2nd Response to PO: Increasingly Functional to Putin’s Interests

Although some currents when they debate politics usually distort other’s positions, at least they make theirs more clear. That is what has been happening with the polemic on the Russian-Ukrainian war: the PO is increasingly more functional to Putin.

Pablo Vasco

To the PO’s article of December 18 (1) in response to our response (2), we acknowledge only one merit: they quote in full our joint statement LIS-L5I-OTI: “we coincide in the revolutionary policy towards Ukraine, where we see the combination of two processes: the invasion of a country by the imperialist power that historically dominated it; and the global inter-imperialist conflict that is also being settled in the Ukrainian trenches. Insofar as there is no direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, we identify that the predominant process is the resistance of the Ukrainian people to the invasion of Russian imperialism. Therefore, revolutionary politics involves supporting the resistance to win and defending the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people, as well as the Donbass, while at the same time confronting Zelensky’s anti-working class policies and fighting for the dissolution of NATO.” (3)

From there on, the PO returns to its painful habit of deforming our position: “Of the combined ‘two processes’ only one remains: ‘the resistance of the Ukrainian people to the invasion of the Russian empire’.” No, comrades. That “only one remains” is on you. It is elementary: the fact that lettuce predominates in a mixed salad does not imply the disappearance of tomato. The fact that in this conflict the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion predominates does not imply that the inter-imperialist dispute and NATO disappear. Moreover: in the world there is not and will not be any war or pure national conflict which in some way does not involve one or more imperialisms. At the same time, this imperial interference does not cancel out the national question: it is a dialectical combination of processes.

Not in our name

It is also wrong to attribute to another person words that they do not say. Since at the same time that we support the Ukrainian resistance we propose “to confront Zelensky’s anti-working class policies and to fight for the dissolution of NATO”, according to the PO the latter would be a “phrase of circumstance”, “minimized”, which “is disqualified”…

Once again the PO repeats its same arbitrary method in order to slander. Since when is the PO a judge of intentions? What kind of method is that of slandering what the opponent affirms, labeling it “circumstantial”? Far from it, the denunciation against the U.S., NATO, European imperialisms and the bourgeois Zelensky government is an integral part of our policy since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, almost three years ago. And obviously it is part of the policy of our section, the Ukrainian Socialist League, which besides having militants fallen in combat suffers the political and trade union persecution of Zelensky’s anti-worker government.

The PO rants against the LIS-L5I-OTI political unity because the latter current was close to them for years until it moved away and is converging with our positions and methods.

Neither Zelensky is Chiang Kai-shek… nor 1932 is 1937

Since the PO fails to refute the categorical position of Trotsky -and Marx and Lenin- before this type of wars, cited in our article, it seeks to disqualify it as “models of dubious application” and on top of that it mistakes the date: not once but twice it speaks of 1932, when the reference is to the Sino-Japanese war of 1937.

Specifically, although the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek was bourgeois, Trotsky, maintaining total political independence from it, placed himself on the military side of China in its war against imperialist Japan.

In case the PO does not know it, we quote another text of Trotsky from 1937 on this matter: “I have also heard arguments of the type: ‘by upholding this war led by Chiang Kai-shek against Japanese imperialism we do a service to British and American imperialism and we can become their instrument’. Again ultra-leftism becomes a handicap for revolutionary action. An example: in a factory the company guards attack the workers, wounding and killing several. The workers are so outraged that the union fakirs themselves are forced to call a strike. Our ultra-leftist appears on the scene, with a finger raised above his head by way of warning: ‘We will not strike,’ he says, ‘not only because the union leaders are fakirs incapable of securing our total emancipation but also because, by our strike, we will do a service to the competing firm and thus become the instrument of another exploiter.’

“In the case of a strike the workers could only greet such arguments with indignation. However, if projected on the grandiose scale of a war this same attitude is infinitely more criminal and worthy of provoking anger. It is clear that Chiang Kai-shek cannot ensure the liberation of China; but he is trying to prevent it from being reduced to even further slavery, and this constitutes a small step towards its further liberation. We will participate in this small step with all our energy.

“Ultimately, it is false that we ‘help’ Britain. A people who are able to defend themselves with arms in hand against one bandit tomorrow will be able to repulse another. A revolutionary party, which understands this and consciously and courageously takes its place at the head of a people defending the remnants of its independence, is the only party capable of mobilizing the workers during the war and, after the war, of wresting power from the national bourgeoisie.” (4)

In case this quotation is too long for the PO, we add a third, shorter one, also from 1937: “Past experience does not allow us to nourish illusions about the social program of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek. But if there exists in the world a just war, it is the war of the Chinese people against their oppressors. All the workers’ organizations, all the progressive forces in China, without abandoning their program or their political independence, must fulfill to the end their duty in the war of liberation, regardless of their attitude toward the Chiang Kai-shek government.” (5)

“Let’s leave the bibliographical quotations aside”, says the PO in its article when Trotsky and history contradict it!

More and more functional to Putin’s interests

According to the PO, “the existing process [in Ukraine] is indeed a confrontation of NATO -the United States and other allied powers- against Russia, its related countries and, in turn, China which is the strategic objective of imperialism”. It is “the most heated focus today of a state of growing evolution towards a world war…” And he adds “the communicating vessels of the war in Europe with the conflict in the Middle East… [including] the coup in Syria – or the military tensions in the China Sea and the armed conflicts in Africa.”

In short, since for the PO every war or conflict today is already a prologue or part of the third world war, it proposes “war on war; revolutionary defeatism; the enemy is Zelensky, Putin and their regimes; fraternization of Russian and Ukrainian workers, by workers’ governments”. Apart from omitting the right to national self-determination of the Ukrainian people, it even places as first enemy the government of the invaded country before that of the invading imperialism. Putin is grateful. The error comes from his characterization of Russia and its government, alien to reality. Hence its nostalgia for the “former Soviet bloc”, the “former Warsaw Pact bloc” and “the former constituent territories of the Soviet Union”. According to the PO, Putin governs “for the benefit of the bureaucratic/bourgeois oligarchy” in order to “maintain control of the capitalist restoration”… as if this had not already been consummated for years! A short stay in Moscow would be enough to dispel such an illusion, shared by all the Stalinists and neo-Stalinists of the planet. Campism rejoices.