I’ll preface with saying that I’m only a random Communist. Please take what I say with a grain of salt, even if I come off as confident.
Regardless of your opinion on the war, it is not going to affect its course unless you go fight there, with a few exceptions.
Unless you live in Russia or Ukraine, your priorities should be:
- pressuring your country’s government for non-interventionism, including sanctions. Capitalist States have only the interest of capital in mind, and their intervention will hurt the people further
- fighting racism in your communities, especially the new wave of anti-Russian hate.
If you live in Poland or Romania, you should also be fighting the racism against non-Ukrainians (mostly foreign students) seeking refuge. Most of them just want to go home. The fact that the police are attacking them is extremely ridiculous.
Yeah biden and america have so far opposed negotiations which is the only way this ends so that’s the priority and taking in refugees. Based on my experience with post 9/11 you don’t get any brownie points for saying “Sadam is a bad guy BUT…” it just doesn’t register. You’re with the terrorists. People already picked their sides focus on the civilians that will get killed
None of those European anarchists and libertarians will speak about this, because they are comfortable with it. They are more than comfortable with Russophobia at this point, similar to Sinophobia or hate for Indians or whatever hate trends on reddit or 4chan. The evidence is out in the open, with Western news media openly being racist, or millions of nasty comments and tweets or the hideous sentiment promoting Nazism by omission of argument and suppressing ANY neutral or pro-Russian stance.
The amount of vitriol I have seen in the past week, amplified by the power of Western Big Tech, is BLOODY F***ING INSANE. Sinophobia and hatred for Indians used to be widespread and more subtle and spread over many years, but the hatred packed for Russia in the past week has unrivalled history atleast in the past century. Even during Nazi Germany against Jews, there was no technology connectivity at this level.
That old lady shown in blood and whatnot on magazine and article covers is a paid actor for this Western grift. So many Indian students, coloured people faced physical thrashing and verbal crap and rejection from Poles coming from a USA compromised Ukraine.
History was wrong. It is just not the 1% elites that facilitate crimes at this scale. People are also involved just as much. Back then the medium was just not internet, but IRL “socialising” among micro neighbourhood groups.
Anyone downvoting this is most likely one of the 10-20 hideous racists that pose in the cloak of anti war internet heroes these days. History will spit at all of you for media illiteracy, racism, ignorance of history, lack of empathy, wordsmith weaseling and sheer entitled assholery at its finest.
@cyclohexane@lemmy.ml you see the ratio of votes on this post you made? That shows what ratio of hideous racists exist on Lemmy. And some of them are still attempting to not downvote it to not get exposed like grifters.
Edit: hooboy 10 minutes and 1 downvote, some people are working day and night. Soon there will be no US installed puppet and Nazism in Ukraine. Sovereignty, stability and solidarity to both Russia and Ukraine!
I don’t understand why some communists insist in “taking sides” in a fratricidal war between an oligarch backed regime against the most anti-communist (and pro-Nazi) State in Europe. I thought that we, as a political community, decided this centuries ago when adopted as stanza of our hymn:
“The kings make us drunk with their fumes,<br> Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!<br> Let the armies go on strike,<br> Guns in the air, and break ranks<br> If these cannibals insist<br> On making heroes of us,<br> Soon they will know our bullets<br> Are for our own generals”
Our bullets are both for Putin and Zelensky.
The problem I see is a lot of people (not necessarily communists) see arming Ukraine as the neutral or peace position; and opposition to that as picking putins side
I am among these people.
Yes, i believe helping “the little guy” against a big bully is always the neutral position. Although economic sanctions i personally don’t see as neutral but rather as a form of another bully (western bloc) reverse-bullying the “original” (in this specific story) bully while using the little guy as an excuse.
Remember Spain 1936? The “neutral” position of west-european socdems of non-assistance ended up strengthening fascism across Europe, while USSR’s “neutral” position of arming only the regular army (in exchange for political control/repression over revolutionary Spain) ended up destroying the revolution (dismantling of people’s militias, banning of women from the battlefield, slaughtering the anarchists eg. in the battle of Telefonica).
