Trump’s Hegseth Caper and the Delusion of ‘Peace Through Strength’

by David Stockman Posted onNovember  15, 2024

Well, you can say this much about the Donald’s off-the-wall pick of Fox’s weekend news commentator, Pete Hegseth, for Secretary of Defense: At least it wasn’t a hard-core neocon like House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) or the horrid Senator Tom Cotten of Arkansas. Better a cheerleader for patriotism and valorization of the military than war-mongering interventionists like those three blemishes on the Republican brand.

Well, maybe. Yet what this insensible pick also shows, if any more proof is needed, is that Donald Trump is a clueless, lightweight political demagogue who has no intention of bringing the Empire Home. Nor does he have the remotest chance of making the American economy great again. That’s because if you don’t dismantle the war machine and slash the hideously bloated national security budget by upwards of $500 billion per year, the already debt-saturated US economy is going to be KO’d by an exploding public debt.

For want of doubt, however, here is the Donald’s rationale for selecting a guy to run the $1 trillion/2.9 million employee Pentagon who has never managed anything bigger than a household of three successive wives and the accumulation of seven kids:

“Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy… Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country… With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.

What unmitigated breast-beating rubbish!

For crying out loud, the last thing America needs is another Warrior for the Troops. Instead, what it really needs is a Fearless Slayer of the sacred cows and obese pigs of the military/industrial complex who gorge themselves at the Pentagon’s trough.

Likewise, the pointless, costly Forever Wars stem from too much of the false “strength” of a globe-spanning War Machine that thrives upon inventing enemies, exaggerating threats to national security and provoking conflicts. We are referring, for instance, to the Washington-funded and orchestrated coup in Ukraine during February 2014 that deposed a duly-elected, Russia-friendly President and fostered the hellacious civil war now raging in Ukraine.

The fact is, the very slogan “peace through strength” is a vestigial relic of the Cold War. In today’s world it is utterly irrelevant because subsequent to the Soviet Union’s disappearance into the dustbin of history there remains no rival military superpower which poses a remote threat to the liberty and security of the American homeland. In the year 2024 America doesn’t need “strength” to deter hostile like-sized enemies because, well, there are none.

So today’s $1.4 trillion national security budget – including $70 billion for foreign aid and operations and $380 billion for the deferred cost of the Forever Wars in the form of veterans benefits – is a colossal, unaffordable waste. And it is the preponderant source of the very thing which Washington should be backing down from – namely, the America’s existentially threatening runaway public debt.

That figure was $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took office; $19 trillion by the time the Donald stumbled into the White House; stands at $36 trillion today; will top $60 trillion by the end of the next decade based on current built-in spending and borrowing; would exceed $70 trillion by the same point (2034) under the sweeping tax cuts and spending increases already proposed by the Donald; and will hit $150 trillion by mid-century under the CBO’s latest Rosy Scenario outlook.

Yet the Donald chooses to appoint to the single most crucial fiscal job in the entire Federal government a flag-waving champion of military glory. And one who is also an ill-informed hawk who foolishly thinks America is imperiled by enemies on every side and that we can bomb our way to safety, even in the case of a third-rate power like Iran that poses no military threat to the American homeland whatsoever.

Nevertheless, Hegseth sounded like Curtis LeMay in an interview during the Donald’s last stint in the Oval:

After the Soleimani assassination, Pete Hegseth called on Trump to bomb Iran’s energy production facilities, ports, and nuclear facilities. He said Trump should even bomb mosques, hospitals, and schools if deemed necessary.

More importantly, his top priority seems to be rooting-out DEI and wokish nonsense from the armed forces:

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said, referring to Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. “Any general, any admiral, whatever,” who was involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programs or “woke shit” has “got to go,” Hegseth said.

Well, yes, the current Joint Chiefs of Staff to the last man ought to be fired all right, but for not telling the President and Congress that the demolition derby in Ukraine is pointless, unwinnable and risks the threat of nuclear war, DEI or no.

