SOCIALIST ORGANIZER

Special Supplement –September 19, 2024

www.socialistorganizer.org – Please distribute widely!

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IN THIS SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

1) A Marxist Case For Voting For Kamala Harris – by Cliff Conner

2) A Personal Reply to Cliff Conner by Alan Benjamin

3) War in Ukraine: An Inter-Imperialist War — By Daniel Gluckstein

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A MARXIST CASE FOR VOTING FOR KAMALA HARRIS

By Cliff Conner

People who know me will most likely be shocked and flabbergasted to read that headline and see my name under it. Hell, I’m shocked. It represents a 180-degree reversal of an opinion—nay, a principle—I had strongly held and professed for most of my life. Fifty-three years, to be exact—1967 through 2020.

The headline above actually understates my position. I not only believe socialists and working people, including readers of this publication, should merely vote for Kamala Harris for President of the United States, I call upon you to campaign for her. Ring doorbells. Phonebank. Pass out flyers. Donate your hard-earned money if you can afford to. Whatever it takes to ensure her election.

OK. Having stated the proposition as blatantly, if not to say provocatively, as possible, I will now attempt to provide the justification.

A bedrock principle of the socialist organization I joined in 1967 held that no socialist should ever vote for or give political support in any form to the Democratic or Republican parties. They were and are the twin parties of capitalism, imperialism, war, racism, sexism, homophobia, and the destruction of the environment. To vote for a Democrat or a Republican was to cross the class line—to become the equivalent of a scab who crosses a striking union’s picket line.

I had adopted that principle because of the Vietnam War. I had opposed the war since 1964, the first year I was legally old enough to vote. I followed the presidential campaigns of Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, and was convinced that Johnson would end the war—because he said he would—and Goldwater could end the world—because he was threatening to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam if elected. When Johnson won in a landslide, I was greatly relieved. And then came the great betrayal.

Johnson almost immediately did the polar opposite of what his campaign had promised. Within a couple of years he had not only failed to end the war; he escalated it into a war of monstrous proportions, sending hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers into combat and bombing Southeast Asia more heavily than the Axis powers had been bombed in World War II. That war took the lives of millions of freedom fighters and civilians. Although we didn’t have definitive proof until the Pentagon Papers were leaked in 1971, it turned out that Johnson had been planning that escalation while he was campaigning as a “peace candidate” in 1964!

Long story short—I became a fervent chanter of “Hey, Hey, LBJ—How many kids did you kill today?”  I joined the antiwar movement and began to help organize it. I joined the socialist movement, became a Marxist, and vowed to never be fooled by a Democrat again.  In every subsequent election for the next fifty years, I argued that the Democrats and Republicans were essentially the same. Not identical, of course, because if they didn’t pretend to be different, they couldn’t bamboozle the electorate. But the political consequences would be the same no matter which party won any given election—the capitalist class would continue to rule, the working class would continue to be exploited, and, as Bob Marley sang, “The dream of lasting peace will remain but a fleeting illusion.”

I am writing this now in response to a loving challenge from one of my daughters, who has reminded me that I taught her to avoid both of the twin parties of capitalism like the plague. Why, she asked me, have I changed? The short answer is that I haven’t changed. The American political situation has changed so drastically that I felt obliged to revise my approach to it.

But hadn’t I told her that voting for a Democrat would be a violation of principle?

Yes, I did, and I still think so. However, I have learned that principles are not the absolutes I once thought they were. Sometimes you can find yourself trapped between dueling principles that force you to choose which is more important. This is one of those times. The principle of bearing responsibility for acting to avoid a historic catastrophe for the working class “trumps” (sorry about that) the principle of not voting for a Democrat.

“Lesser Evil” Politics?

Decent, well-meaning people I’ve known who are not socialists argue that despite everything that is obviously wrong with American society, the liberal Democrats are not as bad as the rightwing Republicans. The Democrats are the “lesser evil,” and therefore it is a good thing when they win elections.  Socialists have heard that argument ad nauseum, and we have long rightfully opposed it. I opposed it until, as I said, 2020.  And then circumstances changed. A much, much greater evil suddenly came to the dance.

