By Kahlil Wall-Johnson for the Saker Blog
The inter-imperialist camp, as it has been called, has dedicated itself to painting the Ukraine conflict strictly in terms of inter-imperialist struggle. In their dedication to this interpretation, they have committed to a series of surprisingly extravagant claims, some of which I intend to gather here and hold up to the light. However, it is this camp’s total lack of scruples, specifically when it comes to their sources, that has compelled me to object. Having said this, I find it necessary to reassure the reader that what follows is not (unlike the pieces being critiqued) a rant on how we ought to interpret Lenin’s Imperialism, or even really an attempt to engage with theory. Nor is it a detailed comparison of the role of the US and Russia in the world-system. There is no need to repeat the many articles which have rebutted these claims and contrasted the specific nature of US imperialism to Chinese or Russian foreign policy and trade. Rather, what I am trying to scrape at here is their lazy and offensive attitude towards their sources; an attitude that is repeatedly criticized by the very authors they cite!
Interestingly, it is these individuals’ familiarity with many of the contours of US imperialism that has provided them with a premade template to project onto Russia’s behavior. This has led them to defend certain claims, which at times, even surpass those of the US corporate media. As teaser of what is to come, the figures of whom we are speaking write that “Ukranians are not oppressing Russians” and that “when Putin likens this behavior to genocide, he takes a page from the execrable Adrian Zenz” while going on to speak of “a Russian empire of lies,” and its plagiarism of the US “doctrine of humanitarian interventionism.”
Let us begin with a recent piece titled “‘Is Russia an imperialist country?’— That’s not the right question to ask?’ by a certain Greg Godels. The only potential merit that should be granted the author is that of almost taking a look at the idea of multipolarity through a historical perspective. There is a point to be made. Multipolarity is indeed an abstract concept; without a concrete analysis of the emerging poles, it is not necessarily desirable, nor, as he argues, anti-imperialist in the Leninist sense. Then there is also the problem of the extent to which the world can even reach, or stabilize at, a point of mutually independent sovereign states or empires. This could lead to the subsequent question of whether multipolarity —a potentially ambiguous buzzword, enjoyed principally in foreign policy documents and by foreign correspondents— is even an adequate tool through which to understand economic, military and political history. There is potential here for a rich debate. In fact, it has certainly already begun to take place. Unfortunately, after pointing out the abstract character of the principle at hand, Godels drifts further away from any potential concrete analysis to declare that, since multipolarity isn’t inherently anti-imperialist or anti-capitalist, today’s emerging world isn’t either and, most importantly, doesn’t deserve any support. What makes him think that multipolarity is being supported as an abstract principle, universally valid throughout history? Why assume we are not taking stock of actuality?
Laying claim to what Lenin would be saying of the present, Godels and others assume the all too familiar this-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-Ukraine tone. The Bolshevik leader is quoted relentlessly, leaving us no doubt as to whether or not they have read him. When not busy copy and pasting, their writing is completely devoid of the concrete analysis, so beloved by Lenin, which might back their inter-imperialist reading of the war in Ukraine. These pieces range from directly labeling Russia as an imperialist power, to more diffuse readings of Lenin in which Imperialism is presented as a project in which all capitalist states participate, regardless of their position in the hierarchy of national economies, and less as a trait circumscribed to certain powers. Regardless of the path chosen, at the end of the day Russia, and China, are irrevocably implicated in the imperialist project and any opportunities or potential that we might expect to be perceived by a self-described marxist-leninist in the weakening of the US empire, are dismissed on the grounds that the immanent multipolar world, of which Russia is often cast as the sole representative, is tainted by capitalism, or “enmeshed” in imperialism. In fact, these disciples of Lenin explicitly argue against the decline of the US empire representing an opportunity at all, reserving their support for a metaphysical parallel dimension in which they run simulations of a “radical change” pure enough for their ideals.
Beyond these moralistic arguments, history is marching forward— whether these Marxist-Leninists give it the greenlight or not. Despite their nostalgia for the “radical socialists” who “tried to adapt to reality,” their stream of revolutionary rhetoric rings hollow if it is out of rhythm with these developments. Even their source of identity —Lenin and his contemporaries—, while condemning WWI, actively factored its aftermath, a weakened capitalist core, into their calculations (‘the war to end all wars’). Even they recognized the objective nature of the forces at work; the war could not be detained— denounced? Yes, but only as a symptom of the system. Unlike these earnest, ethical interventions, echoing from the inter-imperialist camp demanding that “Russia must immediately withdraw its forces from Ukraine and cease interfering in Ukrainian affairs,” while “The United States and its satellites must do the same,” Lenin’s pamphlets well above today’s anti-war petitions.
Before getting too bogged down in particular claims, we would be wise to catch the implicit assumption by which those who do not condemn Russia are supporting, or in favor of the conflict in some way. This is a particularly frustrating depiction of things, especially for those of us who were weary of it prior to February 24. Enough has been written on the series of events that led up to this moment; a series of events, which when considered in their totality, make condemnation of Russia a very stubborn task. The tragedy of the occasion is beyond question, yet beyond this fact, the inter-imperialist camp has shown remarkably little interest in both the specific events that led up to February 24, and the global consequences of a favorable or unfavorable outcome for Russia. Moreover, when the scope of US aggression, encirclement and even entrapment towards Russia is admitted to, they turn around and refuse to consider the gravity of these threats on a military or security level, insisting that it was merely the profit motives of Russian billionaires. Of course, that billionaires in Russia have faced choppy waters, or that the communist party of Russia supports, and called for, their country’s intervention, is deemed irrelevant, or in the latter case potential class treason. In any case, when one seeks to understand the series of events that led up to Russia’s intervention, as opposed to grafting Lenin quotes onto preconceptions, it is hard to think of what Russia could have done to avoid this outcome. These Marxist-Leninists should not be expected to share in Putin’s disavowal of socialism, however, his disdain for Soviet-era allocations of Russian-majority territories to Ukraine (Crimea, Eastern Ukraine) is not unfounded given the current circumstances.
It should also be understood that the present critique is neither directed at the general practice of recourse to Lenin, nor is it intended to rescue him from misuse. Rather, what we are taking aim at is this perspective, passed off as the work of “a good marxist” and “a good historian” (yes, these are real quotes), according to which the present situation would be best understood solely by drawing on literature from, and comparisons with, the early 20th century. Thus Godels repeatedly tells us that “The demise of the Soviet Union has freed the hand of imperialism, producing a world substantially congruent with early-twentieth-century imperialism.“ or that “Twenty-first-century imperialism shares more features with the imperialism of Lenin’s time than differences.” It is an interesting way of proceeding, in which both the past and the present must be significantly distorted, or selectively read, so as to resemble each other, while the differences between the two epochs are only admitted to insofar as “‘New’ great powers replaced or changed places with the line-up active in Lenin’s time.” Before poking any holes in this way of thinking, we might ask the representatives of this trend how they find it presentable to ignore the many contributions made to the field since the days of Lenin, and especially in the wake of Bretton Woods or the breakup of the USSR. Lenin is no doubt a starting point, sure, but how is it passable to present his diagnosis from 1916 as the bulk, if not entirety, of one’s contemporary perspective?
Let us take a look at another claim shared by Godels and some of his comrades in arms: “the attempt to impose multipolarity upon a world saddled with the domination of the British Empire was a critical factor leading to World War I,” which he invokes as a sort of cautionary tale against the dangers of welcoming multipolarity. We might start by asking if it is appropriate to compare the dominance of Britain, or the sterling zone, to that of the American Century and dollar hegemony, especially given the considerable independence of other pre-WWI powers (the Monroe Doctrine being almost a century old). Does a war, which saw the US begin to impose unipolarity, qualify as an attempt to impose multipolarity? Or perhaps, even more to the point, is it not a clumsy anachronism to impose the notion of multipolarity on the colonial world of 1916, which openly embraced imperialist ideology; a world, which regardless of the internal power struggles of Western Europe, was largely dominated by a community of states which for many decades operated as a coalition of colonial powers (i.e. the scramble for Africa)? Can a parallel really be drawn between the Axis powers’ struggle for colonies, and China and Russia’s foreign policy? Apparently so, as we shall see later. Formal similarities aside, must we ignore the particularites of each epoch so thoroughly for the sake of this parallel? In any case, this strained analogy requires both events to be warped to the extent that it is difficult to conceive of how one could aid in understanding the other, and immediately becomes problematic when we compare the contending powers of WWI and those of today. I can only wonder what a truly “good historian” would make of all this.
