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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

Many of my parent’s older communist friends and mentors - the generation before them- had not only fought in the Second World War but had ‘good’ wars. A high proportion being given either commissions or becoming senior NCOs. I wish I’d listened to them more as a kid. I’d have loved to see them debate the NWBTCW line against a revolutionary university lecturer…
 
International Communist Party. Had to look it up mind, not sad enough to know that.

It's here Manifesto of the Communist Left to the proletarians of Europe - 1944

This bit made me laugh/despair, "Too many among you have made yourselves the auxiliaries of capitalism by participating in the partisans’ war, the most extreme expression of nationalism. Your enemies are neither the German soldier, nor the English or American soldier, but their capitalism which has led them to war, to killing, to death. Your enemy is your own capitalism, whether Laval or De Gaulle represents it. Your freedom is linked neither to the fate nor to the traditions of your ruling class, but to your independence as a proletarian class."
This is the sort of group that deservedly slips down the back of the settee of history and when rediscovered pose the question why did we buy that. Apparently ( according to Wikipedia " They opposed the anti fascist partisans that fought the fascist Mussolini government, leading to accusations of being German agents due to their opposition to anti-fascism."
 
Many of my parent’s older communist friends and mentors - the generation before them- had not only fought in the Second World War but had ‘good’ wars. A high proportion being given either commissions or becoming senior NCOs. I wish I’d listened to them more as a kid. I’d have loved to see them debate the NWBTCW line against a revolutionary university lecturer…
But remember that they were all "it's just an imperialist war" until the Germans invaded Russia and Stalin turned all anti-nazi.
 
This is the sort of group that deservedly slips down the back of the settee of history and when rediscovered pose the question why did we buy that. Apparently ( according to Wikipedia " They opposed the anti fascist partisans that fought the fascist Mussolini government, leading to accusations of being German agents due to their opposition to anti-fascism."

I aspire to be un-elected leader for life of a group like that comrade. Think of the power I'd have at my fingertips - at least until I denounced myself as a petty bourgeois agent of imperialism.

Until then, "Comrades, we have passed a resolution denouncing the propaganda agent for imperialism and the partisans Leonard Cohen! LONG LIVE THE FRATERNISATION OF ALL THE EXPLOITED! DOWN WITH THE IMPERIALIST WAR! LONG LIVE THE WORLD COMMUNIST REVOLUTION!"

 
Many of my parent’s older communist friends and mentors - the generation before them- had not only fought in the Second World War but had ‘good’ wars. A high proportion being given either commissions or becoming senior NCOs. I wish I’d listened to them more as a kid. I’d have loved to see them debate the NWBTCW line against a revolutionary university lecturer…

Yeah, I think one of differences now is the emergence of counter/sub cultural stuff (and all the baggage like pacifism that goes with that) in the 1960s that has since become synonymous with being 'left wing', and then actual impact of wars since on the mental terrain of the left. Plus of course stuff like the Iraq war/WMD stuff that has fucked up many in the left's ability to see beyond that mess in any other circumstance.

The left often gets rightly criticized for not being grounded in the reality of a situation and people's lives in the here and now, and this is no different with some people. Someone was telling me about how it could have been so much better if maybe the Russian troops had mutinied and refused to invade. Well yes fantastic, but that's not the reality is it? And using it as some deluded comfort blanket to give yourself some dreamy alternatives to the actual reality of the situation might be nice, but doesn't help anyone. If you're utopian dreaming anyway, why only go that far? Why not imagine what it would have been like if Putin had read Gandhi and decided he was a pacifist on the night of the invasion and called it all off and sent the military all home?

This is still one the best things I've read on all this Supporting the Ukrainian resistance. Six questions
 
OK, I can agree with you that while (obviously) the situation in Ukraine isn't the same as anything that's happened before, lessons can be taken from history, and I agree that the rush and sometimes present tendency of some people to throw their previously held politics to the side in support of a war is something to be aware of. But when I was discussing this with someone I know who has a very firm NWBTCW position they referred me to a statement made by some communist group in 1944 that called for all workers across the world to unite and refuse the war, that capitalism and the ruling class of all sides was the real enemy etc. They were happy with it as a statement made in difficult circumstances but that still managed to refuse to take any sides in an imperialist war. But it was a statement made in 1944 that managed to not even mention the horrors of the death camps, Holocaust, etc. and plastered over all that with 'no imperialist war'. So I think it's very much bearing in mind that one of the lessons of history in situations like this is the tendency of some small left wing groups and people to portray war as a simple confrontation between power blocks, with no deeper understanding of what else is going on alongside/underneath that. The 'campism' that people rightly get criticized for, just from a slightly different angle.