The difference between the evils was no longer simply a matter of more or lesser; it was qualitative.  And the difference, I am convinced, if Donald Trump wins a second term, could well result in oppression and death on a scale surpassing what happened in Europe in the mid–twentieth century. It could plunge not only the United States but much of the world into political darkness and horror for a generation or more. Trying to ignore it is whistling past the graveyard. I feel as a matter of principle a duty to actively oppose it, not with hopes, bluster, and empty theorizing, but in a materially meaningful way. Get out the vote! For Kamala Harris!

Here’s the electoral situation today: You don’t have the luxury of voting for what you want. We are confronted, by the enemies of the working class, with a purely binary choice. You are forced to choose Harris or Trump.  You can abstain, of course, but for working-class voters, that will be a half-vote for Trump.

Voting for a third-party candidate is virtual abstention. You disagree? You think one of the third-party campaigns might actually win the election? I would be quite comfortable and confident in literally staking my life that they will not. It is as impossible as me winning the hundred-meter dash in the Olympics. If you understand in your bones the existential danger Trump represents, you will begin campaigning for Harris immediately.

This position, I have been told, means that I support Kamala Harris, or that I support the Democratic Party, or that I support the genocide in Gaza.  None of these propositions are true, no matter how often I am told what I “really mean.”  I do not support Kamala Harris.  I do not support the Democratic Party.  I loathe their policy of unconditional moral and material support to Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinian people. I support getting rid of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the whole two-party electoral system.

I support the idea of a labor party and a socialist America. Not a business-as-usual America run by politicians who call themselves socialists, but an America where the entire productive system is completely nationalized and under workers’ control. Unfortunately there is no real labor party to support in this election, and a socialist America is a goal, not a present option that can be obtained by wishing for it.

I reject the impotent politics of “calling for” things that aren’t going to happen in time to make a difference, including a labor party and massive, organized workers’ resistance against Trumpist oppression. I remember Jerry Gordon quoting Shakespeare to the ultralefts who “called for” a general strike against the war in Vietnam:

“I can call forth spirits from the vasty deep.”

“Why, so can I, and so can any man!  But will they come?”

Mark Twain famously said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” The politics of “calling for” things that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon are faith’s first cousins.

In brief, my appeal to vote and campaign for the Democratic Party candidate in 2024 is solely based on the fact that she is not Trump, and does not pose the threat of ruling as an unaccountable autocrat.

How Real and How Large Is the Danger that a Trump Re-election Represents?

Many readers of this publication will be as familiar with the horrors of the Nazi era in Germany as I am. Furthermore, the portrayal of the Third Reich in popular culture (books, movies, and television) should mean that millions of Americans can at least comprehend what is meant by saying the Third Reich was a regime of almost unimaginable cruelty. The murder of millions of innocent victims provided a new benchmark of the extreme limit of “man’s inhumanity to man.”

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” as the saying goes, but I believe it is entirely possible that a second Trump administration “without guardrails” would meet and exceed the Nazi cruelty. I would expect it to begin by shooting down hundreds of anti-genocide or Black Lives Matter demonstrators in the streets. Guantánamo’s prisoner population could increase apace, including both American and “immigrant” protestors. And Trump has explicitly made it known that he’d like to see concentration camps “throughout our nation” to combat urban crime and homelessness—and of course “urban crime” is closely associated in his reptile brain with “immigrants” and people of color. Here is how he puts it:

Perhaps some people will not like hearing this, but the only way you’re going to remove the hundreds of thousands of people, and maybe throughout our nation millions of people . . . is open up large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities . . . build permanent bathrooms and other facilities, make ‘em good, make ‘em hard, but build them fast, and build thousands and thousands of high-quality tents, which can be done in one day. One day. You have to move people out.

If Trump gains legal control over the executive branch of the U.S. government, he has explicitly promised that on “Day One” of his taking office he will be a dictator, accountable to no one but himself.