Regarding the dismissal of multipolarism, it should be noted that this argument depends on Russia, caricatured as a “ravaged former socialist state now owned by mega-billionaires” —with no legitimate security concerns, or internal class struggles, of her own— being cast as the sole representative of an emerging polispheric world. Accordingly, to the extent that the US empire’s decline is cautioned against on the grounds of Russia’s existence, China and other nations struggling against US dominance must either be denounced as capitalist, or be swept under the carpet for the sake of convenience. In the case of the Godels’ piece we have been focusing on, he opts for a mix of the two: the author’s sole reference to modern China is the following isolated statement: “PRC’s impressive entry into the global capitalist economy and subsequent remarkable growth threatens US hegemony, creating intensified competition and tensions.” Thus, far from being an alternative to US dominance, China is portrayed in an almost dangerous light, and is referred to on the sly via its initials (maybe we were supposed to forget about it). The same could be said of this brave theoretician’s declaration that without the USSR, the “the most viable economic scaffold for independent development outside of the imperialist system was eliminated.” We can only assume that the Belt and Road Initiative is either a touch too imperialist for his liking, or that he was hoping we would fail to remember.
Within this logic, the history leading up to Russia’s intervention is pounded into the mold of early 20th-century inter-imperialist competition; an act reminiscent of the “baroque conviction” (p. 293) criticized by Gramsci, and echoed by Losurdo, wherein one becomes more orthodox by seeing the world solely through the lense of economic incentive. In this particular case, the state is nothing more than the administrative branch of capital. As the latter noted, this reductionism “simplifies and flattens the complexity of historical and social processes.” Accordingly, these orthodox marxists, while fully aware of the unilateral nature of US aggression, reduce the war to a question of “whose billionaires are more important to you? The US’s or Russia’s?” Yet history has shown us that military concerns can reach existential levels, upon which the lens of economic incentives becomes relatively inadequate to understand the behavior of states: think of the Cuban missile crisis, or even the arms race from the perspective of the USSR. As Gustavo Bueno put it, the dialectic of class is incomplete without the dialectic of states. One need only remember the conviction of Michael Hudson, or other analysts, that Russia’s motives were primarily of a military nature. This is not to deny that economic outcomes were not factored in; the point is that they start to warp the picture when other factors are disregarded. Likewise, to assert that security concerns can reach existential levels is not to provide a cover story for Russia’s deeper imperialist ambitions. Although it should be said that the instantaneous rejection by many leftists of this particular casus belli is certainly linked to the desensitizing effect of US imperialism. Unfortunately, Godels and his comrades have gone as far as to declare that “Russia is mimicking US policy” and “the doctrine of humanitarian interventionism,” showing very little care for the history of Ukraine or the scope of the US empire.
Of course the trajectory of Russia’s billionaires must be considered, all of this is not meant to absolve them of their misdeeds, quite the opposite. The point is that, in reducing the conflict to the rivalry of two capitalist systems, there is no analysis of the particular development of capitalism in Russia as a creation of US imperialism. It is almost ignored that the people of Russia are more at war with US imperialism than they are with the billionaires of Russia. In fact the latter are its children! Given the havoc wreaked on Russia upon US penetration, it is insulting to write off the exploitation and suffering of the Russian working class as the doing of endogenous billionaires; the people are just as much the victims of US imperialism, while the billionaires are indebted to it. We might add that it was the very moderate limits the Russian state began to impose on its vulnerability and on the looting of its resources that led the US to escalate. Regardless of where you look, the history of this conflict does not agree with these heavily ideological distortions.
Similarly, this rigid, inter-imperialistic reading of Russia’s behavior comes hand in hand with assertion that this war is wholly detrimental to the Russian working class; a view most expounded by a presumed associate of Godels, Nikos Mottas. Here he speaks with remarkable confidence, hailing the stance of the Russian Communist Workers’ Party (RCWP) in opposition to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which is charged with having sold out. Clearly, there can be no mention of the fact that working class Russians have relatives in the war-torn regions of Ukraine, or that the ‘indivisibility of security’ against US aggression is in the interest of working class Russians as well. But even in the statements of the RCWP to which they refer, we find a much more tentative perspective than the one extracted by these ideologues, in fact, certain sentences are deceptively cited, ignoring the context of the broader argument. Yes, the statement is titled “No to fascism, no to imperialist war!,” and does go on to declare that “We have no doubts that the true aims of the Russian state in this war are quite imperialistic – to strengthen the position of imperialist Russia in world market competition,” yet, the very next sentence specifies that “since this struggle today to some extent helps the people of Donbass to repulse Bandera fascism, the communists in this part of it do not deny, but allow and support as much as it is waged against fascism in the Donbass and Ukraine.” The statement is adamant in its support for the intervention, going so far as to regret that “it happened late, much later than it should have” and stressing that “As long as Russia’s armed intervention helps save people in the Donbass from reprisals by punishers, we will not oppose this goal. In particular, we consider it acceptable if, due to circumstances, it is necessary to use force against the fascist Kyiv regime, insofar as this will be in the interests of the working people.” Compared to Mottas, the authors of this statement seem to take the issue of nazism rather seriously!
Most notably, the statement contains no denouncement of Russia’s actions so far, quite the opposite, and repeatedly stresses the need to watch attentively for a potential predatory turn. Disappointingly, here Mottas deceptively confirms his thesis by pasting the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph: “Not the masters but the workers will die on both sides. To die for class brothers is worthy, but to die and kill for the interests of the masters is stupid, criminal and unacceptable,” omitting that the first sentence is a conditional clause discussing “the possibility of the military campaign of assistance to the Donbass from Russia… developing into a truly completely predatory war,” in which case “We will regard this as a war of conquest.”
Indeed, the statement assumes the aforementioned diffuse definition of imperialism, however its criticism of recent events is deeply measured, and it problematizes its own framework. Both the statement and Mottas agree that the true source of the conflict was not humanitarian, yet while the latter emphasizes its inter-imperialist nature to indict Russia, the statement is open in its identification of US aggression, even citing the revival of fascism! Interestingly, what we find in the RCWP statement is well beyond the moralistic logic of the inter-imperialist camp, as they explicitly posit the possibility of recognizing that Russia is implicated in imperialism, while insisting on supporting their countries actions so far in Ukraine! Thus, contrary to Mottas and co, they are aligned with the diagnostic and tactical dimension of Lenin’s work, as opposed to turning to him for an ethical guide on what can, or cannot be, supported. The piece actually justifies its support for its country, which it nevertheless defines as having imperialistic motives. Is this to say that in certain cases we must choose between nations with imperialistic elements? Must the puritans recant their support for this statement as well? In any case, I recommend that the reader skim over the short statement, if only to grasp the extent to which it has been distorted.
As if that weren’t enough, Mottas then fixes his gaze on the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), which certainly deserves to be criticized for a great many of its positions and policies. However in this case, the PCE’s calling for “the dissolution of NATO” is ridiculed as hypocrisy simply because the PCE has formed a small part of the coalition government for the past several years. Apparently government officials are hypocritical if they criticize state policy. By this logic, one wonders just what exactly politicians are expected to do. He presumably sent the PCE an email in which he told them that if they wanted his support, they must resign and resort to blogging as the sole means of expressing political views.
Another case study in this tendency is Stephen Gowans who, it should be noted, cites Domenico Losurdo and appears to hold him in high esteem. The latter will be of use here, frequently, as a considerable portion of his work is dedicated to questioning the very same current in which the inter-imperialist camp finds itself (or fails to find itself, but can be found we should say). As with the previous statement, we will quote him to great length, not out of deference but rather to display the total lack of scruples of those who twist his work to their ends.