There’s no good answer in war. But when i look at what’s happening in Rojava, and despite all my hatred for western powers, i’m glad the autonomous administration is still alive thanks to outside support. Without foreign intervention, the revolution in Rojava would have been crushed either by Daech or by the Turkish fascists.
True, comrade. I simply fail to understand how someone could believe in arming for peace. It is as logical as fucking for virginity.
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This is a really simplistic view. The war in Ukraine didnt start last week, it already started in 2014, after the u.s. coup in Kiev. People in Donetsk and Lugansk didnt accept that illegal change of government. In response, the coup regime attacked them with tanks. Now they were about to start another offensive, and even threatened to acquire nuclear weapons (Ukraine has the know-how from Soviet times). Russia demanded security guarantees from u.s. and nato since december, but they were ignored. So they saw war as the only option to prevent more civilian deaths in Donbass.
the u.s. coup in Kiev
It’s called a revolution. Whether that was supported by foreign powers or not is irrelevant. A coup looks like something else entirely, and you’ll see in the history of US-backed coups that they’re not exactly fans of having elections that would threaten their puppets.
Because an “oligarch backed regime” is not an accurate assessment of what Russia is. Russia has a popular front where the national bourgeoisie and the working class share an interest against imperialism from NATO. Russia’s biggest industry, the gas industry, is nationalized. The West wants to privatize and extract the wealth from Russia’s natural resources, which would be deleterious to all classes in Russia.
AES countries support Russia. Just look to the positions of North Korea, Cuba, China, Bolivia, and Venezuela. The biggest opposition party in Russia, the KPRF, supports intervention in Ukraine.
What’s up with all the anti gay stuff then?
That’s their business. Most of the world working class has homophobic tendencies. This was true in the West as well until just a few years ago. In Germany, gay marriage was only legal in 2017. As far as I know, Cuba is the only AES country that is progressive with LGBT rights. This type of social acceptance takes time.
If they are a popular leftist front then why are the so socially regressive? Lenin, mao, Marx were all very clearly in favor of social progress. The bolsheviks legalized homosexuality when they came to power. Mao spoke in favor of recognizing diverse ethnic identities within China and wrote forcefully against Han supremacy.
This idea that progressive social values, like acceptance of LGBT people or anti racist stuff is “liberal social justice wars” is fucking fashy bullshit. It’s ahistorical. It’s dressed up strasserism.
Why are you using quotes for “liberal social justice wars” when that’s not what I said? And you say I argue in bad faith. As an American, I do support LGBT rights. I have lots of friends and family who are LGBT and I care about them deeply. How can you call me a strasserist? Is this your idea of a joke?
Homosexuality and transidentity is nothing new, and it would require some serious source to assert that working peoples are more reactionary than the intellectual elites: in the history of the western world it’s always been the other way around with a working class queer underground taking years/decades to become socially accepted by the higher classes.
Also worth noting, the USSR has a strong history of fighting for women/LGBT rights, right until Stalin reinstated the old moral order and banned homosexuality again. I don’t know in English but in french a few years back i read a good book about the history of “sexual deviancy” in the USSR and the evolving political context around it.
I know if you look at pre-modern cultures from around the world you will see homosexuality and transgender people. However, the proletariat is a modern phenomenon of capitalism, and somehow, the modernization of the world has erased many natural aspects of our humanity. And I think that’s tragic.
it would require some serious source to assert that working peoples are more reactionary than the intellectual elites
It’s just common sense. LGBT rights are at their strongest in western countries, the countries where the labor aristocratic tendency is working its hardest, where the intelligentsia is most numerous, where the world imperialist ruling class actually resides. It’s the richest cities and states within the US that are the most socially progressive like San Francisco and California, and it is the poorest that are the most reactionary, like West Virginia or Alabama.