But you can’t send the equivalent of a Pom-Pom Boy who valorizes destructive military combat like that carried out by Washington in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (sic!) to do a man’s job of draining the vast Swamp on the Pentagon side of the Potomac. You need someone who knows why the whole idea of Washington’s global hegemony is wrong, obsolete and not remotely necessary for securing the safety and liberty of the American homeland.

Stated differently, America First amounts to nothing more than flag-waving and nationalist boasting unless it is predicated on bringing the Empire Home, dismantling the War Machine and drastically slashing the national security budget as part of a comprehensive plan to stem the tsunami of red ink flooding from the banks of the Potomac.

The starting point for that task, of course, is that in the present world order there are no technologically-advanced industrial powers who have either the capability or intention to attack the American homeland. To do that you need a massive land armada, huge air and sealift capacities, a Navy and Air Force many times the size of current US forces and humongous supply lines and logistics capacities that have never been even dreamed of by any other nation on the planet.

You also need an initial GDP of say $50 trillion to sustain what would be the most colossal mobilization of weaponry and materiale in human history. And that’s to say nothing of being ruled by suicidal leaders willing to risk the nuclear destruction of their own countries, allies and economic commerce in order to accomplish, what? Occupy Denver?

The entire idea that there is a post-cold war existential threat to America’s security is just nuts. For one thing, nobody has the GDP or military heft. Russia’s GDP is a scant $2 trillion, not the $50 trillion that would needed for it to put invasionary forces on the New Jersey shores. And its defense budget is $75 billion, which amounts to about four weeks of waste in Washington’s $900 billion monster.

As for China, let us not forget that even its communist rulers sill believe it is the “Middle Kingdom” and therefore already occupies the most important territory on the entire planet. Why would they want to patrol the streets of Cleveland OH or Birmingham AL for dissenters from Chairman Xi’s thought?

More importantly, they ain’t got the GDP heft to even think about landing on the California shores, notwithstanding Wall Street’s endless kowtowing to the China Boom. The fact is, China has accumulated in excess of $50 trillion of debt in barely two decades!

Therefore, it didn’t grow organically in the historic capitalist mode; it printed, borrowed, spent and built like there was no tomorrow. The resulting simulacrum of prosperity would not last a year if its $3.6 trillion global export market – the source of the hard cash that keeps its Ponzi upright – were to crash, which is exactly what would happen if it tried to invade America.

To be sure, its totalitarian leaders are immensely misguided and downright evil from the perspective of their oppressed population. But they are not stupid. They stay in power by keeping the people relatively fat and happy and would never risk bringing down what amounts to an economic house of cards that has not even a vague approximation in human history.

Moreover, the nuclear blackmail card can’t be played by China or Russia, either. Neither has anything close to the First Strike force that would be needed to totally overwhelm America’s triad nuclear deterrent, and thereby avoid a retaliatory annihilation of its own country and people if it attempted to strike first.

After all, the US has 3,700 active nuclear warheads, of which about 1,770 are operational at any point in time. In turn, these are spread under the sea, in hardened silos and among a bomber fleet of 66 B-2 and B-52s – all beyond the detection or reach of any other nuclear power.

For instance, the Ohio class nuclear submarines each have 20 missile tubes, with each missile carrying an average of four-to-five warheads. That’s 90 independently targetable warheads per boat. At any given time 12 of the 14 Ohio class nuclear subs are actively deployed, and spread around the oceans of the planet within a firing range of 4,000 miles.

So at the point of attack that’s 1,080 deep-sea nuclear warheads to identify, locate and neutralize before any would be blackmailer even gets started. Indeed, with respect to the “Where’s Waldo?” aspect of it, the sea-based nuclear force alone is a powerful guarantor of America’s homeland security.

