Exposição da Tendência Bolchevique (Alemanha, Canadá, Irlanda, Reino Unido, EUA)
Exposição de Alan Gibson (aos 26:37 minutos) no painel: Os marxistas falam sobre o conflito entre a Rússia e o Imperialismo
1. Texto em Português.
2. Text in English.
2. Text in English.
1. Texto em Português.
Gostaria de iniciar minhas observações descrevendo brevemente como a tendência bolchevique entende a situação atual.
Para nós, o reconhecimento de que a Rússia não é um estado imperialista é central para nossa compreensão do conflito atual.
Após o colapso da União Soviética em 1991, a Rússia emergiu como uma potência capitalista regional, com uma economia centrada principalmente na exportação de energia, não na extração de superlucros de outros países.
O imperialismo americano renegou suas garantias feitas a Gorbachev de que não haveria expansão da OTAN na Europa Oriental e, em vez disso, continuou a aumentar a aposta a ponto de tentar incluir a Geórgia e a Ucrânia no bloco.
O objetivo final do imperialismo dos EUA, expresso por Dick Cheney entre outros, é dividir a Rússia em vários estados menores e mais gerenciáveis e obter o controle de seus imensos recursos naturais.
Desde o golpe de direita de Maidan, em 2014, patrocinado pelos EUA, os vários governos ucranianos têm sido efetivamente regimes fantoches dos EUA executados a partir de Washington.
Portanto, consideramos a guerra atual como sendo fundamentalmente entre o imperialismo dos EUA/OTAN e a Rússia não imperialista.
Infelizmente, esses eventos ocorrem na ausência de um movimento operário revolucionário organizado capaz de colocar a questão do poder: neste contexto, os marxistas favorecem a vitória da Rússia não imperialista sobre o representante ucraniano dos imperialistas dos EUA/OTAN.
A parte da esquerda que considera a Rússia imperialista (com todo o conteúdo político variado que dão ao termo) ou fica do lado da Ucrânia (e, portanto, EUA/OTAN) ou é neutra e clama pelo derrotismo revolucionário de ambos os lados.
Há também aqueles que consideram a Rússia como não-imperialista, mas que não favorecem a vitória dos russos (como o SL e IG) isso é ostensivamente porque eles não consideram isso um conflito essencialmente entre os imperialistas dos EUA/OTAN e a Rússia, mas sim um conflito da Rússia capitalista invadindo a Ucrânia capitalista.
Depois, há os anarquistas, que argumentam que mesmo que haja uma distinção entre imperialista e não imperialista, isso não faz diferença, pois ambos são capitalistas – embora em muitos casos estejam do lado da pobre e inocente Ucrânia.
O que todos compartilham em comum é o fracasso em compreender a importância central de derrotar os vorazes imperialistas.
O papel dos fascistas na Ucrânia precisa ser abordado.
É claro que os fascistas foram as principais tropas de choque no golpe de 2014 e, como resultado, conseguiram se alojar dentro do aparato estatal. Eles desempenharam um papel criminoso nos 8 anos de violência contra a DPR & LPR, que resultou em cerca de 14.000 vítimas.
No entanto, para nós, a presença dos fascistas nas forças armadas ucranianas e no aparato estatal mais amplo é secundária ao papel da aliança militar imperialista EUA/OTAN.
Para nós, a questão chave para os revolucionários neste conflito é se opor ao imperialismo EUA/OTAN.
Uma questão relacionada a isso é reconhecer o que é o fascismo e o perigo que ele representa para a esquerda e o movimento dos trabalhadores. A Ucrânia nos fornece lições valiosas a esse respeito.
Se, por exemplo, compararmos a atividade das perigosas formações fascistas organizadas na Ucrânia com o populismo direitista incoerente de Donald Trump, que irritou sua base (que incluía uma minoria de fascistas e outros ultradireitistas) em um motim destinado a derrubando os resultados das eleições de 2020 nos EUA em 6 de janeiro de 2021, acho que a diferença é clara.
Os elementos fascistas no motim do Capitólio de 6 de janeiro gostariam de ter saído desse processo como algo equivalente ao Setor Direito e ao Batalhão Azov após os protestos da EuroMaidan de 2014 e o golpe subsequente. Mas eles não o fizeram.