Gowans incurs in the same logic described earlier: China and Russia are branded as capitalist (leaving little to no room for distinctions between economic structures with vastly different magnitudes and dynamics), and equated with the US. Then their rivalry with the US is reduced to inter-capitalist competition and, voila, conflated with imperialism. Given this disdain for all “competitive actions’‘ and self-interest on behalf of states (his telltale signs of imperialism) we can only guess that he would feel more comfortable with other nations if they offered no competition at all to the US and hermetically sealed themselves off from international trade. One can only wonder if these individuals consider the USSR’s foreighn policy to have been completely devoid of competition and self-service? Or maybe socialism has never existed for them, except in Cuba maybe, where the blockade has kept them pure from market forces. They must prefer their socialists “poor but beautiful;” a position which Losurdo repeatedly attacks and condemns in his many responses to this very same rejection of contemporary Chinese policy.
As you will soon see, the extent to which Gowans so perfectly embodies a number of positions which Losurdo disapproves of is comical. Gowans’ ideas are wholly incompatible with the Losurdo book he quotes, and hasn’t read or has intentionally disregarded the Italian philosopher’s work on China or Stalin, where Losurdo shows himself to be one of the most forthright defenders of ‘socialism with chinese characteristics.’ But above all, Losurdo’s work is largely a critical assessment of the millenarian hopes for the “end to classes and states altogether” or the transcendence of polarity in a “nonpolar” world (“the very essence of Marxism” we are reassured); themes so ubiquitous, and very much alive, in Gowans’ rants.
There is something very immaterial about this discomfort with multipolarity. It seems to bother these people that some states are bigger than others, or that even socialist states have to compete for spheres of influence. They seem to object to the fact that the world will always be polarized to a certain degree. Yet, a world where these imbalances don’t exist is a metaphysical experiment, and there is great reason to hope that the dynamics of Chinese, and even Russian, foreign engagement constitute a break from the extremely predatory lineage of western europe and the US. Of course, if Russia and China take a predatory turn in their foreign policy, then they must be critiqued. We are not so blinded by our irrational desire to see the US empire fall.
Gowans is perhaps the most explicit representative of the tendency we have been describing. In his obsession with critiquing those who associate imperialism today with the unipolar role of the US, he writes that his own view is “more complex” because it “follows the lines” of Hilferding, Bukharin and Lenin, while he repeatedly defines imperialism as a “system of rivalry”. Does this mean that in the 90’s, amidst the “end of history” —when rivalry, be it inter-capitalist or Cold War-esque, had largely subsided— that imperialism had slipped into the shadows as well? In any case, this lense of imperialism-as-rivalry begins to lose credence after WWI (unless the USSR is read as imperialist as well). Most alarmingly, he then goes on to complain that the position he is attacking is “at odds with the model developed by the three Marxists cited above.” This is worth ruminating on for a moment. For Gowans, it is an inconsistency that a diagnosis of the year 2022 does not correspond to that of 1916! This is the bizarre anti-historical attitude we have been trying to provide a portrait of. Then, Gowans, in the same piece from which we have been quoting, moves on to the same pre-WWI parallels that Godels had gotten so excited about. Although in this case we are told that understanding contemporary imperialism vis-a-vis the US, and advocating for multipolarity, retroactively “excludes the Axis powers as imperialists,” rendering them anti-imperialist given their struggle against the British empire, as they too sought “their place in the sun.” Once again, apart from the work of another “good historian”, we are face to face with the same refusal of any concrete analysis.
When everything is this thoroughly abstracted and beaten to death, a number of highly reductionist parallels can be suggested: an equally imperialist Eurasian empire is set to steal the stage from the US; Russia’s struggle for the integration of regions on its border is equated to the US drive for control of the same markets; the pre-WWI struggle for the spoils of colonialism is equated to Eurasian integration. Such is the extent to which they scour their brains for symmetries, casting things as a good ol’ fashion imperial tug-of-war.
There is something unforgivable about this apathy, or even reluctance, shown towards the decline of the US empire, the scandals of which we know all too well. The leveraging of these forced symmetries, this insistence that Russia and China are of the same category as the US, the childish attempts to monopolize Lenin or Marx, it rings like more of a fickle provocation than any serious attempt to dabble in history or theory. China and Russia’s concrete terms of engagement are apparently irrelevant, their competition only harboring the dangers of war. There is almost this assumption that the US would ever loosen its grip without a fight! It is absurd how emerging powers are reprimanded for their militarism, as if the only thing holding the US back were not the fear of its own destruction.
It must be fun for this clique to speculate from their position of ideological purity, digging their feet in and demanding a nonpolar, stateless, classless world. Better yet: a paradigm change; a competition-free, altruistic awakening; a revolutionary break with this imperialism-is-everywhere world. Have they been reading foucault? Nevertheless this leisure is not possible for those of us who are confronting the actual historical conjunctions offered to us. In fact, it is worrisome that they did not walk away from Lenin with any appreciation for concrete analysis, and clearly were not influenced by his more tactically oriented works (i.e. Left-Wing’ Communism: an Infantile Disorder, What is to be Done?). Yet, if we were to assume this diffuse notion of imperialism, one could only wish, for example, that Russia had been more imperialist in Gaddafi’s Libya. Their current state of affairs is certainly less desirable than that of the liberated territories of Syria. Yet almost expectedly, this stark contrast is downplayed on the basis that Syria is a Russian “vassal.” Predictably, the areas “ruled” by Russia are put on an equal footing with the ones controlled by “US,” “Turkish” and “Israeli” forces.
Dedicated as they are to this dismissal of imperialist Russia, the representatives of this camp cling to Lenin’s emphasis that there is no formula through which to identify imperialism. It is here where Gowans believes he has found something to adapt to his project in Losurdo, who we are told ”challenges a commonly held misconception that the Bolshevik leader’s understanding of imperialism can be reduced to a checklist of characteristics that define individual states”. But even this clarification is decontextualized and betrayed: far from rejecting the notion of an imperialist checklist in favor of a historically situated approach like that of Lenin’s, they have reverted to a criterion of their own, which happens to be the loosest, most free-floating one available. In short, any activity bearing an element of competition or self-interest, any integration with capitalist markets, constitutes a sign of imperialism. On the other hand, while admitting to the fluidity of his parameters, Lenin built his analysis through the diagnosis of the scale of foreign investments, colonial possessions, superprofits, the merging of private capital, industry and government, etc; that is the specific heritage of the US, EU and NATO. While these authors attempt to untie imperialism from this lineage, moving towards the universal criteria mentioned above, they draw on, or attempt to hold on to, all of the imagery and scandals —the emotional thud— of the definition of imperialism they are distancing themselves from! As if the two were one and the same; as if the imperialism they try to tap into or harness for their denunciations could be reduced to the elements of capitalism, self-interest and international competition which they have detected in China and Russia!
We must remember that the parameters of imperialism must have a degree of flexibility; they must be historical. This is the precondition to be able to recognize modern imperialism as such. Nobody in 1916 could have predicted the evolution of capitalism. Indeed, how could one have foreseen global dollar hegemony? Or a deindustrialized, imperialist core in the US and western europe? The list goes on. Having recognized this, it is highly deceptive to argue that what Lenin was describing could be reduced to things such as integration in international markets, or competition and self-interest, as his work was an acutely historically-situated diagnosis of a specific phase of capitalism, a necessary stepping stone to understand the present, yes, but also insufficient for this purpose. It is equally deceptive if there is no distinction between the vastly different things being equated under the same umbrella, yet this is precisely what they strive to do. The inertia of their commitment to this argument requires them to gloss over the facts. In their extravagance they stoop irretrievably low, warning those who disagree that, besides Lenin turning in his grave, they may be class traitors. Yes, here they finally show their true colors, inadvertently lecturing vast swathes of the “confused” or “ignorant” multitudes who are not of the same mind.
