alanjjohnstone
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“The United States is setting up China as a second target of its intense economic war against Russia in what could have cataclysmic effects on the world economy, including the West.
The U.S. could not impose the most stringent sanctions on Moscow without the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and now the U.S. is trying to link China to the war.”Although details are vague and not verified, Belarus railway workers appear to have taken action to thwart the Russian supply lines
DJP, Kliman’s final reposte to you
“The Ukrainian people’s understanding of their interests is the polar opposite of yours. When millions of people who are being slaughtered, terrorized, and displaced overwhelmingly oppose appeasing the perpetrator, I’m going to listen to what they say is in their interests. Also, appeasement didn’t work out so well prior to WWII, or during the last 8 years in Ukraine” is revealing, especially from someone of his academic intellectual stature.When does the attitude of the majority determine the rights or wrongs of any political position. We can safely assume that the views of many more millions of Russian citizens are also the polar opposite to your understanding. Does that invalidate what you say, also?
Bringing up the WW2 appeasement is such a shallow defence for any historical analysis of present events.
The earlier accepted wisdom was that it was Ukraine that was unwilling to seriously negotiate any home-rule proposals due to the political pressure from its right-wing nationalists.
And what appeasement does Kliman talk of? No nation apart from Russia has supported self-rule for DPR and LPR or recognised the annexation of Crimea. Very different from 1938 when an international conference conceded Sudetenland to Germany.
Economics may be Kliman’s forte but history isn’t.
As we fully expected our analysis is not a popular one by either side. We are the rare Third Campists who stand by our convictions and commitments.
If Kliman seeks to raise the past, then he should be aware with Britain actually in a war, facing a real threat of invasion and suffering daily war crimes from the Blitz bombing, we stood by our principles and did not bend because they were not in accord with the sentiments of our families, friends and neighbours. To paraphrase Churchill, we too stood alone.
I don’t know the figures but some of our own members were casualties of the war yet it did not result in the Party being moved by emotional appeals.
Making up international law as it suits.
Gordon Brown and Sir John Major want a new international tribunal to be set up and investigate Vladimir Putin for his actions in Ukraine. The former PMs are among 140 academics, lawyers and politicians to sign a petition calling for a legal system modelled on the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals after World War Two.
Putin does a stadium rally to boost morale.
I read the reports on BBC and Guardian, and they use the same sceptical quotes from participants to question its credibility, which raised suspicions to me that editors are following an unspoken agreed line. Surely out of tens of thousands in the crowds, many different quotes would have been gathered.
And was the tv coverage sabotaged?
As for an appropriate slogan what about. “Don’t die for capitalism, Live for socialism”
“Was the refusal to unload Russian oil barrels the result of class consciousness, or more the result of pro-Ukraine nationalism on the part of the British workers, in solidarity not with fellow workers abroad, but with UK media urging the backing of the Kyiv govt?”
Right now, the sympathies of the working class are predominantly with their Ukrainian brothers and sisters. Perhaps also with those Russian dissidents protesting.
Our own position is very much a minority one
“We condemn both sides and denounce the senseless killing of our fellow workers. History shows that in times of war, working-class interests are never served by workers throwing in their lot with nationalist or other political leaders of capitalism”
We should acknowledge that it is Ukrainian fellow workers who are cannon fodder for Zelenskyy and pawns to be sacrificed for Putin
Whatever the motive, it has more effect than Extinction Rebellion anti-petrol station campaign.
Perhaps a better working link
I should remember that vinyl banner, ALB.
I got it made when I lived in Kerala and donated it to either Edinburgh or Glasgow branch on a visit back along with a few others I designed, ALB. A bargain at a fiver.
Something always strikes me about the words we choose to use. We make it a prominent part of our case that for Marxists as we socialism and communism are synonyms yet the latter is not near as frequent in our writings as the former. Nor can we deduce it is the corruption of the word communism by the Bolsheviks as the practice by ourselves predates Lenin’s distortion.
We perhaps inherited from William Morris and the Socialist League’s custom. Or a legacy of founding members in the SDF.
But clearly, these early members believed the term communism carried something already questionable despite our main text being the Communist Manifesto
Another word to have fallen out of popularity is of course social democracy
Silencing the enemy
“We do not consider RT’s licensee, ANO TV Novosti, fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast licence,” it explained.
Ofcom is carrying out 29 investigations “into the due impartiality of RT’s news and current affairs coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
We have always suffered from the problem of semantics. We are counselled to refrain from the use of the word internationalism also as being imprecise.
I believe the slogans previously used is understood similarly by the groups I would aim my suggestion of cooperation towards.
I note you substitute class struggle for class war which is rejected as being too metaphoricalI believe they all derive from the original Chartist slogan
“peace to the cottages, war on the palaces” or a version of it, and where we received, “peacefully if possible, forcibly if necessary” slogan
But your alternative slogan is perfectly okay by me and I will begin to use them.
But I don’t hold that this objection on the matter of wording of slogans that are specifically dsigned to be simplistic and soundbites should deter us from collaborating with other groups in the Thin Red Line. In the context of the present conflict these do indeed separate us from the left-wing understandings of the cause of the war, both pro- and anti- Russian versions of and incorporate that unless the working class prevail in achieving socialism, wars will recur after this one has ended.
The sanctions are certainly revealing the wealth of the Russian oligarchs.
Swiss banks said on Thursday that there are between 150 and 200 billion Swiss francs ($160-$213 billion) of Russian clients’ money are held in Swiss accounts.
Analysts say the figures announced show that the actual extent of Russians’ business with Swiss banks is far greater than what the balance sheets unveiled by several financial firms so far shows.
>>>>We would like to know your thoughts on these ideas. We also refer you to “Unite the Left to Defend Ukraine,” an appeal by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, whose campaign your organization can join.* Will there be a public reply? Something along the lines of this perhaps?<<<<
As I said in a previous post and on Discord, our position “the only good war is the class war” is held by only a very few on the fringes and to have that message heard, there should be joint meetings held, (call them forums if you wish) and some sort of statement could be issued with an appropriate agreed text (a round-robin circular).
I’m aware this is a break with our tradition of no shared platform other than in opposition and some will view it as transgressing our hostility clause.
Wasn’t a precedent started in WW1 when we published details of the peace conference of the Bolsheviks in 1915?
But what is the point of grandiose and eloquent declarations when we do not reach anybody? Even this proposal will have limited effect but more than if we only read from the same song sheet to the same choir, as we usually end up doing. And as other groups also do.
I consider the interests of my class and fellow workers to be above partisan party politics. We can be flexible while still maintaining our principled stand with those who share broadly our position, despite any comradely criticism we may have of some details.
We can benefit by being the organisation that takes the initiative and start to shed our reputation of sectarianism.
We can shift the responsibility of unburdening some of the historic baggage some still carry on to those other groups.
Peace between people, war upon our rulers.
A more detailed explanation of the ICT-CWO position arising from an online meeting it held
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2022-03-17/war-in-ukraine-the-internationalist-position