I'd be happy to bet everyone on here is 'against imperialist war' btw. And anyway, what is this being 'against imperialist war' you mean, and that lots of people say with no explanation? I'm not sure at all seeing this through such a dated lens is really that helpful at all, or at least not without some serious unpacking. What do you actually mean by this in terms of Ukraine? That it is solely a NATO/Ukraine against Russia battle of imperial powers? And even if you think there are elements of that within the current conflict, is the also no element of anything else contained with that? And is there no element of people defending themselves against invasion, death and occupation in the ways they see fit that's worthy of supporting? All wars are pretty much just the same thing is what plenty of lefties seem to think. No need to think too much about it, just shout "No imperialist war!" and be done with it.

"Ah, but they end up in alliances with the Ukrainian State, and take arms from NATO, and anyway look at Azov!" they cry. Well given pretty much all the political struggle that goes on here and in many countries involves compromises with States and other bodies, surely it's pretty fucked up to hold people in a life or death position to some purist standards we don't even hold ourselves to? Do you know how weird, lacking in solidarity and fucked up politically it looks to Ukrainian lefties of all shades that some here in the West just keep going on and on about Azov, in the same way the Russian State does?

"Well, they could resist in other ways!" they cry. I had a conversation with someone at the start of this who was very much against any armed resistance, and was of the opinion people should leave, or just ignore the invasion and occupation, and then start organizing the workers under the occupation and encouraging Russian military desertion etc. The first suggestion I'm not even going to give any time to as it's so fucked up, but the second is on some level fair enough and is something that could, is, and probably will be done. (But given we can't even manage to do that here really, seems a bit much sometimes to be telling people to do something we can't/don't even do under pretty easy conditions.) Some have then also then pointed to people doing demos against the occupation etc. in places like Kherson as illustrations that this is possible. And for sure it is, but there's a pretty big element of ignoring the things they are criticising other parts of the struggle that they don't agree with for (flying of Ukrainian flags, calling for NATO involvement, support for Ukrainian State, etc.) to paint that kind of thing as something done by entirely different people, with different politics, and better than the fighting just to back up there own dogmatic position.

But seeing that as something to do as part of the struggle, rather than something entirely separate and 'purer' than fighting as well strikes me as having similarities to a pacifist position rather than anything else. Not to mention the weirdness and fucked-up-ness of some people here in their safe houses and little groups here telling Ukrainians how to resist.

And about the risk of escalation that people keep mixing in with everything else... yeah for sure, but if you keep bringing that up then at least be honest and say something like you're scared of this escalating into something that impacts you and others, and rather than take that risk you want Ukraine to stop fighting and being supported to fight, and then they can suffer what that'll mean in the future, but at least you and everyone else won't be impacted. And that to me isn't a political position, but a position of fear and a throwing out of solidarity with people there. I mean whatever you want, but be honest about it.

Yes, and in particular being against war, the war and this war. That means being against the invasion of Ukraine, first and foremost. It's 100% beholden on Russia to back up, apologize and make compensation for this shit. Ukrainians are only IMO obliged to stop fighting when they decide to. Part of Putin's gamble must surely have been that Russia has more and bigger bombs than Ukraine, as well as more people, so ultimately Ukraine will at some point run out of one or more of those things first. If allies of Ukraine (I for one am against 'nations' and their flags and divisions but here we are so I use relevant terminology, excuse me) keep supplying more and bigger bombs then the people will run out first. That Putin continues regardless of that knowledge is revealing, but honestly if Ukrainian people are willing to keep fighting, and dying to defend ---

--- there it is, actually. The people who are in foxholes, getting shelled by Z-painted tanks - why? What's in it for them? If they run out of ammunition to shoot at the people shooting at them, what should they do? Why do they go on, even as it seems against the odds? I'm still stuck on questions like that tbh.

I am anti war, I am against this war, I am against Russian aggression towards its neighbours. I'm against this invasion of Ukraine ... I just don't see what else those people could have done or could do. Still, sooner or later all the Ukrainians who want to fight will be dead, or so badly hurt they'll have to stop. Then there will be a kind of peace, the kind you get at a funeral.
 