If you need further evidence of his intentions, go to You-Tube and watch the famous debate with Joe Biden on June 27th, 2024.  The world was focused on Biden’s sad, mumbling performance. (As a senior citizen myself, although I abhor “Genocide Joe’s” policies, I could empathize with him in that situation.)  The most horrific aspect of the debate, however, wasn’t how Biden spoke but what Trump said.  No matter what the journalists asked him, Trump repeatedly pivoted to a diatribe against “raping, murdering” immigrants. It was classic Nazi-style demagogy, with “immigrants” replacing “Jews” as the scapegoats for all of society’s ills.

I believe Trump when he says he wants concentration camps galore, and you should, too, because his recent thundering against “socialists,” “communists,” and “Marxists” is aimed directly at you and me. When he calls political opponents, including Democrats, “vermin” and charges immigrants with “poisoning the blood” of the United States, he is clearly demonstrating his fascistic bona fides.

If Trump is re-elected, his second term will almost surely be “without guardrails.”  He already has the Supreme Court in his pocket, and with their support could rapidly have the Department of Justice totally under his command.  Anyone who thinks the “principled apolitical U.S. military” will step up and stop him, is sadly deceiving themself.  Is all of this really “no difference” from what can be expected from a Kamala Harris administration?

Marxism and the Bourgeois Revolution

Let me explain the difference in Marxist terms.  The Democrats say that Trump presents a threat to “democracy.”  The problem with that is that American democracy has not been “the shining city on a hill” that it has always promised. It certainly has not fulfilled its promises to the indigenous population of North America, to African-Americans either during or after the era of slavery, or to refugees and immigrants who can see only hypocrisy in the welcoming words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Its promised “equal justice for all” has been deeply corrupted by the ability of wealthy criminals to “play” the legal system by buying the services of very expensive lawyers (not to mention stacking the courts at all levels with rightwing judges vetted by the Federalist Society).

But it is nonetheless true that American society has from its origins enjoyed the benefits of what Marxists call “bourgeois democracy.” That is to say, capitalist democracy. It is sometimes called “political democracy” to distinguish it from “economic democracy” or “socialist democracy.”

The essence of bourgeois democracy is fealty to the rule of law, and equality before the law, which excludes the rule of unaccountable autocrats. And anyone who thinks Marx, or Lenin, or Trotsky pooh-poohed bourgeois democracy as “no different from monarchy” is tragically mistaken. They understood bourgeois democracy as the monumental achievement of one of the world’s most consequential social revolutions: The French Revolution of 1789–93.

Bourgeois democratic rights are the necessary foundation of all human rights. They were first codified in The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution, and in the Bill of Rights amended to the American Constitution. Solidifying and extending the democratic gains of the bourgeois revolutions is prerequisite to socialist democracy.

Bourgeois democracy and bourgeois democratic rights in the United States are often taken for granted, but Marxists, of all people, should be completely aware of what it would mean to lose them.  It would make the struggles we are now engaged in far, far more difficult to pursue, and therefore, to win. If we lose bourgeois democracy, the vibrant movements against genocide, for abortion rights, for union rights, for justice to Cuba, for climate justice, will be crushed, suppressed, and driven underground—for at least a generation and possibly much longer. No political principle can take precedence over the need to actively resist that eventuality.  Yes, “resistance” implies much more than merely organizing voting for an alternative to a demagogue, but at the present moment that is the only road open to us. Palestinians and their allies will certainly continue the struggle against the genocide in Gaza by any means necessary, and against Biden and Harris’s policies of supplying the weapons that are killing children and others in Gaza. Can that be squared with voting for Harris against Trump? It can be and it must be, for all the reasons I have stated here.

As a Marxist, I also adhere to philosophical materialism as opposed to idealism. I have therefore long understood that socialism cannot be accomplished by logical arguments influencing people’s ideas, but by material events that force working people by the millions to resist the collapsing capitalist system and create a socialist alternative to replace it.  For the same reason, I do not expect my verbal arguments here to change the minds of those whose adherence to the principle of not voting for Democrats is deep and long-held. But to keep my opinion to myself would be violating the greater principle I recognize: to do everything in my limited power to prevent the disastrous destruction of bourgeois democracy.

