“Rabochi Put” ("Work Way") “Marxist-Leninist Labour Movement (Russia)
(translated from Russian by the International Marxist-Leninist Archive)
On the war in Ukraine and the tasks of the working class
The so-called "recognition" of the LDNR (Donetsk - Luhansk People's Republic) by the Russian authorities caused a slight confusion among the townsfolk. They started talking about the victory over Ukraine, about the end of the war in Donbass. However, the recognition of the "people's republics", as we already know, did not mean the end of the war, after that the war broke out with greater force, capturing not only Crimea and Donbass, but also other territories of Ukraine. Russian imperialism, having recognized the LDNR, did not stop in its predatory seizures, it went further. Moreover, it had a good reason for this - Ukrainian financial capital and its Western partners did not accept the loss of valuable territories, markets, sources of raw materials, wage slaves, means of production in the Donbass and Crimea, they did not want to give it away just like that to the Russian imperialism and have long planned to take revenge.
A certain respite in the war after the recognition of the LDNR by Russia, of course, was possible. There are enough examples in history when some imperialists wrested markets, cheap raw materials, etc. from others by military force, and after such seizures a period of relative peace could set in between the belligerent powers. But in the bowels of this fragile world, a new war between the robbers have always been ripening: the robbed capitalists gains strength and prepares to rob their robber, and the robber prepares not only to keep the stolen goods, but also to rob further.
The war in the Donbass and now in Ukraine is not an accident and not a “sin”, as the priests preach, but an inevitable stage of imperialism, just as legitimate a form of capitalist life as is peace. Wars between the capitalist powers are the result of the aggravation of contradictions between them on the basis of the struggle for the redivision of the world and spheres of influence. A change in the balance of economic and military forces among the groups of finance capital inevitably raises the question of a redistribution of the world or a part of it. Wars are spurred on by crises and competition in world markets; they are a means for the bourgeoisie to redistribute the already divided world in their favor, to temporarily alleviate the crisis, to obtain the highest profits, to retain power over the peoples. A new big war, which is being prepared before our eyes, arises as an inevitable result of the development of world economic and political forces on the basis of modern monopoly capitalism. The capitalist system of the world economy is constantly fraught with elements of a general crisis and military clashes, therefore the development of the world economy today is not in the form of a smooth and uniform movement forward, but only through severe crises and military catastrophes.
The crux of the matter is that different groups of world financial capital and the countries dominated by these groups develop unevenly. This uneven development, when some groups rush ahead in terms of their wealth and power, while others lag behind, in the course of time leads to a sharp imbalance within the world capitalist system. That group of imperialists who consider themselves less endowed with markets for goods, raw materials, convenient and advantageous positions, sooner or later makes an attempt to change the situation and redistribute "spheres of influence" in their favor - through the use of military force. As a result of this, a split of the capitalist world into hostile camps and a war between them arise.
The fact that the predatory wars of recent years have been waged by the bourgeoisie in the order of creeping, "small" wars and protracted military conflicts does not change the essence of the matter. The LDNR and the Crimean peninsula are nothing but parts of the territory of Ukraine seized by Russian imperialism as new markets, robbery and spheres of influence. One group of imperialists, with the help of military force, robs their competitors, occupies their territory, ousts the goods of competitors from there, replacing them with their own. In what forms and for what reason this was done is a secondary matter.
The important thing is the fact that the extreme intensification of the struggle for markets in the era of imperialism, the growth of armaments connected with this, inevitably had to lead to a war and so it did. The seizure of land and the subjugation of foreign peoples, the ruining of a competing state, the plunder of its national wealth, distracting the attention of the working masses of Russia, Ukraine and other countries from internal political crises and the struggle for better living conditions, disunity and nationalist fooling of the workers, the extermination of their vanguard in order to weaken the revolutionary the movement of the proletariat - this is the only real content and meaning of the war in the Donbass and throughout Ukraine.
It is the duty of the advanced workers to reveal this true meaning of the war and mercilessly expose the lies, sophisms and pseudo-patriotic phrases spread by the bourgeoisie in the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the LDNR in defense of the war.
It is no secret that the Russian bourgeoisie is fooling the working class and the working masses, assuring that they are waging war to protect Russians in Ukraine and Donbass, to protect their homeland, freedom and culture from Ukrainian fascism, to liberate the east of Ukraine from Ukrainian occupation, to destroy the reactionary fascist state Ukraine. But in reality, the Russian oligarchy has long since grown together with the largest Ukrainian bourgeoisie, and is its faithful ally in the struggle against the workers' and democratic movement in Ukraine. At any outcome of the war, the Russian oligarchy will direct all its efforts to support the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and save it from destruction if a revolution breaks out in Ukraine.
