Five months of war in Ukraine

Five months of war in Ukraine

If the working class and other workers do not rise up, there will be no progressive solution.

Masses 669, Editorial, July 24th, 2022

The crisis of revolutionary leadership is what stands out the most in the conflagration that has shaken Europe and the world. Trade unions and parties considered to be leftist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois, were not able to oppose the war and fight for its end. A huge political confusion settled in their ranks and caused divisions. What favored and still favors incomprehension and political paralysis. To a large extent, the masses have been at the mercy of imperialism’s propaganda that NATO poses no danger to the Russian people. And Russia’s response left doubts as to whether it was a military action that implied a violation or not of Ukraine’s right to self-determination.

The working class, therefore, had no way of discussing, understanding and taking a stand on the character of the war. In other words, if it was and still is a war of domination, in which capitalist interests prevail; or war of liberation, in which the exploited and oppressed peoples fight for their emancipation from the rule of the capitalist class and imperialism. Five months have passed, and the consequences of the war in Ukraine fall entirely on the shoulders of the exploited, in the form of an increase in poverty, misery and hunger, without the union leaderships and left-wing parties, which claim to be socialist, putting themselves forward for the defense of the lives of the masses and for the end of the war.

The rise in inflation and the cost of living, the strengthening of the recessive tendencies of the world economy, and the impulse to destroy jobs, result in greater social barbarity. It is absolutely clear that the war in Ukraine itself did not lead the world economic crisis and social barbarism. On the contrary, the decomposition of aged capitalism, which resists giving way to the classless society, communism, is what engenders wars, and potentiates the structural barbarism of the imperialist era. But it is imperative to recognize whether the forces of imperialist reaction are facing the resistance of the proletariat, or whether they have a clear field for their destructive march.

It cannot be ignored that the bureaucratic and revisionist decomposition of Marxist internationalism, imposed by Stalinism, and, above all, the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, favored the field of counterrevolution and allowed imperialism to regain lost ground for the process of transition from capitalism to socialism, opened with the October Revolution of 1917. It is necessary to seek the roots of the present war in Ukraine in the defeats suffered by the proletariat that led to the USSR liquidation, the advance of the imperialist siege of Russia, the intensification of national oppression and civil wars between the former Soviet Republics themselves.

The inertia and collaboration of the union leadership with imperialism in the face of the Ukrainian war are the most profound expressions of the setback suffered by the world revolutionary movement. They demonstrate the historical gravity of the Third International liquidation and the dissolution of the Fourth International, battered by revisionism.

The events of the moment highlight the urgent need for the working class to stand up for the end of the war, for a peace that guarantees the security of Russia, that averts the dangers of the NATO siege, that guarantees the territorial integrity of Ukraine, that reinstate the right of separation of the two republics of the Donbass region, which establishes the real self-determination of Ukraine, in accordance with the free decisions of the Ukrainians themselves. For an anti-imperialist peace! For a peace based on the democratic and revolutionary foundation of the oppressed nation’s right to self-determination!

Only the united working class can defeat the US military offensive against Russia. Only the united working class can regain the self-determination of Ukraine and all the other ex-Soviet republics. In this way, it is possible to take concrete and firm steps in the recovery of the revolutionary conquests of the proletariat that created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and to fight the wars of domination with the wars of emancipation.

After completing five months of war, we are witnessing the expansion and military escalation of imperialism. From the NATO summit in Madrid, Biden jumped to the Middle East, to negotiate with the Saudi monarchy the military alliance conceived by Trump, which includes the Zionist state of Israel against Iran and Syria. Germany prepares to strengthen the arms race. Japan participated in the Madrid summit, committing to military escalation in Asia. Russia and China were explicitly named as a NATO military objective.

It is within this framework that the class-conscious vanguard faces the difficult task of rebuilding the World Party of the Socialist Revolution, the Fourth International. A Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist policy in the face of the military confrontation in Ukraine, and a firm international campaign for the end of the war, are fundamental to strengthen the Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International*.

*English translation for “Comitê de Enlace pela Reconstrução da IV Internacional” – CERQUI