Amidst these tirades against a “very capitalist China” and a Russia no “less an imperialist state than the United States,” Gowans attempts to invoke Losurdo, who is no longer with us to set the record straight. Fortunately, his work leaves little room for interpretation regarding his compatibility with his hijackers’ project. For example, in the online translation of his book on Stalin, on page 293 we find his frustration with the fact that “In analyzing international relations there are those who consider themselves to be the foremost champions of anti-imperialism by expanding as much as possible their list of imperialist countries; all of them put on the same level!;” a conviction which he punctuates several lines later with Togliatti’s famous remark that “one of the fundamental points of our revolutionary strategy, is our ability to understand, at any given moment, who is the principal enemy and to concentrate all our strength against that enemy.”
Yet we need not look any further than the very same book from which Gowans cites to encounter that on page 303, “China is the country that more than any other is challenging the international division of labour imposed by colonialism and imperialism, and furthering the end of the Columbian epoch—a fact of enormous, progressive historical significance.” Again, let’s not forget that Gowans has decided any support for China or Russia —”baby imperialisms” as he eloquently puts it— constitutes “little more than a mental illness.” He clearly has no reservations about drawing on the wisdom of the mentall ill when he stumbles across an isolated sentence that serves his mission.
Losurdo goes on, directly addressing this debate when he remarks that “Today, in the advanced capitalist countries even the intellectual culture influenced by Marx finds it hard to include the struggle to shake off ‘political annexation’ (Lenin) or the ‘political yoke’ (Guevara), to repel military aggression, in the category of emancipatory class struggles. The refusal to interpret endeavors to end ‘economic’ annexation (Lenin) or the ‘imperialist economic yoke’, and to foil ‘economic aggression’ (Guevara), in terms of class struggle, is prejudicial. ” (p. 291) and repeatedly returns to the fact that “Lenin had no hesitation in affirming that ‘[i]n a genuinely national war, the words ‘defence of the fatherland’ are not a deception and we are not opposed to it ’.” Anyone acquainted with Losurdo is aware that his entire work is pervaded by a treatment of the national question that completely transcends the level of thought we are critiquing. For someone in Gowans’ camp, it would take a certain degree of clumsiness or bad faith not to see oneself in the crosshairs of Losurdo’s critique. Let’s just hope he didn’t make it that far in the book.
As a means of distancing ourselves from the particular focus of this debate, the following Losurdo excerpts tap even deeper into the general state of detachment and confusion of this camp. In criticizing a certain familiar outlook, Losurdo, in Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns, writes of “the difficult balance between the legitimation of modernity and its critical evaluation, a balance that characterizes Marx and that Marx himself inherited from Hegel” and notes the former’s awareness of “those who, when faced with difficult situations and the failure of certain ideals, first of all confirm their ‘inner sincerity’ and assume the ‘halo of honest intentions” (2014, p. 262).
Even so, his distaste for this mindset becomes even more palpable when he recalls Engels’ jest at the “beautiful soul” who “delights itself in its on inner purity and excellence, which it narcissistically enjoys in opposition to the baseness and dullness of actuality and the world’s progress” and which upon seeing the “harshness” of reality, “withdraws in horror, and to make up for it, it is always ready to pity itself for being ‘misunderstood’ and ignored by the world;” a place in which it “always ends up making a terrible impression, not only on a political level, by demonstrating its impotence, but on a more strictly moral level, by revealing itself as soft, narcissistic, and essentially hypocritical.”
Kahlil is interested in Gustavo Bueno and the subject of empire.
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This is my first time commenting here, and i just want to say, THANK YOU for this excellent article that expresses in ways i never could my frustration with so much of today’s western “communist” left (not all of it!)
For all that they bandy about Lenin quotes, they could not be more at odds with the spirit of Lenin’s writings and his approach to understanding the world. They cherrypick Lenin quotes attempting to justify an already preconceived narrative and in so doing resemble more a Bernstein or Kautsky (who would frequently quote Marx without actually understanding him, as Lenin pointed out over and over in his scathing critiques of them).
They do not actually analyze the objective conditions and peculiar circumstances of today but instead engage in anachronistic parallelisms. They are trying to shove today’s square peg into yesteryear’s round hole.
I take issue with one thing in the article, namely with calling these “comrades” Marxist-Leninists. The Chinese and Vietname communists are real Marxist-Leninists. These western armchair communists are not, in fact they much more resemble Trotskyists (who love to call the former USSR “social-imperialist” in much the same utterly erroneous and analysis-free fashion that today’s China gets called capitalist and imperialist).
They are what we would today call “ultra-lefts”, suffering from the very same “Infantile Disorder” about which Lenin wrote in his famous work. They are unable to let go of their idealism and start dealing with the messy reality of the world as it is, so they simplify the world until it fits into their black and white mold. But most damning of all, they are unable to identify properly what Mao called “primary and secondary contradictions”.
There is no question that Russia has its problems. So does China. But in the face of a world-spanning US empire seeking to impose unipolar dominance and subjugate us all, those are very much secondary.
Marxism without a healthy dose of geopolitics is worthless. That’s why Trotsky’s ilk never were capable of developing the USSR. Multiple “Internationals” and consistent “world revolution” messaging will never work.
Geopolitics, economics, and national interest will always trump fanciful ideas of idealism. That’s what the CPC has gotten right since Reform and Opening.
Russia is not an imperialist power because it does not seek to open businesses in foreign countries and thus exploit workers in those countries. Nor does Russia seek to exploit the natural resources/ raw materials of foreign countries
Lenin stated that in a war between an imperialist power and a non imperialist country, workers must militarily side with the non imperialist country without giving it an iota of political support. The war between Russia and Ukraine is really a war between Russia and USA.
Russia is a capitalist country. The oligarchs have faced some choppy waters but have far from drowned. A real socialist has no country. He always struggles against the capitalist class, including the capitalist class in Russia. Need I remind anyone that the first thing that Putin did after his most recent landslide reelection is reduce pensions.
The Worker’s World Party is pretty good on the Russia/Ukraine conflict. As is Bolshevik Tendency.
In my previous post, I should have said “in a war between an imperialist power and a non imperialist CAPITALIST country.”
– Russia is a capitalist country.
All states are governed by Money [as noted by Rothschild]. North-Korea followed China very fast.
In case of African states with little government, Moeny is even more important.
If you know a state that is not governed by Money I am interested.
Here any Communist should ask himself: Am I against capitalism?
Are Western states liberal, capitalist states? Here we run into a problem as Nazism is a visible trait.
We have to understand the basic nature of money first. Money is invented as an exchange tool. To make barter trade more efficient. Money is a TOOL in its basic.
Then comes the political ideologists who use the tool not to exchange, but to create power, submission, suppression, “governed by money”. But you and other ideologists have lost the pacifier.
Money is an exchange tool. Therefore it started with gold and silver and cobber, exchange value.
Now we sit in front of the flat screen with open mouth “being governed by illusional e-money”.
That (Money) is what the Communists want to make war upon, demonising it as “evil capitalism”.
– We have to get rid of money
– You mean creating digital currency?
– Exactly
– Some currency state can control?
– Right
what is this “cobber” of which you speak?
is it some material known in antiquity, the manufacture of which has since been forgotten?
is it an exotic perfume, like “frankincense” and “myrrh”?
is it some kind of precious stone, which is only found in a secret mine, deep in the mountains of Afghanistan?
is it an oil with amazing medical properties, extracted from the carcasses of an extinct species of whale?
enquiring minds want to know.
Anton,
Could you tell where Lenin said that a non-imperialist state should be supported in a war against an imperialist one?
Lenin addressed this matter in “War And Revolution”.
If Russia is really capitalist is in fact debatable. It is in any case less capitalist than the United States and the EU, and that is precisely the reason why it is constantly under attack from the latter. There is a hudge difference between a President who has done his best to repair the neoliberal damages caused by a puppet (Yeltsin) but sees himself once compelled to reduce pension funds or increase pension age while the economy of his country is strangulated by illegal sanctions, and the governments of Western states that are not threatened by anyone but have freely chosen the path of austerity and have been constantly going through it for many decades. The fight between the West on one side and Russia/China on the other side is definitely not an inter-imperialistic fight, it is a inter-systemic fight just like the US vs. the USSR.
