Author: Internationalist Perspective

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A Perfect Storm

Letter from the UK

Huge swathes of the British working class are either on strike or will strike in the coming days and weeks. Scottish refuse collectors all over the country are striking. The Port of Felixstowe container terminal – handling half of the UK’s container traffic – has been essentially shut because of striking workers. There have been regular walkouts of engineering contractors, especially at refineries across the UK Postal workers, bus drivers, train drivers and other railway workers, London Underground workers, even nurses and other NHS workers, and telecoms workers are all striking or are about to. Even the criminal barristers are on indefinite strike. And there have been strikes at Amazon too. There has been nothing like this in the UK for decades. It doesn’t take much analysis to see why this is happening.

The UK is the seventh richest country in the world and yet tens of millions of people are facing penury. The demands for wage increases are near-universal. The simple fact is that the major capitalist – the state – is gouging out the wages of the working class at an almost unprecedented rate. Yet, the government economic policy – unlike that in the decade following the 2008 recession – is not officially austerity.  

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A DEMOCRACY TO DIE FOR

“Russia’s war in Ukraine [is] a fight for global democracy, experts say”1

When the elite speak of freedom and democracy, duck and take cover!

We know this story all too well. Once our ancestors fought and died to liberate Jerusalem for the one true God, then for King and Country, for the Fatherland, for der Fuhrer, Il Duce, Uncle Joe (Stalin) and worst of all for ethnic nationalism. More generally they fought and died in conflicts claiming to be struggles between good and evil. God is always on the side of the soldier. In WWI they fought to “Make the world safe for democracy” and 30,000,000 deaths later some precarious form of democracy was attained; only to be swallowed by competing powers in the next decade, e.g. the Weimar Republic becomes the Third Reich and back to a democratic republic in a few short years. War needs the patriotic banners; the people need the songs and the sound of trumpets that urge them on to perform heroic deeds on the battlefield and to die for a glorious cause “if necessary.” In short, it would seem that the citizens need lies and democracy provides the most seductive deceit of them all.  

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NE VOUS BATTEZ PAS POUR «
VOTRE » PAYS

Tout le monde déteste la guerre. Surtout ceux qui en envoient d’autres mourir sur les champs de bataille. Ils prétendent qu’ils abhorrent la guerre, mais hélas, ils y seraient contraints par ceux d’en face. Ceux qui empiète sur notre pré carré. Ceux qui envahissent une nation « souveraine ». Nous n’avons pas le choix ! Nous devons nous défendre… De quel « nous » faites-vous partie ? La propagande implacable des deux côtés pousse tout le monde à choisir un camp, à devenir un participant actif ou une pom-pom girl dans la guerre. Parce que l’autre côté est vraiment horrible. Et c’est toujours le cas.

L’armée russe est accusée de crimes de guerre. Une bien étrange expression « crime de guerre ». Une expression redondante, en effet, parce que la guerre est par définition un crime, le plus grand de tous les crimes. Quel que soit le but, les moyens sont toujours le meurtre de masse et la destruction. Il n’y a pas de guerre sans massacres atroces. L’expression suggère qu’il y aurait deux façons de faire la guerre : une civilisée et une criminelle. Si jamais il y avait une différence entre les deux, elle a été effacée par les progrès de la technologie militaire.  

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¡NO LUCHES POR “TU” PAÍS!

Todo el mundo odia la guerra. Sobre todo las personas que envían a otras personas a morir en el campo de batalla. Afirman que lo aborrecen, pero por desgracia, el otro lado los obliga a hacerlo. El otro lado, que está invadiendo nuestros cotos de caza tradicionales. El otro lado, que está invadiendo una nación “soberana”. ¡No tenemos otra opción! Debemos defendernos… ¿De qué “nosotros” eres parte? La propaganda implacable en ambos lados empuja a todos a elegir un bando, a convertirse en un participante activo o animador en la guerra. Porque el otro lado es realmente horrible. Y siempre lo es.

El ejército ruso está acusado de crímenes de guerra. Un término extraño, “crimen de guerra”. Uno término redundante, en realidad, porque la guerra es por definición un crimen, el mayor de todos los crímenes. Cualquiera que sea el objetivo, los medios son siempre el asesinato en masa y la destrucción. No hay guerra sin masacres atroces. El término sugiere que hay dos formas de hacer la guerra: una civilizada y una criminal. Si alguna vez hubo una diferencia entre las dos, fue borrada por los avances en la tecnología militar. Desde principios del siglo 20, el porcentaje de víctimas civiles en las guerras ha crecido constantemente.  

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SOLIDARITY AND THE PANDEMIC

This is a response to the article Neither Idiots nor Sheep by comrade Sander. In it, Sander explores the impact that the virus has had on the economy and criticizes those, who, particularly in the left, essentially deny the reality of the virus by joining the no-vaxx camp, often mingling with reactionary forces on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Sander brings up the uncomfortable point that although capitalism will seize upon any crisis for its own ends, it is in the interest of both the ruling class and the working class to overcome the medical emergency. It is in the interest of the capitalists to have a “healthy” enough working class in order that they can continue squeezing profits in an uninterrupted process. It is also of course in the interest of the working class to have medical care against an objective life-threat. In this strained situation the polarization that has occurred fueled by conspiracies, misinformation and rightwing agendas seems to run contrary to a basic need for solidarity in overcoming an adversity which is social in nature.

