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Marxists define their attitude toward a given war by analyzing the profound historical and material forces that give rise to it, and which are manifested in the development of the conflict. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), while opposing the invasion of Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putins government, places the current war in the context of a broader Marxist analysis of the entire 20th century, in particular of the historical processes triggered by the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent three decades of imperialist war waged by the US and NATO.

A diametrically opposed attitude is adopted by petty-bourgeois opportunists. They base their views on the surface of events and the limits of their own orientation to capitalism and its national state system.

One of the most striking expressions of this attitude is exemplified by a Morenoite and Shachtmanite amalgam called the International Socialist League (ISL). Over the past months, the ISL has issued statements with titles such as No to Russian imperialist aggression against Ukraine! NATO and the US out of Eastern Europe! No more wars in the interests of the imperialists!; and Russian imperialism out of Ukraine! Solidarity with the Ukrainian workers and people! No more wars promoted by the imperialists!

These pseudo-lefts seek to camouflage their support for US-NATO imperialist policies with phony anti-imperialist slogans. Joining the frenzied war propaganda of the Western corporate media in promoting Ukrainian resistance, regardless of its NATO-backed and largely far-right character, the ISL presents the alleged aggressive expansionism of Russian imperialism as the determining factor in the outbreak of war. To the extent that NATOs participation is mentioned, they claim that its presence is no guarantee for peace and provides Putin excuses.

The ISL enthusiastically endorsed anti-Russian aggression protests that took place in Germany and other European countries, covering up the role of their bourgeois leaderships, which demand a military escalation by their imperialist states, distill hatred against the Russian people and promote Ukrainian chauvinism.

In Latin America, where the national bourgeoisie assumed a more reticent attitude toward the conflict in Ukraine, the ISL itself organized such demonstrations that appeal to reactionary sentiments among the affluent middle class. In Argentina, the ISLs leading party, Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores (Socialist Workers Movement - MST), held a protest in front of the Russian embassy in Buenos Aires, in which ISL flags were mixed with right-wing placards depicting Putin as Hitler and with the slogan Slava Ukraini (Glory to Ukraine).

On March 4, the ISL published its Chronicles from Kiev, a series of comments on the war by Oleg Vernyk (or Vernik), the leader of its affiliated group in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Socialist League (USL). Speaking the language of a petty-bourgeois chauvinist, he proclaimed: The Ukrainian military is much smaller in composition and less prepared. We are not an imperialist state. But yesterday, our boys showed miracles of heroism. And they resist! ... Long live Ukraine!

These views were further developed in an online event hosted by the ISL on March 9 titled International Conference from Kiev, featuring Vernyk as its main speaker. The conference completely confirmed that the ISLs so-called opposition to NATO is a hoax.

In the name of the ISL, Vernyk praised the Ukrainian state and the right-wing government of Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he praised for having shown very positive personal characteristics. He dismissed the presence of far-right and fascistic forces in the Ukrainian state apparatus and the army as nothing more than a myth, and demanded in practice that US/NATO engage in direct military confrontation with Russia, likely provoking a nuclear war. In Vernyks words:

Many left-wing organizations say that there is a conflict between two imperialisms, but were not willing to support either side. But we should look at the real situation: who started a war against whom? Russian imperialism. Before the war, the US had sent only a hundred anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, but there was a huge scandal, as if it had sent a lot of weapons. For two weeks now, our President Zelensky has been asking NATO to close Ukrainian airspace and defend the Ukrainian people. But what does NATO answer us? Dear friends, this is your conflict, and we dont want to take part in it.

Contrary to what the ISL misleadingly claims, the engagement of the United States (as well as of the European imperialist powers) in the war against Russia in Ukraine goes well beyond the deployment of a few weapons. The amount of American and European weapons poured into the country, before and after the invasion, has actually been massive and is growing. As the World Socialist Web Site reported, the Biden administration is pushing through a $40 billion package of military and financial aid to Ukraine that brings the total allocated to the war in Ukraine in less than three months to a staggering $53 billion. Moreover, Finland and Swedens moves to join NATO are the latest imperialist provocations and preparations for a direct war against Russia, totally vindicating the analysis made by the ICFI.

But these are only the most recent episodes in the systematic advance of the US and NATO in Eastern Europe since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The aim is to encircle and ultimately colonize Russia.

These efforts were significantly escalated by the US-backed far-right coup in Kiev in 2014 that transformed Ukraine into a de facto military base for NATOs imperialist ambitions. Since then, the NATO powers have engaged in ever more bellicose provocations against Russia, with joint military drills with the Ukrainian army and diplomatic treaties such as the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership, which directly threatened a war with Moscow.

The supposed starting point of the ISLs positionwho started a war against whomis fundamentally anti-Marxist. For revolutionary internationalists, the determining question is not who fired the first shot, but rather what is the general character of a given war and the social forces behind it. In his writings about the first imperialist war, Lenin often recalled Clausewitz famous dictum, War is a continuation of policy by other means, claiming that Marxists have always rightly regarded this thesis as the theoretical basis of views on the significance of any war.

As Lenin warned, if you have not studied the policies of both belligerent groups over a period of decadesso as to avoid accidental factors and the quoting of random examplesif you have not shown what bearing this war has on preceding policies, then you dont understand what this war is all about [War and Revolution, May, 1917]. The attitude criticized by Lenin, transformed into a systematic method of political cover-up, is precisely what guides the ISLs response to the war.

This is especially true in the ISLs characterization of Russia as an imperialist country, which tears the concept of imperialism completely out of its historical context. For Marxism, imperialism is the epoch of the highest stage of development of capitalism, marked by the dominance of finance capital, which arose in the late 19th century and has extended itself into our time. Whether in war or peace, the major capitalist powers pursue imperialist policies in the sense that they seek to resolve the contradiction between the growth of global productive forces and the constraints of national state borders through the drive to dominate the world.