Those who see not voting for a Democrat as an absolute principle say it might politically mislead the working class into thinking that a capitalist party can solve their problems. That is true, but it is an error of philosophical idealism to treat ideas, mistaken or not, as the primary factor in the class struggle. They are not. The material conditions that a Trump protofascist regime could impose far outweigh political confusion on any scale.

As an example of what I am arguing against here, I will cite an opinion that appeared in a periodical of an organization I respect and admire, Socialist Organizer, August 28, 2024:

“The [Democratic Party] candidates are not going to get a guaranteed vote from everyone just because we don’t want Trump. Obviously, we don’t. Nobody wants another four years of that nonsense, but it’s sad that these are our only two options. I see Kamala as just Biden 2.0. We need to have a Labor Party. We need to have other parties that can have candidates that people will want to support and vote for.”

The editors’ comment on this opinion was: “We agree.”

I emphatically do not agree, comrades. Trump’s threat is not simply “another four years of that nonsense.” It is not merely “sad” that our only electoral options are limited to Harris and Trump. “Kamala” is not “just Biden 2.0.” She is the bourgeois democratic candidate running against the antithesis of bourgeois democracy. The difference is a matter of life and death on a global scale.

New York City, September 5, 2024

(two months before election day)

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A Personal Reply to Cliff Conner

Dear Cliff,

Yes, I was shocked to read your statement on the November 2024 elections. You were one of my mentors when I joined the SWP in the late 1970s in your capacity as co-editor of the International Socialist Review and the wonderful Education for Socialists handbook series. Yes, your text represents a 180% reversal of fundamental positions of our movement, indeed, of Marxism itself. It pains me to write these words.

Why do I disagree with your text?

As Marxists, as socialists, we are, and we must never stop being, proponents of working-class independence. We understand that class independence is the bedrock of Marxism. Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie is a bitter enemy of the working class because of the relations of production. This is especially the case in the epoch of imperialism, that is, capitalism in its death throes – the most dangerous period of capitalism.

Your advocacy of “lesser evilism” in the case of Kamala Harris subverts the struggle for class independence. It particularly subverts the struggle for a Labor Party in the United States. Marxism is the fusion of theory and practice placed at the service of building the revolutionary party. Trotsky explained that revolutionaries should always look for ways to direct the masses to the central question of state power. The most advanced, “crowning” transitional demand would be for the formation of workers ́ government by the Labor Party.

Socialist Organizer believes that to move forward workers’ struggles today and tomorrow, there is an urgent need for a break with the Democrats. A new party is needed to express and fight for the needs of all working people and the oppressed, to break their subordination to the twin-parties of the bosses, and to pose the perspective of a government of and for working people.

You write that you agree fundamentally but make an exception at this moment. Yet, the working class can never move forward when workers are told to come to the rescue of “bourgeois democracy” to defeat Trump. The Democrats long ago turned against “bourgeois democracy”. It was only the independent mass struggles of workers and the oppressed that forced the corporate duopoly to enshrine and later protect the shrinking vestiges of bourgeois democracy.

This is the age of imperialism

Cliff, this is the age of imperialism in its most destructive phase – a period where labor, human and democratic rights are being dismantled every day by both parties of Capital. You write as if we were still living in the period of ascending capitalist development. Kamala Harris will be overseeing as commander-in-chief the most powerful – and lethal – army the world has ever known.

Kamala Harris is a hawk. In her debate with Trump, she stated unequivocally that she will seek to strengthen the lethal capacity of the U.S. Army, and that she will not hesitate to use this lethal capacity “to defend U.S. interests” anywhere in the world

I don’t believe there is a qualitative difference between Democrats and Republicans. There are differences, some substantial to be sure, but they are not qualitative. And I believe that it is a binding principle not to support capitalist politicians — especially the candidates of the main imperialist party: the Democrats.

As Marxists, as socialists, we are — and must never stop being — internationalists. There are a growing number of hotspots around the world — some of them of genocidal dimensions. This sheer barbarism, rooted in a capitalist system in its death agony, is being funded and teleguided by U.S. imperialism, with the Democratic Party at the helm. 

