“ A class cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group with common problems, interests and prospects”
– Harry Braverman
The Ukraine topic has divided the British left for over a year now. If anyone subscribes to the mainstream media, they will have you believe that Ukraine is a liberal paradise which belongs in the EU, Ukrainian President Zelensky is an angel, and Russian President Putin is the devil incarnate, alongside anyone who sounds even slightly Russian. However, if you subscribe to alternative sources, then a completely different story is told, one that does not show Zelensky in quite so saintly a light.
Our objective at the Class Consciousness Project is to create class awareness within the workers of Britain, with our ‘bread and butter’ being the struggles of our class compatriots.
Class awareness does not begin or end at home. To understand the pernicious nature of the state, the West and capitalism we need to understand how it acts internationally. Living in an imperialist country like Britain means we can, and often do, fall into the trap of believing the world is shaped in our image. In reality it’s being shaped by the imperialists’ exhausting drive for dominance. Ukraine is no exception to this, but the current conflict has been created to further western hegemony.
At this point, it is pertinent that we put forward our position on the Ukrainian conflict.
To begin with, we are utterly opposed to western imperialism, the globalisation of western capitalism and with that we stand against the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the existence of Nato as an organisation.
Europe had always been a continent in conflict, not only in terms of exporting violence in the name of colonialism, but wars amongst countries in continental Europe itself and struggles for dominance in the region. With the growth of global capitalism these wars had become too costly for the burgeoning corporate world exuding from the United States. This prompted the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to empower the defeated German state to lead the way in the creation of Nato and the precursor to the European Union, the European Coal and Steel Community, which was founded in 1951.
This was swiftly followed by the Treaty of Rome and the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957. The North Atlantic Treaty, which formed Nato, was signed in 1949 and since has grown alongside the EEC and modern EU to become its de facto military arm. Germany was rebuilt by the victorious imperialist nations after World War II to construct a new capitalist Europe under the yoke of the US empire. In the immortal words of Nato’s first General Secretary, Lord Lional Ismay, the treated was signed to:
“Keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans down.”
Nato’s stated founding principle, to act as a defensive organisation to bring peace to the capitalist countries and halt the rise of Communism in the east of Europe, has been repeatedly proven to be a lie, with its attacks on Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia and, most recently, its creation of the proxy war in Ukraine on behalf of the US Empire.
Since the advent of the North Atlantic Treaty, the Soviet Union has been unfortunately torn asunder, but the Russian Federation has taken its place as enemy number one, being of the few countries that can defy the dominance of the USA.
The Soviet Union held firm as a counterweight to capitalist expansion. The USA fought against eastern Communism with wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the UN-sanctioned Korean war, but with a strong communist bloc in the Soviet Union and China, they were not capable of decimating countries easily, like we have seen in the Middle East over the last 30 years.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a period of looting devastated Russia. The 1990s were an awful period of capitalist destruction, immortalised in the warm words that Margaret Thatcher had for Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev: “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.” Following the fall of Gorbachev came the drunk puppet Boris Yeltsin and Russia no longer wielded the power it once had, leaving the Americans and Nato unchallenged for over two decades. The world was subject to the predations of the west. Invasions, coups d’etat and sanctions subjugated the world and funded the US’s rising dominance. Russia’s decline continued until Vladimir Putin entered the Kremlin, who proceeded to lead the Russian federation into a new period of growth.
During this period, Nato has only strengthened and spread its tentacles eastwards across Europe, from Germany to Turkey. The US Secretary of State James Baker once assured the unbelievably naïve and stupid Gorbachev that Nato would move “Not one inch eastward” of Berlin following German reunification. That pledge has been broken fourteen times since and it is now hotly contested whether this was said at all, but the USA does like to rewrite history.
Fast forward to 2014 and Euromaidan (Or the Maidan Coup) and the humorously named ‘Revolution of Dignity’. There had been growing discontent in the Ukraine with far-right sentiment being rebuilt in the image of the old supporters of Nazism and Stepan Bandera, birthing militia like the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector, both of which have been folded into the main Ukraine army and many arms of the Ukrainian government structure. The aforementioned Stepan Bandera is to this day hailed as a national hero, when in fact he was a Nazi collaborator who organised pogroms in Ukraine against Roma and Slavic people. This rewriting of history has led to Westerners shouting ‘Slava Ukraini’ and buying t-shirts of the Azov Battalion, painfully oblivious to the fascist connections, but then again you scratch a liberal and reveal a fascist.
The Maidan Coup began in response to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to decline to sign an association agreement with the EU, focusing instead on strengthening historic ties with their Russian neighbours. Obviously, this was an affront to western hegemony, and the forces in support of Ukraine’s closer association with the EU went to work. Yanukovych was usurped and ran, in fear of his life, to Russia.
Since then, Ukraine has gone deeper into the mire. It has long held the title of ‘Most Corrupt Country in Europe’ with a definite far-right problem. The mainstream media even produced several documentaries on the issue, all of which have been swiftly swept under the carpet since the conflict began.
The outlawing of the Russian language and the removal of Soviet history from the country began to stir up unrest in the east of the country, where the majority of people are ethnic Russians. A civil war began, with Donetsk and Lugansk attempting to free themselves from the yoke of Ukrainian fascism. From 2014 to the present day, there have been many atrocities, including the fire in the trade union hall in Odessa which saw the murder of workers who were against Ukraine creating closer ties with the EU and keeping their Russian Ukrainian heritage. We have cited on this atrocity previously when trade union PCS passed a motion in support of Ukraine.
The proxy war currently being fought on Ukrainian soil is not a winnable conflict. The USA are beginning to understand this but are still willing to fight till the last Ukrainian. Russia entered the country after years of trying to avoid conflict, with two failed Minsk agreements. The civil war on Russia’s border and the threat (false or not) of Ukraine joining Nato left them with no choice but to defend their border and in turn defend the new republics created in the east of Ukraine, who have voted to join the Russian federation.
Russia’s actions are not that of an imperialist nation. It does not seek to asset strip Ukraine, as you have seen happen to many who have fallen foul of the Nato, it is acting in the interests of its own country and those that wish to join it.
The Ukrainian regime under the comedic puppet Zelensky acts entirely fascistic. They have outlawed and imprisoned opposing parties, appropriated all news facilities and arrested any journalist that dares to challenge the narrative. Videos have found their way onto social media of locals fighting against forced conscription and being beaten in the streets for doing so.
What was once called the breadbasket of Europe is now becoming a failed state and they are pushing extermination of its young men by conscripting them to fight in an unwinnable conflict. European countries and the USA are sending them billions of dollars so they can buy arms they either can’t use or don’t even stay in the country long enough. Because they are being sold on the black market. The Ukrainian money pit that is stained with the blood of the working class that are fighting a war for capitalist profit.
This conflict, and all that has led up to it, has all been in the name of empire building on the backs of the worker. There is no just cause for the Ukrainians to fight against their own people or their Russian brothers and sisters. Before 1991, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union and the two states are intrinsically linked by history. Nato’s drive for war has never been to save Iraqis from Saddam, to remove the Taliban and Bin Laden from Afghanistan or to free the people of Libya from an “evil regime” under the late great Muammar Gaddafi. It is not attempting to help Ukraine, but profit from it.
This is entirely anti-worker and we stand with the working class in Ukraine who are forced to live under such authoritarian regime. We support the battle against the far-right Nazism that has infested Ukraine once again and are whole heartedly against the US empire, its Nato vassals and the destruction they have waged across the world in the name of ‘defending capitalism’.
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