The position of Russia in this international struggle is of a subordinated economy, mainly based on the exportation of commodities (and not of capital). The imperialist NATO powers are financing their proxy war in Ukraine with the aim of gaining control of the vast Russian landmass, which contains among the worlds largest reserves of oil, gas, and strategic minerals. Moreover, this US-led imperialist campaign is part of broader war preparations against China. Russia, on the other hand, intervenes militarily abroad seeking not colonies for exploitation, but geo-strategic guarantees against imperialist intervention.

The ISL is particularly unable to explain how Russia emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a new imperialist power. This position is not in any sense a continuation of the tradition of Trotskyism, which has historically explained that the restoration of capitalism in the USSR would entail the transformation of Russia back into a semi-colonial country. The ISLs position is a development, in fact, of the positions of the petty-bourgeois opposition led by Max Shachtman and James Burnham, who broke with the Fourth International as far back as 1939-40.

The basis of the Shachtmanite opposition was a repudiation of Trotskys definition of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers state and of its bureaucracy as a caste, and not a social class. Variants of Shachtmanism such as that represented by C.L.R James (Johnson-Forrest tendency)proposed that the Soviet Union represented a new form of state capitalism with imperialist tendencies. In his complete and open break with the Fourth Internationals perspectives, James exclaimed: Orthodox Trotskyism can find no objective necessity for an imperialist war between Stalinist Russia and American imperialism. It is the only political tendency in the world which cannot recognize that the conflict is a struggle between two powers for world mastery. [State Capitalism and World Revolution, 1950]

The ISLs characterization of todays Russia as an imperialist power contains in itself the assumption that the Soviet Union constituted not a degenerated workers state, but some half-way development toward an imperialist capitalist state. The dissolution of the USSR would have represented only a completion of that process. The historical significance of the October Revolution, instead of the beginning of the international socialist revolution, is reduced to a mere shortcut in the development of Russian national capitalism.

In its reactionary defense of the Ukrainian national state, the ISL further reveals the implications of its bankrupt historical conception. Advocating collaboration with Zelenskys military forces, Vernyk claims that the Ukrainian regime should be supported because, supposedly in opposition to Russian totalitarianism, it is just a common bourgeois democracy. In its previously mentioned declaration of January 21, the ISL declares that The obstacle to the establishment of complete and total control of Russian imperialism over the territory of the former USSR has been Ukraine.

From these assertions, one can conclude that the breakup of the Soviet Uniona progressive historical event according to the ISLs reactionary political standpointresulted in two distinct products: imperialist Russia on the one hand, and democratic Ukraine on the other. The logical corollary to this perspective is that, to eliminate Russian imperialism and give birth to other common bourgeois democracies, a further partition and crippling of Russia is necessary.

The false conceptions of Russian imperialism and democratic Ukraine must be rejected by Marxists. The Russian and Ukrainian states have fundamentally common characteristics as the reactionary product of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Both are ruled by bankrupt capitalist oligarchiesthe descendants of the Stalinist bureaucracy and inheritors of the stolen property of the Soviet statewhich are fundamentally unable to assert their independent interests from imperialism.

The ISLs rotten orientation to the Ukrainian bourgeois state and NATO is not merely platonic. Their supporters in Ukraine sit at negotiation tables with imperialist agents, make commitments to far-right politicians and build their constituency among the fascistic paramilitary forces.

The ISL offers no explanation of the political origins and trajectory of the forces that founded its Ukrainian Socialist League (USL). This is understandable, since a look at its background and ties reveal the most sordid political record.

On its website, the ISL reports that the foundation of the USL occurred less than a year ago, in April 2021. The opening remarks at the event were given by the groups leader Oleg Vernyk, introduced as the president of the Zakhyst Pratsi (Labor Defense) union. Exhibiting the stamp of every opportunistic political tendency, Vernyk declared that the USL repudiates the traditional conflicts in the Marxist milieu and instead proposes the unification of efforts of all Marxist organizations and circles that exist in Ukraine.

While the principled divisions that emerged within the Marxist movement throughout the 20th centurymost decisively the river of blood separating Trotskyism and Stalinismdo not interest the USL, it is inclined to divide political tendencies according to their orientation to different bourgeois national states. In a recent interview with the Russian website Levoradikal, Vernyk defines myself and my comrades from the USL as the pro-Ukrainian left, as opposed to the pro-Russian left [which], of course, dominates the left in Ukraine. He claims that his position boils down to consistently fighting both Russian imperialism in Ukraine and Western imperialism at the same time. That is a blatant lie.

The connections between Vernyk and his trade unions (hes also in the leadership of the Democratic Trade Unions of Ukraine) and the pro-imperialist political forces that promoted the Maidan coup are glaring. In one of its 2014 statements, the Democratic Trade Unions of Ukraine claims: The All-Ukrainian Union of Democratic Trade Unions of Ukraine, represented by its leaders and union members, has been on the European Maidan in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, since the first day of mass protests against the governments brutal violence to overturn the Ukrainian peoples historic choice. European integration.

Revealing its role as an agent of European imperialist powers and its purely bourgeois nationalist perspective, the statement calls for the [f]ormation of a pro-European government of peoples trust and a broad public debate involving politicians, civil society and European partners on how to implement the agreement. This reactionary program would later take place, with Vernyk sitting at the table with representatives of the European and Ukrainian ruling classes to discuss the capitalist future of the country.

Several photos on the Democratic Trade Unions of Ukraines Facebook pagenow dedicated to sharing ISL and USL statementsshow their flags raised alongside those of the fascist Svoboda (Freedom) party, one of the major forces in the far-right coup in 2014. In one of them, both flags are displayed together on a wall of what they claim was the occupation of Kyiv City Hall in December 2013.

Glorifying the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its leader Stepan Bandera, which aided the Nazis in horrific massacres of the Jewish population during the Second World War, Svoboda posted a statement in 2010 reading: To create a truly Ukrainian Ukraine in the cities of the East and South we will need to cancel parliamentarism, ban all political parties, nationalize the entire industry, all media, prohibit the importation of any literature to Ukraine from Russia... completely replace the leaders of the civil service, education management, military (especially in the East), physically liquidate all Russian-speaking intellectuals and all Ukrainophobes (fast, without a trial shot. Registering Ukrainophobes can be done here by any member of Svoboda), execute all members of the anti-Ukrainian political parties....