Eles não foram o fator decisivo nesse evento e nunca houve dúvida de que eles tivessem influência significativa sobre a máquina estatal ou mesmo sobre o próprio movimento, ao contrário do Batalhão Azov e outras formações na Ucrânia, que são fascistas fortemente armados e organizados.
Vemos este encontro como um pequeno passo para afirmar a compreensão bolchevique do papel do imperialismo no mundo contra a enxurrada de propaganda de guerra vinda dos meios de comunicação de massa burgueses. Há sempre uma pressão enorme para se adaptar às forças dominantes, como infelizmente vemos na resposta da maioria da esquerda.
Também é importante ver o conflito atual no contexto geopolítico mais amplo do desejo imperialista, particularmente dos EUA, de destruir o estado operário deformado chinês e abri-lo à exploração direta e punitiva.
O câncer das relações sociais capitalistas foi autorizado a criar raízes na China. Os burocratas que dirigem o estado operário deformado estão jogando um jogo perigoso tentando conter os interesses do capital e, ao mesmo tempo, manter os padrões de vida dos trabalhadores.
Essa tensão terá que ser resolvida e o perigo de uma contra-revolução capitalista é grande – mas isso ainda não aconteceu e a China continua sendo um estado operário deformado que deve ser defendido.
Voltando ao conflito atual. Os russos até agora parecem ter feito o que pretendiam.
Tratava-se de garantir que a Ucrânia nunca se juntaria à OTAN, degradando os elementos fascistas dentro das forças armadas ucranianas que ameaçam a Rússia, solidificando/expandindo o DPR & LPR e criando uma ponte terrestre para a Crimeia (e também abrindo a segurança do abastecimento de água para a Crimeia) .
Cerca de 75.000 soldados ucranianos estão cercados no que os russos chamam de caldeirões e, na próxima semana, esses soldados, muitos deles simpatizantes do nazismo, vão se render ou ser liquidados.
Os russos têm controle total do ar (daí os apelos à OTAN para impor uma zona de exclusão aérea) e poderiam ter arrasado qualquer cidade se quisessem. No entanto, além de Mariupol, que era um reduto do fascista Batalhão Azov, eles tentaram minimizar os danos às áreas urbanas. Por exemplo, todas as infra-estruturas civis (água, electricidade, gás de aquecimento, comunicações, etc.) permanecem operacionais em Kiev e Kharkiv. Continuar a guerra só trará mais caos e sofrimento para os ucranianos comuns.
A recusa do governo ucraniano em resolver o conflito aderindo às propostas russas só pode significar mais sofrimento desnecessário – embora isso pareça ser o objetivo dos EUA e seus aliados da OTAN. Ao continuar a inflamar a situação e prolongar o conflito, eles estão jogando com a possibilidade de esta guerra se tornar nuclear uma perspectiva que pode significar o fim da civilização humana.
Congratulamo-nos com a oportunidade de participar deste evento ao lado de outros esquerdistas que entendem que a questão central é a oposição ao imperialismo dos EUA/OTAN.
É necessário buscar reagrupar e reorganizar aquelas forças que estão seriamente comprometidas com a difícil luta para reforjar uma organização operária revolucionária de massa viável em uma base internacional. Mas esse desejo não pode ser alcançado encobrindo questões programáticas significativas no interesse de projetar um grau de unidade que não é real.
Os camaradas devem ter visto que no início da semana a Voz Esquerda pediu um novo Zimmerwald. O que realmente precisamos nesta circunstância é uma esquerda de Zimmerwald baseada na oposição intransigente à agressão imperialista – seja diretamente ou por meio de seus representantes.
Tal formação necessariamente veria que a agressão dos EUA/OTAN contra a Rússia por meio de seu representante ucraniano está ocorrendo no quadro mais amplo de crescente hostilidade imperialista em relação ao estado operário chinês deformado.
Para aqueles que não estão familiarizados com nossa organização, a BT segue a tradição da revolucionária Liga Espartaquista dos anos 1960 e 1970 antes de sua degeneração programática em um culto de obediência sem cérebro. Essa herança política enquadraria quaisquer discussões sobre uma unidade mais substantiva.
