Putin—Get Out of the Ukraine

 

By Steve Halpern

Today, the world is asking the question: Why would Vladimir Putin order the Russian armed forces to invade the Ukraine? As with all wars, the deaths, and destruction caused by this invasion appear to be senseless. So, in this blog I will go into the history of what I believe is at the core of this crisis.     

For me, before we look at the war in the Ukraine, I think it is useful to look at the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. Then we can look at the history that led up to this disaster.

Labor and capital

The core of the political economic system of capitalism is the conflict between labor and capital. I am one of the billions of workers from around the world who go to work every day for an employer. At that job, I’m required to do what I’m told for every minute that I’m on the job. I receive a part of the wealth that I produce. The employer is the one who takes the lion’s share of that wealth. Yet employers add absolutely no value to the commodities workers create. 

This relationship has existed for literally every commodity that has ever been produced where there is capitalism. Politicians label this dictatorship of capital a “democracy.”

For these reasons, I do not label capitalist politicians like Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump as smart or stupid. For me, these politicians have chosen to live their lives in denial of the essence of what capitalism is. Today, we can also argue that in the past many educated people adopted themselves to the horrendous systems of slavery and feudalism for long periods of time.

This reality means that these politicians have no serious problem with the fact that there are four capitalists in the United States who each have over one-hundred billion dollars in assets, while about forty-two million people in this country don’t have enough food to eat.   

So, how is all this relevant to the invasion of the Ukraine?  I will start to answer this question with a short history of the Russian Revolution.

The Russian Revolution

Before the Russian Revolution, Russia was viewed as a prison-house of nations. The Ukraine was one of many nations where there was routine discrimination against the people of those nationalities.

British capitalists took advantage of this discrimination and invested to manufacture steel in eastern Ukraine known as Donetsk. This took place in the late 1700s when capitalism was first establishing itself. Today the Donetsk region of the Ukraine continues to be the most populous region of the country. British capitalists also profited from the discrimination against Irish people in the industrialized north of Ireland.

Just as the people of the Ukraine experienced routine discrimination, Jews experienced racist terror. The Black Hundreds were a terrorist outfit similar to the Ku Klux Klan of the United States. The czar openly supported the Black Hundreds who raided Jewish neighborhoods and murdered thousands. 

In the year 1905, the Russian people had enough of this madness and demonstrated in the capital, Saint Petersburg, demanding fundamental changes. The armed forces of the country attacked that demonstration and murdered hundreds of protesters. 

However, the czar agreed to allow a Provisional Government known as the Duma to be established. The problem was that when the czar decided that he didn’t like the Duma, he simply ordered it to be closed. 

Then, the czar ordered Russian soldiers to join in the international holocaust known as the First World War. Britain was losing its position as the super-power of the world, and other advanced capitalist nations went to war to decide what nation would replace Britain. That effort would require two world wars that cost the lives of about 80 million people.

This war proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the Russian people. Millions of Russian soldiers lost their lives in the war. Those soldiers lacked sufficient ammunition, food, clothing, or boots and lived in rat-infested fox holes. Aside from these unimaginable horrors, the Russian people experienced famine. Infants died of starvation because their mothers didn’t have the food that would give them breast milk.

These conditions convinced Russian workers to remove the czar from his throne in February of 1917. The conditions became so bad that the armed forces refused to repress the revolution. As a result, the Duma replaced the czar. However, this parliamentary government supported capitalist relations, and like all capitalist governments, refused to deal with the basic problems workers faced.

So, after the February Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia. Lenin saw that the workers also had established their own councils known as the Soviets. Since the Duma was ineffective in advancing the demands of workers, the Soviets organized to demand concessions from employers as well as the czar. 

Lenin looked at this relationship of forces and convinced his organization known as the Bolsheviks to demand, “All Power to the Soviets.” To prepare Russian workers and peasants for the struggle ahead, Lenin wrote several pamphlets.

One of those pamphlets was “State and Revolution.” In this pamphlet Lenin quoted Frederick Engels, one of the authors of the Communist Manifesto. Lenin and Engels argued that the state, as we know it, was created by capitalism as a “special instrument of repression.” 

This argument cuts through the illusion that parliamentary democracy has anything to do with genuine democracy. Just as employers require workers to do as we are told, the state works consistently to advance the drive of maximize profits for corporations. 

Then Lenin wrote his pamphlet, “Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism.” Here, Lenin argued that the First World War was about which capitalist cartels would control the entire world. For Lenin, the reality of imperialism didn’t happen because of mistakes made by individuals. No, imperialism was the ultimate stage of where capitalism needs to go.

Today, Vladimir Putin rejects the politics of Lenin. Putin sees the armed force of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) expanding. He asked the member nations of NATO not to expand in the Ukraine. If Putin understood what Lenin had to say about imperialism, he would know that NATO is indifferent to his pleas to leave the Ukraine alone. As Lenin argued, “imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.”

