EDIT: I'm very proud of this community. All the posts are making me think and solidly criticizing from an anti-imperialist perspective. Thanks, hexbear
EDIT: I'm very proud of this community. All the posts are making me think and solidly criticizing from an anti-imperialist perspective. Thanks, hexbear
Then I think you might be confused what revolutionary defeatism means. You're right it is aligning yourself against your own government, but it most certainly is not unflinchingly supporting the other guy. It's not "fence-sitting" to recognize the proletariat has absolutely nothing to gain from the war in any outcome, unless you think Lenin was a Kautskyite chauvinist, revolutionary defeatism means seizing the opportunity of bougies being weak and disunited to seize proletarian power by trying to turn the war into civil war. This is why NATO collectively shitting themselves and killing themselves with sanctions would be a good consequence of the war -- provides an ample opportunity for communists to agitate against their own governments, provided you actually seize it. Likewise, Russian communists should oppose the war and fight against their own government, not unflinchingly support NATO, no? (if KRPF and Zyuganov weren't cucked to Putin, that is). This doesn't require you to sit on any "side", quite the opposite, since revolutionary defeatism inherently acknowledges that communists should take no side, but take advantage of it to sabotage and rally against their own state in whatever way they can.
What Russian communists should do is outside the scope of this discussion because nobody here is a Russian communist. I’ll let them figure this one out
Lenin worked with the German imperialists to overthrow the Tsar. Fanon joined the French imperialists to shoot Nazis. Marx worked with the Ottoman imperialists to weaken European powers. Revolutionary defeatism ABSOLUTELY means working with the opposing capitalists
That would still fall under taking advantage of the conflict when an opportunity arises, not supporting the other side, no? Lenin took the train ride, not dedicated the rest of his career to singing the praises of Kaiser Wilhelm II's anti-imperialism lol
The Fanon example is also out of place. If you claim people should unflinchingly support the opposite side in a capitalist war, shouldn't Fanon be on the German side?
Edit:
This line is also sussy, what difference would it make which side of the war you're on? Is Russian Kautskyism excused?
I don’t believe Russia is imperialist or that this is an inter-imperialist war, so I don’t think that Russian socialists should use the tactic of revolutionary defeatism here - just like Libyan socialists under Gaddafi should not have exercised revolutionary defeatism while imperialists were invading and destroying the nation.
Revolutionary Defeatism is the duty of socialists in an imperialist nation. Not the duty of socialists in a non-imperialist capitalist nation under attack from imperialists.
"Neither 1914 nor 1940" by Mike Macnair
Good post, thank you very much
very interesting essay, thank you for sharing.
Even if we're gonna ignore Russia's resource extraction and super-profits in Central Asia, the reason Russia is not part of the big boy imperialists is because they've been denied a seat at the big boy table at every turn. It's not as if they didn't try to join NATO or cozy up to the US, the fact that they're currently aligned against them is less out of Russia's goodwill and more the consequence of decades of US foreign policy blunders and hostility toward Russia. The only way Russia can be imperialist in a world already conquered by the US is to go through them and try to secure a foothold, which is what this war is about. Once again your example is weird, Libya was attacked not the one attacking like in this case. Are you saying Ukrainians should not exercise revolutionary defeatism?
Russia did not start this or “attack”. NATO threw a fascist coup in 2014, started a civil war and just before the current crisis they prepared invasion of Donbas and did massive artillery strikes in breach of ceasefire. Russia is the victim of imperialism here, of imperialist sanctions and encroachment and encirclement
Ukrainian army is fascist arm of imperialism so Ukrainians should absolutely exercise revolutionary defeatism.
