XIX. Revolutionary Defeatism in Conflicts between Imperialist States: Programmatic Components (1)

 

 

 

 

Let us now deal with various components of the program of Revolutionary Defeatism which the RCIT advocates in inter-imperialist conflicts.

 

 

 

For Working Class Independence – No Support for Any Great Power!

 

 

 

The starting point for any correct orientation in a conflict between imperialist states must be the political independence of the working class. This means that socialists must reject support either for their “own” imperialist state or for any other imperialist state. In its programmatic document “Six Points for a Platform of Revolutionary Unity Today”, the RCIT summarized the Marxist position as follows:

 

“It is only possible to understand the driving dynamic of the present period of capitalist crisis and to take a correct position if one recognizes the imperialist character not only of the US, EU and Japan but also of the new emerging powers, Russia and China. Only on such a basis is it possible to arrive at the only correct, anti-imperialist program on this issue – proletarian internationalism and revolutionary defeatism, i.e., the perspective of consistent struggle of the working class independent of and against all imperialist powers. This means that revolutionaries refuse to lend support to any Great Power in inter-imperialist conflicts under the slogan “The main enemy is at home!” (…) Those who fail to recognize the reactionary and imperialist character of these Great Powers will inevitable fail to take a consistent anti-imperialist, i.e. Marxist, line and will end up, consciously or unconsciously, supporting one or the other imperialist camp as a “lesser evil”.” [1]

 

This line is in accordance with the class line as Lenin and the Bolsheviks elaborated it during World War One. In Socialism and War, one of their key pamphlets which they published shortly before the first international conference against the imperialist war in Zimmerwald in September 1915, the Bolshevik leaders emphasized that the working class must oppose it own as well as any other Great Power. [2]

 

„Social-chauvinism is advocacy of the idea of “defence of the fatherland” in the present war. This idea logically leads to the abandonment of the class struggle during the war, to voting for war credits, etc. In fact, the social-chauvinists are pursuing an anti-proletarian bourgeois policy, for they are actually championing, not “defence of the fatherland” in the sense of combating foreign oppression, but the “right” of one or other of the “Great” Powers to plunder colonies and to oppress other nations. The social-chauvinists reiterate the bourgeois deception of the people that the war is being waged to protect the freedom and existence of nations, thereby taking sides with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Among the social-chauvinists are those who justify and varnish the governments and bourgeoisie of one of the belligerent groups of powers, as well as those who, like Kautsky, argue that the socialists of all the belligerent powers are equally entitled to “defend the fatherland”. Social- chauvinism, which is, in effect, defence of the privileges, the advantages, the right to pillage and plunder, of one’s “own” (or any) imperialist bourgeoisie, is the utter betrayal of all socialist convictions and of the decision of the Basle International Socialist Congress.“ ^[3]

 

Such a position must be taken also today. However, as we have elaborated above this is only possible if one is capable of correctly recognizing the class character not only of the old imperialist powers (U.S., EU and Japan) but also of the new emerging ones (China and Russia). Without such recognition, any organization will inevitable slide into the social-chauvinist swamp.

 

 

 

The Struggle against Chauvinism

 

 

 

The struggle against imperialism and militarism is not one which starts only once shots are fired between the Great Powers. It is a combat which is organically related to the total struggle against the ruling class. Hence, as Trotsky once remarked, it requires a thoroughly internationalist, anti-chauvinist political consciousness of the workers vanguard, in the first place, and, eventually, the majority of the proletariat: “The struggle against war is inseparable from the class struggle of the proletariat. Irreconcilable class consciousness is the first condition for a successful struggle against war.” ^[4]

 

The struggle against war is closely related with the political struggle against all forms of ideological chauvinism, hatred against refugees, national oppression of migrants, jingoism against imperialist rivals, etc. In other words, the struggle against imperialism and militarism must be an organic part of the daily political work of any revolutionary organization.

 

In fact we see in the last years a massive surge of chauvinism in all Great Powers. Such chauvinism is first and foremost directed against migrants and national minorities. There has been a huge rise of anti-migrant chauvinism in the U.S., Western Europe and Russia in the past years, resulting both in an increase both of state repression as well as of racist right-wing and fascist forces (mostly directed against the Latinos and Black people in the U.S, Muslim migrants in Western Europe and Russia and, in the case of letter, also against the national minorities in the Caucasus). In China, there are currently only few migrants from abroad because there is a vast supply of “internal migrants” (as we have explained above). However, Beijing is wiping up chauvinism against its national minorities – in particular the Muslim Uyghurs in East Turkestan (or Xinjiang as the province is officially called by the Chinese authorities). [5] Japan, historically the most insulated of all Great Powers with hardly any migrants and with only a very small Korean minority, is traditionally very xenophobic (which will provoke domestic political tensions given the need of the capitalist class to import cheap migrant labor in the coming period. [6])