And then there are the roughly 300 nukes aboard the 66 strategic bombers, which also are not sitting on a single airfield Pearl Harbor style waiting to be obliterated, but are constantly rotating in the air and on the move. Likewise, the 400 Minutemen III missiles are spread out in extremely hardened silos deep underground across a broad swath of the upper mid-west, which would also need to be taken out by would be blackmailers.

Needless to say, there is no way, shape or form that America’s nuclear deterrent can be neutralized by a blackmailer. And the best thing is that according to the most recent CBO estimates the nuclear triad will cost only about $75 billion per year to maintain over the next decade, including allowances for periodic weapons upgrades.

The heart of America’s military security thus requires only 7% of today’s massive military budget. Indeed, the key component of the nuclear deterrent – sea-based ballistic missiles – is estimated to cost just $188 billion over the next decade, or 1.9% of the $10 trillion national defense baseline.

In any event, that 7% piece of the Warfare State is actually what dissuades both Moscow and Beijing from attempting nuclear blackmail and therefore invasion by nuclear checkmate. That is to say, America’s security lies in nuclear deterrence – the linch-pin called MAD (mutual assured destruction) that has worked for 70 years. And it worked even at the peak of the cold war when the Soviet Union had 40,000 nuclear warheads and leaders far more unstable than either Cool-Hand Vlad or Xi Jinping.

At the end of the day, it is the triad nuclear deterrent and the relative economic diminutiveness of Russia and China that keep the American homeland secure and safe from hostile foreign encroachment. Indeed, when it comes to the threat of a conventional military invasion the vast Atlantic and Pacific moats are even greater barriers to foreign military assault in the 21st century than they so successfully proved to be in the 19th century.

That’s because today’s advanced surveillance technology and anti-ship missiles would consign an enemy armada to Davy Jones’ Locker nearly as soon as it steamed out of its own territorial waters.

The fact is, in an age when the sky is flush with high tech surveillance assets a massive conventional force armada couldn’t possibly be secretly built, tested and mustered for surprise attack without being noticed in Washington. There can be no repeat of the Japanese strike force steaming across the Pacific toward Pearl Harbor sight unseen.

Indeed, America’s ostensible “enemies” actually have no offensive or invasionary capacity at all. Russia has only one aircraft carrier – a 1980s era vessel which has been in dry-dock for repairs since 2017 and is equipped with neither a phalanx of escort ships nor a suite of attack and fighter aircraft – and at the moment not even an active crew.

Likewise, China has just three aircraft carriers – two of which are refurbished rust buckets purchased from the remnants of the old Soviet Union, and which carriers do not even have modern catapults for launching their strike aircraft.

In short, none of the non-NATO countries will be steaming their tiny 3, 2 and 1 carrier battle groups toward the shores of either California or New Jersey any time soon. An invasionary force that had any chance at all of surviving a US fortress defense of cruise missiles, drones, jet fighters, attack submarines and electronics warfare would need to be 100X larger.

Again, there is no GDP in the world – $2 trillion for Russia, $3.5 trillion for India or $18 trillion for China – that is even remotely close in size to the $50 to $100 trillion GDP that would be needed to support such an invasionary force without capsizing the home economy.

At the same time, the 11 US carrier battle groups, which will cost upwards of $1.2 trillion over the next decade, would have no role in a continental Fortress America defense at all. They would be sitting ducks in the blue waters, and far less effective than aircraft and missile defenses based in the North American interior.

In short, these massively expensive forces have no purpose other than global power projection and the conduct of wars of invasion and occupation abroad. That is, they are military accoutrements of the Global Hegemon not even remotely relevant to a proper Fortress America defense.

Most of the rest of the massive $900 billion defense budget is based on false predicates, fabricated threats and the budget-grabbing prowess of its own marketing (i.e. think tanks) and advocacy (i.e. defense contractors) arms.

For instance, why in the world do we still have NATO 32 years after the Soviet Union perished?

