Many international comrades flew into Prague for this anti-war congress, mainly because we represent a minority amongst the left in our own countries and wanted to come together to discuss how we see the unfolding drive to global war. On the whole, we come from a range of tendencies, from left communist to orthodox marxist to anarchist, but subscribe - to varying degrees - to a ‘revolutionary defeatist’ tendency that is critical of ‘campism’ - where much of the left falls into, what we see, as the trap to support one bourgeois (state) faction over another.
History has shown us time and time again that the numbers of working class people that end up dead for one side to win, just to then get fucked over by the nation state they were defending does not seem worth it (see India post-independence, South Africa post-apartheid…)
This is called ‘ideological’ and unrealistic by our critics when the realities of war take hold. As revolutionaries of varying tendencies, we are all ‘ideological.’ We desire a certain outcome (revolution) for a certain aim (to overthrow capitalism). This is pretty ‘unrealistic’ in most situations…until it isn’t. Until then, we adhere to our principles for working class revolution as best we can, while also trying to engage with what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine, while admitting that that is extremely difficult. Propaganda is everywhere, repression inside Ukraine is strong, and reliable, impartial information is hard to come by.
Is sticking to certain principles when times get tough worthy of such anger and contempt? We don’t think so. Is it easier to stick to these principles when we are not living inside Ukraine? Probably. But does that mean we should throw our principles out of the window? Or be told that we are not “allowed’ to express those principles when the time warrants it because we are ‘from the west?’ We are internationalists, so to say some comrades are allowed to have an opinion and others not based on their geographical location seems absurd to us. And it’s worth mentioning that in a country the size of Ukraine, it would be pretty weird to suggest that the criticism of the war from a non-campist perspective such as ours is totally absent. Groups such as the Workers’ Front of Ukraine (RFU) share similar criticisms of the war. Yes, they may be a minority, but since when do anarchists care about that?! But, despite our principled stand, we still think we have a duty to try and understand what is happening on the ground, to not ‘condemn’ or ‘preach’ to anyone what they should be doing, to try and relate to working class realities, in all their messy contradictions…
Ultimately, we don’t want to see masses of people being killed in war, unless there are clear revolutionary potentials. At the beginning of the Ukraine war, some comrades did indeed think this potential was there, and they supported anarchists choosing to fight in Territorial Defence Units with the hope of accessing some autonomy and weapons. Over the last two years, this has proven to be impossible. All armies in Ukraine have been fully integrated into the state machinery. Of course, an ongoing analysis of the war is needed to see how the objective conditions are changing and whether this is giving rise to any ‘revolutionary potentials’. At the moment, we see none, but would be happy to receive any intelligence to the contrary!
We fear though, that these potentials do not exist within the participation in the war, and so why would we be actively supporting the continuation of the war, when it will just mean even more deaths and no realistic chance of ‘success’ on the horizon? We ask ourselves what would be a success in this war? If the goal of the Ukrainian army is to push the frontline to the borders of 1991, and then defend such borders for years from the counter attacks of the Russian army, it's not unlikely that there could be hundreds of thousands more deaths. Especially as this scenario could mean that there are long deadly battles in cities like Donetsk or Sevastopol (where Russia’s fleet is), fighting building by building. The occupation might be defeated, but at what cost?
Not supporting the continuation of this war does not make us ‘neutral’ and it definitely does not make us ‘indifferent’. We care deeply about working class lives and we think that by providing uncritical support to continued militarisation, the global warmongers, including Russia, will be the only winners.
We care that the wars around the planet might escalate towards a larger European or Asian war or even a Third World War, and that one day our homes, families and neighbourhoods could be under the bombs too. Macron has already said a few times that (more) European troops should be sent to Ukraine. We cannot see how a direct war between Russia and NATO would help to protect lives, in Ukraine or elsewhere. The idea that we can achieve security by having strong armies is a risky one for working class people. When armies grow, it is usually because they will be used in war, and the military complex lobby will want new wars to justify the continuous increase of military budgets (and decrease of social expenditure). The Cold War deterrence between superpowers meant that there was no direct war between the US and the USSR, but their large armies were still part of wars that killed millions of workers (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc.). Even worse, there were moments where nuclear war was a real possibility, and it seems like this threat is also growing nowadays.
Our critics say that we are only concerned with economic exploitation as a legitimate basis for armed struggle and that fighting to preserve cultural autonomy is just as valid a reason. We are not in the business of telling working class people what to do - but we do have the right to fight against the decisions of our own governments to funnel more money into the arms industry rather than education and healthcare. And we do think we have a duty to present alternative perspectives of their role in a war which is, whether they choose to believe it or not, much bigger than them and their fight for ‘cultural identity’. To be honest, you may have a point that many of us don’t take this term on face value. Many of us do not understand the impulse to die for the chance to be able to speak ‘our’ language, nor do we have many customs or rituals that really define who we are. If some people in the east of Ukraine do, fine, but we are suspicious of the idea that ‘assimilation’ threat itself is a strong enough reason to drag us all closer to a third world war. And what does ‘preserving autonomy’ mean anyway in a context where free speech and the right of free association are banned? Where strikes are outlawed, there is forced conscription, attacks on demos and protests, a dependence on foreign aid and military supplies, complete dependence on the military leadership, and, in future, a dependence on western reconstruction? What does ‘autonomy’ mean for the at least 70,000 people who have already died (according to the New York Times in August 2023) on the Ukrainian side?
Critics may say there is no alternative but to fight under these conditions in the current moment. But we still think it’s important to fight for 'autonomy' on working class terms, rather than capitalist neoliberal ones: 'Solidarnosc' managed to run a whole organisational network through cells, underground papers, meetings etc. during a dictatorship; so did workers' organisations during dictatorships in South Korea, Brazil etc. They managed to defeat the dictatorship eventually, without a similar level of destruction and class collaboration… If a significant part of the left isn’t talking about an end to war, it leaves the terrain to the right wing, which is doing a pretty good job of tapping into a large segment of working class sentiment across Europe.
We are also suspicious of the claim that Russia wants to ‘exterminate’ Ukrainians, with its connotation of genocide as a strategic aim. We do see this mainly as an imperialist land grab, and as such, not worth risking one’s life for. Part of this authoritarian capitalist expansion exercise by Russia probably would involve clamping down on cultural identity, but historically, there are many examples where this can be preserved in other ways, whether by underground means, or new struggles on a non-warring terrain.
Yes, we see your point that repression in Russia is probably much worse than in Ukraine. However, we don't see how keeping a war ongoing for years, maybe even lasting a decade, is going to decrease the levels of repression anywhere, neither in Russia or Ukraine. Both countries will need to send more and more conscripts to the front, and to achieve that, their respective police states will need to grow even more. These buffed-up police states will increase their repression to any form of worker dissent, which may appear in the form of strikes or protests.
Why does any of this matter anyway? We have no real power to stop this war. Most of us are in tiny organisations, with no mass workers’ base. And yet, when the majority of the left are either completely silent on the ongoing war in Ukraine or demanding more weapons, we think it’s important to represent a pole for people looking for an alternative view. As soldiers in Ukraine continue to desert conscription and the frontline, we want them to see that there are people who are critical of the ‘war effort’, and fully support their right to turn their backs on whatever nationalist ideas are being used to keep people fighting to retain key profit-making resources.
We need to criticise all capitalist states - there are no ‘goodies’, only varying degrees of ‘baddies’. If this makes us ‘anarcho-putinists’, we really do despair.
From,
A few of us who attended the Anti-War Congress in Prague in May.
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