 

However, Great Power chauvinism is also increasingly directed against imperialist rivals. See for example the Anti-Russia hysteria in the U.S. and the EU – in particular since the events in the Ukraine in 2014 and even more so since the US Presidential elections in 2016 and the poison attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the UK's intelligence services. [7] Likewise we see an increasingly aggressive campaign in the old imperialist states against China. Accusing it of striving to control modern technologies and to spy on the Western communication systems. [8] Vice versa the Russian state takes actions against various NGO’s under the pretext that they act as “foreign agents”. The chauvinist campaigns both in China and Japan around the conflict about the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea [9] or the chauvinist campaigns against the backdrop of looming Global Trade War are other examples.

 

Lenin emphasized that the reformists and centrists usually grossly underestimate the difficulties of fighting against imperialist war. They imagine that once a war starts, they will organize strikes or other mass actions in order to stop it. Lenin explained, in his notes for the communist delegation at an international congress organized by reformist trade unions in The Hague in late 1922, that this is a total illusion.

 

“On the question of combating the danger of war, in connection with the Conference at The Hague, I think that the greatest difficulty lies in overcoming the prejudice that this is a simple, clear and comparatively easy question. “We shall retaliate to war by a strike or a revolution”— that is what all the prominent reformist leaders usually say to the working class. And very often the seeming radicalness of the measures proposed satisfies and appeases the workers, co-operators and peasants. Perhaps the most correct method would be to start with the sharpest refutation of this opinion; to declare that particularly now, after the recent war, only the most foolish or utterly dishonest people can assert that such an answer to the question of combating war is of any use; to declare that it is impossible to “retaliate” to war by a strike, just as it is impossible to “retaliate” to war by revolution in the simple and literal sense of these terms. We must explain the real situation to the people, show them that war is hatched in the greatest secrecy, and that the ordinary workers’ organisations, even if they call themselves revolutionary organisations, are utterly helpless in face of a really impending war. (...) We must take special pains to explain that the question of “defence of the fatherland” will inevitably arise, and that the overwhelming majority of the working people will inevitably decide it in favour of their bourgeoisie.” [10]

 

One of the consequences of this assessment, in addition to prepare the revolutionary party and its cadres to work under illegal conditions, i.e. for underground work, is the necessity of the political preparation of the workers vanguard and the working class as a whole. Such a political preparation requires a thoroughly internationalist, anti-chauvinist education of the working class. Revolutionaries must combat any thought that the fatherland would be the fatherland of the workers. They have to explain that the fatherland is “owned” and controlled by a small minority of robber capitalists. These bandits exploit “us and them” – i.e. the native workers, the migrant workers and workers abroad. This is why workers in the imperialist countries must not defend the fatherland of the bosses. Only if the workers expropriate and expel the exploiters, only if they take power, only then does the fatherland become “their” fatherland, only then it becomes legitimate, indeed necessary, to defend the fatherland. This line, this spirit, must be a constant common thread in the propaganda and agitation of revolutionaries in imperialist countries!

 

We note, in passing, that the Marxists’ opposition against the empty threat of anarchists as well as opportunists to “retaliate to war by a strike or a revolution” has been distorted by various centrists in order to justify their opposition against organizing any strike activities against imperialist wars. However as a matter of fact, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were only opposed to the following specific idea: namely to threaten organizing a general strike only once a major imperialist war has started. They did so correctly because in such a situation, at the beginning of a major war with all the huge mobilizations of the bourgeois public opinion and state repression, it would be too late to organize such a general strike. However, Marxists were not at all opposed to organize strikes and general strikes against militarism and war-mongering, i.e. before such a major inter-imperialist war would start (or also later during such a major war as it was the case in Russia, Germany and Austria in 1916-18 or in Italy in spring 1943).

 

During the period when the Communist International was following a revolutionary path, it codified such an approach in its most important programmatic statement on the issue of the imperialist war (which we already mentioned above). Among the crucial means in the struggle against war the Comintern advocated: “Strengthening the revolutionary will of the broadest masses to fight against the outbreak of imperialist war by street demonstrations, general strikes, armed uprisings.” [11]

 

In this spirit, for example, did the Soviet trade union delegation at the international anti war congress in The Hague in December 1922 propose to organize an international anti-militarist campaign including an international 24-hour protest general strike. [12]

 

Lenin explained, in discussing the duty of Marxists in imperialist countries, that it is obligatory to unconditionally support the right of self-determination of oppressed nation. He emphasized that the importance of this is not only because of the legitimate nature of the liberation struggle of the oppressed nations but also because of the necessity to educate the native working class of the Great Powers in the spirit of internationalism, of anti-chauvinism.