Para pessoas que desejam saber mais sobre nossas perspectivas programáticas mais amplas, você pode visitar nosso site bolsheviktendency.org
2. Text in English.
I would like to start my remarks by briefly outlining how the Bolshevik Tendency understands the current situation.
For us the recognition that Russia is not an imperialist state is central to our understanding of the current conflict.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia emerged as a capitalist, regional power, with an economy that is primarily centred on energy exports, not the extraction of super profits from other countries.
American imperialism has reneged on its assurances made to Gorbachev that there would be no NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and has instead continued to up the ante to the point of trying to include Georgia and Ukraine in the bloc.
The ultimate objective of US imperialism, expressed by Dick Cheney among others, is to chop up Russia into several smaller more manageable states and gain control of its immense natural resources.
Since the 2014 US sponsored right-wing Maidan coup, the various Ukrainian governments have effectively been US puppet regimes run from Washington.
We therefore regard the current war as being fundamentally between US/NATO imperialism and non-imperialist Russia.
Unfortunately these events take place in the absence of an organised revolutionary workers movement able to pose the question of power: in this context Marxists favour the victory of non-imperialist Russia over the Ukrainian proxy of the US/NATO imperialists .
The section of the left that considers Russia to be imperialist (with all the varied political content they give the term) either sides with Ukraine (and therefore US/NATO) or they are neutral and call for revolutionary defeatism on both sides.
There are also those who regard Russia as non-imperialist but who do not favour victory of the Russians (like the SL & IG) this is ostensibly because they do not consider this a conflict essentially between the US/NATO imperialists and Russia but rather one of capitalist Russia invading capitalist Ukraine.
Then there are anarchists, who argue that even if there is a distinction between imperialist and non-imperialist, it makes no difference as they are both capitalist—although in many cases they side with poor innocent Ukraine.
What they all share in common is a failure to grasp the central importance of defeating the rapacious imperialists.
The role of the fascists in Ukraine needs to be addressed.
It is clear that the fascists were key shock troops in the 2014 coup and as a result were able to lodge themselves inside the state apparatus. They have played a criminal role in the 8 years of violence against the DPR & LPR which has resulted in some 14,000 casualties.
However for us the presence of the fascists in the Ukrainian military and wider state apparatus is secondary to the role of the US/NATO imperialist military alliance.
For us the key issue for revolutionaries in this conflict is opposing US/NATO imperialism .
A related question to this is recognising what fascism is and the danger it poses for the left and workers’ movement. Ukraine provides us with valuable lessons in this regard.
If for instance we were to compare the activity of the dangerous, organized fascist formations in Ukraine to the incoherent rightist populism of Donald Trump, who riled up his base (which included a minority of fascists and other ultra-rightists) in a riot aimed at overturning the results of the US 2020 election on 6 Jan 2021, I think the difference is clear.
The fascistic elements in the Jan 6 Capitol building riot would have wanted to have come out of that process as something equivalent to the Right Sector and Azov Battalion following the 2014 EuroMaidan protests and subsequent coup. But they did not.
They were not the decisive factor in that event and there was never any question of them having significant influence over the state machinery or even the movement itself, unlike The Azov Battalion and other formations in Ukraine, who are heavily armed and organised fascists.
We view this meeting as a small step in affirming the Bolshevik understanding of the role of imperialism in the world against the barrage of war propaganda coming from the bourgeois mass media. There is always huge pressure to adapt to prevailing forces as we unfortunately see in the response of most of the left.
It is also important to see the current conflict in the wider geo-political context of the imperialist, particularly the US, desire to destroy the Chinese deformed workers’ state and open it up to direct and punitive exploitation.
The cancer of capitalist social relations has been allowed to take root in China. The bureaucrats heading the deformed workers state are playing a dangerous game trying to contain the interests of capital while at the same time maintaining living standards of the working people.
This tension will have to be resolved and the danger of a capitalist counter-revolution is great – however that has not yet happened and China remains a deformed workers state which must be defended.
Going back to the current conflict. The Russians so far seem to have pretty much done what they intended to.