The devastation of Gaza and now the West Bank have rightfully earned Biden the moniker of “Genocide Joe.” The parallel with the death camps of World War II is appropriate. Kamala Harris never broke ranks on Gaza; she is a hard-core warmonger. She wants weapons more “lethal” than the ones that exist today. Differences with the Republicans? Close to zero. And as the war in the region expands, you can expect Harris-Walz, assuming they win and can protect their victory, to pursue the war – all in the name of waging the fight “against terrorism.”

Then there’s Ukraine, with the recent $61 billion in U.S. military aid to Zelinsky and his fascist allies. The U.S. provoked and later fueled this unending war, whose trenches conjure images of World War I. It’s an inter-imperialist war, with neither side defending the interests of the workers and youth. (We do not support Putin or Zelinsky). The U.S. generals and arms manufacturers love this war, as it delivers huge profits and saps the military strength of Russia – the better to prepare the ultimate objective: war against China (whose skirmishes are a warning of the confrontations ahead. See accompanying article on Ukraine.]

Biden in his debate with Trump addressed the coming war with China, and he sounded like more of a hawk than Trump. The same is true of Kamala Harris. In Europe, NATO countries are already preparing for war with Russia and China. Differences between Democrats and Republicans on the wars abroad? None.

The list is long: U.S. war on Yemen, U.S. war on Cuba (whose people are being driven to starvation by the U.S. embargo), U.S. war on Venezuela, beginning with continued coup d’etats against Hugo Chávez and now Nicolas Maduro, U.S. war on Haiti (where a new occupation by proxy is under foot) … all fomented by the Democratic Party.

I cannot vote for, nor can I call for a vote for, Democratic Party candidates who are responsible for the annihilation of the Palestinian people — and oppressed peoples worldwide, particularly the Cuban people, whose revolutionary struggle, despite all the obstacles, inspired me to become a socialist.

Cliff, you might agree with this assessment of U.S. imperialism’s role today (though from our discussions you seem undecided on the war in Ukraine), but you will no-doubt respond that when it comes to the U.S. imperialist war at home, Trump is the main danger.I learned long ago that the Democrats in power are masters of co-optation of all social protest movements. That has been demonstrated time and again; two recent examples being the immigrant rights movement [see piece by E.J. Esperanza on our Socialist Organizer website] and Black Lives Matter. Democrats are the gravediggers. 

I learned that decades and decades of “lesser evilism” have only paved the way for the Trumps and other proto-fascists. That, too, has been proven to be true. 

I learned that it takes the Democrats to stop major strikes, such as the railroad workers’ strike last November, where Biden, a so-called “friend of labor,” invoked the Railway Labor Act to derail the strike.
Let us look carefully at Kamala Harris’ commitment with respect to reproductive rights. If you listen carefully to her campaign speeches, her only commitment is to sign legislation restoring a federal right to abortion if one lands on her desk. 

So … Haven’t we been here before with such empty words. This would require 60 pro-choice Senators to overcome the filibuster. I’m sure you will agree that this is unlikely – and of necessity means not just endorsing Harris but pro-choice Democrats down ballot – especially as Kamala Harris is out stumping to re-elect Bob Casey, Jr. in Pennsylvania, who is notorious for his anti-abortion position as had been his father before him.

Since democratic rights seem to be a pivoting point for you, let me cite one more example with regard to the first amendment right to speech and assembly. Let us note that with regard to expression of any solidarity with the Palestinian people, it has been Democrats, notably Charles Schumer of NY, the leading Senate Democrat, who have pushed most vociferously for legislation that equates most criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination inappropriately with anti-Semitism.

Trump is a threat, but the Democrats are not going to stop him; fundamentally they are birds of a feather. They will be stopped by huge numbers of workers and activists in the streets, defying their union heads and community leaders, if necessary.

PS – Cliff: You ended your statement with a quote that we reprinted from Tempest magazine. We agreed with its call for a Labor Party and genuinely independent working-class parties – not the formulation of Trump’s “nonsense” (which trivializes our assessment of Trump). We don’t agree with minimizing the threat posed by Trump; we just don’t think that voting for Harris-Walz is the way to defeat Trump and all that he stands for.