As for the social nature of the war in Ukraine and the Donbass, this nature and the true meaning of the war are not determined by who started it first or where they stand and what the troops of the Russian Federation or Ukraine are doing. This character is determined by what kind of policy the war continues (war is the continuation of politics by other means), by what class, for what purposes, this war is being waged. Therefore, the causes of the war in Ukraine should not be sought in the mistakes or malice of individual statesmen, although, of course, mistakes and malice also exist. But the real roots of the war lie in the economic interests of the bourgeois class, no matter how they gloss over this indisputable fact.
Could the old and new wars in Donbass and Ukraine have been avoided? Is it possible to avoid future capitalist wars for markets, raw materials, spheres of influence? Hypothetically, it is possible, if it were possible to periodically redistribute raw materials, markets, export and investment of capital between groups of world financial capital in accordance with their economic weight - in order to make coordinated and peaceful decisions. But this cannot be done under the present capitalist conditions of the development of the world economy. This would mean that the economic roots of predatory wars — private property, competition, chaos and anarchy of production, crises of overproduction — have been destroyed. And since these roots remain, the wars of the capitalists for the redistribution of the divided world are inevitable as long as capitalism exists. Financial capital needs them to obtain maximum profits, to ruin their competitors, to rob other countries and peoples. Groups of billionaires and millionaires are interested in wars, who view them as a source of income that provides enormous profits. These billionaires hold reactionary governments in their hands and direct their policies, including provoking wars. But at the same time, these financial capitalists are afraid of their peoples, who do not want to fight, do not want a new war, and stand for the preservation of peace. That is why the capitalists are trying for the time being not to escalate things to a big war, which is fraught with revolution, but the very development of imperialism is somehow leading the bourgeoisie to a world war. It uses its fascist governments to keep the peoples from fighting for peace with the fear of terror, to entangle its peoples with lies about "civil peace" and "defence of the fatherland", to deceive the working people and portray the predatory war as a defensive one. The capitalists are trying to deceive their peoples in order to impose their predatory plans on them and draw them into a new war as cannon fodder.
The capitalists of Russia and Ukraine are in no way inferior to each other in plunder, atrocities and the endless cruelties of war. But in order to fool the proletariat and divert its attention from the only truly liberating war, namely, the civil war against “their own” and “foreign” bourgeoisie, for this purpose the capitalists of both countries are trying, by false phrases about patriotism and peace, to exalt the significance of their “national” war and to assure the peoples that they seek to defeat the enemy not for the sake of plunder and seizure of markets and lands, but for the sake of the "liberation" of all peoples (except their own).
And the more diligently the governments of the Russian Federation and Ukraine try to divide the workers and send them against each other, the more ferociously the system of martial law and military censorship is used for this purpose. Both governments begin to persecute their internal enemy—the class-conscious workers, the democrats—much more strongly than the external enemy. The bourgeoisie of both countries is strenuously preaching chauvinism to the masses under the name of "patriotism" and "defence of the fatherland." Consciously or not, some leftists sing along to this, ignoring or denying the basic truth of socialism, stated in the Communist Manifesto, that workers under capitalism have no fatherland.
Capitalists never fight each other with their own hands. Instead of themselves, they send the working people to the slaughter. It is favorable for the slaughter that governments systematically develop prejudices, mistrust and hostility towards other peoples among the working people. The workers of Ukraine are set against the Russian proletariat, the workers in the Russian Federation are told that their enemy is the Ukrainians or the American people, etc. This is done in order to distract the proletarian and oppressed masses from their own class struggle against the capitalists and oppressors, as well as from their duty of international solidarity of workers against world capital.
The current wars thus flow from the essence of imperialism. They will stop only when the capitalist economic system is destroyed or thoroughly undermined. The toiling masses are driven to this [conclusion] by all the hardships of war, by the enormous number of casualties among the people, by the destruction of the productive forces and social wealth, which have been destroyed or may be destroyed by a new war.
Today the workers are not yet strong enough to stop the war started by the bourgeoisie. But the slave-owners, forcefully impose weapons on the proletariat during mobilization for war. The workers need to take these weapons, but not in order to go to foreign countries and shamefully kill there the same oppressed and humiliated slaves of the bourgeoisie, but in order to direct them against their exploiters.
The war, while revealing the ulcers and contradictions of the capitalist system, at the same time opens the eyes of the workers to the true state of things. By provoking an intensification of the crisis, this war is undermining the very foundations of bourgeois society and is opening up new horizons for the workers in their struggle for socialism.
Therefore, the working class, which mainly has to supply soldiers and make the main material sacrifices to the war of the capitalists for profits, is a natural opponent of war. The war of the imperialists completely contradicts all the class interests of the workers: from obtaining bread to the creation of a socialist economic and social system, which alone can put an end to all wars and bring peace to the peoples.
