Russian Tensions
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I read this recently from Rosa Luxemburg which I thought relevant. It is a long quote but explains why we should oppose all sides in this conflict.
“…The strongest pillar holding up the despotic government, as well as the reign of capitalists over the working people, is the military, the standing armed forces. The people are usually convinced that a country needs an army to defend itself against enemy attack. In reality, these enormous armies standing always at arms are needed not for defense of the country but for two purposes: to plunder foreign lands and peoples, and to keep the people of their own land in bondage to their sovereign exploiters.
The wars that today’s states wage against each other are not needed by the working class, only by the capitalists. The working class gains nothing if the state wins new territory by subjugating other lands and peoples to tyrannize them and wring them dry. Only capitalists benefit from winning new markets, since there they can transport and transform into gold the bloody labor they squeeze out of workers at home. The nobility benefit from armies and wars too, because they can occupy the top military positions and live idly in them while receiving fat salaries from the state coffers. Finally, bureaucrats high and low find in war and in newly conquered lands the opportunity to line their pockets with embezzled funds, starving soldiers and tyrannizing conquered peoples as they do so.
Yet those who profit the most from weapons, armies, and wars are the manufacturers of iron, steel, rifles, and ships, as well as the various suppliers of military clothing and food products. In these ways, hundreds of millions spent every year for upkeep of the military flow from government coffers to the pockets of a handful of capitalists. These few make enormous fortunes, especially in wartime, when the government loses battleships, weapons, and cannons in battle and places orders for yet more instruments of murder.
Armies and wars bring the working people only loss. The youth of the people waste some of their most beautiful years in the regular army, spending their time not on work that would benefit them and theirs but on mindless drills, enduring cruel harassment and humiliation from brutal drillmasters and petty officers. In war the sons of the people fall by the thousands, laying down their lives or becoming crippled for life, all to make their worst enemies, the capitalists, richer. In this way, nearly the entire cost of maintaining enormous armies and waging wars falls on the backs of the people. The countless millions the government throws away on barracks, artillery, warships, officers, and so forth flow from no other source than the pockets of common folk. Taxes paid by the impoverished masses on every last morsel placed in their mouths and on every thread of clothing worn on their bodies are the source from which all current governments grow their militarism. But the greatest injury inflicted by today’s militarism on the working class is that soldiers are the instruments the government uses to oppress the people of their own land! It is true that the ranks are filled by workers themselves. A soldier is a worker or peasant in uniform. And yet, the years spent in military service in a barracks, at a distance from family and friends, and the brutal discipline of the army are intentionally set up to make of the worker or farmer in uniform a cowed animal, blind and deaf to everything but the orders of his commanders. After several years of drills, the soldier forgets that he is a child of the people, stops thinking at all about his actions, and stands ready at his officers’ orders to murder his own father and mother. And so the classes and governments in power have in the army a deadly weapon against conscious workers and rebellious peasants. The tsarist government responds to every uprising of desperate peasants in Russia, to every large demonstration of workers in Russia and Poland, by spilling blood. On one side, proletarians in plain clothes fight for a better existence and for freedom, and on the other, at the order of officers, proletarians in uniform turn murderous weapons against them as they would against foreign invaders. Today’s armed force serves mainly to hold the working class under the yoke of capitalism, not only in Russia but in every capitalist country…”
In regard to the National Question Rosa Luxembourg adopted a stand much better than Karl Marx and she smashed the so called concept of the self determination of the peoples and the national liberation.
The general idea is that socialist/communists and workers should not intervene in interclass or inter capitalist dispute and should not take side with any capitalist blocks or capitalist wars, or to support pro capitalist presidential candidates
http://www.bannedthought.net/USSR/Lenin/Lenin-OnTheNationalAndColonialQuestions-ThreeArticles-Peking-1967-OCR-sm.pdf This is pure bourgeois nationalism wrapped in Marxist phraseology in our times some groups take sides with the Ukrainian capitalist class and other take sides with the Russian capitalist class. Socialism which is a worldly revolutionary theory became a nationalist theory, and instead of oppressed workers of the world it was switched to oppressed nations of the world
Another apt quote from Red Rosa
“…For us, for Social Democracy, the Russian soldier is not an enemy, only an armed and dangerous beast whom we wish to tame. For us, the Russian soldier is primarily a blind instrument of absolutism, a proletarian, a worker, a part of the Russian working class, and as such our brother, a member of the one and the same working class to which, according to our view, both Polish and Russian proletarians belong. Therefore, the matter of our worker struggle is also their concern. By enlightening the Russian worker who occupies our land, we call on him not to sympathize with a foreign cause but to understand his own class interests and to fight together with us for common liberation, first from the yoke of absolutism, and then from the chains of the capitalist system…”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group of mercenaries, defended the idea of sending prisoners to fight in the Ukraine war after a video showed him recruiting at a prison.
“It’s either private military companies and prisoners, or your children – decide for yourself.”
Prigozhin said that if he were in prison he would “dream of” joining the Wagner group to “pay my debt to the Motherland”.
“If you serve six months, you are free,” he said. But he warned potential recruits against desertion, adding: “if you arrive in Ukraine and decide it’s not for you, we will execute you”.
“Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group of mercenaries, defended the idea of sending prisoners to fight in the Ukraine war after a video showed him recruiting at a prison.”
Criminals who’d committed serious crimes are not eligible for the program.