During the 2020 Ukrainian local elections, Vernyk made an official statement supporting right-wing candidate Yuriy Levchenko and his Peoples Power party, which had accepted leaders of his trade union as candidates. Vernyk wrote: On behalf of the Central Committee of the VNPS Labor Defense I express my gratitude to the political party Levchenkos team Peoples Power, which in fact demonstrates the support for independent trade unions of Ukraine and boldly and in principle nominates its activists to local governments.

The Peoples Power party supported by Vernyk was founded in 2020 by Levchenko shortly after he broke with Svoboda, which he represented as an MP in Kiev. A representative episode in his political career occurred in October 2017, when Levchenko admittedly dropped a smoke bomb inside the parliament to disrupt the vote on a bill for a Peaceful Settlement of the Situation in Certain Areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions.

The USLs sinister orientation to the Ukrainian far right is further evidenced by a post on Vernyks Facebook page. In one picture, dated November 2017, he poses next to uniformed police officers described as members the Special Tasks Patrol Police, among whom he is reportedly inaugurating a union branch. He writes in the caption: The time has come when the soldiers of the regiment, on whose shoulders rest the harsh everyday life of the anti-terrorist operation, will independently and responsibly begin to fight for their socio-economic and labor rights in the ranks of our militant independent trade union.

The Special Tasks Patrol Police was a direct product of the 2014 coup. Under the new regime, it was created as a network of volunteer battalions formed by paramilitary forces, some of them openly fascist, such as the notorious Azov Battalion, which carries a variant of the Nazi swastika as its emblem. Yuriy Bereza, a fascist politician and commander of the Dnepr-1 battalion, explained the significance of these militias: The volunteer battalions, which were created within the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, are probably one of the most significant reforms that brought real patriots to the police.

The ISLs man in Ukraine, Oleg Vernyk, has an extremely dubious past. In 2003, he was at the center of accusations of a political and financial scam in Ukraine involving at least 12 and probably many more (over 20) organizations around the world, according to the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP) in the United States, one of those who fell for this scam.

While then leading the Ukrainian section of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), Vernyk and his colleagues reportedly introduced themselves under different identities to various Western organizations, declaring their interest in establishing an affiliated group in Ukraine and on that pretext collecting financial support from each of them. These fraudulent operations and the phony political parties created by them lasted for years, exposing at the same time the rottenness of the international relations sought by these various pseudo-left organizations. The scandal led to the CWI issuing a statement in August 2003 announcing its decision to Immediately suspend Oleg Vernik, a member of the IEC of the CWI, and to recommend his expulsion to the next meeting of the IEC.

Another figure reportedly participating in this scam was Ilya Budraitskis, the then-representative of the Russian section of the CWI, now leader of the Pabloite Russian Socialist Movement and, like Vernyk and the USL, an apologist for the Maidan coup.

The ISL is a political amalgam of national tendencies with different anti-Trotskyist origins, which have in common the need to hide their records of opportunism and betrayals of the working class under a new political faade.

It was founded in 2019 on the initiative of the Argentine MST, a party that originated in a split of Nahuel Morenos Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Towards Socialism, MAS) in 1992. While it is impossible to find any explanation for the political reasons that led them to break with the MAS and its international grouping, the LIT-CI, their subsequent record has only reinforced the most rotten aspects of Morenoism.

Between 1997 and 2005, the MST presented itself in the Izquierda Unida (United Left, IU) electoral alliance with the Stalinist Communist Party of Argentina. They borrowed the name of one of the opportunistic alliances established between Morenos MAS and the already discredited CP in the aftermath of the Argentine military dictatorship. And, even after their alliance with the Stalinists broke up in 2005, the MST continued to uphold it as its fundamental political model. In 2015, it joined the Frente de Izquierda y de Trabajadores (Left and Workers Front, FIT), led by the Partido Obrero (Workers Party, PO) and the Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (Socialist Workers Party, PTS), where it remains until today. The PO began an initiative together with the Workers Revolutionary Party (EEK) in Greece and the Revolutionary Workers Party (DIP) in Turkey to refound the Fourth International in alliance with Russian Stalinists.

The Venezuelan Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide, MS), another founding section of the ISL, was created during the rise to power of the bourgeois nationalist government of Hugo Chavez, which it defined as a revolution. In 2008, the MS joined Chavezs ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV), leaving it later in 2015 while claiming to represent the real chavismo against the deviations committed by the new President Nicols Maduro.

The orientation to their own bourgeois national states and political establishments is what defines the policies of every section of the ISL. This generates the permanent potential for an organizational implosion. Last years presidential election in Chile has clearly demonstrated this, with the ISLs Chilean and Turkish sections issuing conflicting statements on the victory of pseudo-left candidate Gabriel Boric over his far-right rival Jos Antonio Kast. While the Chilean Movimiento Anticapitalista (Anticapitalist Movement) raised a clear call to vote against Kast in favor of Boric and celebrated the defeat of Pinochetism, the Turkish Sosyalist Emekiler Partisi (Socialist Laborers Party, SEP in Turkish acronyms) said that revolutionaries should not be excited about Boric winning the presidency.

The ISL was not and could not be created based upon a critical analysis of its own political experience, much less through a principled appropriation of the 80 years of history of the Trotskyist movement, with which it has broken any and all ties. Rather, it starts from an attempt to falsify this history and claim that the Fourth International in fact never existed, being no more than a project that was aborted with the assassination of Trotsky in 1940.

