More on The National Question, Response To Linda Mann [Photo: Ultra-nationalist meme celebrating the massacre of 116 anti-fascists in Odessa by neo-Nazis on May 2nd. For the fascists in power in Ukraine, this beetle has come to represent the anti-fascist movement because its colors are similar to those of the St. George Ribbon, a ribbon worn by the anti-fascists to celebrate the USSRs victory over Nazi Germany in WW II. In the Odessa massacre, the 116 victims who died were burned alive, beaten to death, choked to death, and shot. The burning of this beetle is symbolic of that and is a funny joke to the fascists. The U.S. backed government was involved in the massacre in the first place and responded to it by arresting survivors of the massacre and did not arrest any of the perpetrators.] Linda writes: So is Ukraine fighting Russian imperialism or US imperialism or both? Capitalism has been restored in Russia and the same dynamics are at work with both it and the US. And are the Sovoba and Right Sector parties a progressive formation in this respect? Lenin shared with Luxemburg the perspective that nationalist ideology is always reactionary, but Lenin believed that the nationalism of oppressed nations played a progressive role when they prosecuted national liberation struggles against imperialists. Lenin didnt live to see the era when groups like Hamas (created by Israel to foil secular nationalists in the PLO) or al quaeda (brought about by the US and its allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan) would be looked to by certain deluded leftists as purveyors of national liberation struggles. Steven Argue Responds: First, the neo-Nazis of Svoboda and Right Sector are only nationalist to the extent that they hate all of the oppressed nationalities of Ukraine, including Russians. In terms of standing up to the actual imperialist oppressors, the United States and EU, they do the opposite and were instead put in power by the imperialists to carry out the dictates of the IMF and imperialism in general. In this respect they are extremely similar to their ideological forefather Stepan Bandera who murdered national minorities, but subjugated Ukraine to German Nazi domination. Yesterday the Ukrainian Nazis fought to subjugate Ukraine to Nazi plans which included killing off most of the population, enslaving the rest, and settling Ukraine with the German master race. Today they subjugate Ukraine for drastic IMF austerity, fracking, and other exploitation under imperialist servitude. Id also say that Russia is a weak capitalist country not an imperialist nation. Their support for the elected president of Ukraine as well as their limited support for the oppressed Russian nationality in Ukraine constitute a defense of national trading interests as the United States is attempting to isolate Russia, carry out regime change in Russia itself, and break Russia into three pieces that will be easier for U.S. imperialism to control. Brzezinski, who still advises Obama, has written this entire plan out. Russia itself had far less direct foreign investment in Ukraine than the EU. In fact, Russia itself has more direct foreign investment coming in to their country than going out. Russia is a country that is equally capable of having friendly relations with socialist countries like Belarus as with capitalist countries like Ukraine before the coup. This is because Russia is looking to maintain trade relations over investment and exploitation through finance capital. This is based in the fact that Russia simply is not strong enough to exploit countries in the ways that the U.S. and EU imperialists seek in Ukraine and every corner of the globe. Further more, in response to Linda, Lenin was correct on the national question while Luxemburg was wrong. Regarding the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc, Lenin never subordinated the class struggle to the struggle for national liberation, and he would have advocated the need for alternative proletarian socialist leadership, but he would have also supported the military defense of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon from the Israeli oppressor nation, as I do as well. On the question of Al Quaeda, this was an imperialist invention working with the U.S. imperialist client states of Pakistan and and Saudi Arabia. It was created to fight against the liberation of the women and peasants of Afghanistan under leftist and Soviet backed PDPA rule. Al Qaeda and similar Islamists continue to serve that imperialist purpose today in Syria. None of this means that the nationalism of oppressed nations is always progressive, but it certainly isnt always reactionary as Doug Mann has repeatedly claimed. In fact, struggles for national liberation under revolutionary proletarian leadership were an essential component of the Russian Revolution that brought with it the legalization of languages that were illegal under the tsar, investment in education and literacy in languages that were previously illegal, the establishment of a federation of socialist republics where the language rights of the different nationalities were established, the establishment of a planned socialist economy that guaranteed education, employment, and health care, thus decreasing competition over scarce resources, the use of the planned socialist economy to put more investment in the traditionally poorer republics and thereby lift them up economically within the USSR, and the ability of that planned socialist economy to turn one of the poorest countries in the world into an industrial powerhouse capable of defeating two major imperialist invasion. Despite Stalinist distortions after Lenin, these advancements were huge and remained so after Lenins death. There would have never been a Russian Revolution if Lenin didnt have the correct position on advocating the rights of oppressed nationalities. nationalities. -Steven Argue of the Revolutionary Tendency
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 21:19:55 +0000
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