“if you arrive in Ukraine and decide it’s not for you, we will execute you”.
Russia does not have the death penalty, meaning that was a joke.
“Professor Lyle Goldstein authored a report—titled “Threat Inflation, Russian Military Weakness, and the Resulting Nuclear Paradox: Implications of the War in Ukraine for U.S. Military Spending”?
“Professor” Goldstein knows which side of his bread is buttered. He’s writing copium for his audience. You will actually be dumber after reading this fraud’s report. I’ve previously linked to an article by Scott Ritter, an actual military expert, and he is clear, NATO stands no chance against Russia in a military conflict in Russia’s near abroad.
Germany appropriates 3 Russian-owned refineries.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-takes-control-of-russias-rosneft-subsidiary/a-63145437
Wishful thinking?
According to Newsweek’s William M. Arkin, Putin may be running out of options as he fights to maintain his grasp on the country.
“We’re seeing more and more blaming of Western weapons,” says the second official, “as if it is an excuse for why Russia is losing. It’s ironic, given that Putin-and-company normally argues that it can defeat NATO. Now it’s, ‘we couldn’t have won because of Western intervention’ that is seeking to deflect responsibility from Moscow.”
“Putin’s options for the future are bleak, particularly as he increasingly feels the heat of domestic opposition,” the first intelligence official said. The official also noted “the impact of 60,000-plus Russian casualties and as well as the bite of sanctions and the controls on travel as challenges to Putin.”
“I’m not so sure I agree with the ‘long war’ predictions,” an Army officer said as he suggested that Putin is running out of options for a viable conversion. “Everyone’s talking about Putin’s hold over Europe with his control of gas, that this is his ace in the hole. But if the heat intensifies back home, Putin may have to shift his attention to a winter disaster of his own making.”
“Continuing the war is the only way for Putin to stay in power,” Former World Champion chess player Garry Kasparov said. “He wants to create extra chaos in the free world hoping that a new window will open for him. It’s really just a protracted agony. It is cynical and stupid, but Putin is willing to put thousands of civilians into graves in the months to come before the whole of Ukraine is liberated, if that will allow him to maintain power.”
https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/analysis-beginning-end-vladimir-putin/
“Wishful thinking?
According to Newsweek’s William M. Arkin…”
It absolutely is “wishful thinking”. Why do you keep posting western propaganda Alan? It serves no useful purpose other than to confuse visitors to this site. Putin is hugely popular in Russia. His position is in no way under threat.
NATO supplying weapons to Ukraine actually advantages Russia. It takes NATO equipment out of NATO arsenals and puts it on the battlefield where Russia can destroy it. This leaves NATO weaker not stronger.
The claim of 60,000 Russian troops dead is absurd. Almost all infantry combat is being fought by Donbass militiamen not Russians. Reliable sources say their casualties are in the region of 10,000. Ukraine on the other hand has some 200-250 thousand casualties. Ukraine is losing this conflict and losing it badly. Articles like this give false hope to the supporters of the fascists and help to delay any future peace process. Alan, stop posting such rubbish.
I’m curious to why the USA so far has not supplied Ukraine with a version of the Iron Dome anti-missile defence system.
Israel appears to think it is effective.
“I’m curious to why the USA so far has not supplied Ukraine with a version of the Iron Dome anti-missile defence system.”
Iron Dome is a joke and the Ukrainians know it.
Ukraine ‘Tears Down’ Israel’s Iron Dome Systems; Says They Are Incapable Against Russian Missiles
The re-militarisation of Germany
Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said that, while the country was grateful to soldiers for drilling wells, stemming floods and helping with Covid vaccinations, “that is not their core mission”.
He added: “The army’s core mission is to defend freedom in Europe,” saying that it was his objective to turn the German military into “the central pillar” of European conventional defences and make it “the best equipped force” on the continent.
Days after the Russian invasion began in February, Mr Scholz announced a “new era” in German defence spending, pledging a special €100 billion fund to modernise the underfunded forces, plus increasing defence spending to two per cent of GDP.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/german-army-too-focused-drilling-194548910.html
“The re-militarisation of Germany”
Germany is facing a depression as is most of the rest of Europe. Where’s the money gonna come from? What will desperate, hungry Germans think about all that military spending when their kids have no food? Moreover, German industry is grinding to a halt because of its shunning of Russian gas. No energy no metals production. No metals production no military production. Germany ain’t remilitarising.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/09/17/sxgs-s17.html?fbclid=IwAR3XHUQuLArw9ozVS2MbxL06Y6nf2FxvG9lnFj-cm3My98rejcg4UdCH7Zg
After Russian debacle in Ukraine, US escalates conflict with Russia and ChinaFollowing the collapse of Moscow’s northern front of Russia’s six-month-old invasion of Ukraine, the United States has responded by further intensifying its involvement in the war against Russia in Ukraine and preparations for war with China over Taiwan.
In the course of one week, Ukrainian forces advanced dozens of miles, capturing massive quantities of Russian weapons and ammunition, along with, according to Ukrainian officials, thousands of Russian soldiers.
On Thursday, the Biden administration announced an additional $600 million in weapons to Ukraine, adding to the more than $50 billion in armaments and other assistance that has been allocated to date.
The new arms shipment, the 21st such “drawdown” since the start of the war, includes ammunition for the HIMARS missile system, 36,000 rounds of 105mm artillery, counter-battery radar and a thousand precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds.
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