But remember that they were all "it's just an imperialist war" until the Germans invaded Russia and Stalin turned all anti-nazi.
The CPGB were all for war originally .

By 1938 it had reconsidered the revolutionary defeatist position. When asked whether revolutionary defeatism was was still the best policy for the workers in a capitalist country associated withe the USSR the deputy editor of The Daily Worker said

‘The workers in a capitalist country associated with the Soviet Union are interested in victory, and must do everything to further it.’ Moreover, he said that to oppose the coming war as an imperialist conflict was ‘nothing more nor less than a whitewashing of fascism

The CPGB , following the Cominterns line, still held a position of a popular front in a potential war against Germany when war was declared on September 1st . The CPGB's view , as expressed in the Daily Worker , was ‘ a just war which should be supported by the whole working class and all friends of democracy in Britain". Many CP members signed up into the armed forces due to this. The CPGB had been very against Chamberlains appeasement, hence again in The Daily Workers ‘there is not a minute to be lost in getting for Britain at war a new government, a government that has the unstinted trust of the people, a government that gets things done’. Harry Pollit , the Gen Sec of the CPGB argued:

We have to face facts. Labour cannot form a government that can win this war on its own. My personal opinion is that you can’t win this war unless you have in the new government not only representatives of Labour, but men like Lloyd George, Eden, Churchill and Duff Cooper — all imperialists. But we have to win this war and to win it with people who are going to be ruthless

The Comintern following the Russian/German non aggression pact issued the new line, ie that the war was imperialist, to its Communist Parties in mid September . There was a rumour that on receiving the telegram from the Russians that Politt hid it as it was against both his personal and the CPGBs own policy. The CPGB met late September and reconfirmed its original position . It wasn't until the beginning of October that the CPGB central committee had a majority, in many cases reluctantly, supporting the new line. The thing that haunted many members of the CPGB at that time was that to break from the Comintern or to lose faith in the USSR was a political and personal crisis , they felt there was nowhere to go.
 
The crux of it for me is that it should be possible to apply the NWBTCW critique, acknowledging that both warring States are entities acting in their own interests, against those of the workers (pre-war Ukraine under Zelensky being corrupt, aggressively neoliberal, ambitious to join Fortress Europe, repressive against its Russian-speaking minority etc) while also listening seriously when central and eastern European anarchists/anti-fascists/anti-capitialists, fairly consistently (though also important, not universally), say a Putin victory has to be resisted.

The reasoning I've tended to see is similar to that of the resistance against Franco, or indeed against Mr Godwin's Law, in that anarchists weren't fighting to impose a full-fledged revolution, but to stave off a wholesale destruction of working class power and room for maneuver that they saw arriving with the invading troops. In Spain there was a revolutionary project to defend, but this existed as part of a compromise with a liberal/socialist State, which it was hoped in victory would be less able to or enthusiastic about turning around and annihilating the workers' gains. In the latter it was straightforward - Hitler = industrial death camps. Everyone dies if no-one fights. Anarchists fought because the alternative was to be wiped out, as had already happened in Germany and Italy, which is fairly obviously not a good strategy for fighting the class war.

The repeating refrain from comrades on the front lines today is that this is a war in that mold, and that Putin has no intention of stopping with Ukraine. The Russian State has history, in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria, of mass killings and brutal repression in areas it controls to eliminate potential troublemakers. Its behaviour within its own borders against minorities and opponents of all kinds (socialists and anarchists included) is well documented and alongside outright killings, includes the continuation of its longstanding "hard labour in Siberia til you die" strategy as a means of silencing political dissent. Putin is a dictator who oversees a regime that is perhaps less aggressively deranged than the Third Reich, but has no more real compunction about using overwhelming violence and repression. The calculation is thus that it's better to fight against the invasion, because the magical arrival of a mass class awakening on both sides is not a thing to be relied on.

None of this makes it wrong to say that the ideal is for the working class, Russian and Ukrainian, to turn their guns on the ruling class in both countries. What I'm finding quite frustrating is that some people aren't wrapping their heads around the fact that you can say so while also recognising that solidarity with class strugglists who are there is what can be done in the realm of the realistically possible right now.
 
