The big elephant in the room is the surrender of Ukraine to stop the massacre. This will not make Ukrainians look bad; it would save lives. Any further outcome, but immediate ceasefire, will be producing more deaths, more poverty, and a bigger reactionary aftermath.
From our couch we can discuss the fact that the USA and the EU should categorically deny Ukraine of NATO membership. We can discuss the fact that the conflict in Ukraine has continued for the past eight years, and that the Russian aggression, although unjustifiable, was to be expected. We can say that Putin has gone mad or that he has never been more rational. We can add that there are other wars in the world, that the media do not seem to care about as much. We can sadly note that there are acts of ethnic cleansing going on right now in several parts of the globe, and even other invasions. We can say how hypocritical it is to price the Ukrainians for fighting back the Russians while we thank “ourselves” for the military and humanitarian aids we provide to Ukraine as long as this allows us to rely on Russian gas. We can discuss and say all that. What’s the point!
The Marxist left does not have a revolutionary army, the Marxist left today does not even have any sort of Party of a decent enough size to be taken seriously. The Marxist internationalist left cannot organize the resistance in Ukraine. These are facts! What the Marxist internationalist left should just say is: “Ceasefire, now! Stop the massacre, now!”, and this means for the Ukrainian to surrender and negotiate peace.
We internationalists are against wars; thus, we are against this Russian-Ukrainian war which is wanted by the ruling class but suffered by the working class. We internationalists are against any sort of patriotic war. We know that the existence of National States, the so-called Fatherlands or Motherlands, is a matter of fact, as well as we know that for their very nature, those National States cannot and don’t want to represent the interests of all ethnic-linguistic-cultural realities which happened to be contained within their borders. The National States follow the sole interest of capital and of its globalized class. To do so they exploit the labor of the working class. In each single Fatherland “its” working class will benefit a certain degree of concessions with regards to its autonomy and self-defense. However, as soon as various fractions of the capitalist class’s interests are at stake, the National States will not hesitate to put workers of one nation against workers of another nation. And we must be against all this.
This internationalist left position is not the mere antipatriotic or antimilitarist one professed by the revolutionary-syndicalists of the end of the XIX century, by which they spread the idea that general strike and insurrection would be the effective ways to respond to military mobilization, not to mention the naive idea that a such a war could be converted, today, into a global revolution. It was overly ambitious then and it is unthinkable today.
People, workers living in Ukraine, people, workers living in Russia, unite against this war! People, workers living anywhere unite against any war! Our side is the side of the working class, employed or unemployed who is going to suffer all this, as we suffered all wars. The working class has no nation, and its solidarity must be international. This is a genuine appeal to the Marxist left. Let’s be united around the cry of: “Down the weapons, now!”.
Cesco
