David McMullen, Online
Simon Blow in Partisan! 12 accuses me of being “behind this or that capitalist nation in its conquest for domination of the world market”. Let’s get clear about what is happening in Ukraine. Firstly, in pursuit of a restored Czarist empire, a nation is denied the right to self-determination. Secondly, we have a tyranny fearful of contagion trying to snuff out a burgeoning bourgeois democracy next door. And for the individual Ukrainian success of the invasion would mean being subject to vengeful murderers best avoided by fleeing to Poland. There is no comparison between being under the boot of the new Czar and being an independent bourgeois democracy freely choosing to join the European Union.
And as I have pointed out on various occasions, bourgeois democracy is far more fertile soil for the emergence of a radical left and the working class movement generally than tyranny. There are some excellent historical examples. First we have the Bolsheviks. They were only able to get out and about freely because of the bourgeois democratic revolution in February 1917 and, furthermore, their actual existence was due to the Czarist regime’s relative lack of ruthless efficiency. Then there is Germany in 1933 when fascist efficiency ensured that the left simply ceased to exist. The main “exceptions” to the rule were China and Yugoslavia where the communists were able to escape to the mountains. These will be less of an option in the future because of far better communications and more advanced military technology available to counter-revolutionary forces.
There is no no need to subscribe to “a bizarre offshoot of Maoism”. You just have to support the Lenin/Stalin line on the national question and the right of nations to self-determination, and take a similar united front position to the Comintern in the late 1930s. Then the major powers were divided into the war-shy bourgeois democracies and the fascist powers primed for conquest. We have something similar now, with Russia and China being in the latter category. They need to be defeated or deterred, and everything possible done to encourage and facilitate their overthrow by bourgeois democratic revolution.
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