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None of this makes it wrong to say that the ideal is for the working class, Russian and Ukrainian, to turn their guns on the ruling class in both countries. What I'm finding quite frustrating is that some people aren't wrapping their heads around the fact that you can say so while also recognising that solidarity with class strugglists who are there is what can be done in the realm of the realistically possible right now.
Afaict, no-one has suggested anything like that. The only suggestion is that Ukraine should surrender to Russia.
 
The only suggestion is that Ukraine should surrender to Russia.
The intent of people talking about NWBTCW is not to suggest surrender but to call on the working classes of both sides not to fight. This is not going to happen but it certainly isn't taking a pro-Putin position.
 
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The intent of people talking about NWBTCW is not to suggest surrender but to call on the working classes of both sides not to fight. This is not going to happen but it certainly isn't taking a pro-Putin position.
I think we may be at cross-purposes. No-one these boards appears to believe in any sort of football-at-Christmas fairytale. There are a few, though, who think that a Russian victory should be not be resisted.
 
Who do you think is saying this? RD whatsisface is a bit of a tool but Top Cat is a longstanding member of these boards, a libertarian socialist and afaict a decent person who happens to be, not unreasonably, upset at some of the more hawkish attitudes that have bubbled up on this thread from time to time. I don't disagree with them there, jubilation over deaths on the Other Team is understandable but it's not pleasant or to be encouraged, for example and I'm also not really a fan of pitching a principled anti-war position as being the same thing as advocating for a Russian victory. We can disagree without leaning towards that sort of thinking - I prefer to keep the white feathers in pillows.
 
Who do you think is saying this? RD whatsisface is a bit of a tool but Top Cat is a longstanding member of these boards, a libertarian socialist and afaict a decent person who happens to be, not unreasonably, upset at some of the more hawkish attitudes that have bubbled up on this thread from time to time. I don't disagree with them there, jubilation over deaths on the Other Team is understandable but it's not pleasant or to be encouraged, for example and I'm also not really a fan of pitching a principled anti-war position as being the same thing as advocating for a Russian victory. We can disagree without leaning towards that sort of thinking - I prefer to keep the white feathers in pillows.
very much so - but better yet to keep white feathers on birds!
 
The CPGB were all for war originally .

By 1938 it had reconsidered the revolutionary defeatist position. When asked whether revolutionary defeatism was was still the best policy for the workers in a capitalist country associated withe the USSR the deputy editor of The Daily Worker said



The CPGB , following the Cominterns line, still held a position of a popular front in a potential war against Germany when war was declared on September 1st . The CPGB's view , as expressed in the Daily Worker , was ‘ a just war which should be supported by the whole working class and all friends of democracy in Britain". Many CP members signed up into the armed forces due to this. The CPGB had been very against Chamberlains appeasement, hence again in The Daily Workers ‘there is not a minute to be lost in getting for Britain at war a new government, a government that has the unstinted trust of the people, a government that gets things done’. Harry Pollit , the Gen Sec of the CPGB argued:



The Comintern following the Russian/German non aggression pact issued the new line, ie that the war was imperialist, to its Communist Parties in mid September . There was a rumour that on receiving the telegram from the Russians that Politt hid it as it was against both his personal and the CPGBs own policy. The CPGB met late September and reconfirmed its original position . It wasn't until the beginning of October that the CPGB central committee had a majority, in many cases reluctantly, supporting the new line. The thing that haunted many members of the CPGB at that time was that to break from the Comintern or to lose faith in the USSR was a political and personal crisis , they felt there was nowhere to go.
A very early instance of the split that would eventually divide the Euros from the Tankies. Those who saw their primary loyalty as to the ideals of communism and those who felt it should lay with the USSR. Seeing the fall out of how that played out close up was one of the reasons I turned out such a wanky reformist...
 
ETA Being as TopCat goes without saying, as Rob has pointed out.

I've always considered TopCat to be sound, but his drive-by postings on this subject has raised an eyebrow.

To stumble into the thread with one line posts asking 'How do all you gung ho lot feel now?' and accusing posters of being 'Warmongering loons', without engaging in the conversation at all, is basically just trolling.
 
I've always considered TopCat to be sound, but his drive-by postings on this subject has raised an eyebrow.

To stumble into the thread with one line posts asking 'How do all you gung ho lot feel now?' and accusing posters of being 'Warmongering loons', without engaging in the conversation at all, is basically just trolling.

Yeah, TopCat's a sound and longstanding poster but that kind of post isn't exactly worthy of polite and thoughtful replies.
 
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