In this exclusive interview, Joti Brar tackles some of the most pressing debates facing the global Left today.______________________________________________S...
The October revolution happened exactly because Lenin was against the WWI “During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.” He saw the opportunity it created for social change and took it. The first thing the soviets did when they came to power was leaving the war
This absolutely doesn’t mean that WWI was a revolutionary war or an anti-imperialist war
Your problem is that you are attempting to blindly copy-paste the conclusions of an analysis which was written for a specific geopolitical situation over a hundred years ago. This doesn’t work. It’s lazy and it’s bad dialectical materialism. The conditions today are vastly different. You cannot have a correct analysis unless you first understand the reality that you are currently faced with. We are not living in the 1910s.
This is why i told you to go read this as it features an updated analysis of present day forms of imperialism and global capitalism, and of the overall economic and political situation, which differ significantly from those of Lenin’s time.
Did the defeat of Syria in the imperialist dirty war that was waged against them for over ten years bring proletarian revolution in Syria closer or is it not farther away than ever? What about Iraq? What about Libya? What about Yugoslavia? Can you name one example since WWII where a country losing a conflict against US imperialism and/or forces aligned with US imperialism made it more likely that they would have a socialist revolution?
You need to understand that, under the current configuration of the global capitalist-imperialist system, a defeat of Russia would only lead to its renewed neo-colonization, total plunder by Western corporations on a scale similar to what happened in the 1990s, and likely balkanization (which would mean decades of violent separatist conflicts involving Russia’s many ethnic minorities; imagine the 90s Chechen wars times ten).
The grip of imperialism over not just Russia but over the entire the world would not be weakened, it would in fact be strengthened. Global capitalism, now in deep crisis, would see yet another lifeline extended to it, as it did in 1991, by the opening up and plunder of the vast resources of the USSR and the socialist bloc. This would not create conditions for proletarian revolutions in the way that defeat in WWI did, it would do the opposite.
The conditions for launching a socialist revolution in the wake of a defeat in the NATO proxy war simply don’t exist in today’s Russia, let alone for defending any attempted revolution against imperialist intervention if the Russian state falls. There is too little revolutionary working class organization and too many reactionaries and willing would-be compradors ready to sell out to the West and govern on their behalf as colonial administrators in exchange for wealth, privileges and their own fiefdom.
A defeat therefore would entrench the forces of reaction, imperialism and neo-colonialism in Russia and beyond. And it would also critically endanger all remaining socialist states’ existence, in particular China which relies on Russia to protect its northern flank from imperialist encirclement and to complement its manufacturing focused economy with Russia’s raw material strengths.
If China were to be completely encircled and socialism in China defeated, the remaining AES states would be easily isolated and fall in quick succession. This would set worldwide socialism back by a century or more. We would be back to 19th century conditions where the entire world is dominated by imperialism and socialism is just a distant dream.
“During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.”
Yes. Which is why those of us who live in the West desire the defeat of NATO and its fascist Ukrainian proxy in the reactionary proxy war that they launched against Russia.
The first thing the soviets did when they came to power was leaving the war
Yes they did and they were right to do so. On the other hand, the Chinese communists didn’t do that with the war against Japan, even though the Chinese government at the time was a bourgeois nationalist and violently anti-communist one. The Chinese communists temporarily allied with the bourgeois government against the greater threat, which is also what a majority of Russian communists have done with regards to the Ukraine war.
In fact the communists were the ones who were advocating the longest and the loudest for the Russian government to intervene more forcefully all throughout the 2014-2022 Donbass conflict. Why? Because they recognized the real nature of the Ukraine regime and its purpose as a weapon of Western imperialism against Russia and against the people of the Donbass.
Mofo is speaking as if the October Revolution didn’t occur in the context of imperial capitalist infighting, WW1.
The October revolution happened exactly because Lenin was against the WWI “During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.” He saw the opportunity it created for social change and took it. The first thing the soviets did when they came to power was leaving the war
This absolutely doesn’t mean that WWI was a revolutionary war or an anti-imperialist war
Your problem is that you are attempting to blindly copy-paste the conclusions of an analysis which was written for a specific geopolitical situation over a hundred years ago. This doesn’t work. It’s lazy and it’s bad dialectical materialism. The conditions today are vastly different. You cannot have a correct analysis unless you first understand the reality that you are currently faced with. We are not living in the 1910s.
This is why i told you to go read this as it features an updated analysis of present day forms of imperialism and global capitalism, and of the overall economic and political situation, which differ significantly from those of Lenin’s time.
Did the defeat of Syria in the imperialist dirty war that was waged against them for over ten years bring proletarian revolution in Syria closer or is it not farther away than ever? What about Iraq? What about Libya? What about Yugoslavia? Can you name one example since WWII where a country losing a conflict against US imperialism and/or forces aligned with US imperialism made it more likely that they would have a socialist revolution?
You need to understand that, under the current configuration of the global capitalist-imperialist system, a defeat of Russia would only lead to its renewed neo-colonization, total plunder by Western corporations on a scale similar to what happened in the 1990s, and likely balkanization (which would mean decades of violent separatist conflicts involving Russia’s many ethnic minorities; imagine the 90s Chechen wars times ten).
The grip of imperialism over not just Russia but over the entire the world would not be weakened, it would in fact be strengthened. Global capitalism, now in deep crisis, would see yet another lifeline extended to it, as it did in 1991, by the opening up and plunder of the vast resources of the USSR and the socialist bloc. This would not create conditions for proletarian revolutions in the way that defeat in WWI did, it would do the opposite.
The conditions for launching a socialist revolution in the wake of a defeat in the NATO proxy war simply don’t exist in today’s Russia, let alone for defending any attempted revolution against imperialist intervention if the Russian state falls. There is too little revolutionary working class organization and too many reactionaries and willing would-be compradors ready to sell out to the West and govern on their behalf as colonial administrators in exchange for wealth, privileges and their own fiefdom.
A defeat therefore would entrench the forces of reaction, imperialism and neo-colonialism in Russia and beyond. And it would also critically endanger all remaining socialist states’ existence, in particular China which relies on Russia to protect its northern flank from imperialist encirclement and to complement its manufacturing focused economy with Russia’s raw material strengths.
If China were to be completely encircled and socialism in China defeated, the remaining AES states would be easily isolated and fall in quick succession. This would set worldwide socialism back by a century or more. We would be back to 19th century conditions where the entire world is dominated by imperialism and socialism is just a distant dream.
Yes. Which is why those of us who live in the West desire the defeat of NATO and its fascist Ukrainian proxy in the reactionary proxy war that they launched against Russia.
Yes they did and they were right to do so. On the other hand, the Chinese communists didn’t do that with the war against Japan, even though the Chinese government at the time was a bourgeois nationalist and violently anti-communist one. The Chinese communists temporarily allied with the bourgeois government against the greater threat, which is also what a majority of Russian communists have done with regards to the Ukraine war.
In fact the communists were the ones who were advocating the longest and the loudest for the Russian government to intervene more forcefully all throughout the 2014-2022 Donbass conflict. Why? Because they recognized the real nature of the Ukraine regime and its purpose as a weapon of Western imperialism against Russia and against the people of the Donbass.