Armchair communists indeed. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that the ongoing world economic/political realignment, led by Russia is world historic change, is revolutionary change, should stop calling themselves revolutionary. Anyone who calls himself a “communist” and denies the necessity and correctness of Russia invasion of Ukraine should just admit he is a common. liberal I used to read Godel’s web page occasionally, long ago, before Feb 24, before the world changed. There is no point paying attention to what he says about anything, anymore.
Thanks for this. I’m not a Marxist, but I found the argument being from a Marxist-Leninist perspective both fascinating and convincing. There is a danger that Russia and/or China could turn out to be truly imperialist. I don’t think either are anywhere near it at this point. In fact, I’d argue that Russia is being extraordinarily careful to not have it be imperial in the sense of conquest.
Lenin would certainly understand the need for direct conflict with fascism. I always return to Dimitrov’s definition of fascism as the political expression of finance capitalism. Finance capitalism will always be imperial in what little I know of Lenin. There can be no argument in good faith that US imperialism and finance capitalism have benefited the working class of Ukraine. Would the armchair communists suggest that nothing be done to protect Ukrainians from imperialism and capitalist exploitation?
We’ve learned that Avostal will not be rebuilt. The people of Mariupol hated it. It gave them cancer and was an environmental disaster, but profitable for an oligarch who funded fascists. An imperial conquest wouldn’t be likely to agree to a profitable enterprise being dissolved for quality of life reasons articulated by the working class living in the shadow of a steel mill. There are no non-profit empires.
There is a lot of theory being expanded on this website, but I just see basic truths. It comes from a conscience, morality and a sense of justice. Trotsky was the leader of the Bolsheviks,80% Jews and the west is completely controlled by these same people.
Somewhere, somehow a group understood that people can be controlled and manipulated, for themselves. Russia’s only problem is that they still have these people embedded in their country, as in many other countries.
To claim that these Russians billionaires are somehow different from the western types is completely incorrect. They all have the same masters.
China has gotten rid of many who, as they become rich, allowed to join the club, but because of their system; they jail them when they catch them.
Russia must do the same to free themselves from bondage.
The root of all of this has always been racism and a feeling of superiority. It could well be that the people that always controlled the finances, nurtured this and now was the time to put in all chips to retain control.
But, whereas they have the power to buy western governments and billionaires, they don’t have the power to control the military might of Russia or China. These are the facts right now!.
Very well put. Everything else is knives at a gunfight
Bronstein was not the leader of the Bolsheviks.
The sort of behavior this article denounces is the sort of behavior that trots engaged in during the lead-up to WW2 – against the USSR.
As a marxist-leninist I approve of this article, it points out destructive and self-destructive ultraleft tendencies within alleged communists, tendencies that are most easily explained as controlled opposition and entryism by the worst of trotskyism.
I agree with practically all that has been said here. The Chinese Communist Party appears to me to be entirely consistent with Marxist – Leninist logic in holding that their current stage of socialist development is but a step along the path to a higher socialist development. Socialism with Chinese characteristics, as they call it, does not in my view in any way fall into the trap of being a reversion to a “capitalist” model. It is but a stage of socialist development that is necessary in the current world situation. This is how the CCP sees it, with their typical Chinese intellectual consistency. Therefore I regard China to be consistently Communist in a principled manner.
Russia however is a more complex case. I would argue that in actually being pushed by imperialism into going to war against the Capitalist empire of lies (on behalf of the peoples of the World) Russia can only bind itself into the objective logic of anti imperialist struggle: The pressure generated by the objective requirements of strategic success in such a long term, and world changing struggle, press upon Russia with a logic all of its own. If the Marxian dialectic is correct, as I believe it is, then to actually succeed in overthrowing world capitalism requires that Russia organize itself around some form of internally disciplined socialist power. It appears to me that the current Russian leadership, of objective necessity, is in the beginning stages of moving in this direction. The logic is there if not the open recognition of it. Which makes the internal development now underway in Russia extremely interesting.
– Lenin would certainly understand the need for direct conflict with fascism.
The Bolsheviks were created by Western finance, and also Swedish LM Ericsson, who delived surveillance eletronics to the Bolsheviks.
It is important here Russia had a large Khazarian minority, ready to be exploited for “Communism” [destabilization of the Tsar]
ad hominem removed … mod
What many people who spout these theories seem to not understand is that during the period leading up to World War 1 it was almost universal practice for intelligence agencies from many countries to run underground influence operations upon each other. Espionage was rife. It was a widespread practice during World War 1 for the contending powers to pursue military victory against their opponents by attempting to ferment revolution in the homeland of their enemies. One example being German intelligence supported Lenin in Russia in order to undermine the Romanov war effort. So Lenin understood their game and took their money. He then went on to conduct his own policy along with countless other Russian revolutionaries. Lenin was never for sale. If the Russian revolutionaries got some underhand help from the West and the Swede Ericsson assisted with some surveillance electronics that hardly rises to the level of saying that these external manipulators “created” or controlled the direction of the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin and co “created” it. The idea you present is absurd and easily disproved if one looks more closely.
The Russian revolution was a self creation of the Russian people in struggle, under enormously difficult circumstances. It was an epic world changing convulsion that demands a much deeper explanation than that offered by you. You write as if you can see nothing creative or constructive in this revolution and can only ascribe it to evil and manipulative forces. That shows how disconnected you are from the whole period.
The obvious question has to be asked – if the West created the Russian revolution why did so many Western nations then have to invade a few years later in order to attempt to overthrow their own creation? Another convincing proof of the falsity of your position is the following; If the Bolsheviks were fighting both the Russian White Armies and a multiplicity of Western invading armies all at the same time – with what force did the Reds (who were notoriously underfunded and ill equipped proletarians and peasants) prevail and finally overcome such a formidable array of vicious enemies? Where did the energy of the Red victory come from?
There is only one possible answer and it stares us in the face. The awakened passion and will of the Russian working masses. It was a volcanic convulsion arising from within the Russian people. That is why it is designated as “Red.” No way can that be just put down to just some manipulation of Western Finance or merely some supposedly Jewish plot. Even if such plots did exist, which I grant many did.
– The Russian revolution was a self creation of the Russian people in struggle, under enormously difficult circumstances.
The Communists were headed by the Khazarians. That is a fact confirmed by Putin.
Who is Rothschild? A Khazarian. That I consider a fact.
Who is financiers like Warburg? Another Khazarian
“The Warburg family is a prominent German and American banking family of German Jewish and originally Venetian Jewish descent”
Who wanted to take down the Tsar? The Khazarians, who had historical reasons for murdering the Tsar.
They left a note about “history being revenged”
When I read the article this morning there were very few comments, and I immediately thought that my old mate Snow Leopard will have some interesting comments on this. He did not let me down.
I particularly liked ” Where did the energy of the Red victory come from? There is only one possible answer and it stares us in the face. The awakened passion and will of the Russian working masses. It was a volcanic convulsion arising from within the Russian people. That is why it is designated as “Red.” No way can that be just put down to just some manipulation of Western Finance or merely some supposedly Jewish plot.”
Indeed. Too many of us look for conspiracies, forgetting that in many instances it’s simply a case of “tides in the affairs of men.” Sometimes ordinary folk achieve great things.
Today’s news has a story about Khazarian mafia:
– Britain’s parliamentary warlords have to date gladly provided £2.1 Billion to fund the Ukrainian war effort rather than budgeting to fix the UK’s gutted NHS, declining educational system, historic poverty or ever-increasing homeless population. With the deplorable state of the UK in mind, why does the British public continue to ignore this national decline in favour of Ukraine’s factual allegiance to neo-Nazism?
The Khazarian mafia cannot care less about Brits. Neither can they care less about 100.000 dead by vaccines. Ukraine is Khazarian homeland – that is what matters for them?
Left wing Soros = Khazarian mafia (Soros is also Vatican related). I have already stated Stalin claimed 4.2 mill deaths in Auschwitz (?) .. exactly what Israel could ask for at that time.
and SWISS based Red Cross in 1945 after seen all documents in the german camps in saying about 285,000 + so what is real NUMBER?????