The only real answer is that it is a mechanism to sell arms to its 30-member states. Indeed, Europe had long ago proved it did not really fear that Putin would be marching his armies through the Brandenburg Gates in Berlin. That’s why Germany spent only 1.4% of GDP on defense, and was more than happy to buy cheap-energy via Russian delivered pipeline gas.

Germany’s current quasi-warlike posture vis-a-vis Russia is actually not what it is cracked-up to be by the US pro-war media, either. The truth is, the German Green Party – which is what kept the Scholz social democrat government in power until last week – has gone full retard war-mongering for the most hideous of reasons: To wit, the Greens live to end the era of fossil fuel, and what better way to do it than cut off the cheap oil and gas supplies from Russia on which German’s fossil-fueled economy is based.

Likewise, one thing anyone who has read a smattering of European history knows is that Russians and Poles hate each other and have for a good long stretch of wars and bloody altercations. So Vlad Putin may not be a Russian Gandhi, but he is sure as hell way too smart to attempt to occupy Poland. Ditto France, Germany, the Low Countries, Iberia and the rest.

In short, Washington doesn’t need NATO to protect our allies in Europe because they are not facing any threat that can’t be handled by their own ways and means, preferably of the diplomatic variety. In fact, the whole disaster in Ukraine today is rooted in the War Party’s mindless expansion of NATO in violation of all of Washington’s promises to Gorbachev to not expand an inch to the east in return for the unification of Germany. Yet NATO now includes all of the old Warsaw Pact nations and even attempted to extend its reach to two of the former Soviet Republics (i.e. Georgia and Ukraine).

Can the same thing be said of America’s so-called allies in East Asia?

Why, yes it can. Just as the definitely not sacrosanct borders of Ukraine were drawn by long dead Soviet tyrants (i.e. Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev) that America’s homeland security has no reason to defend, the same is true of Taiwan.

Chiang Kia-Shek lost the Chinese civil war fair and square in 1949, and there was no reason to perpetuate his rag-tag regime when it retreated to the last square miles of Chinese territory – the island province of Taiwan. The latter had been under control of the Chinese Qing Dynasty for 200 years thru 1895, when it was occupied by the Imperial Japan for 50 years, only to be liberated by the Chinese at the end of WWII.

That is to say, once Imperial Japan was expelled the Chinese did not invade or occupy Taiwan–it had been Han for centuries. It is separated from the mainland today only because Washington arbitrarily made it a protectorate and ally when the loser of the civil war set up shop in a small remnant of modern China, thereby establishing an artificial nation that had no bearing whatsoever on America’s homeland security.

In any event, the nascent US War Party of the late 1940s decreed otherwise, generating 70 years of tension with the Beijing regime that accomplished nothing except bolster the case for a big Navy and for US policing of the Pacific region for no good reason of homeland defense.

That is to say, without Washington’s support for the nationalist regime in Taipei, the island would have been absorbed back into the Chinese polity where it had been for centuries. It would probably now resemble the booming prosperity of Shanghai – something Wall Street and mainstream US politicians celebrated for years.

And, no, a Red Taiwan will not stop selling semiconductor chips to the US. For crying out loud, the entire Red Ponzi of China is predicated upon being an industrial supply base to America.

Moreover, it still is not too late. Absent Washington’s arms and threats, the Taiwanese would surely prefer peaceful prosperity as the 24th province of China rather than a catastrophic war against Beijing that they would have no hope of surviving.

By the same token, the alternative – US military intervention – would mean WWIII. So what’s the point of Washington’s dangerous policy of “strategic ambiguity” when the long-term outcome is utterly inevitable? And yet and yet: Every one of the Donald’s national security appointees to date (save for Tulsi Gabbard) are foaming at the mouth China hawks, and Pete Hegseth is no exception.

But if you foolishly believe the self-serving military-industrial complex and Warfare State propaganda holding that the already tottering Red Ponzi is a military threat you are unlikely to be persuaded to slash anything from the defense budget. That’s because nearly the entire $250 billion annual cost of the Navy/Marines and much of the rationale for the two-and-one-half wars $185 billion Army is based on fighting a war with China in the Far East.