There is a tendency of reactionary behavior because, well, these working people didn’t go to college like we did. I think this onion video really hits the nail on the head of how absurd the contrapositive is. It’s not a good thing, but it’s just the truth. And it’s a truth that communists have been and should be prepared for. In 1917 the working people and peasants of the Russian empire were not waving rainbow flags or learning each others pronouns. What did it matter in the end?
Not every country cares about liberal standards. And there is no single measure for “progress”, every country has the right to determine its own policies on different issues. Gringos cant tell Russians how they have to think “correctly” about gays.
Nobody’s telling ordinary russians how they can think. We’re just pointing out that the Russian government is fascist, and that in the past two decades they have worked very closely with the orthodox patriarchs to bring back “the old order”.
Or are you saying that a government banning queer propaganda and repressing its own people protesting these human rights abuses is justified?
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Im just sharing my opinion. Dont care if you disagree, but at least try to insult me in a creative way.
The CPRF is against a war in Ukraine. 3 MPs from CPRF said quite clearly they’re against the invasion. They voted to protect Donetsk and Lugansk, not to bomb Kiev.
I don’t know how can you say that United Russia’s project is part of a popular front. It really is a mystery to me how anyone could be in favor of a war where almost every single casualty is going to be of a child of the working class. What the working class has to gain from this war? For almost every soldier, all they can manage to do is to return alive to their families. Nothing more. Does this war promotes the international solidarity of the working class? No, it doesn’t. On the contrary, this is promoting nationalist jingoism everywhere and it is going to make Ukraine’s political landscape even worse. More anti-communism, more “Oriental menace” propaganda…
Another thing: Neither China nor Cuba supported Russia in the invasion. They abstained from voting to condone Russia. The countries that voted against condoning Russia (and thus supporting Russia’s position) are Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria.
Did you even read the first source you linked? How are they clearly against the invasion when Zyuganov says
Only demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine can ensure lasting security for the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and the whole of Europe
Aren’t those the exact two terms, demilitarization and denazification, that Putin used to describe the operation?
Yes, comrade, I read it and I try to stay up-to-date with their discussion, because I believe in the Party. Various other Communist Parties also adopted the same position of being anti-war, which is quite a strong tradition in our movement.
Also, check what Mikhail Matveyev, Oleg Smolin, and Vyacheslav Markhaev said. Those three are MPs from CPRF and could state more than enough the position of the Party. Well, unless you’re accusing them of breaking the democratic centralism of the Party… but, if this is the case, I believe you should give us quite an amount of evidence, because this is a very serious allegation.
Before I get to that, you still haven’t addressed the quote. Or even explained how what Zyuganov said supports your conclusion. It doesn’t. Zyuganov supports peace in Ukraine the same way I support peace in Ukraine. In the sense that military intervention is necessary to end the 8 year long Donbas war and ensure security against NATO aggression. I don’t know where you are getting this from that KPRF is against the intervention in the first place.
Comrade, it is quite clear that you’re not acting in good faith. The text states the following:
It is particularly important for the peoples of the world to become aware of the adventurous nature of Washington’s policy and recall the experience of broad anti-war movements. The unfolding of such a movement would ensure solidarity with the peace-loving peoples of Russia and Ukraine and protect their right to independent development. (…) In the situation when the Russian Federation has taken a stand in defense of the people of Donbass, it is necessary to render every possible assistance to refugees and the civilian population of the DPR and LPR.
The fact that he uses the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” is a moot point. This is what was alleged to protect Donetsk and Lugansk, and I don’t believe any communist would oppose to this. What I find it strange is to believe that demilitarization involves waging a military invasion. Like I previously said, arming/bombing for peace is as logical as fucking for virginity. It is jingoistic nonsense such as “si vis pacem para bellum”.
Also, the three members of the CPRF were quite clear in their opposition to the invasion. Their position is quite public. Again, you can argue that they’re breaking the ranks of the Party, but this is a serious allegation and I hope you have evidence to back this up if you choose this way.
