interesting comment from Rob Ferguson, my response follows: … I have been taken aback at how quickly the left collapse on imperialism is taking place. My response to John Rees is also on Anindya Bhattacharyyas wall and the heart of the argument I would put up against this piece [goo.gl/zCAeyi] begins there too. There will also be a piece in the April issue of Socialist Review out next week. Charlie, to put up such a positive signpost to this article should give you serious pause for thought. The SR piece and StW have more in common than it might seem. Both make the mistake of balancing one imperialist camp against another. StW and CF start with the movement against US imperialism and so Russian imperialism is deemed the lesser evil. SR and others start from the movement in Maidan and so in the balance it is Nato that becomes the lesser evil. The mistake is to start by trying to weigh one imperialist camp against another in the first place. This represents a serious break with the revolutionary tradition that Russian revolutionaries took. To take one example from the article: It is also obvious that the land seizures so far have all been initiated by Russia. As Lenin argued repeatedly in his writings on imperialist war, which side fires the first shots are seizes the first annexation is irrelevant. In fact from the point of view of Russia as the weaker imperialism defending its near abroad, it was a perfectly logical act. >>> my response: Robs position cites an orthodoxy I would not dispute lightly, its one Chris Harman wrote about over two ISJ articles and one I tried to lay out here goo.gl/XeBhBh. It rightly insists on taking a birds eye view of imperialism and factoring this totality into ones judgement. But this gesture alone cannot be a satisfactory answer to the question of what revolutionaries do in a particular time and place. It is absurdly reductive to judge a living movement from such a lofty vantage point, to seek out a key link in the chain from a Gods eye view. One must fly up but one must also return to earth. That involves engaging the subjective question of how revolutionaries should build. Revolutionaries in Ukraine have three choices: side with Russia (perhaps building a countermovement to Maidan, certainly collaborating with occupying powers), sectarian abstention, or trying to build a left current in an large but politically highly volatile existing mass movement. I side with the revolutionaries taking the latter of these three options. I think revolutionaries here should start with solidarity with left revolutionary currents in Ukraine. Opposition to imperialisms East and West is a corollary of that. But engagement the maelstrom of Maidan is a necessary starting point.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 22:01:31 +0000
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