International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity held a successful 'hybrid' meeting in central London earlier in November. Speakers from Britain, Ireland, Ukraine, the Russian Federation and Poland spoke on the platform or via Zoom on the topic 'The struggle against Banderite fascism and the future of Ukraine'. This is the contribution from Konrad Rękas, a Polish journalist and political commentator.
In 1913, the world was convinced that the threat of war was completely impossible, which was related with the progress of civilisation, the development of science, and especially the international system based on the so-called concert of powers, international conferences during which colonial empires shared global spheres of influence. However, in reality, under the skin of this alleged belle epoque there were insurmountable contradictions and class conflicts, and enlightened minds already saw the spectre of a crisis that would surpass all previous problems of capitalism.
Nevertheless capitalism always tries to move forward, changing itself just to continue its basic goal: unlimited, infinite accumulation, achieved thanks to the exploitation and oppression of the working class. And precisely so that these oppressed and exploited did not see their chains, the demons of xenophobia, racism, chauvinism and jingoism were invoked. The world war meant not only new, gigantic profits. It was also a great draining of workers blood, a release of emotions and the lowest human instincts, as a result of which British, German, French and Russian workers murdered each other instead of turning their weapons against their real enemies: capitalists, plutocrats and the imperialist governments corrupted by them.
historical mistake
109 years ago, even a huge part of the European left got carried away by false, nationalist emotions, widely joining the camp of the global war. Those few who called for peace, for solving real, pressing social problems, were murdered, like the Frenchman Jean Jaures, or imprisoned, like the Scotsman John Maclean.
The war, started under the pretext of a secondary incident in the distant Balkans, covered almost all of Europe, a significant part of the colonies in Africa and Asia, claiming nearly 20 million victims. A war that almost no one believed was a threat a year earlier...
In fact, only one major socio-political movement opposed the war from the beginning, rightly seeing it as just another stage of capitalism and imperialism. Only the Bolsheviks from the beginning condemned the primitive blackmail of pseudo-patriotic nationalism used to draw nations into war. And only the Bolsheviks acted in accordance with the best interests of the global proletariat, implementing the programme: “war on the palaces - peace to the huts!”. For there is no other just struggle than the class struggle, the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors, the struggle of those who have nothing to lose except their chains, against those who have everything.
Peace, Land and Bread
We have met a few days after the 106th anniversary of the Great October Revolution and immediately after the 105th anniversary of the end of the war in 1918, and we still find this programme relevant.
War, unimaginable yesterday, is today an everyday reality for Ukrainians and Russians, Palestinians and Jews. Land, water and natural resources are the subject of increasing accumulation. We are observing the takeover of Ukrainian agricultural production by global corporations such as Bayer-Monsanto, DowDuPont/Corteva and BASF. The legendary fertile Ukrainian chernozem or black soil is today used to produce artificial toxins in the interests of globalists. The same applies to the gas deposits in the sea shelf of the Gaza Strip, over which the Zionists want to take direct control.
Nazism – the last resort of capitalism
Concentration of ownership is also a constant for the Western world. Even more so when we face the growing Nazism today. Nazism is always the last weapon of capitalism. Today, global liberalism has summoned two of its historical dogs of war to the idea: Jewish fascism: Zionism, and Ukrainian Nazism: Banderism. Genocide has been going on in Gaza and in the whole of Palestine since 1947, now escalated by an obviously Zionist provocation.
Similarly, the Western takeover of Ukraine is marked by genocide: the provocations in Kiev in February 2014, the mass murder in Odessa on 2nd May 2014, the relentless attacks by Kiev troops against the people of Donbas, resulting in over 20,000 people killed and injured in the last 9 years.
The wars in Palestine and Ukraine are parts of the global war against Nazism, but also the manifestation of class struggle.
In Ukraine, this war is taking a particularly harsh, cruel, dehumanised course, under the authoritarian rule of oligarchs and compradors who deny the working-class basic rights, even those formally guaranteed during the liberal oligarchy period after 1990.
The Ukrainian working class is exploited without even a theoretical right to resistance, and at the same time, millions of Ukrainian migrant workers join the reserve army of labour not only in Poland but also in Western countries, like the UK. This phenomenon has an objectively negative impact on the position of the Western working class, supporting ethnic prejudices inducted by the capitalists to prevail against the common class cause.
Revolution will prevail!
The cyclical nature of the crises of capitalism and imperialism are a necessity, directly as Marx predicted, and the same is about our obligation to hold active resistance. The liberation of Ukraine from Nazism is therefore today not only a Ukrainian issue, but also a deeply internationalist issue. And as internationalists we must say clearly today: just as our forefathers defeated Nazism by raising the banner in Berlin over the Third Reich’s Chancellery and the Reichstag, today we must do it again in Banderite Kiev and Zionist Tel Aviv!
Comments
Post a Comment