In struggle,

Alan Benjamin

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Appendix #1

War in Ukraine: An Inter-Imperialist War

PRESENTATION

Following are excerpts from the report presented at the meeting of the OCRFI Organizing Committee (Fourth International) on May 25-26, 2024, under the title, “A de facto World War that requires us to fight the “social-chauvinism” of the 21st Century.” The excerpt dealing with the war in Ukraine is reprinted from The Internationale, Nos. 34-35, July 2024. The full report can be accessed on our website” http://www.socialistorganizer.org.

Gluckstein is a leader of the French section of the Fourth International and co-chair of the Workers Party of France. From the outset of the war in Ukraine, the Workers Party has stated:

No Putin, no Biden, no NATO!

The Workers Party, in line with the principles of the workers’ movement, calls for an immediate halt to the supply of arms and munitions to Ukraine.

The billions used to support the war in Ukraine must be confiscated

and reallocated to the urgent needs of the population: reopen closed classes in schools; mass recruitment, training and decent pay for the necessary hospital staff, increase wages and pensions, build hundreds of thousands of low-income housing units. – The Organizer

  *.  *.  *

By Daniel Gluckstein

There is a war going on in Europe today pitting two alliances against each other. On the one hand, a transatlantic alliance, the United States plus the European Union. And on the other hand, Putin’s regime and a number of countries around the world that support it. Of course, there are differences with the Second and First World Wars.

For the time being, the war is not taking place on the soil of the main European imperialist powers on the side of the Atlantic alliance. France, Germany and Great Britain do not have a war directly on their soil, but they are engaged in this war.

And they are involved in a relationship between the various imperialists which is quite comparable to the previous situations. We know that at the end of the First World War, U.S. imperialism established its domination over the world capitalist system. After the Second World War, it reinforced this domination.

Today, we do not even need to wait for the end of the conflict to see that, even now, when it comes to supplying shale gas, oil and the arms industry, to name but a few, U.S. imperialism has taken the lion’s share, not only by pre-empting all the present and future wealth of Ukraine and the surrounding regions, but also by passing on the bulk of the burden of the war to competing imperialisms and reserving the bulk of the profits for itself.

Just as in the Second World War, we are sold the misleading ideology of the need for “unity against fascism”. Now, if the masses were rightly looking for a way to fight fascism, there is no doubt that the objectives of French or British imperialism in 1939, no more than the objectives of US imperialism in 1941, were not the struggle “for democracy against fascism”, but the struggle to preserve their position in the face of German imperialism, and possibly Japanese imperialism, which threatened them.

Today we have something similar, where Putin’s regime – anti-democratic, reactionary, corrupt, mafia-like, this cannot be disputed – is used as an argument in the name of which fighting Putin would equal defending democracy or defending the rights of peoples.

In 1914, as in 1939, the conflict stemmed from the need for German imperialism to find space on the world market corresponding to the power of its productive forces.

And the – incompatible – need for competing imperialisms to preserve their own position against this competitor. Today, under different conditions, comparable issues are emerging.   The collapse of the USSR in 1991 created an unprecedented situation

What is special about the current situation? What makes the current situation special is the conditions created by the collapse of social and then state ownership in the former USSR and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. And these conditions have created an unprecedented situation.

The capitalist class, the most powerful imperialisms, have done everything since 1917, but particularly since 1945, to speed up the conditions for the collapse of state ownership in the USSR and Eastern Europe, quite simply because this meant that 10%, 15%, 20% of the world market was out of their reach.

 The very nature of imperialism, as defined by Lenin, is the trend towards permanent expansion of the productive forces at a rate far greater than the capacity of the markets to expand. So the need to constantly conquer new markets as well as the existence of markets that escape imperialism was obviously intolerable.

 So imperialism has always worked for the collapse of state ownership in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Its avowed aim was to be able to take over the economies of these countries, flood these markets with the  products of U.S. and other multinationals, and, in search of speculative assets, invest in them the mountains of capital that were having trouble being valued on Wall Street, in London, in Paris and so on. That was the objective.