Kjell108: I do think you have a valid point to make about the Khazarian mafia. And I thank you for making it. Clearly there is truth in what you say.
One of the most useful descriptions of the current Ukraine conflict I have seen brings to the surface the deep historic roots underlying that conflict. I read that it is actually a spiritual struggle for control of land (and a wider influence) between Russian Orthodox Christianity and the Khazarrian “Jewish” mafia — Both Russian Orthodox Christianity and Khazarian Jews seek control of the same territory. And they both know it. The war for Ukraine is both a spiritual and a political-military struggle and it is a fight to the death over land between two antagonistic spiritual forces.
It cannot escape my notice that as this struggle between Russian Orthodox Christianity and the Kharzarian pseudo Jews over the Ukraine sharpens and intensifies it serves to sharpen and highlight the fundamental contradictions between Christianity in general and Talmudic Zionism in the wider sense. With very obvious wider spiritual implication for all of us. For this reason I support your bringing the point to the fore.
Putin’s position here is pivotal. He is a sincere and committed Orthodox Christian. Clearly deeply engaged in this current spiritual struggle. It is eminently logical and even necessary that in the heat of this ongoing struggle Putin will interpret a great deal of the actions of multiple parties in the light of this existential conflict. He has to bring the issue out of the darkness and caste light upon it. As well he should and is so doing. This is his spiritual responsibility and we can all be thankful that he is doing it. He strengthens authentic Christianity in this way.
So well he should highlight and emphasize the role of Khazarian Jews throughout the entire period, including the entire 20th century. Even to the point of casting light upon their influence during the Bolshevik and Soviet era. However this becomes complicated and difficult for people to hold in balance. The difficulty lies in what Putin must do is describe these hidden influences in a manner that highlights the underlying issues in the current struggle. He must emphasize and highlight the contradiction between Kharzarian ambition and Russian Christianity. This is where it can get very confusing for people who are removed by 100 years from the original Russian convulsion. Whilst drawing out (as he should) the antagonistic contradictions in that period that are relevant to the current spiritual struggle the danger this entails is that it can create an unbalanced reading of the nature of the former conflict. The original revolution is being interpreted from within the logic of the current contradiction.
The trap I see is that people now can easily make the mistake of thinking that the distinctions Putin is rightly drawing relevant to now fully match the totality of the contradictions that were in play 100 years ago. In the 1917 era there was a Kharzarian influence within the wider Russian struggle and it is good that you and others bring it to light.
However the potential for confusion lies in that highlighting that contradiction, whilst vital for our current struggle, can serve to obscure contradictions that had a deeper and wider relevance to the struggle 100 years ago. The problem I see is that the explanation needed for now is not a perfect fit for the explanation of what happened 100 years ago. But it is all too easy for the human mind to try to make one explanation fit both conflicts. Lenin was not a Kharzarian. Neither was Stalin. The original revolution had its own Russian spiritual force. That is the real reason it prevailed. The symbol of the Hammer and Sickle embodies an authentic spiritual force. It was a Red force rising within the masses and that was what gave it the internal energy to prevail over Patriarchal hierarchy. What gets very difficult for people to deal with is that the original Russian revolution was an emotive spiritual rebellion (red force) against corrupt hierarchical domination. The tragedy for Russia is that their Orthodox spiritual tradition was so embedded in the corruption of that hierarchy it suffered the same fate that befell that wider hierarchy at the hands of the aroused masses. There is an abundance of historical confirmation of this.
Now as Russia resurrects its spiritual self identity it is in struggle to reconcile the spiritual tradition of orthodoxy with the spiritual force of socialism. Both forces are alive in the Russian psyche. But they have never been reconciled. However this is a global problem of the first magnitude and by no means confined to Russia. Two seemingly opposing spiritual forces (Red passion and White Christianity) is a challenge for any mind to deal with. It is what has fueled the Cold War and has been exploited by the Oligarchic hierarchy in the West for a long time. Recall the CIA anthem: “Kill a commie for Christ.” They are exploiting a spiritual divide and conquer opportunity. It has been a source of capitalist psychological and spiritual power for well over 100 years.
And this divide and conquer game works so well because the obvious default logic that almost all minds will fall back upon is that if one side is spiritual (the Whites and Orthodoxy for example, that being the known tradition) then the force that opposes it must be evil. Therefore Communism must be of the Devil. Get it? But that mental posture is not really psychologically satisfactory at all.
It fails as an explanation for 20th century history. If we are going to say that the Russian revolution was “evil” we need to have a picture of why it succeeded against the good white Christians. Now that is a very difficult challenge for any honest and sincere Christian mind. So for want of a deeper clarity it is all too easy for people to say “Oh, the whole Russian revolution was a conspiracy of the wicked and manipulative Kharzarian mafia.” That was the real devil in the works. It is a very attractive judgement because, as you and Putin rightly say, they were actually involved. But there was so much more to the Russian uprising than this under the radar Khazarian influence. That was just a murky and confusing piece of it. But it does not to my mind go anywhere near to explaining why the revolution prevailed.
The real explanation for the Russian revolution must go much deeper and uncover what Gilad Atzmon calls the “metaphysical origins of socialism.” Only when that is done will Russia (and Christianity itself) be able to reconcile the seeming antagonism between two spiritual forces – Christianity and Socialism. This I see as now a compelling psychological need for the Russian people and for people everywhere. In the meantime I encourage people to not settle for interim judgements that force one to view one force as good and the other as evil. When we make that mistake we really do allow ourselves to be mentally captured by that which seeks to divide and conquer.
It is my expectation that an onging and intensifying contradiction between Russian Christianity and the force that currently dares to oppose it will generate a global consciousness raising awakening that can reconcile the two spiritual forces I have attempted to describe. That I would call a real liberation.
+Snow Leopard
Great post. Well done !
“why does the British public continue to ignore this national decline in favour of Ukraine’s factual allegiance to neo-Nazism?” – because they are arrogant, ignorant and stupid.
“There is a danger that Russia and/or China could turn out to be truly imperialist.”
Not in Leninist sense. The ruling classes in those countries are not monopolist or financial capitalists.
– Lenin would certainly understand the need for direct conflict with fascism.
The allies bombing of soft target (civilians) was fascism. Russia was allied with the big fascists, that killed maybe 4-6 mill Germans. The German killed 600,000 Brits, mostly military targets.
Even so, his distaste for this mindset becomes even more palpable when he recalls Engels’ jest at the “beautiful soul” who “delights itself in its on inner purity and excellence, which it narcissistically enjoys in opposition to the baseness and dullness of actuality and the world’s progress” and which upon seeing the “harshness” of reality, “withdraws in horror, and to make up for it, it is always ready to pity itself for being ‘misunderstood’ and ignored by the world;” a place in which it “always ends up making a terrible impression, not only on a political level, by demonstrating its impotence, but on a more strictly moral level, by revealing itself as soft, narcissistic, and essentially hypocritical.”
This is a remarkable quotation, because these guys seem to think that they should get full credit for “the world’s progress”, and are the true spokesmen of “the world”! If that is not vainglorious narcissism, one does not know what is! In fact this narcissism is in direct opposition to peaceful community life, and these ideologues will ruin communities wherever they get a chance. Their fraud must be exposed and opposed, even by the otherwise peace-loving people.
Naresh: I agree completely. It is indeed a remarkable quotation. Can we call it an elegant expose, courtesy of Engels, of the degenerate metaphysics produced by bourgeois idealism masquerading as socialism?
This might seem a bit “over the top”, but it seems to me that all ideologies are invented to suck the life-blood out of communities, in the east or in the west, in the north or in the south. Happy communities rely on common, shared humanity, whereas ideologies are designed to trap people into giving up on their own humanity and blindly serving the self-appointed “high priests” of ideology. We need the teachings of Buddha or Jesus Christ to avoid falling into the trap.
