Tag: war in Ukraine

Posted on

A DEBATE ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE

On September 10, Internationalist Perspective co-organized a public debate in Woodbine, a community hub in New York city, on the war in Ukraine, entitled “War and capitalist crisis”.

Since then, the war in Ukraine has escalated and many more ordinary people from Ukraine and Russia have died for worse than nothing. The Ukrainian forces, armed to the teeth by the US and its Nato-allies, have retaken some territory, Russia annexed provinces in eastern Ukraine, missiles of both sides sowed destruction on both sides, Putin ordered mass mobilization, provoking scores of protests, resistance and an exodus of many thousands refusing the role of canon fodder. All this and more has happened, but the fundamental question debated at Woodbine has remained the same: is this a local conflict in which the invaded nation deserves universal support? Or is it an interimperialist conflict, resulting from the global crisis of capitalism, in which the working class has nothing to gain and everything to loose?

Opposing perspectives follow from these assessments. In this debate, moderated by Ross Wolfe , three of the four speakers argued that this is a war between competing capitalists in which the working class is the victim and that the latter therefore can only defend its interests by refusing to fight each other and fight instead the ruling class in both countries.  

Read More →

Posted on

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.  

Read More →

Posted on

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.  

Read More →

Posted on

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.  

Read More →