When the collapse of the state- controlled economy in the former USSR and all the countries of Eastern Europe took place from 1991 onwards, it gradually became apparent that it was taking place everywhere, but in two different forms. In one case, it took the form of the submission of the new regimes to the dominant imperialism.   In other words, the plundering of State property that had become privatised was rapidly transformed into plundering by American, German, British and French multinationals. One of the agents of this was the entry of the countries concerned into the European Union, into NATO and the eastward extension of NATO.

If you look at the NATO map, It is spectacular. In the last twenty-five years, NATO’s eastern frontier has shifted by thousands of kilometres, encompassing all the countries of Eastern Europe except Russia, Belarus and a few others. But the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and many others were integrated into NATO.

 As an expression of the integration of these countries into the world market under the direct domination of the dominant imperialism, U.S. imperialism, or the subaltern imperialisms of Western Europe.  Russian oligarchs also want “their place in the sun”.

Things happened differently, particularly in Russia. And this is at the root of the problem facing imperialism today. Why did things happen differently?

Firstly, because Russia is a huge country, endowed with considerable wealth and resources, but also with a powerful, corrupt oligarchy, combining the political apparatus inherited from Stalinism, its military apparatus, and that layer of hundreds of nomenklaturists who used to live as parasites of the state economy, and who, after the collapse of the latter in 1991, felt that they had their own interests to defend.

As a result, the privatisation of Russia’s immense state-owned wealth was carried out first and foremost not directly for the benefit of world imperialism, but via the creation of gigantic trusts that plundered, dismantled and privatised state property, headed by henchmen from the Stalinist apparatus who became powerful multi-billionaires in the space of a few years, extremely wealthy, with a place on the world market, buying up English football clubs, occupying all the most upmarket ski resorts in France and villas on the Italian Riviera, a mafia capitalist layer without any doubt, totally interwoven with the political and military State apparatus of Yeltsin’s Russia, then Putin’s.

And, as it were, banging their fists on the table to say: “We too want our place in the sun!”

The conflict that has been brewing since 2014 – and in fact much earlier – in Ukraine, is simply the expression of this situation. Namely that the dominant imperialism, in particular US imperialism and its Western European stooges were candidates to take privatisation and plundering into their own hands. But they were not able to do so in Russia as they did, for example, in eastern Germany, where the privatisation of state property was carried out through an organisation called the Treuhand, which offered the backdrop of incredible corruption, the plundering of public property, the building up of enormous wealth, on the pure and simple theft of state property, on the basis of the impoverishment of the working class in eastern Germany.

Privatisation in eastern Germany took this mafia-like form, but was integrated, albeit chaotically, into the German capitalist economy.

This pattern did not apply to Russia. What happened in Russia was a kind of 1000-fold Treuhand. But the privatisation and plundering of the immense wealth that until then had been state property led to the emergence of a mafia-like proto-bourgeoisie that banged its fist on the table and demanded its “place in the sun”. Imperialism flatly retorted: “You won’t have a place in the sun”.

NATO’s eastward expansion was bound to lead to a clash at some point. And it did, on a global scale also. Russia’s role in the war in Syria, Africa, etc., all have something to do with this situation. But, at a point, the clash came to a head, physically and geographically, in the war in Ukraine.  

Similarities between Russian and Ukrainian regimes

It is worth pointing out that there are striking parallels between the ruling classes in Ukraine and Russia. They are the same people, the same bureaucrats who have converted to the “market economy”, the same people who 30 years ago swore allegiance to “Marxism-Leninism” and who after 1991 suddenly changed their skin to stick to the capitalist market.

The same processes are taking place in both countries. For example, right now, at the end of May 2024, corruption cases are snowballing in Russia in the top circles of the Ministry of Defence. Every day, senior military officials are being dismissed for corruption. And exactly the same thing is happening in Ukraine. When Zelensky was unexpectedly elected in 2019, he was initially the candidate of Russian interests in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s favourite candidate.

