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Just watched Icarus. Not a big fan of this "Russia" fellow. (hexbear.net)

submitted 6 days ago by WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

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I have no choice but to abandon gummunibm and reassert myself as a Marxist-Leninist-Bidenist.

No but seriously, it seems like Russia sucks. Thoughts? Does this inform your perspective on Ukraine at all? Does this speak to the biases of the film maker? Are you like "fuck the Olympics anyway"? In essence: you seein this shit?

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[–] Diva@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

I'm stating that this is irrelevant for the Russian government in terms of geopolitics, and at best it serves it as an excuse to justify the invasion to its population.

This has been my observation as well. This is inter-capitalist conflict and it's going to be dominated by what benefits the capitalists on either side at the end of the day more than whatever stated objectives are.

In Rosa Luxemburg's Russian Revolution, her criticism of the Soviets going along with national projects in the first place was particularly prescient:

spoiler

While Lenin and his comrades clearly expected that, as champions of national freedom even to the extent of “separation,” they would turn Finland, the Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, the Caucasus, etc., into so many faithful allies of the Russian Revolution, we have instead witnessed the opposite spectacle. One after another, these “nations” used the freshly granted freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism against the Russian Revolution as its mortal enemy, and, under German protection, to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia itself. The little game with the Ukraine at Brest, which caused a decisive turn of affairs in those negotiations and brought about the entire inner and outer political situation at present prevailing for the Bolsheviks, is a perfect case in point. The conduct of Finland, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic lands, the peoples of the Caucasus, shows most convincingly that we are not dealing here with an exceptional case, but with a typical phenomenon.

To be sure, in all these cases, it was really not the “people” who engaged in these reactionary policies, but only the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes, who – in sharpest opposition to their own proletarian masses – perverted the “national right of self-determination” into an instrument of their counter- revolutionary class politics. But – and here we come to the very heart of the question – it is in this that the utopian, petty-bourgeois character of this nationalistic slogan resides: that in the midst of the crude realities of class society and when class antagonisms are sharpened to the uttermost, it is simply converted into a means of bourgeois class rule. The Bolsheviks were to be taught to their own great hurt and that of the revolution, that under the rule of capitalism there is no self-determination of peoples, that in a class society each class of the nation strives to “determine itself ” in a different fashion, and that, for the bourgeois classes, the standpoint of national freedom is fully subordinated to that of class rule. The Finnish bourgeoisie, like the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, were unanimous in preferring the violent rule of Germany to national freedom, if the latter should be bound up with Bolshevism.

Or take the Ukraine. At the beginning of the century, before the tomfoolery of “Ukrainian nationalism” with its silver rubles and its “Universals” and Lenin’s hobby of an “independent Ukraine” had been invented, the Ukraine was the stronghold of the Russian revolutionary movement. From there, from Rostov, from Odessa, from the Donetz region, flowed out the first lava- streams of the revolution (as early as 1902-04) which kindled all South Russia into a sea of flame, thereby preparing the uprising of 1905. The same thing was repeated in the present revolution, in which the South Russian proletariat supplied the picked troops of the proletarian phalanx. Poland and the Baltic lands have been since 1905 the mightiest and most dependable hearths of revolution, and in them the socialist proletariat has played an outstanding role. How does it happen then that in all these lands the counter-revolution suddenly triumphs? The nationalist movement, just because it tore the proletariat loose from Russia, crippled it thereby, and delivered it into the hands of the bourgeoisie of the border countries.

Instead of acting in the same spirit of genuine international class policy which they represented in other matters, instead of working for the most compact union of the revolutionary forces throughout the area of the Empire, instead of defending tooth and nail the integrity of the Russian Empire as an area of revolution and opposing to all forms of separatism the solidarity and inseparability of the proletarians in all lands within the sphere of the Russian Revolution as the highest command of politics, the Bolsheviks, by their hollow nationalistic phraseology concerning the “right of self-determination to the point of separation,” have accomplished quite the contrary and supplied the bourgeoisie in all border states with the finest, the most desirable pretext, the very banner of the counter-revolutionary efforts. Instead of warning the proletariat in the border countries against all forms of separatism as mere bourgeois traps, they did nothing but confuse the masses in all the border countries by their slogan and delivered them up to the demagogy of the bourgeois classes. By this nationalistic demand they brought on the disintegration of Russia itself, pressed into the enemy’s hand the knife which it was to thrust into the heart of the Russian Revolution.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

See, and this is where you can have an actually constructive criticism of Stalin, as he was a big believer in pushing the national sovereignty of ethnic peoples because he was an ethnic Georgian, despite no one fighting longer or harder against forces of reaction. It was a blind spot in his theory that was created by his own personal experience under Russian chauvinism, but it was also supported by Lenin's theories of political maneuvering and it was these kinds of ideas that bound him closer to Stalin than Trotsky, who was much more inclined towards Luxembourg's ideas.