If you don’t accuse them of breaking the democratic centralism of the Party, then you must read the text under the assumption that what they’re telling you is the case. They are telling you that their posture is “to become a shield for the Donbas, not for bombing Kiev”, as Comrade Matveyev said.
I’d like to point out that you’re also mistaken when you said
AES countries support Russia. Just look to the positions of North Korea, Cuba, China, Bolivia, and Venezuela.
…as it has already be shown in the map of my previous answer. However, you never managed to reckon your mistake. Instead, you try to insult me, asking if I’d read the text that I posted in a clear rhetorical maneuver to avoid taking any of my points seriously. Do you really approach people to talk with this kind of posture? Is this kind of behavior accepted in the Party you belong? Comrade, I don’t believe you act like this in your day-to-day life or at your workplace, so I fail to understand why would you do it with a fellow coreligionnaire. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish here, however I won’t waste more of our time if this is to approached without honesty and good faith. Comrade, if you want to talk in private, you’re always invited. Otherwise, I wish you a good night.
Just because they refuse to vote to support Russia at the UN, does not mean they do not support Russia materially. International relations is 3D chess, it doesn’t represent the real alignments of nations. So far the only countries that have materially opposed Russia are those in NATO, Japan, South Korea, Isreal, Australia, and New Zealand. And even some like Poland, Hungary, Turkey are refusing to send military aid to Ukraine.
Do you really approach people to talk with this kind of posture?
You would not have lasted 5 minutes with the Bolsheviks. They were renown for the intensity and furiosity of their debates. Lenin’s work “Left-Wing” Communism an Infantile Disorder for example. He called ultra left communists infants. Marx was also a very inflammatory rhetorician. Just look at his letters about Bakunin, saying he has become a mass of flesh and fat. If you have a problem with the tone of my speech over its content, you have to be consistent and condemn Marx and Lenin as well. I am not even 1/10 as inflammatory as they were. I’m not arguing in bad faith.
Like I previously said, arming/bombing for peace is as logical as fucking for virginity.
That’s silly. If that was true, why have a military at all? Why put nuclear weapons in Cuba? Do you disagree with Mao’s protracted people’s war? What about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Or what about the Hungarian intervention in 1956? You are upholding peace as an ideal, which is idealism. The real world is full of bad actors, violence, and fascism. Because of this, there are times where it is necessary to use war. Pacifism and warmongering are two sides of the same coin with the same outcome.
How KPRF enforces democratic centralism is their own business. The party itself has not officially condemned the operation, so you can’t take what its members say as the stance of the party. There is also not always an explicit party line on everything.
But this is what Zyuganov said: “So, a very difficult decision on a special operation of Russian troops in Ukraine has been made. I want to appeal directly to the people of Ukraine, including my countrymen and colleagues: let’s expel that Bandera pack that has settled in Kyiv!”
How is that not an example of support for the operation? Do I have to play hermeneutics with you? It’s pretty obvious what their position is.
By the way, it was Zyuganov who called for the recognition of LPR and DPR days before Putin did this. I think it’s kind of interesting. In a way, the KPRF opposition is powerful enough to gain concessions and guide policy.
Because an “oligarch backed regime” is not an accurate assessment of what Russia is.
Yes that’s an accurate description. Or are you denying that Russia has privatized everything after the collapse of the USSR? To be fair, that was under strong pressure from US neoliberals and their laissez-faire policies. But denying that a tiny minority of industrials have acquired control over much of the country practically overnight is historical revisionism.
Russia has a popular front where the national bourgeoisie and the working class share an interest against imperialism from NATO.
No. The working class shares an interest with foreign working class to cooperate and topple all governments. Collaboration with our enemies (the bourgeoisie) is not socialism: it’s a key element of fascist/nazi doctrine.
No war between the peoples, no peace between the classes!
Yes that’s an accurate description. Or are you denying that Russia has privatized everything after the collapse of the USSR?