If they cared at all about 2014, they wouldn't have taken 8 years to do anything about it. The reason Russia was not accepted into the big boys club is because they're a little too big to leave the US unilateral control over the imperialist bloc, which is why they've tried to contain them as much as possible, that much is true, but it really doesn't make a difference when it comes to their intentions. Why do you think Russia would care about being excluded and ostracized from global imperialist system if they didn't want you to participate in it? What exactly do you think Russia's long term goals are here, and what do you think they'd be doing had the US not been around? Imperialism is not just something the bad countries do, it's an economic inevitability. Russia's problem is that their imperialism is limited to their former backyard of Central Asia at the moment, and to fix that they gotta do like capitalist countries do, and expand. I have no fucking clue how people keep falling for capitalist countries' cynical justification for their actions both on the NATOid and Russian side
The fact that you can pick and choose which countries should do revolutionary defeatism and even imply there is such a thing as a good capitalist war just tells me there's nothing of worth left discussing here lol
I suppose you don’t support Palestine then, they are capitalist and conservative. Israel-Palestine conflict is just an inter-capitalist war
I’m not going to bother responding to this load of moralizing ultra drivel
Small oppressed nation fighting against settlers and colonizers vs former empire upset that they've been denied their share of imperialist spoils so they decide to secure a place in the sun on their own :thinking-about-it:
You know someone's not mad when the snarl words come out lmao, eat my ass Kautskyite
Ukraine is a "small oppressed" nation? Just a smol bean fascist NATO base. "fighting against settlers and colonizers" is that really what you think Azov was doing in Donbas? Your lack of material analysis is a disgrace to your name
I was referring to Palestine :brainworms:
Got it, thought you were framing the Ukrainian conflict this way.
Your arguments are that of an anarcho-bidenist and you refuse revolutionary defeatism, not sure how that makes me the kautskyite. I attack my own country, that's not what kautsky did
Your arguments are that of a duginist multipolarista. See? I, too, can say a bunch of garbage instead of actually engaging with your post
The anarcho-bidenists are the ones doing lesser evil-ism and praising NATO's mutual military aid and whatever the fuck, you're doing the same thing but for the opposite side lol. Or rather, you're making the same mistake as them by even think there are two sides when it's just bougies fighting eachother with proles stuck in the middle getting slaughtered. I ask again, should Russians also do revolutionary defeatism and fight back against their own government? If your answer is no, then you've given up on revolutionary defeatism by admitting there is such a thing as a good side in a capitalist war. At that point, stop hiding behind revolutionary defeatism and just call yourself pro-Russia outright
You conveniently skipped over Marx and Engels raising funds for the Ottomans
Marx also supported reformists and succdems in England, doesn't mean I'm gonna do it :lenin-laugh:
You conveniently skipped like half of my comments so I don't think there's anything more to discuss
There's two very big difference between WWI and the decades since then:
The existence of socialism. Socialism didn't exist in WWI, neither in principled nor revisionist forms. Democratic socialism and social democracy didn't exist either, the closest being the Kingdom of Sweden, which acted more like a failed imperialist has-been empire than a progressive force. Successful national liberation struggles that captured state power and were able to expel imperialists from their lands didn't really exist during WWI either, the closest being Liberia and Ethiopia. The Republic of China was controlled by the comprador beiyang government, Iran was also semi-colonized, and the rest of the world can be neatly divided between imperialist powers and imperialized colonies. This is not at all today where you have various progressive countries like Bolivia as well as countries like China which constitutes a form of socialism or at least a progressive force if you don't believe they're actually socialist.
The existence of fascism. Fascism also didn't exist in WWI. And there's a qualitative difference standard liberal barbarism as articulated by Rosa Luxemburg and the absolute debased barbarism as demonstrated by rabid fascists. A proven tactic towards opposing fascism is the united front, where socialists tactically unite with various progressive liberal forces to stomp out fascism. Because at the end of the day, fascists should be dealt with by shoving them into woodchippers feet first. They should be thrown down wells and have grenades thrown at their broken mangled bodies to make sure they stay dead. British soldiers charging no-man-lands to kill German soldiers is a tragedy because it's workers killing workers while British soldiers charging the machine gun nests at Normandy to kill German soldiers is an act of heroism towards ridding the world of fascist dogs.
It's the simultaneous existence of both socialism and fascism that greatly complicates the application of revolutionary defeatism. Like seriously, how would revolutionary defeatism pan out during WWII? Do nothing until Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, in affect copying the absolute opportunistic vulture that is the US? Obviously, when your revolutionary theory makes you act in almost the exact same way as the US, it's time to go back to the drawing board and think things over.
As for Russia vs Ukraine, how you evaluate the conflict goes back to my two points. Russia may not be socialist, but Ukraine isn't exactly free of fascism either. At a certain point, it doesn't matter how far from socialism Russia has fallen from if it can demonstrated that Ukraine has been completely consumed by fascism.