What we really need are the teachings of The Creation, (theyfly.com.. The Goblet of Truth), not a babbling to imaginary deities or to fat, half naked painted statues, of an Indian business man, with ties to Royalty, who taught to be respectful and good, in 500BC..
Well, this would have perhaps been better entitled: ” The Depravity Of Hegle Scholars”.
“Russia, caricatured as …the sole representative of an emerging poly-spheric world. Accordingly, … China and other nations struggling against US dominance must either be denounced as capitalist, or be swept under the carpet for the sake of convenience.”
True; the Anglo Zionazi Capitalist countries have no idea what a minority they are, nor how temporary is their power. Reminds me of the Fascist regimes who overran Europe between 1923 to 1943; they used to ask one another in secret: “Why do “they” (the rest of the world) hate us so much?”.
I agree wholeheartedly with most of the article but should emphasise that such communists are a very tiny minority. Even the Trotskyists for the most part support Russia. A far greater danger to Russia lies with its oligarchy, many of whom are outright supporters of imperialism, namely US imperialism. If Russia were in fact an imperialist power, how come the US and the West have excluded Russia from international financial institutions rather than the other way round? That a country’s capitalists invest capital abroad renders them imperialist, deprives the concept of any analytical value; Brazilian capitalists invest in Portugal and Portuguese capitalists in Brazil, ergo inter-imperialist rivalry?
Further to the above I should like to highlight the contemptible stance of Chomsky in the US and Craig Murray in the UK, hitherto staunch critics of western imperialism. Murray has gone so far even as to affirm that if he were Ukrainian he would fight,if Russian he would refuse. This is to declare that one would take up arms on behalf of NatoNazi imperialism!
Its a discussion between marxists. Apologize for any inconvenience, but I prefer Putin’s calling a spade for a spade: “The Western Empire of hypocrisy and lies”. Because that’s what it is.
Ok, but you have to define what is meant by ’empire.’ After all, one hears at times in the West that Putin wants to restore the Russian Empire. It is not enough just to denounce such as lies.
Thats why I apologize. Some people will need to have this defined, but if you know it is just one more Western lie and you know facts on the ground, the case is quite simple :-).
They are not communists (Marxist-Leninist), armchair or not, no matter how they call themselves. CPUSA is not communist, it is CIA controlled wing of democratic party. Many degenerates and liberals call themselves communists, especially in the imperial core. First, the immediate goal of Leninist countries is defeat of imperialism, nothing else, internal policies can change, adapt to situation, to serve this goal. Second, socialism has nothing to do with equality of rewards, but equality of opportunity, “to each according to his work” was even written in Soviet constitution.
There is a misunderstanding of what being communist means, I have to say this blog contributes to it by focusing on certain policies of post 1917 Bolsheviks, that were not essential part of the ideology, mistakes were made, as every time when something untested is being implemented.
Lenin had an exact word for that rabble: Liquidators; otherwise the article is an excellent compendium of obsession mean very own “class” of “that” and those who see them as enemies to death those who think like them. Going to the grain, his favorite is China the perfect dictatorship of the bread and circuses of the Roman, with Orwellian controls “social loyalty” (Social Credit) economically and spiritually. China is the ideal communist model of Western oligarchies, she is your ideal hive mind for all who dream West, WEF, Davos Forum, Klaus Schwab: “You will not have anything and you will be happy.”
As a postscript: Lenin legalizes abortion in Russia in 1922 and since then Russia has lost tens of millions dead, countless millions of deaths more than in all wars. Malthusian legacy of the Communists.
Nobody in 1916 could have predicted the evolution of capitalism. Indeed, how could one have foreseen global dollar hegemony? Or a deindustrialized, imperialist core in the US and western europe? The list goes on.
Looks like to me as these developments falls entirelly in the scope of financialization of the economy and the globalization of war, something clearly identified as imperialistic traits by Lenin in 1916.
Depriving any historical role to other than oligarks, palacian strugles, dominant press or ideological matters in general is a feature to watch out when reading authors of history. This should be clear, at least after Hegel.
The author rants on about “Imperialism “ when we’re far past that. The “collective west” today is nothing more than a Corporate Colonists project by means of Fascism & tyranny. It’s possible to have a “Imperialist” nation state without looking to colonize, subjugate the world. However, the UK/US/EU are colonialist, and desire all other nation states to submit to Corporate Fascism, hence the “rules based order”. The idea that Lenin was “Imperialist” as written in the article was pretty lame too. The West have simply become “Collective Colonists” to wield corporate/banking power.
War in Ukraine: Political Profile in 12 Questions
1 – Is the US an imperialist country?
2 – Is NATO the armed arm of the US in Europe?
3 – After the end of the USSR, did NATO expand into Eastern Europe?
4 – Is Russia a capitalist country?
5 – Does Russia resist being dominated by Imperialism?
6 – Is Putin a conservative right wing nationalist?
7 – Has Ukraine been used by the US to geopolitically encircle Russia?
8 – Does Ukraine have neo-Nazi militias officially incorporated into its Armed Forces?
9 – In capitalist nation-states, the interests of the bourgeoisie prevail, even when they have a nationalist character?
10 – In inter-bourgeois wars between nation-states the proletariat must seek an alternative of its own?
11 – In the case of an Imperialist attack on a country, even if it is also capitalist, should it still be politically defended?
12 – Is the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat is internationalist, therefore for the abolition of Nation-States?
Answer Key: number of YES answers
12 – Extreme Left
11/10 – Left
9/8 – Center-Left
7/5 – Center
4/3 – Center-Right
2/1 – Right
0 – Extreme Right
Excellent compendium. Just a nuance, Putin is not a nationalist (he does not idolize his country) if he is a patriot (he loves his nation) Russian Christian, I think almost all representatives of the Duma are too.
Here I leave this very risky statement, Putin is the successor to the title of Basileus kai Autokrator (βασιλεύς αὐτοκράτωρ) of the Byzantine Empire, gradually restoring Moscow’s role as the third spiritual and political Rome. From this very risky point of view, Putin knows that the fight will be to the death against the barbarians.
I think you are forgetting that a concrete situation demands a concrete analysis. I like your questions but there are no yes or no answers to the last 2-3. This is called simplification of complex, and is one of many methodological errors Kahlil Wall-Johnson has also made.
I agree with you that KWJ’s piece is overlong and some of it is dodgy and/or irrelevant, but his central thrust is important and he manages to capture the crux of the issue:
“always ends up making a terrible impression, not only on a political level, by demonstrating its impotence, but on a more strictly moral level, by revealing itself as soft, narcissistic, and essentially hypocritical.” (Engels).
First, let’s consider the impotence. Suppose they are right and Russia is entirely motivated by it’s Imperial division. In what way does ” a pox on all their houses” produce any tangible social movement? Surely the line of the left is Shut the War Machine down! (and, one would hope, this would start “at home” ie the US). Absent that nothing they’re saying means anything (and comes across as bizarre bordering on inexplicable)
Second the stunning hypocrisy: Gowans blames Russia for impending starvation, elevated risk of nuclear war, and virtually every social ill that can even tenuously be attached to this conflict. But his preferred resolution — minus a few paeans to a “negotiated” peace that died on the table long ago — is for Russia to simply fall victim to West predation whereupon he can eulogize the Russian working class as more casualties of Imperialism. Lenin spoke derisively of those who sought to win a “kindly democratic peace”. This is worse still, an unkindly, imperial peace.
Multipolarity works in the Orthodox Church because in the Trinity and the Hypostatic union there is sufficient ground for true diversity in the midst of true unity. Geopolitical multipolarity as a secular version of the Orthodox Kingdom will fall short until the glorious second coming of Christ
China and Russia are two countries whose people have already turned the tables in domestic politics, and today are turning the tables on the planet, a consequence of the way Western powers treat and exploit the Global South, overthrowing governments according to their convenience and commercial interests, as happened in Iraq, Libya and others. Here in Brazil in 2016, with US support for the parliamentary coup against President Dilma Roussef and the subsequent illegal arrest of former President LULA, taking him out of the 2018 election, throwing the country into the darkness it is in today. I think that what is at stake is not capitalism vs. communism, but a revolt coming from former communist countries that have absorbed the idea of solidarity and the collective, which are not contemplated in the savage capitalism practiced by the West, and are challenging this economic order. Globalization failed when the idea that the free market alone would solve all problems was passed on, and what happened was the globalization of misery. The BRICS do not want to rule the world, but to have an opinion, to be heard, and to participate in the decisions.