In 2020, the ISL held an event titled the Leon Trotsky Series, supposedly celebrating the life of the great Russian revolutionary. ISL leader Alejandro Bodart summed up his organizations fraudulent view of the history of the Fourth International after Trotskys death:

[The] distance between [Trotskys] experience and ability, and that of the cadres who continued his work, was enormous. ... The Fourth International was decimated and effectively paralyzed during the war. And when it reorganized at its end, its leaders turned out not to be up to the difficult circumstances. ... These difficult circumstances were compounded by a series of tremendous mistakes by the leadership of the Fourth International, which ended up dividing and dispersing the Trotskyist movement. ... Those of us who continued the struggle to build a world revolutionary party did so separately, building international currents centered on a more developed party with like-minded groups in other countries.

Pointing to the political conclusions derived from this historical fabrication, Bodart continues: [R]ecovering [the Fourth Internationals] legacy requires us to overcome the limitations we have had. This is the challenge the ISL is taking up in trying to regroup the revolutionaries who come from different experiences and traditions, from different currents of Trotskyism on the basis of a principled program for socialist revolution.

The ISLs refusal to address the internal struggles that developed within the Fourth International during and in the aftermath of World War II fulfills a critical political role. By erasing and falsifying the history of the protracted struggle of orthodox Trotskyism against all kinds of revisionism, it attempts to avoid the obvious identification of the opportunist politics it pursues with that of the anti-Trotskyist renegades of the Fourth International. Bodart himself and his MST were until recently represented in the Pabloite United Secretariat with observer status.

In its document What Kind of International Organization do We Need? the ISL advocates a different model of international construction, openly rejecting the principles under which the Fourth International was founded, and declares that the ISL is not built on 100% sameness.

Explaining the kind of political heterogeneity it advocates, it says that partial differences, such as the class nature of the USSR, which is a very classical discussion of the past, cannot be a reason for separation.

The very classical discussion of the past they refer to, far from an open question for the Trotskyist movement, was the cause for a definitive separation between Trotskyism and petty-bourgeois opportunism. The path taken by those who opposed the Fourth Internationals designation of the USSR as a workers state, such as Max Shachtman, ended in direct collaboration with US imperialismwhere the ISL finds itself today.

Another historical ancestor of the ISL sections, Tony Cliff, broke with the Fourth International in 1950 on the basis of the Shachtmanite theory of state capitalism, proclaiming the Soviet Union a new form of class society and the Stalinist bureaucracy a new ruling class. Rejecting the defense of the USSR against imperialism, he initiated the slogan neither Washington nor Moscow.

Rejecting all the historical foundations of the Fourth International and basing itself on Shachtmanite and Pabloite revisionism, the ISL is one of many middle-class anti-Trotskyist organizations that abuse the dignity of Trotskyism, and invoke the need for an international organization only as a cover for their national opportunist agendas.

As we point out that the present war in Ukraine is rooted in the consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a principled revolutionary position in relation to the present war must stem from a correct political assessment of the major historical event of 1990-91.

In its document, Our vision of the world. Our strategy, the ISL proclaims that It was not a triumphant counter-revolution that opened the way to capitalist restoration, but one democratic revolution after another that ended the domination of Stalinism over a third of the planet. With this reactionary celebration, the ISL claims its place in the rotten tradition of the Morenoites and other Pabloite organizations that gave a political cover to the Stalinist restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union.

The ICFI clearly saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism by the Soviet bureaucracy as the culmination of the Stalinist counterrevolution, fully vindicating the Fourth Internationals prognosis and perspective. The Morenoites, however, claimed it represented a new kind of democratic revolution not envisaged by Trotsky that fundamentally refuted the program of the Fourth International.

Fighting to expose the illusions promoted by the Stalinist bureaucracy and its Pabloite apologists, the ICFI warned the Soviet and international working class that the dissolution of the Soviet Union would not open the way for the flourishing of capitalism and a pacific coexistence with imperialism. On the contrary, it would lead to the fragmentation of the USSRs territory and intensification of aggression by the imperialist powers, not to mention an unprecedented decline in the living standards of the Soviet working class. These were the tendencies manifested in the subsequent 30 years of wars waged by the United States and NATO, of which the present war in Ukraine is a continuation.

After the August putsch in the USSR in 1991, David North visited Kiev on behalf of the International Committee of the Fourth International, delivering a lecture at a workers club. In this lecture, based on the Trotskyist analysis of world economy and the danger of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, he said, As Russia and the Ukraine attempt to integrate themselves into the structures of world imperialism on a capitalist basis, they will quickly find themselves not only confronted with all the massive problems confronting every other third world nationnone of which has found successful answers to their problemsbut with additional and especially harrowing difficulties.

As North explained, the only solution which can be found is that which is based on the program of revolutionary internationalism. He continued:

The return to capitalism, for which the chauvinist agitation of the nationalists is only one guise, can only lead to a new form of oppression. Rather than each of the Soviet nationalities approaching the imperialists separately with their heads bowed and their knees bent, begging for alms and favors, the Soviet workers of all nationalities should forge a new relationship, based on the principles of real social equality and democracy, and on this basis undertake the revolutionary defense of all that is worth preserving of the heritage of 1917.

The past 30 years of NATOs eastward expansion and relentless encircling of Russia, provoking a desperate invasion in Ukraine, have sharply vindicated these warnings. The narrative of the Morenoites and other pseudo-left groups of an imperialist Russia waging an unprovoked expansionist war, on the other hand, lacks any historical or materialist basis.

As the WSWS previously explained, even if this definition were correct (which it is not), this does not justify the Morenoites support for NATO and the Ukrainian national state. Socialist defeatism applies to all sides in an inter-imperialist conflict.

Nearly 80 years ago, Trotsky explained that A socialist who preaches national defense is a petty-bourgeois reactionary at the service of decaying capitalism. The task of Marxists in Ukraine is not to defend their own imperialist-backed national state against Russia in the war, but to advance an internationalist revolutionary perspective based on socialist defeatism to unify and mobilize Ukrainian, Russian and the international working class against the NATO powers, as well as the Kiev and Kremlin regimes.