But it does lead us to ask, if the Bolsheviks didn't give up their claim to inherit the Russian empire, would Rosa have just decried them as another imperialist? I only say this because much of her theories appear to simply be monday morning quarterbacking to Bolshevik ideas that actually got to be implemented, after all, today we could just as easily point towards the Balkans as a proof that not giving people their own national identities eventually leads to another kind of destruction and reactionary uprising, where the proletariat are easily pitted against each other by the ethnic bourgeois under 'freedom from communist tyranny'. I think the national/ethnic question is an incredibly difficult question to answer, and it will take more than simply pitting 20th century revolutionaries against each other.

[–] Diva@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Sorry in advance for the wall of text:

I think the national/ethnic question is an incredibly difficult question to answer, and it will take more than simply pitting 20th century revolutionaries against each other.

100%, it's not about declaring one or the other as "correct" but understanding their positions within the broader context. What I see as a goal of criticism like this is to allow for us to understand past failures and their impact on the present as well as how to move forward, rather than trying to lionize any particular figure. They are all flawed, but still worth learning from.

But it does lead us to ask, if the Bolsheviks didn't give up their claim to inherit the Russian empire, would Rosa have just decried them as another imperialist?

Based on the nature of her critique I don't think that she would simply have changed her tune given different circumstances, if anything I think she was hoping that those national liberation slogans were just that, slogans to rally support then set aside, rather than integrated into the socialist project once the Bolsheviks won. I do want to reiterate that she was clearly in support of the Bolsheviks, despite having criticisms for them, she had far worse things to say about social democrats and reformers:

the Social Democracy in the highly developed West is made up of wretched cowards and will look calmly on while the Russians bleed.

She had criticism for the Bolsheviks from the standpoint of what she saw as the needs of the world revolution, but her primary criticism was of the failure on the part of the proletariat of Western Europe to aid them.

On the subject of the Bolsheviks signing Brest-Litovsk, which was the basis for the criticism I cited in the previous post she had this to say about the choice from a non theoretical standpoint:

they are not to blame. They are in a jam, have only the choice between two evils and choose the lesser. Others are responsible for the fact that the Russian Revolution turns out to the devil’s advantage.” And again she writes: “The German government-socialists may shout that the rule of the Bolsheviks is a caricature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is, then only for the reason that it is a product of the conduct of the German proletariat, conduct which was a caricature of socialist class struggle.”

At the end of the day and with the benefit of hindsight the Bolsheviks did make the best of a bad situation and while it's possible to envision a better path it doesn't mean that it was going to be viable in the historical context.

I only say this because much of her theories appear to simply be monday morning quarterbacking to Bolshevik ideas that actually got to be implemented

This was contemporaneous criticism though, her polemics with Lenin happened before any of this unfolded.

While Lenin and the Bolshevik line was centralization, the national projects were ultimately in opposition to that.

Quoting Lenin now on this:

the right to self-determination is an exception to the general premise of centralisation. This exception is absolutely essential in view of reactionary Great-Russian nationalism; and any rejection of this exception is opportunism (as in the case of Rosa Luxemburg); it means foolishly playing into the hands of reactionary Great-Russian nationalism. But exception must not be too broadly interpreted. In this case, there is not and must not be anything more than the right to secede." (Letter to S.G. Shahnmyan, Vol. 19).

My read of this is that both parties have their own perspective in this situation, Rosa with her perspective with Polish bourgeois nationalists, Lenin with the understanding of what reactionary russian nationalism could lead to un-checked. Not to be a centrist but they both have valid points.

As Lenin called her an opportunist, she said the same, the slogans of national liberation was commented on as opportunism and a concession to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes that would ultimately be a poison pill to the entire project, this is from 1915, well before these events played out:

Capitalist politicians, in whose eyes the rulers of the people and the ruling classes are the nation, can honestly speak of the “right of national self-determination” in connection with such colonial empire. To the socialist, no nation is free whose national existence is based upon the enslavement of another people, for to him colonial peoples, too, are human beings, and, as such, parts of the national state. International socialism recognises the right of free independent nations, with equal rights. But socialism alone can create such nations, can bring self-determination of their peoples. This slogan of socialism is like all its others, not an apology for existing conditions, but a guidepost, a spur for the revolutionary, regenerative, active policy of the proletariat. So long as capitalist states exist, i.e., so long as imperialistic world policies determine and regulate the inner and the outer life of a nation, there can be no “national self-determination” either in war or in peace.

In the present imperialistic milieu there can be no wars of national self-defence. Every socialist policy that depends upon this determining historic milieu, that is willing to fix its policies in the world whirlpool from the point of view of a single nation, is built upon a foundation of sand.

after all, today we could just as easily point towards the Balkans as a proof that not giving people their own national identities eventually leads to another kind of destruction and reactionary uprising, where the proletariat are easily pitted against each other by the ethnic bourgeois under 'freedom from communist tyranny'.

That still happened in the context of an imperialist world system. Once the USSR fell their days were numbered. I would still take the lesson from that to be that as long as capitalist states exist, the system operates on that logic and no other states can have self determination. Socialist states will be besieged by counterevolution and reaction, nationalist states will be limited by their own colonial conquests and ability to enslave others.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago

These are great insights! Thanks!