 

„The important thing is not whether one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of the small nations are liberated before the socialist revolution, but the fact that in the epoch of imperialism, owing to objective causes, the proletariat has been split into two international camps, one of which has been corrupted by the crumbs that fall from the table of the dominant-nation bourgeoisie—obtained, among other things, from the double or triple exploitation of small nations—while the other cannot liberate itself without liberating the small nations, without educating the masses in an anti-chauvinist, i.e., anti-annexationist, i.e., “selfdeterminationist”, spirit.“ [13]

 

The same idea was defended by Trotsky as he explained in his famous theses War and the Fourth International, published in 1934: “A “socialist” who preaches national defence is a petty-bourgeois reactionary at the service of decaying capitalism. Not to bind itself to the national state in time of war, to follow not the war map but the map of the class struggle, is possible only for that party that has already declared irreconcilable war on the national state in time of peace. Only by realizing fully the objectively reactionary role of the imperialist state can the proletarian vanguard become invulnerable to all types of social patriotism. This means that a real break with the ideology and policy of “national defence” is possible only from the standpoint of the international proletarian revolution.” ^[14]

 

In fact, one can generalize this important thought of the leaders of the socialist October Revolution. Revolutionaries are obligated to utilize all issues related to the defense of the imperialist fatherland – from colonial wars, financial plunder of semi-colonial countries, closing the border for refugees, discrimination of migrants, “anti-terror laws”, Islamophobia, trade wars, patriotism against imperialist rivals, etc. – in order to educate the popular masses in the spirit of anti-chauvinism, of proletarian internationalism, of international working class solidarity.

 

Furthermore, the issue of consistent struggling against all forms of chauvinism, of anti-imperialism in words and deeds, is also a decisive criterion to evaluate the true political nature of organizations of the workers movement. Revolutionaries have to judge them – are they honest fighters against the imperialist ruling class, are they vacillating opportunists or are they social-imperialist lackeys of the bourgeoisie – by examining their positions on all these issues of domestic and foreign policy of imperialism.

 

Trotsky emphasized, in the same theses quoted above, the importance of such a test for any socialist organization: “At the same time, it is necessary to follow attentively the inner struggle in the reformist camp and attract in time the left socialist groupings developing towards revolution to a struggle against war. The best criterion of the tendencies of a given organization is its attitude in practice, in action, toward national defence and toward colonies, especially in those cases in which the bourgeoisie of a given country owns colonial slaves. Only a complete and real break with official public opinion on the most burning question of the “defence of the fatherland” signifies a turn, or at least the beginning of a turn from bourgeois positions to proletarian positions. The approach to left organizations of this type should be accompanied by friendly criticism of all indecision in their policy and by a joint elaboration of all theoretical and practical questions of war.” ^[15]

 

 

 

Changes in Conditions and its Consequences

 

 

 

Such a constant political education of the working class and the popular masses is even more important today for the following reasons. First, the ruling class has increased their already enormous possibilities to manipulate the working class and the popular masses. As a by-product of the development of productive forces, the volume of media and its every-day presence has also enormously increased – particularly in the imperialist countries. The expansion of TV and internet, its presence not only at home and work but also in public transport and shopping malls, the social media, the wide-spread use of smart phones, etc., all this gives the bourgeoisie the opportunity to expose the people with a permanent stream of ideological manipulation around the clock. 100 years ago, the working people were exposed to the slaveholder propaganda once a week when they visited the church or the mosque where the priest or the imam lectured the people on issues as instructed by the religious or state authorities. Today, the working people and youth are exposed to the finely woven ideological manipulations of the ruling class 24 hours every day and seven days a week. Now, it is not so much the priest or the imam but myriads of anonymous media stars, “influencers”, “experts” plus, of course, the official politicians and their lackeys who are carrying out the ideological treatment of the people.

 

There are numerous examples which demonstrate how the ruling class and reactionary forces are able to utilize the social media in order to manipulate the popular masses. The spread of “fake news” about “criminal refugees” by reactionary racist forces in Europe, the demagogic campaigns by the right-wing Bolsonaro campaign during the Presidential elections in Brazil, or by the Assadistas and Putinistas against the Syrian Revolution, are just a few examples.

 

Lenin already drew attention to the fact that the popular masses are facing a massive web of institutions, ideologies, traditions, etc. which makes it impossible for them to spontaneously see through all of this and to recognize their class position and the corresponding tasks. Such recognition by the masses necessitates the aid of the organized Marxists.