All wars are bankers’ wars.
The US has a privatized monetary system whereby all Federal Reserve Notes are created ex nihilo as interest bearing debt, such that no debts = no money. The biggest lenders are Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase, but lately the Federal Reserve, the lender of last resort, has also got into the act to create more money, that it has been investing in the stock market for its own account. The US Treasury is now indebted to financial capitalists to the tune of $39 trillion on which it must pay interest by taxing the workforce and also creating more money as debt.
China operates a digital domestic currency currency created by its government owned central bank, but without incurring any government debt to private banks. This has enabled it to build impressive infrastructure without taxing the workforce and not going into debt to private banks.
All this discussion above is rather superfluous, since it just uses political buzzwords, to deliberately complicate what is a essentially a very simple problem. All the wars entered into by the US since its inception in 1776 have been conducted to ensure the dominance of a privatized monetary system, that has come to dominate industrial capitalism to its detriment.
Russia is struggling to extricate itself from international banker control and that is why NATO expanded to its borders and install ballistic missiles in preparation for an all out war with Russia.
China on the other hand saw the writing on the wall forty years ago, and has refused to allow private banks to control their destiny with external debt.
Thank you Saker for hosting this article. A liftime Australian communist is a lonely state. I agree with this article and in small way argued the same thing. If there is any means for engaging with others, of like minds, please post any suggestion. We need to find our voices again.
Great essay!
I think the biggest question is, why should we take the opinions of these random Western leftist bloggers – like Stephen Gowans – more seriously than the political positions of the world’s major communist parties (e.g. Chinese, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, etc)? Why should we consider the views of one shadowy Internet figure to be more important than the views of political parties that actually have real power and influence in the real world? When I ask myself these questions, I naturally tune out the Western left, and that includes the Anglosphere’s irrelevant, self-proclaimed “Marxist-Leninists.”
Everyone familiar with this subject knows that the Western left is heavily influenced by Western mass media, Western oligarch funding, the West’s corrupted intelligentsia, and even the infiltration of Western intelligence agencies. We should be especially leery of Western leftists who push geopolitical views that are strikingly similar to that of the US State Department and Neocon think tanks. Who is providing them with donations? Inquiring minds would love to know!
Hey… Don’t use generalisations like “western communist left” because they can make you enter in real contradictions. I’m a communist, marxist-leninist, from the Portuguese Communist Party. PCP is the ONLY party in Portugal that understands completely – I mean completely – the very nature of this conflict. We are the ONLY anti-imperialist party in the parliament and we are being persecuted for being like that. JUst like that! We are appointed in media as Putin’s supporters and worse. Even Right-wing party’s have asked for our dissolution. And I know a lot of communist party’s like mine in western countries. Just look at the Greek Comunist party, the one from Cyprus, Spain, even France and Italy. We support completely the struggle of Russia against USA and NATO. Completely. Of course we understand the suffering of Western Ucranian People, but we atribute the responsability to NATO, USA and it’s Pupies. Maybe is better if you start to undersand who are the communists you are talking about! The old marxist-leninist party’s, most of them, remain anti-imperial, knowing that the only imperial block is the western one. But if you talk about a whole buch of new socialist parties, the onse we call from the “caviar left”, like the Left Block Party in Portugal, Siriza in Greece ou Podemos in Sapin (even if you have to admit that are people in them agains Empire), or the Greens, then you have you “arm chair communists”. But they are not assuming themselves as communists. They assume themselves as socialists, eurosocialists, social democrats, social liberals and so on, like in the old days empire used labour and socialist parties to divide working class and keep it away from real communist parties. So, don’t confuse them all at the expense of obliterating and allienating the one and only support Russia and Global South have in so called collective West. I’m a old school marxist-leninist, communist, I read The Saker, Pepe Escobar, Stalker, and all the independent media that is against empire. And that’s because that’s what we are in PCP, anti-Imperialist and after it, anti-capitalist. But made no mistake, you never, I mean never, are going to find any article from a real communist in the west, and from my party, saying that Russia is an Empire. Never. We have as one of our main objectives and reivindications to achieve the Nato dissolution and the defeat of the empire. That sounds like the communists you are talking about? You need, and your readers too, to achieve a better understanding of the left movements in the west and even in USA and Latin America. Most of them are Burgeois shit, but you still have old school consequent and dialetic communist party’s. And most of my comrades are reading the saker, so, be carefull in alienating them.
I agree with you that the Portuguese and Greek parties are doing very good work. When I write about the “Western left” here, I am really referring to all of those individuals and groups that support Western imperialism (whether open or de facto support). This support for Western imperialism is especially a problem in the Anglo-Saxon countries, possibly due to a higher degree of government infiltration and manipulation of these groups and individual activists. For instance, I have seen hard proof of infiltration of the Communist Party USA (I can not share any details, but I can assure the readers that it is real).
I don’t feel like the piece was targeting communism in general, it was just looking at a few very shady bloggers. Doesn’t the author defend Lenin a bunch of times? It is funny how something can be read so many different ways, somebody above in the comments thought the essay had a marxist-leninist perspective. Anyway, glad to hear CP in Portugal hasn’t capitulated.
This writer quotes two clauses from Godels (providing no links to his several articles on the Ukraine war). He misses the main point to be gotten from Godels: imperialism is a stage of capitalism, not a label to be applied yes/no to each country ( https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2022/03/is-russia-imperialist-country-thats-not.html )
He spends all his words debating other commentators. We are supposed to take on faith that his occasional passing assertions of a fact on the ground are accurate.
This “Zoltan Zigedy” blogger Greg Godels’ position is little different than Stephen Gowans’. Basically, his argument is that since many countries have reached a ‘monopoly capitalist’ phase of development, they are all morally equivalent. Therefore, activists should not bother opposing the US imperialists’ wars and coups that target other countries that have reached the ‘monopoly capitalist’ phase of development, because all of these countries are equally bad. Isn’t it obvious who would want the left to be pushing a position like that? The US capitalists – so that no one in the West will oppose their drive for global domination! We are not falling for it, “ZZ.”
By the way, Russia is not the aggressor in this conflict. The West is. Their Maidan coup overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014, which started this entire conflict. The West, once again, wants to gobble up large parts of the Russian world, which the Ukraine is definitely part of. Russia militarily entered the conflict this February to help liberate the people there who have been suffering underneath this fascist US puppet dictatorship for the past eight years. Besides the Kiev regime’s endless Donbass shelling, many dissidents have been brutally tortured, raped, and killed for their opposition work (and that includes Ukrainian communists, the fate of which these US leftist bloggers do not seem to care about). The armed forces of the Russian Federation have come to end this madness – and the world’s real anti-imperialists support them.
Russia is not imperialist, Lenin’s work “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism” are the answers, it is a peripheral capitalism, with few foreign investments, etc.
The inter-imperialist war is used by Trotskyists, Eurocommunists (PCE, PCF, PCI), Neo-Trotskyists (Hohxist anti-revisionists such as the RCWP or Communist Reconstruction of Spain).
Chilean Marxists-Leninist Regards
Well, all of this is dispute. I live in the United States, where the mainstream media is demonizing Russia and prompting the American Military Industrial complex to manufacture a large cache of advanced weapons at taxpayers’ cost. In the meanwhile, most Americans consume “recreational” drugs to somehow escape reality, the reality of their sheer exploitation on behalf of the Military Industrial complex. As a nation, we have reverted to that which Hegel himself criticized of the bourgeois mentality, for which freedom is the freedom to act immaturely. Most everyone drugged out, without critical thinking whatsoever, useful idiots for the final decadence of the American Empire, and, how did Lenin say about how, respectively, Germany, Great Britain, and America would eventually fall?