I can find no fault at all with this criticism but I am left wondering in what shape this solidarity will manifest?  

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AGAINST CAPITALIST WAR !

The following powerful text was written by the comrades of La Oveja Negra in Argentina.

No war is easy to understand, no “geopolitical” situation is simple to grasp. Even less so when it is assumed that there are no social classes in the world: there are only countries, leaders and political ideologies. Thus, there are those who support and justify the massacres and the horror of war. There are those who forget or want to make people forget that wars are fought for money. As comrades in Russia point out at this moment, behind the war there are only the interests of those who hold political, economic and military power: “For us, workers, pensioners, students, it brings only suffering, blood and death. The siege of peaceful cities, the bombings, the killing of people have no justification.” (leaflet of the Section of the International Workers’ Association of the Russian Region KRAS-AIT)

War makes explicit the horror of a society based on accumulation and profit. It is capitalist peace by other means. What is happening in Ukraine is added to the wars and invasions that unfortunately are nothing new (Palestine, Yemen, Syria) and to the millions of dead from hunger, misery, work, preventable diseases or suicide.  

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DON’T FIGHT FOR “YOUR” COUNTRY !

Everybody hates war. Most of all the people who send other people to die on the battlefield. They claim that they abhor it, but alas, they’re forced to it by the other side. The other side, which is encroaching on our traditional hunting grounds. The other side, which is invading a “sovereign” nation. We have no choice! We must defend ourselves… Which “we” are you a part of? Relentless propaganda on both sides pushes everyone to pick a side, to become an active participant or cheerleader in the war. Because the other side is truly horrific. And it always is.

The Russian army is accused of war crimes. A strange term, “war crime.” A redundant one, really, because war is by definition a crime, the greatest of all crimes. Whatever the goal, the means are always mass murder and destruction. There is no war without atrocious massacres. The term suggests that there are two ways of waging war: a civilized one and a criminal one. If ever there was a difference between the two, it was erased by advances in military technology. Since the early 20th century, the percentage of civilian casualties in wars has grown steadily. In the 19th century American Civil War, military personnel still accounted for more than 90% of total war deaths.  

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LA BARBARIE RESURGE EN EUROPA (no es que haya desaparecido nunca)

El ataque del ejército ruso contra la población de Ucrania es grotesco. Los tanques y misiles de crucero y balísticos se utilizan indiscriminadamente contra zonas residenciales en ciudades y pueblos, y a los pocos días de su lanzamiento un millón de refugiados y personas desplazadas inundaron las carreteras y los ferrocarriles; tales números no se han visto en Europa desde el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Perspectiva Internacionalista presentará más comentarios a medida que se desarrolle la situación. Hay muchos aspectos en esta guerra pero, por ahora, queremos hacer hincapié en algunos puntos clave.

El contexto geopolítico de la guerra actual es la rivalidad entre Rusia y las potencias occidentales tras el colapso de la Unión Soviética. A pesar de sus garantías a principios de la década de 1990, la OTAN se movió hacia el este, absorbiendo a varios de los antiguos países del Pacto de Varsovia y empujando directamente contra las fronteras de Rusia. A lo largo de las décadas transcurridas desde entonces, Rusia ha estado involucrada en varias guerras para evitar una mayor fragmentación y para hacer retroceder la invasión occidental: dos guerras chechenas, otra en Georgia y, tras el reemplazo de líderes prorusos por líderes prooccidentales en Ucrania, la anexión de Crimea y el área de Donbas (en 2014).  

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LA BARBARIE REFAIT SURFACE EN EUROPE (qu’elle n’a d’ailleurs jamais quitté)

L’assaut de l’armée russe contre la population ukrainienne est grotesque. Des missiles de croisière, des missiles balistiques et des chars sont utilisés sans discrimination contre les zones résidentielles et contre les villes, et quelques jours après son lancement, un million de réfugiés et de personnes déplacées ont inondé les routes et les chemins de fer ; de tels chiffres n’avaient pas été vus en Europe depuis la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Internationalist Perspective s’exprimera davantage au fur et à mesure que la situation se développera. Cette guerre présente beaucoup d’aspects, mais, pour l’instant, nous voulons souligner quelques points clés.

Le contexte géopolitique de la guerre actuelle est la rivalité entre la Russie et les puissances Occidentales au lendemain de l’effondrement de l’URSS. Malgré les assurances données au début des années ’90, l’OTAN s’est déplacée vers l’est, absorbant plusieurs des anciens pays du Pacte de Varsovie et mettant la pression très près des frontières de la Russie. Au cours des décennies qui ont suivi, la Russie a été impliquée dans plusieurs guerres pour empêcher une plus grande fragmentation et repousser l’empiétement occidental : deux guerres tchétchènes, une autre en Géorgie, et – suite au remplacement des pro-russes par des leader pro-occidentaux pro-occidentaux en Ukraine – l’annexion de la Crimée et de la région du Donbass (en 2014).

  

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