Since the “Orange Revolution” of 2005 and the “Euro- Maidan” of 2014, there had been a permanent conflict at the top of the Ukrainian state apparatus between the representatives of Moscow’s interests and those of U.S. interests.  Zelensky, at first, was the representative of Russian interests. And then things turned around. But there is no social difference, no difference in nature between the two regimes.

On the contrary, there is a conflict between the dominant imperialism and another imperialism, a proto-imperialism that is trying to occupy a place, Russia.

So this is a major difference, but at the same time it is a situation which, in essence, is no different from what was at the heart of the imperialist world wars, both the First and the Second. It is the conflict between sectors of the capitalist class on a global scale over who is going to grab which market, who is going to be able to exploit the natural resources of this or that part of Africa or Asia, who is going to be able to invest in this or that market. And that is what gives this conflict its imperialist nature.

There are differences, of course, but they are very minor and no greater than those that existed between the First and Second World Wars, for example. There were, of course, many differences between the First and Second World Wars. For example, fascism was not on the agenda in the First World War. The genocide of the Jews was not on the agenda. Many of the issues were different, but basically the nature of these wars was the same: they are imperialist wars.

Is it correct to say that today the nature of the current war is the same? I think it is correct to say so, and that is how we should approach it. 1939-1941: revolutionary defeatism and “defence of the USSR.”  Of course, there are many differences. For example, the wars of 1914 and 1939 were imperialist wars. But when Hitler’s troops attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, there was a new dimension to the war. It was still an imperialist war, between imperialist powers, but it was also a war of imperialism against the USSR, to wipe out what remained of the gains of the October 1917 revolution. For us Fourth International activists, that makes a difference.

 Let us remember that in 1939, when war broke out on European soil, our orientation in the various imperialist countries at war was that of Lenin: revolutionary defeatism. French activists, for example, refused to support the French bourgeoisie, which claimed it was fighting “for democracy against fascism”, even though a few months earlier it had helped to strangle the Spanish revolution and give way to Franco’s victory.

Obviously, our German comrades – in hiding under the Nazi boot – were in the same position. When the United States was preparing to go to war, supported by a huge wave of chauvinism, our comrades in the SWP, the U.S. Trotskyist Party, courageously fought against the United States going to war. They were even sentenced to prison for it. James P. Cannon, leader of the SWP, was put on trial and delivered a magnificent plea that we have published under the title “Socialism on Trial”.

 In it, he explained to his judges why U.S. Trotskyists opposed the United States going to war, saying: “If it were really a question of fighting fascism, of course we would be at the forefront of the fight against fascism, but that is not what the war is about”. It was not easy to explain this, going against the grain of public opinion in the United States. Our comrades did.

But when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the Soviet Trotskyists, the few who had not been murdered or executed, who were in the Siberian camps, claimed the honour of being sent to the front line to defend, not Stalin and the bureaucracy, but the USSR and the social property created in October 1917.

And indeed, a number were released and sent to fight at their request, and generally all died in combat because the bureaucracy took that opportunity to send them to the front line. But they did so because they were implementing our programmatic position. We defend the old conquests in any conditions, independently of the bureaucracy.

 Did this change the overall nature of the war? No. It changed the particular tasks of the Fourth International activists in the Soviet Union. But the overall nature of the war was inter-imperialist. It was obvious that once the conflict between Nazi Germany and its allies on the one hand, and transatlantic imperialism on the other, had been “settled”, the victor would turn against the Soviet Union. Trotsky wrote this before the war, and it has proved true.

What comparisons can we make today? China is not in conflict, but it is under threat. U.S. imperialism never misses an opportunity to say: “We must prepare for war with China”. The Chinese leaders today, for tactical reasons that everyone understands, are playing the card of moderation in the conflict in Ukraine and a certain line of preservation of the Putin regime. But they have no intention of being drawn into the war by Putin.

Because, yes, it is a parasitic bureaucracy that parasites state property, but it is not a bourgeoisie looking to conquer new markets; it is trying to preserve its positions. It is not interested in getting involved in a war to secure the positions of the Chinese economy, even if it is trying to preserve them, which makes it different from Putin’s regime.