Lenin also wrote about how the Bolsheviks needed to support all the oppressed nationalities of czarist Russia. That support would entail opposition to all forms of discrimination those nationalities experienced for hundreds of years. This support also entailed the right of self-determination for all those nationalities. If those nationalities chose to secede from the Soviet Union, they would have the right to do so. Given the horrors of the past, most of those nationalities found the politics of the new Soviet government something they wanted to be a part of.

After the Russian Revolution, the capitalist governments of the world found the new Soviet government to be intolerable. Those governments were not interested in establishing relations with this government. They wanted a government that would be obedient to the international interests of capitalism. The czarist government of the past served those interests. So, the armed forces of fourteen nations joined with former supporters of the czar to overthrow the new revolutionary Soviet government.                       

Leon Trotsky became the commander of the revolutionary Red Army that defended the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Trotsky had no military experience. He was Jewish and was raised in the Ukraine. 

At that time, the Red Army faced many difficulties. The armed forces of Russia had just been decisively defeated by Germany in the First World War. The Russian people were experiencing famine. Russia happens to be the largest nation in the world with borders that stretch from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean. 

However, Leon Trotsky and the Bolsheviks understood that the Red Army had an advantage that the invaders of the Soviet Union didn’t have. The Russian people had experienced unimaginable horrors. However, now they had a government that was doing literally everything in its power to bring peace, bread, and land to all the people. So, despite all their disadvantages, the Red Army decisively defeated the fourteen nations who invaded their homeland. 

This history demonstrates that the only way workers and farmers can defend themselves from imperialist war, is with a mass mobilization of workers and farmers. Vladimir Putin lives in denial of this history. He would rather beg NATO to stop advancing in the Ukraine. When they refuse to do this, what does Putin do? He orders the Russian armed forces to invade the Ukraine. That invasion only further isolates Putin’s government in the world.

Vietnam

We also need to look at the history of the rest of the world to see how the only way to defend against imperialist expansion is with mass movements of workers and farmers. We saw this in the U.S. war against Vietnam. 

President Eisenhower acknowledged that if elections had been held in Vietnam in the 1950s, Ho Chi Minh would have won 90% of the vote. Eisenhower and other U.S. presidents ignored that reality and installed puppet regimes that served U.S. capitalist interests.

However, the Vietnamese people had been resisting foreign invasions for literally hundreds of years. These included invasions by China, France, and Japan. So, when the United States armed forces invaded their country, the overwhelming majority of the nation mobilized to stop that invasion. This resistance of the Vietnamese won support from all over the world. As a result, the Vietnamese forces decisively defeated the U.S. invasion of their homeland.

Martin Luther King spoke out against the war in Vietnam one year before an assassin took his life. He argued that the United States government was the “greatest purveyor of violence” in the world. He also argued that the U.S. armed forces would appear to be “strange liberators” to the Vietnamese.

Malcolm X also spoke out against the war in Vietnam before assassins took his life in 1965. Malcolm didn’t just oppose the U.S. participation in this war, he was also inspired by the determined resistance of the Vietnamese. He argued that while the United States had all the sophisticated weapons of war, the Vietnamese soldier might only have tennis shoes, a rifle, and a bowl of rice. Yet, when the sun went down, Malcolm believed that the struggle was “even Steven.” 

Malcolm concluded from this reality that the United States armed forces would never win another war on the ground. The history of the past 57 years has proven that Malcolm’s prediction proved to be correct. 

Cuba

The Cuban Revolution erupted because the Cuban people supported the goals of those who dedicated themselves to overthrowing the hated regime of Fulgencio Batista. Batista was, in effect, a puppet of the United States government.

After the Revolution the Cuban government went on a literacy drive to teach every Cuban how to read. People who never had access to health care before, now had access to health care centers in their neighborhoods. 

Today Cuba has more doctors per capita than any other nation in the world. Cuban doctors treat patients in some of the poorest nations. Thousands of medical students come to Cuba to learn how to become doctors.

All of this happened because the Cuban people understand that while the U.S. embargo has caused hardships on the island, they know that the Cuban government is doing everything in its power to support the interests of every Cuban.

In the United States many people argue that there needs to be more controls on those who purchase guns. In Cuba, the government encourages every Cuban to own a gun, so the nation will be effective in defending itself from another U.S. invasion.    

Conclusion

Today when we listen to the capitalist politicians in Russia, the United States, and Europe, we see clearly that none of these politicians have any interest in the welfare of the people of the Ukraine or Russia. In fact, all of those politicians are only interested in the drive to maximize corporate profits. 

In Europe the construction of the pipeline supplying Europe with Russian gas has stopped. This will mean higher prices for workers who need to purchase that gas.

In the United States, we see gas prices that are higher than they have ever been. Yet no one in government argues that capitalists, who are sitting on more money than they could ever use, that they give up some of their wealth to drive down prices. 

Since the election of Joe Biden as President, we have seen no basic changes from those years when Donald Trump lived in the White House. However, when we look at the history I outlined, we see that the only way for the interests of workers to advance will be with mass movements. 

So, just as workers from around the world demonstrated against the Israeli bombing of Palestinians, today we need to demonstrate for the Russian armed forces to get out of the Ukraine.