It was all about ensuring that Ukraine will never join NATO, degrading the fascistic elements within the Ukrainian military who threaten Russia, solidifying/expanding the DPR & LPR and creating a land bridge to Crimea (and also opening up security of water supply to Crimea).
Some 75,000 or so Ukrainian soldiers are surrounded in what the Russian’s are calling cauldrons and over the next week or so those soldiers, many of them Nazi sympathizers, will either surrender or be liquidated.
The Russians have complete control of the air (hence the calls for NATO to enforce a no fly zone) and could have levelled any city had they wanted to. Yet apart from Mariupol, which was a stronghold of the fascistic Azov Battalion, they have attempted to minimize damage to urban areas. For instance all the civilian infrastructure (water, electricity, heating gas, communications etc) remain operational in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Continuing the war will only bring more chaos and suffering for ordinary Ukrainians.
The refusal of the Ukrainian government to settle the conflict by acceding to the Russian proposals can only mean more needless suffering—although this seems likely to be what the US and its NATO allies are aiming at. By continuing to enflame the situation and prolonging the conflict they are playing with the possibility of this war turning nuclear a prospect that could mean the end of human civilization .
We welcome the chance to participate in this event alongside other leftists who understand that the central question is opposition to US/NATO imperialism.
It is necessary to seek to regroup and reorganize those forces that are seriously committed to the difficult struggle to reforge a viable mass revolutionary workers’ organization on an international basis. But this desire cannot be achieved by papering over significant programmatic issues in the interests of projecting a degree of unity which is not real.
Comrades might have seen that at the beginning of the week Left Voice called for a new Zimmerwald. What we really need in this circumstance is a Zimmerwald Left based on intransigent opposition to imperialist aggression—whether directly or through its proxies.
Such a formation would necessarily see that US/NATO aggression against Russia through their Ukrainian proxy is occurring in the wider framework of increasing imperialist hostility towards the Chinese deformed workers state.
For those unfamiliar with our organisation, the BT stands in the tradition of the revolutionary Spartacist League of the 1960s and 70s before its programmatic degeneration into a braindead obedience cult. This political heritage would frame any discussions on a more substantive unity.
For people wanting to know more about our wider programmatic perspectives you can visit our web site bolsheviktendency.org
I would like to start my remarks by briefly outlining how the Bolshevik Tendency understands the current situation.
For us the recognition that Russia is not an imperialist state is central to our understanding of the current conflict.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia emerged as a capitalist, regional power, with an economy that is primarily centred on energy exports, not the extraction of super profits from other countries.
American imperialism has reneged on its assurances made to Gorbachev that there would be no NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and has instead continued to up the ante to the point of trying to include Georgia and Ukraine in the bloc.
The ultimate objective of US imperialism, expressed by Dick Cheney among others, is to chop up Russia into several smaller more manageable states and gain control of its immense natural resources.
Since the 2014 US sponsored right-wing Maidan coup, the various Ukrainian governments have effectively been US puppet regimes run from Washington.
We therefore regard the current war as being fundamentally between US/NATO imperialism and non-imperialist Russia.
Unfortunately these events take place in the absence of an organised revolutionary workers movement able to pose the question of power: in this context Marxists favour the victory of non-imperialist Russia over the Ukrainian proxy of the US/NATO imperialists .
The section of the left that considers Russia to be imperialist (with all the varied political content they give the term) either sides with Ukraine (and therefore US/NATO) or they are neutral and call for revolutionary defeatism on both sides.
There are also those who regard Russia as non-imperialist but who do not favour victory of the Russians (like the SL & IG) this is ostensibly because they do not consider this a conflict essentially between the US/NATO imperialists and Russia but rather one of capitalist Russia invading capitalist Ukraine.
Then there are anarchists, who argue that even if there is a distinction between imperialist and non-imperialist, it makes no difference as they are both capitalist—although in many cases they side with poor innocent Ukraine.
What they all share in common is a failure to grasp the central importance of defeating the rapacious imperialists.
The role of the fascists in Ukraine needs to be addressed.
It is clear that the fascists were key shock troops in the 2014 coup and as a result were able to lodge themselves inside the state apparatus. They have played a criminal role in the 8 years of violence against the DPR & LPR which has resulted in some 14,000 casualties.