I’m not denying that, but you have to observe that there was a reversal of neoliberalism in the 2000s that led to an economic boom. Don’t lecture me on this, I was there. I remember seeing in Moscow several skyscrapers 100+ stories tall being built in the city. Gazprom, the largest gas company in the world, being nationalized is the best example of this shift in economic policy. You can’t just hand wave these developments away.
Collaboration with our enemies (the bourgeoisie) is not socialism
Don’t take it up with me if you actually see things this simplistically. You need to take it up with Mao. Did you know that two of the stars on the chinese flag represent the petit bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie?
It’s fine if you think you know better than Mao though. Just show me where southerntofu thought has actually worked in the world to develop socialism and I’ll believe you.
a reversal of neoliberalism in the 2000s (…) in Moscow several skyscrapers 100+ stories tall being built in the city. Gazprom, the largest gas company in the world, being nationalized is the best example of this shift in economic policy
Skyscrapers are a symbol of industrial capitalism: i don’t see a link with socialism. As for nationalizing gaz, once again i don’t see the link: to me socialism has to do with workers self-organizing the means of production, not with a centralized State apparatus controlling everything. I do not see any evidence that ordinary people of Russia/Belarus/Kazakhstan/Chechnya are doing well, but i see plenty of evidence otherwise.
From what i hear from comrades over there, it’s hard to make a living unless you work in IT or finance or as a higher-level public servant (to be fair, the same can be said around here). In Chechnya, i would go so far as to say the government relies on slave labor from the local population. Nationalization is not communism, or by that standard, renowned french fascist de Gaulle was a communist hero and France is a socialist paradise, all with nationalized healthcare, education… Many people died in de Gaulle’s colonial wars (Algeria, Indochine…) and fascist rule over here (eg. may 68 and de Gaulle’s fascist militias SAC beating down protesters). Is that your vision of communism?
For a more detailed argument on this topic, i strongly recommend Emma Goldman’s There is no communism in Russia (1935):
The first requirement of Communism is the socialization of the land and of the machinery of production and distribution. Socialized land and machinery belong to the people (…) In Russia land and machinery are not socialized but nationalized. (…) it belongs to the government, exactly as does the post-office in America or the railroad in Germany and other European countries. There is nothing of Communism about it. (…) Such a condition of affairs may be called state capitalism, but it would be fantastic to consider it in any sense Communistic. (…) The basis of such planning must be the complete freedom of each community to produce according to its needs and to dispose of its products according to its judgment: (…) There is no trace of such Communism—that is to say, of any Communism—in Soviet Russia. In fact, the mere suggestion of such a system is considered criminal there, and any attempt to carry it out is punished by death.
You need to take it up with Mao. Did you know that two of the stars on the chinese flag represent the petit bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie?
If you remember Marx, communism is the stateless, classless society. The dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be a step on the road to communism: neither Stalin nor Mao have taken any steps to go beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat and actually build communism (as in, all power to the people), and they have in fact repeatedly taken steps to ensure power and resources would not be redistributed to the people: by crushing the soviets with nationalizations or by crushing dissents with the Red Army (Cronstadt, Ukraine commune, Prague uprising…).
Skyscrapers are a symbol of industrial capitalism: i don’t see a link with socialism.
When did I say it was socialism? You need to read things more carefully in general, but you need to read carefully the point I was responding to where you said “Russia has privatized everything after the collapse of the USSR.” Nationalization of Gazprom doesn’t make Russia socialist, but it contradicts what you’re saying which is why I bring it up.
For a more detailed argument on this topic, i strongly recommend Emma Goldman’s There is no communism in Russia (1935):
Why would a 87 year old source be relevant to what is going on today? Are we really going as far as to say the Soviet Union wasn’t communist? Really?
If you remember Marx, communism is the stateless, classless society.