 

“The petty-bourgeois democrats, their chief present-day representatives, the “socialists” and “Social-Democrats”, are suffering from illusions when they imagine that the working people are capable, under capitalism, of acquiring the high degree of class-consciousness, firmness of character, perception and wide political outlook that will enable them to decide, merely by voting, or at all events, to decide in advance, without long experience of struggle, that they will follow a particular class, or a particular party. It is a mere illusion. It is a sentimental story invented by pedants and sentimental socialists of the Kautsky, Longuet and MacDonald type. Capitalism would not be capitalism if it did not, on the one hand, condemn the masses to a downtrodden, crushed and terrified state of existence, to disunity (the countryside!) and ignorance, and if it (capitalism) did not, on the other hand, place in the hands of the bourgeoisie a gigantic apparatus of falsehood and deception to hoodwink the masses of workers and peasants, to stultify their minds, and so forth.“ [16]

 

Of course, as Marxists we always recognize the inner contradictions of all phenomena. The expanded presence of internet and social media can not only be used by the ruling class but also by the working class and the oppressed. And, as we can see from numerous protests (most recently the Yellow Vests protests in France [17]), these media have been indeed used effectively to organize demonstrations and counter-mobilizations on short notice.

 

However, contrary to the petty-bourgeois ideologists who imagine that the “internet is free”, in the real world the means of production as well as the means of communication are usually owned and controlled by the ruling class. China’s strict state control of its internet, the rising number of censorships on Facebook, Twitter, etc. – all this reflects that the idea the internet and the social media would exist in a vacuum outside of capitalist control is a sheer illusion.

 

This does not mean that socialist activists should not make use as much as possible of the internet and social media. First, making such use without censorship is still possible in many countries. Second, even if these media are censored, it will be necessary to utilize them in a similar way as revolutionaries make use of limited legal possibilities in a semi-dictatorship (like, for example, the Bolsheviks did in Tsarist Russia after 1905 by publishing legal papers like the Pravda or by utilizing the State Duma as a tribune for revolutionary propaganda). Thirdly, revolutionary organizations have to make use of technically skilled activists who can circumvent the capitalist control of the media and utilize them in an illegal way (i.e. a 21^st century version of illegal paper printing by revolutionaries in countries ruled by a dictatorship – like the Bolsheviks did when they produced Sotsial-Democrat or Proletary or the French Trotskyists during World War II when they produced La Vérité with the help of an underground printing shop). [18]

 

A further reason for the increasing importance of constant political education of the working class and the popular masses lies in the changing nature of warfare. The development of the productive forces has also resulted in the massive modernization of military technologies. This is not the place to discuss this important issue in detail. Sufficient to say that air planes, satellites, drones, the internet, etc. play an increasingly dominant role in military warfare.

 

On one hand, this makes the military less dependent on soldiers (and, hence, on the potential risk of the collapse of their patriotic moral). On the other hand, this development makes the military much more dependent on the industry and the people producing the necessary segments for the military hardware, i.e. the working class. From this follows, once more, that the struggle against imperialism and militarism must not be limited to the army itself but rather starts already in the factory.

 

Victor Serge, a revolutionary militant and Trotskyist cadre (one of the very few who could escape Stalin’s Gulag in 1935), already drew attention to this development in a thoughtful article published in 1926: “The very technique of war makes it increasingly difficult to sustain the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. In the last war there was – I believe – behind each gunner in the trench, five soldiers or workers absorbed by industrial work and the organisation of massacre. The number of workers behind the combatants will undoubtedly grow with the further mechanisation of slaughter. War is waged now in the factory, more than on the battle field. One is the prolongation of the other. It is the factory which determines the value of the soldiers and the talent of the officers that are at its service. From this fact, it follows that the industrial centers are more than fortresses, the vulnerable points of a country, they are the very places where each side will seek to land its mortal blow. A good industrial mobilisation is the underlying condition of military operation. Corollary: the war will start with the mobilisation of the whole nation. Indeed the life of the entire proletariat will be threatened because the development of aviation and of chemical weapons makes it possible for the enemy to achieve its goal, the destruction of the industrial centers. (...) In future wars, the mobilisation of the rear will have as much importance as that of the troops themselves. All is fixed. With each factory, each workshop has its task; each man his function. Not a machine is omitted from the inventories. In the preparation of the machine, it goes without saying, the apparatus of coercion will strike the first blow.” [19]

 

Today, nearly a century later, this observation is hundred times more relevant. The imperialist war machinery depends on metal production as well as computer, on tanks, air craft (including all the individual components) as well as on the internet. The struggle against imperialism and militarism can be and must be conducted in every workplace, in the internet, etc.!