The Russian Marxists must also base their perspective on socialist defeatism, mobilizing masses of workers and youth against the Putin regime with the demand for an immediate end of the reactionary invasion. The only allies of the Russian workers are their Ukrainian and international class sisters and brothers. This position is an integral part of a single program for the Ukrainian and international working class based on a world socialist revolutionary strategy. This means building ICFI sections in Ukraine, Russia, and all over the world.

Also completely absent from the pseudo-left explanations for the present war are its roots in the insoluble crisis of world capitalism, brought to an explosive level by the COVID-19 pandemic. Together with the war, the criminal response of the capitalist ruling class to the pandemic is disrupting the living standards of hundreds of millions around the globe and pushing the proletarian masses to the path of socialist revolution.

The major wave of protests and strikes erupting across the globe, from Sri Lanka to Turkey, Brazil and across every continent is the fundamental constituency for an international movement against war, social inequality and the mass death policy toward the pandemic, and for socialism.

WSWS Review

What is the pseudo-left?

This review examines the response of pseudo-left political tendencies internationally to the major world political events of the past decade.

See the original post here:
What is behind the International Socialist League's support for the US/NATO war drive against Russia? - WSWS

In the history of the socialist movement, parties and political figures are defined above all by their attitude to imperialist war.

On June 16, 1918, Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs was arrested and jailed for a speech opposing the US governments involvement in World WarI. Speaking to a large crowd in a park in Canton, Ohio, Debs called the war an imperialist war and denounced the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson and the capitalist governments of Europe for waging it.

Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot, Debs declared. Every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense!

On May 10, every single Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed member of Congress voted to approve Joe Bidens request for $40 billion in military and financial aid for Ukraine.

Bernie Sanders, who once published a recording of himself reading Debs Canton speech, voted yes for war credits and said, We should always have a debate, but the problem is that Ukraine is in the middle of a very intense war right now. I think every day counts, and I think we have to respond as strongly and vigorously as we can.

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who knows nothing about the history of socialism, voted yes too. Hoping that people either would not notice or would quickly forget her vote, she refused to issue as much as a press release or tweet explaining her vote. The other DSA members of congress, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, all voted yes as well.

The vote marks a crossing of a political Rubicon. It is an endorsement of the US/NATO war against Russia. It takes money out of the hands of working people confronting inflation and poverty at home and directs it toward death and destruction abroad. It dramatically increases the possibility of a world war between nuclear powers.

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have risen to national prominence by promoting themselves as representatives of the anti-war and left-wing sentiments of masses of people. The DSA similarly calls itself the largest socialist organization in America. But their pro-imperialist actions speak louder than words. They are nothing more than petty-bourgeois lackeys of the most ruthless imperialist power in the world.

According to a House Appropriations Committee summary of the legislation, Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and the DSA have cast their votes for the following:

Ocasio-Cortezs campaign website states she aims to put everyday New Yorkers first, but her vote takes billions of dollars out of the hands of the working class and into building missiles and paying the salaries of Ukrainian fascists who worship the perpetrators of the Holocaust. One cannot fight fascism at home while arming them abroad, nor can one fight corporate power in the US while doing Wall Streets bidding on a global scale.

In 2021, the leadership of the DSA attacked the World Socialist Web Site for exposing Ocasio-Cortezs denunciation of socialist opposition to Biden as bad faith and privileged, in an article that was read over 100,000 times. The DSA leadership declared that the WSWS was slandering Ocasio-Cortez and manipulating her words, with prominent Democratic political operatives declaring that the WSWS was itself acting in bad faith.

Now, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have cast a vote to arm American imperialism and its puppet regime in Ukraine as it prosecutes a war that threatens the extinction of humanity. This is an extension of a role Sanders has played since he first entered Congress in 1991.

As it did with DSA member Jamaal Bowmans vote to fund the Israeli military, the DSA may attempt to distance itself from Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders votes in order to shore up its flagging image as a left organization. But support for imperialism is a central feature of the DSAs political character. The DSA was founded by Michael Harrington, who wrote that socialists must play a pro-American, Cold War, State Department kind of role. Harringtons political mentor, Max Shachtman, supported the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as the Bay of Pigs invasion.

In recent weeks, the DSA has been preparing its justification for supporting imperialist war in the pages of Socialist Forum, one its official publications.

In an article entitled Breaking Camp: The US Left and Foreign Policy after the War in Ukraine, Georgetown University Professor Greg Afinogenov argues that the left must abandon its opposition to American imperialism in order confront Russia and China.

Economic sanctions, Afinogenov writes, will not be enough to compel a retreat, let alone to overthrow Putin, and Ukrainian leaders themselves have lost hope in NATO protection. The article makes no mention of the fact that US sanctions are throwing hundreds of millions of workers to the brink of starvation across the world.

The purpose of Afinogenovs article is to call for support for US imperialism and its war aims.

The most controversial feature of contemporary anti-imperialism, the article states, Is its tendency to boil down to the simple procedure of determining which side the US is on in any given conflict and automatically taking the opposite position. Afinogenov writes that socialists should be wary of those who base their outlook on a recognition of the need for rational limits on the use of US power abroad. He concludes, as a result, that contemporary anti-imperialism is not a coherent political strategy.

If the USs position as world policeman is undermined, Afinogenov writes, it would give a freer hand to other actors pursuing their own economic or imperial goals, including China and Russia. Russia, he claims, is much more aggressive than US imperialism, and is therefore the main enemy.

Only a pro-war publication operated by a pro-war organization could print such a statement. For the last 30 years, the United States has destroyed entire societies, killing millions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria and many other countries. Socialists lend no support to the right-wing Putin regime for its invasion of Ukraine, but to claim that Russia is more aggressive than American imperialism is nothing more than war propaganda in the service of the US government, aimed at paving the way for its next crimes.

In the same edition of Socialist Forum, another article, entitled Toward a modern theory of internationalism, by Bjorn Pederson, calls for arming the Ukrainians:

Mutual aid and even sanctions have their place in our response, but they simply are not equal to quickly stopping the Russian war machine. Opposition to military aid is less persuasive when that aid is given at the request of the democratically elected government of a country being invaded, as has happened in Ukraine.