Therefore, fascist governments are afraid of the voice of truth about the imperialist war, fearing that the truth might expose the aggressive nature of finance capital.
The war will inevitably give rise to a new economic and political crisis in the world. The proletariat can and must use this crisis to lift the entire working people and thereby to abolish capitalist domination. It is already clear that militarism and war will lead to a sharp drop in the standard of living of the working masses, to a rise in prices for all means of subsistence, which will aggravate class contradictions and arouse indignation among the masses of workers and working people. The preparation of capitalists for the next round of war and the war itself are a real system of waste, gobbling up and senseless destruction of colossal social wealth. The most valuable labor force is removed from production for the war. Entire nations are approaching towards such a situation that it will be easy to set them against each other, although this will be a crime against humanity, which has not the slightest justification in the interests of the people. The imperialist war in Ukraine, which has every chance of escalating into a general European or even world war, may become the greatest disgrace in world history due to the blatant disparity between the enormity of the catastrophe and the insignificance of the interests of the handful of billionaires who caused this catastrophe.
The capitalists and bourgeois governments have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. In the present state of the world they cannot start a great war without endangering their dominance. All the past wars of the imperialists, engendered by crises and by the capitalist economic system itself, contributed to social revolutions and defeats of capitalism. The present-day bourgeoisie hopes to avoid the development of an imperialist war into a just war of the peoples against the exploiters, relying on world fascism and small wars. But fascism is cracking under the weight of internal contradictions, and the small wars of the capitalists, as has already been said, are just a delay and preparation for a world war.
One way or another, the working class considers it a crime to shoot each other for the sake of increasing the profits of the capitalists. At this dangerous moment, the working class of Russia and Ukraine must recognize itself as the bearer of the entire future of mankind. It is obliged to prevent the destruction of the people’s lifes, the destruction of the productive forces of society, which the capitalists threaten with all the horrors of mass murder, famine and destruction.
If we are asked the question of which of the two groups of financial capital, Ukrainian or Russian, would be most beneficial to the international proletariat, then we can answer it in the same way that V. I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks answered during the First World War - the most beneficial for the workers and of all working people is the defeat of all groups of the oligarchy, both Russian and Ukrainian. The desire of the defeat one's own government is the only correct attitude towards the imperialist war going on in the Ukraine, both for the working class of Russia and for the working class of Ukraine.
However, there is no doubt that the defeat of Russian imperialism, one of the most reactionary and barbaric governments of the modern world, which oppresses a huge people and greedily encroaches on the freedom and independence of neighboring peoples, would be a great boon not only for the Russian workers, but for the entire world proletariat. In view of the power, special aggressiveness of Russian imperialism and its danger to the lives of hundreds of millions of working people, it is in Russia that a consistent democratic transformation becomes especially necessary: the revolutionary overthrow of the fascist regime, the establishment of a democratic parliamentary republic, the nationalization of all monopoly property.
A greater war, if it nevertheless unfolds, will certainly place on the order of the day the slogan of socialist revolution, which will be all the more urgent as the great hardships and horrors of the war fall on the shoulders of the proletariat of Russia and Ukraine. The role of the working class of the fraternal peoples should become all the more active in restoring our countries after the horrors of "patriotic" barbarism in the context of the colossal technical successes of big capitalism.
The use by the bourgeoisie of wartime laws to completely shut the mouth of the proletariat confronts it with the unconditional task of creating illegal forms of organization, propaganda and agitation. The advanced workers of the Russian Federation and Ukraine must necessarily use their organizational skills and connections to create illegal forms of struggle for democracy and socialism appropriate to the era of the crisis, to unite the workers not with “their own” bourgeoisie and its chauvinist echoes, but with the workers of all countries, and above all, between themselves. The more war victims there are, the clearer the crimes of "their" governments and the need to turn their weapons against them and the bourgeoisie of their country will become clear to the working masses.
In order to save themselves from destruction and save their peoples, the working class of Russia and Ukraine has no other choice but to turn the flaring imperialist war into a civil war—a war against their bourgeoisie, their exploiters and oppressors, against their government. No matter how great the difficulties of such a transformation may seem now, the advanced workers will never give up systematic, persistent, unswerving preparatory work in this direction, if a big war becomes a fact of life. Only on this path will the working class be able to break out of slavery and its dependence on the imperialist bourgeoisie and, in one form or another, more or less quickly, take decisive steps towards peace, the real freedom of the peoples, along the road to socialism, to the happiness and well-being of all working people.
Long live the brotherhood of Russian and Ukrainian workers against chauvinism, false patriotism and the predatory war of the bourgeoisie!
Long live the revolutionary proletarian International!
Down with the instigators of fratricidal war!