 

 

 

The Moral Crisis in the Western Imperialist Countries

 

 

 

Finally, we have repeatedly drawn attention to the important development of declining support of the popular masses in the imperialist countries for military adventures abroad. The decay of imperialism is reflected, among others, in the fact that the capitalist state is no longer able to manipulate the masses to such a degree that they totally identify themselves with the goals of the ruling class and are ready to make sacrifices in a war.

 

This has led to the situation that the imperialists are determined to limit the causalities among their armies as much as possible. This is proven by the fact that the US was forced to withdraw the bulk of its troops from Afghanistan and Iraq despite the fact that their losses were much less than during the Vietnam War or the Korean War 1950-53. According to official figures of the Pentagon, the U.S. military lost 4,423 troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2010 and 2,216 troops in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. [20] True, these are the official figures and it is quite possible that the underestimate the real numbers. But we can take it for granted that the deviations won’t be that big since various documents about the causalities in the Iraq War have been published by Wikileaks and they do not indicate a different number.

 

Another example is Russia. Already in the first war in Chechnya in 1994-96 one could observe the low morale of the Russian soldiers. This resulted in the situation that the Chechen guerrillas were able to defeat the Russian army despite the fact that the later was about ten times as strong in numbers (about 70,000 soldiers) than the Chechen side. [21] Even today the Putin regime, which is in a much stronger position than its predecessor Yeltsin was in the 1990s, is cautious to avoid too many causalities in its military intervention in Syria. As a result, Moscow outsources many military tasks to mercenaries like the Private Military Contractors Wagner Group. [22]

 

Even the colonial settler state Israel faces a moral crisis. It lost its war in Lebanon against Hezbollah in summer 2006 despite the fact that only 122 Israeli soldiers were killed (out of 30,000 soldiers deployed). Or compare the result of the latest Gaza War in 2014 when Israel failed to defeat Hamas despite the fact only 73 Israelis (67 of them soldiers) died while more than 2,300 Palestinians (most of them civilians) were killed!

 

These developments reflect the fact that the working class in the imperialist countries does not identify their state with any great idea and, hence, they are not prepared to make sacrifices for it. Victor Serge, in the article mentioned above, already pointed out: “You cannot lead the masses to commit murder without justifying it by great ideas.” [23]

 

This is evidently different to the oppressed people fighting against the imperialist and tyrannical aggressors. They struggle against occupation and dictatorship and are prepared to make many sacrifices for this goal. There is a famous saying among so-called Islamist Jihadis: “We love death as you love life!” Indeed, how many people in the imperialist states are prepared to give their life for “their” country?! Compare this with the incredible heroism of the people fighting for freedom in Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, etc.!

 

One might object that this would be a religious issue and that only Muslim people would be prepared to make such sacrifices. But this is not true. There are also numerous examples of non-Muslim people who were ready to make huge sacrifices in their struggle for liberation. Take for example the Russian workers and peasants who successfully defended their revolutionary fatherland against the reactionary White Armies and the foreign imperialist invaders in the civil war 1918-21. Likewise, the Soviet army and the Partisans in Eastern Europe and the Balkans heroically fought against the Nazi occupants in 1941-45. The same could be observed in Vietnam against the US invaders in 1965-75 in which about one million Vietnamese were killed! Or take the Tamil people in Sri Lanka who defended their homeland successfully for a quarter of a century against a numerically superior enemy until they suffered a bloody defeat in 2009. (The “Tamil Tigers” had a special wing for suicide operations against the Sri Lankan army, the so-called “Black Tigers”.)

 

In summary, the decadent, imperialist societies which are robber states can absorb much less blows than the oppressed people who fight for a just cause! Revolutionaries in imperialist states can utilize this for aiding the struggle of the oppressed by further undermining the chauvinist “moral” among the people and by advocating internationalist solidarity.

 

Naturally, this task is part of a broader goal – the political education of the working class in the spirit of international solidarity, in the spirit of anti-chauvinism and rupture with any Great Power. This is the true meaning of the famous words from Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto – “The workers have no fatherland". It is in this spirit that socialists resolutely oppose all forms of imperialist chauvinism which is wiping up hatred of one people against the other. Such jingoism is aimed at poisoning the consciousness of the working people. Hence, they must launch a determined campaign against any form of political or ideological support for any Great Power – be it their own imperialist bourgeoisie or a foreign one. Hence, socialists must explain the need for the workers to break with every form of political and ideological identification with the imperialist national state.