However for us the presence of the fascists in the Ukrainian military and wider state apparatus is secondary to the role of the US/NATO imperialist military alliance.
For us the key issue for revolutionaries in this conflict is opposing US/NATO imperialism .
A related question to this is recognising what fascism is and the danger it poses for the left and workers’ movement. Ukraine provides us with valuable lessons in this regard.
If for instance we were to compare the activity of the dangerous, organized fascist formations in Ukraine to the incoherent rightist populism of Donald Trump, who riled up his base (which included a minority of fascists and other ultra-rightists) in a riot aimed at overturning the results of the US 2020 election on 6 Jan 2021, I think the difference is clear.
The fascistic elements in the Jan 6 Capitol building riot would have wanted to have come out of that process as something equivalent to the Right Sector and Azov Battalion following the 2014 EuroMaidan protests and subsequent coup. But they did not.
They were not the decisive factor in that event and there was never any question of them having significant influence over the state machinery or even the movement itself, unlike The Azov Battalion and other formations in Ukraine, who are heavily armed and organised fascists.
We view this meeting as a small step in affirming the Bolshevik understanding of the role of imperialism in the world against the barrage of war propaganda coming from the bourgeois mass media. There is always huge pressure to adapt to prevailing forces as we unfortunately see in the response of most of the left.
It is also important to see the current conflict in the wider geo-political context of the imperialist, particularly the US, desire to destroy the Chinese deformed workers’ state and open it up to direct and punitive exploitation.
The cancer of capitalist social relations has been allowed to take root in China. The bureaucrats heading the deformed workers state are playing a dangerous game trying to contain the interests of capital while at the same time maintaining living standards of the working people.
This tension will have to be resolved and the danger of a capitalist counter-revolution is great – however that has not yet happened and China remains a deformed workers state which must be defended.
Going back to the current conflict. The Russians so far seem to have pretty much done what they intended to.
It was all about ensuring that Ukraine will never join NATO, degrading the fascistic elements within the Ukrainian military who threaten Russia, solidifying/expanding the DPR & LPR and creating a land bridge to Crimea (and also opening up security of water supply to Crimea).
Some 75,000 or so Ukrainian soldiers are surrounded in what the Russian’s are calling cauldrons and over the next week or so those soldiers, many of them Nazi sympathizers, will either surrender or be liquidated.
The Russians have complete control of the air (hence the calls for NATO to enforce a no fly zone) and could have levelled any city had they wanted to. Yet apart from Mariupol, which was a stronghold of the fascistic Azov Battalion, they have attempted to minimize damage to urban areas. For instance all the civilian infrastructure (water, electricity, heating gas, communications etc) remain operational in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Continuing the war will only bring more chaos and suffering for ordinary Ukrainians.
The refusal of the Ukrainian government to settle the conflict by acceding to the Russian proposals can only mean more needless suffering—although this seems likely to be what the US and its NATO allies are aiming at. By continuing to enflame the situation and prolonging the conflict they are playing with the possibility of this war turning nuclear a prospect that could mean the end of human civilization .
We welcome the chance to participate in this event alongside other leftists who understand that the central question is opposition to US/NATO imperialism.
It is necessary to seek to regroup and reorganize those forces that are seriously committed to the difficult struggle to reforge a viable mass revolutionary workers’ organization on an international basis. But this desire cannot be achieved by papering over significant programmatic issues in the interests of projecting a degree of unity which is not real.
Comrades might have seen that at the beginning of the week Left Voice called for a new Zimmerwald. What we really need in this circumstance is a Zimmerwald Left based on intransigent opposition to imperialist aggression—whether directly or through its proxies.
Such a formation would necessarily see that US/NATO aggression against Russia through their Ukrainian proxy is occurring in the wider framework of increasing imperialist hostility towards the Chinese deformed workers state.
For those unfamiliar with our organisation, the BT stands in the tradition of the revolutionary Spartacist League of the 1960s and 70s before its programmatic degeneration into a braindead obedience cult. This political heritage would frame any discussions on a more substantive unity.
For people wanting to know more about our wider programmatic perspectives you can visit our web site bolsheviktendency.org
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