I remember enough of Marx to know he never said that “stateless, classless, moneyless” quote everyone keeps using. It’s a definition that was used to describe what the final stage of communism might look like, and it comes from people who studied Marx later, not sure exactly where.
“We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things” is how Karl Marx actually describes communism. If you mean communism as the final stage of communism, we can’t say what it is, because it does not currently exist, nor has it ever existed.
neither Stalin nor Mao have taken any steps to go beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat and actually build communism
And neither have you. Neither have any ultra leftists. I don’t see why anyone should abandon Stalin or Mao when they have accomplished far more for socialism than any of their detractors.
Are we really going as far as to say the Soviet Union wasn’t communist? Really?
Yes. Since your argument seems to be based on USSR was communist, Putin is the direct descendant of the USSR so Putin is communist. I’ve been focusing on debunking the second assertion but if that’s not enough i’m happy to tackle the first one. There was a communist revolution in Russia/Ukraine in 1917, and the bolsheviks crushed it. There was no communism under the USSR after that, only State capitalism. It’s very relevant to this discussion because “invading ukraine” is precisely part of what destroyed communism in the USSR.
it comes from people who studied Marx later, not sure exactly where.
Yes it’s a paraphrase. But to be fair some of Marx’s own wordings are fairly close. I don’t remember those i read previously (from books he published later in his life), but for what it’s worth from exactly 5 seconds of “googling”: “this dictatorship is only a transition to the dissolution of all classes and leads to the formation of a classless society.”
If you mean communism as the final stage of communism, we can’t say what it is, because it does not currently exist, nor has it ever existed.
Of course it has. Communism (or anarchism) is a quasi-natural state of things in many circumstances (see also Graeber on this topic). Most communities throughout the history of humankind have lived without what we understand as private property or work, and millions of people live to this day in self-organized communities without rulers. These people are practically building communism without intermediate steps or broken promises, or even political police: they are accomplishing a lot more than Stalin or Mao ever did who just reproduced the structures of the old Empires and painted them red (which has arguably nothing to do with communism).
Of course it has. Communism (or anarchism) is a quasi-natural state of things
I agree that communism will lead to a return to this natural human state. There’s a reason why we use the word revolution. When we talk about a revolution of the earth around the sun, it is the earth returning to the same position it was a year ago. That’s what a revolution is, an instance of something revolving, which implies an eternal cycle.
But of course, the earth doesn’t really return to the same place, because the sun is moving too. So it’s more of a spiral. That’s one of the main ideas of dialectics: everything is in motion, all change is connected. So even if we can narrowly contrive a useful picture of the earth in an eternal cycle, in the big picture, something has still changed. History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.
So the point of this ramble is to say that while there will most likely be a lot of similarities between this final stage communist society and primitive communism, they are not the same thing. What’s ironic is that the end of primitive communism and the beginning of this final communism are both events driven by the same thing. An overabundance of commodities.
When this happened the first time, it gave rise to the institution of private property, because people now had something worth protecting and stealing. In the future, overabundance will lead to the dissolution of private property. Because everyone’s needs and desires can be met the institution of protecting one groups desires over an other’s will be redundant.
So already we see a key difference. Primitive communism existed because of scarcity, the communism of the future exists because of overabundance.
Millions of people live to this day in self-organized communities without rulers.
I’m not sure what you are referring to because you could be referring to a lot of different things. Maybe the Zapatistas or Rojava? I guess not Zapatistas because they have leaders. But Rojava only exists in the context of a civil war and a state of anarchy which also allowed far right groups like ISIS to flourish. And Rojava is also financially backed by the US government. But maybe I assume too much and there is a different example you have?
Since your argument seems to be based on USSR was communist, Putin is the direct descendant of the USSR so Putin is communist.
No that’s not my argument. Putin isn’t a communist. What I said more specifically was that Russia is a popular front like China was during WWII. China wasn’t communist during WWII, but the communists were a strong faction in alliance with the others in China. Because there is a contradiction between the country and the imperial ruling class that is principal. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is secondary at the moment.