Pederson demands that the left cease criticizing American imperialism for its role stoking the conflict: It doesnt serve the Left well to spend this moment railing against the limited slate of bad options that have been forced on us by decades of failed international policy.

The proponents of imperialist war promote the fiction that a victory for American imperialism will serve humanitarian ends. In a May 10 forum hosted by the former publishing house of the now-defunct International Socialist Organization, Haymarket Books attempted to put an identity-politics spin on support for arming Ukrainian fascists. During the event, Yulya Yurchenko, a fellow at the George Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center (and self-described feminist activist), declared:

We must channel theory into praxis. We need to do what is necessary to help the victims of aggression to protect themselves by any means necessary. that means arming Ukraine and overcoming personal moral conflicts about violence. This is not about us staying pious but about helping those subject to violence, and they need to protect themselves. So, standing by and [calling for] non-interference in such situations are tantamount to condoning the continuation of violence. The moral choice here is clear. I am also against war. I hate violence in any form. Yet when somebody comes to you with a gun, you waving a flower in their face is not going to solve the problem.

Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and the DSA are sending weapons to the Ukrainian military not out of theoretical confusion, but because it serves the interests of the privileged social force which they represent.

The pseudo-left represents the top 10 percent of society, a privileged section of the population whose stock portfolios depend upon the ability of American banks and corporations to dominate the world and subjugate their rivals. This layer is now hysterically pro-war and rabid in its denunciations of the Russian people and Russian culture.

The role of the DSA is to provide a left propaganda spin on American imperialisms ruthless war aims. To paraphrase Debs, while there is a political establishment, they are in it. While there is imperialism, they will support it. They represent everything socialism is not.

WSWS Review

What is the pseudo-left?

This review examines the response of pseudo-left political tendencies internationally to the major world political events of the past decade.

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Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and the DSA vote for war - WSWS

Australias PM accidentally bowls over a child during football match

Australians go to the polls this weekend to vote in the first national elections since 2019, the ballot determining which party and prime minister will gain power. People there will vote for all the seats in the House of Representatives, and just over half the seats in the Senate. The result that comes from the House of Representatives ultimately decides which party forms the next government, and one party needs to win at least 76 of the 151 seats to form a majority government.

If it fails to gain the required number of seats the closest party must try to win the support of independent MPs or those from minor parties.

Unlike in many other countries, voter turnout in Australia is extremely high, with the 2019 ballot seeing a turnout of 92 percent.

This is because voting is mandatory for the over-18s and comes with a hefty fine if an individual fails to do so, with more than 17.2 million people 96 percent of eligible voters signed up for this year's election.

Currently, the Liberal-National Coalition is in power with 76 seats in the House of Representatives, followed by the opposition Labor Party with 68 seats, and various other independents and minor parties with the remaining seven seats.

Earlier this year, Australian Labor leader Anthony Albanese travelled to the UK to meet with politicians in Westminster, including the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He posted a photograph of himself and Mr Corbyn smiling together, with the caption: "Great to catch up with @jeremycorbyn today in #Westminster at a critical time in British politics."

Terry Barnes, a political consultant who writes about Australian politics, shortly after questioned to what extent Mr Corbyn may influence Mr Albanese in a piece for The Spectator titled, 'Could Australias answer to Corbyn become PM?'

He noted how on becoming Labor leader after his second attempt, Mr Albanese "cast around for role models and settled on Jeremy Corbyn."

Mr Barnes wrote: "Indeed, Albanese and Corbyn became friends, and in 2019 Albanese didnt hesitate to tweet a selfie with the then Labour leader, two brothers in socialist arms."

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Like Mr Corbyn, Mr Albanese has his roots in radical socialism, this going back to his student days when he emerged as a key player in the left faction of the Labor Party on the Students' Representative Council.

He led a group within Young Labor that was aligned with the faction's 'Hard Left', and which maintained "links with broader left-wing groups, such as the Communist Party of Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament and the African National Congress".

His hard-left stance has continued throughout his career, but now, with the prime minister's seat a real prospect, Mr Albanese appears to have toned down his radical roots and taken a more clinical approach to his campaign.

Unlike Mr Corbyn who was often seen walking through the halls of Westminster in his tweed blazer and pens tucked into his shirt pocket, Mr Barnes said: "He has sharpened his image and found a good tailor, lost weight and sought to look the prime ministerial part."

However, he added: "But he hasnt disowned his radical socialist past."

Currently, things are looking hopeful for Mr Albanese and the Labor Party, as according to most of the polls coming out of Australia Labor leads by nearly ten percentage points.

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Many of his campaign pledges have caught the eyes of millions of Australians: Labor has promised to deliver tax relief to more than nine million citizens through tax cuts that would benefit everyone with incomes above AUD$45,000 (25,365).

It has also pledged to increase low-and-middle-income tax offset by AU$420 (236) this year, and promises to build 30,000 new social and affordable housing units over five years much like what Mr Albanese grew up in with his mother in Sydney.

Gender equality, like within Mr Corbyn's manifesto, is also a key issue.

Since the coalition came into power in 2013, Australia has fallen in the global gender gap rankings to its worst-ever ranking, currently placed 50th of 156 countries around the world.

Mr Albanese has moved to try and win the female vote by suggesting Australia closes its gender pay gap and improves career options for women, in the process attacking the coalition under Prime Minister Scott Morrison by saying "women are being left behind".

Mr Morrison has a bad track record of being accused of sexism and misogyny, last year being awarded The Trump Award at the annual Most Sexist Remarks of the Year, prizes handed out to people in Australia each year for outrageous comments.

One of the remarks included his comments on the Women's March4Justice march, where he told Question Time that 'not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not here in this country'.

LadBible said: "Essentially, he was saying women should at least be happy they're not being shot dead."

Another awkward moment came when he revealed that his wife, Jenny, told him he "had to think about this as a father first" when referring to when Brittany Higgins alleged she was raped at Parliament House.

Meanwhile, Mr Barnes, writing in The Spectator, ended his analysis on a sombre note: "Its clear many Australians either arent put off by Albaneses hard-left roots and personal values, or simply dont care. And an antipodean Corbynites election victory could only give heart to Corbyns ostracised Labour followers in Britain."

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Jeremy Corbyn tipped to influence Australia's 'next' socialist PM: 'He's a role model' - Express

Around the world, in developing and so-called advanced countries alike, millions are facing food insecurity and hunger amid soaring prices and shortages of food.

Last month, the World Bank estimated that food prices will increase by 22.9 percent this year, driven largely by a spike in global wheat prices. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of food commodities such as sugar, dairy, cereal and vegetable oil, is nearly 30 percent higher than in April 2021.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that overall food prices rose 9.5 percent last month, and meat costs are 20 percent higher than in 2021.

As inflation continues to rise, workers wages are failing to keep pace. Calculations by Business Insider last week found that when factoring in inflation, real wage growth for workers in the US in the information technology, utilities, financial activities, mining and logging, manufacturing, construction, education and retail trade sectors decreased from January 2021 through April 2022. Most industries, including trade, manufacturing and construction, saw a decline between three and four percent.

As real wages decline for millions of workers throughout the world, the over 40 percent increase in wheat prices this year has already led to a substantial increase in global hunger. A report released last week by the UNs World Food Programme (WFP), titled A hunger catastrophe, estimated that 811 million people around the world, or one-seventh of humanity, face food insecurity and go to bed hungry every night.

The same report noted that the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity has more than doubled, from 135 million in 2019 to 276 million last year, to an estimated 323 million this year. An estimated 48.9 million people are currently on the very edge of famine and at risk of starvation.

This seismic hunger crisis, the report notes, was driven by four factors: war, ongoing crop failures due to the effects of climate change, economic consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the overall increased cost of food. The WFP remarked that the organization paid 30 percent more in 2022 for the same food products than it paid in 2019.

The increase in food prices led UNICEF on Tuesday to release an emergency child alert, warning that without emergency funding, 600,000 children are at immediate risk of severe acute malnutrition. The report revealed that this leading cause of preventable death in children, also known as severe wasting, has increased by more than 40 percent since 2016.

In a statement accompanying the report, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell wrote, The world is rapidly becoming a virtual tinderbox of preventable child deaths and child suffering from wasting. According to UNICEF/WHO/World Bank statistics, India leads the world in children affected by severe wasting, with over 5.7 million children under the age of five suffering from severe malnutrition.

Following India, some 812,564 children in Indonesia are suffering from severe wasting, putting them at risk of dying from common childhood illnesses. This is followed by 678,925 children in Pakistan, 482,590 in Nigeria and some 327,859 in Bangladesh.

The food crisis is not limited to developing countries. Expressing the globalized nature of modern production and the catastrophic impact of inflation on the working class the world over, a survey conducted in the United Kingdom and released Tuesday by Sky News found that, to alleviate inflation burdens, 27 percent of Britons aged 16 to 75 skipped meals in April. Another 65 percent sought to reduce costs by not turning on their heating.

Speaking before the Treasury Committee at the House of Commons on Monday on the danger of rising inflation, already at a 30-year high of 7 percent, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey frankly admitted that theres a lot of uncertainty.

Bailey confessed, Sorry for being apocalyptic for a moment, but that is a major concern. Verifying Baileys concerns, British retailer Marks & Spencer warned the following day that food price inflation could increase by a further 10 percent in the UK by the end of the year.

In the United States, parents around the country are unable to locate baby formula. In some instances, parents have been forced to drive to Mexico to find formula, while others have nowhere left to turn but the hospital.

On Tuesday, multiple news outlets reported that two children, a toddler and a preschooler, had to be hospitalized at the Le Bonheur Childrens Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee in cases directly related to the formula shortage, Dr. Mark Corkins told WHBQ-TV.

This is literally not just Memphis, not just Tennessee or the South. This is literally all of North America being affected, Corkins said. Dr. Corkins added that he was forced to treat the children with IV fluids and nutrients because neither the hospital nor any stores carried formula the children could tolerate. He said he expects that more children will end up in the hospital unless action is taken soon.

Driving up the cost of food prices is a global fuel shortage that is affecting farmers and workers alike. In the United States on Tuesday, for the first time ever, the auto club AAA reported that the average price for a gallon of gas in the US was more than $4 in all 50 states, with California leading the nation at an average of $6.02 a gallon.

High prices at the pump most profoundly affect lower-income families, as they spend a higher proportion of their earnings on gas and are less likely to drive electric vehicles, Mark Finley, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Bloomberg.

There are many factors that are contributing to the rise in fuel and food prices, including the ongoing war in Ukraine. When it comes to wheat, Russia and Ukraine account for 30 percent of all global wheat exports. More than 26 countries, including Egypt and Somalia, rely on these two countries for between 50 and 100 percent of their wheat imports. Currently, some 4.5 million tons of wheat are sitting in Black Sea ports, unable to be shipped out due to ongoing hostilities.

Data from the International Food Policy Research Institutes food trade policy tracker shows that since the outbreak of the war, 23 countries have imposed export restrictions on food, affecting over 17 percent of the total calories traded on global markets. In addition to restricting staple foods, countries have placed restrictions on potash and nitrogen fertilizer, leading to increased prices. These price increases have in turn forced farmers globally to compensate by planting less crops, further driving down supply and increasing consumer prices.

While US President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have attempted to pin rising food and gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin, repeatedly referring to inflation as Putins price hike, the reality is far different. The war in Ukraine has contributed to further increases, but, as any worker who has had to pay rent or buy groceries knows, prices were soaring long before February 2022.

In reality, the surge in prices and inflation is the outcome of bipartisan monetary policies pursued by both big business parties, particularly since the 2008 financial crisis, during which President Barack Obama, through the Federal Reserve, printed up trillions of dollars to prop up the financial markets and guarantee the wealth of the super-rich.

In March 2020, the US government passed another massive bailout for the financial oligarchy in the form of the multitrillion-dollar CARES Act, which has led to a more than doubling of the Fed balance sheet, from $4.1 trillion in February 2020 to over $8.9 trillion as of May 2022.

The direct intervention of the US government to save the banks and stock prices of the ultra-wealthy has resulted in American billionaires increasing their wealth by 62 percent during the pandemic, while workers nominal wages have risen by only 10 percent over that same period, according to an April report by Oxfam.

The ruling class is determined to make the working class pay for the bailouts of the rich and the cost of the war. While there is supposedly no money for COVID vaccines, child tax credits or pandemic-related unemployment programs, the two big business parties have provided the Ukrainian military with some $53 billion this year.

The surging cost of living and the unavailability of basic goods have triggered mass protests around the world. This has been most vividly seen in the mass movement of workers in Sri Lanka. Similar large-scale protests against food and energy prices have also taken place in Tunisia and Peru.

These protests are coupled with a growing movement of the working class in the United States. Last week, in a powerful show of the power of rank-and-file health care workers, nurses organized independently of the unions to oppose the unjust persecution of Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught, forcing the judge to ignore prosecutors demands for an outrageous six-year prison term and instead grant probation.

In Detroit, Michigan last week, 79 percent of Detroit Diesel workers overwhelmingly rejected a contract that would raise wages just 8 percent over the span of six years.

The soaring level of hunger, amid the vast and continual enrichment of the financial oligarchy, is a testament to the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. As workers enter into struggle all over the world, they must demand that the financial oligarchs, not the workers, pay for the crisis of capitalism and fight to replace this irrational social order with socialism.

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Soaring food prices threaten workers with food insecurity and starvation - WSWS

China has a new official political doctrine.

Its called Xi Jinping Thought, and it is everywhere. Schools, newspapers, television, the internet, billboards and banners all trumpet the ideas of Mr. Xi, the countrys president and Communist Party leader.

Officially known as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, the ideology will soon be given an even more prominent platform: the preamble of Chinas Constitution.

Boiled down, the doctrine is a blueprint for consolidating and strengthening power at three levels: the nation, the party and Mr. Xi himself.

The doctine, like Mr. Xi, is not going anywhere soon. The Party on Sunday abolished the presidential term limit, meaning Mr. Xi could remain in power indefinitely. Heres your guide to understanding the ideas likely to guide China through the next decade, or possibly longer.

The Nation: Make China Great Again

Since Mr. Xi became chairman of the Communist Party in 2012, he has vowed a great rejuvenation to restore China to its ancient prominence and glory.

In recent decades, China has become the worlds second largest economy and a powerhouse of global trade and investment. Xi Jinping Thought promotes taking the next step, making China not only prosperous but also politically powerful.

Never before have the Chinese people been so close to realizing their dreams, Mr. Xi is often quoted as saying. Implicit in the dream of being counted among the worlds powers is the idea of China nearing the United States in strength and influence.

To sustain Chinas global rise, Mr. Xi is modernizing Chinas military and investing heavily in a $1 trillion international trade initiative known as Belt and Road. Under Mr. Xi, China has expanded the size and scope of its military, purged corrupt officers and built military installations in contested waters of the South China Sea.

The Party: Chinas Best (and Only) Option

Mr. Xis nationalist message of China as a strong, highly respected world power resonates with many Chinese.

But the promise of national glory comes with a catch: single-party rule.

Xi Jinping Thought promotes the supremacy of the Communist Party to growing numbers of avid consumers, internet users and world travelers a group fundamentally different from the workers and peasants who were supposed to be the soul of the Communist Revolution.

Mr. Xis philosophy teaches that the goal of a powerful, unified China can be achieved only if the Communist Party stays firmly in control of China. The party, he says, is the solution to Chinas problems, not their source.

Harping on the importance of one-party rule is not new in China. But Mr. Xi has taken aggressive steps to revitalize the Communist Partys grip on business, the news media, the internet, culture and education. The influence of party permeates every corner of society even rap music.

Official news media routinely point to the corruption and failings they see in Western democracies. Why question the Communist Party when the alternative is chaos and corruption? goes the message.

The Man: The National Patriarch

The third piece of Xi Jinping Thought is Mr. Xi himself.

Central to the doctrine is the idea that for China to continue its global rise, and for the party to maintain its rule, a decisive leader is needed at the helm. And the man for the job is Mr. Xi.

A new security deal. The Solomon Islands signed a sweeping security agreement with Chinathat could threaten the stability of the entire Asia-Pacific region. The deal gives Beijing a foothold in an island chain that played a decisive role in World War II and could be used to block vital shipping lanes.

A pause on wealth redistribution. For much of last year, Chinas top leader, Xi Jinping, waged a fierce campaign to narrow social inequalitiesand usher in a new era of common prosperity. Now, as the economic outlook is increasingly clouded, the Communist Party is putting its campaign on the back burner.

Xi Jinping Thought was seen in action this week when the Communist Party announced it would abolish presidential term limits, allowing Mr. Xi to remain in power, perhaps indefinitely.

In propaganda, Mr. Xi is referred to as lingxiu, a reverent Chinese word for a leader that was also used for Mao Zedong. In official imagery he is portrayed as a visionary leader on a historic mission brave, wise and decisive.

Xi Jinping Thought still reveres the teachings of Mao and Karl Marx, but it also links Mr. Xi to even older Chinese traditions, especially Confucianism.

Mao said he wanted to smash the grip of Confucius on China and ignite revolution. But Mr. Xi regularly quotes Confucius and other ancient sages, stressing their teachings on obedience and order, and promoting the idea that the party is the custodian of a 5,000-year-old civilization.

Party propaganda now even equates Mr. Xi to a Confucian patriarch who runs the country as if it were his own family.

And all good Confucian children must observe filial piety.

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Xi Jinping Thought Explained: A New Ideology for a New Era