In short, the only sensible policy is for Washington to recant 70-years of folly brought on by the China Lobby and arms manufacturers and green-light a Taiwanese reconciliation with the mainland. Even a few years thereafter Wall Street bankers peddling M&A deals in Taipei wouldn’t know the difference from Shanghai.

Likewise, we think it is pretty evident that the Chinese do not like the Japanese and the South Koreans do not like the Japanese for the same reasons which go back to Imperial Japan and its invasions and occupations of both countries between 1895 and 1945. Yet 75 years have now passed and all three nations have become booming centers of economic prosperity and modern technologically-based civilization.

To be sure, the War Party on the Potomac can’t seem to understand that most of mankind would prefer peaceful commerce to bloody warfare or even permanent political and military mobilization. So the fact is, the only way these three great Asian nations would go to war today is if it were instigated and funded by Washington.

We’d bet, however, that this is the silver lining of the historic Ukraine fiasco now unfolding. No nation in its right mind – and these Asian folks are self-evidently in their right mind – would volunteer to become a Ukraine-style weapons testing range for the Washington War Machine.

In short, there is no need whatsoever for America’s massive conventional armada and its nearly $1.4 trillion annual expense. Easily $500 billion could be cut from that bloated military monster,

Yet what has the Donald proffered to save America from the impending fiscal calamity it fuels? Why, a flag-waver whose first priority is apparently getting the girls out of the trenches, when no American – he, she, them or they – needs to be in the battlefield trenches anywhere on the planet in the first place.

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

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MAGA’s Fascist Attacks on Gender

Fighting the far right's fascist "family values" with an emancipatory vision of gender and family

By Eli Brown

October 11, 2024

Source: Liberation Road


Ted Eytan, “Capital Pride Parade” (2018) / CC BY-SA 2.0


1. Why Is JD Vance Afraid of Childless Cat Ladies?

During a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance made a now-famous quip that the country is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Vance continued: “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Vance’s words resurfaced after his selection as the GOP vice presidential candidate; he has since doubled down on them. Trump has long made similar comments, including reportedly referring to Kamala Harris as a “bitch” behind closed doors. At the recent Moms for Liberty conference, Trump outlandishly claimed that public schools were providing gender-affirming surgery to children without parental knowledge, an assertion so demonstrably false and ridiculous it would be laughable, except that he said it in front of an audience of far right-wing activists who have been instrumental in vicious direct action and legislative attacks against trans people.

Many on the left, center, and even some on the right decried Vance and Trump’s statements as misogynistic and “weird,” out of touch with the values of the American public. While Trump and Vance’s rhetoric may be alienating and unpopular to many, it points to a larger and more alarming reality: patriarchy has become a central component of the MAGA attack plan, dovetailing with its racist attacks as part of a larger vision of white Christian nationalism. And as the right ramps up its assault on gender and especially on trans people, it is crucial for the left to grasp the centrality of patriarchal oppression to MAGA’s broader social, political, and economic agenda and to fight for a different, emancipatory vision of gender and family.

2. Moral Panic and Mass Line on the Right

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, the right has discovered that regressive policies on abortion and gay equality are anathema to many Americans. To their dismay, they can no longer rely on anti-abortion activism and “gay panic” to mobilize their base. But through trial and error, they have been working to recycle these old lines and to shift their rhetoric to find new lines of attack. GOP-led states have passed numerous attack bills banning abortion and severely curtailing the rights of trans people. We can view the broad but disjointed attacks of the past years as a kind of practice of mass line development by the far right: which attacks stick, which are effective (and ineffective), and what energizes itsr base?

Through this process, MAGA has shifted the focus of its attacks onto transgender people and especially trans children. But the highly visible attacks on trans people are only the “tip of the spear” of a much broader assault on gender rights and bodily autonomy. As Trump and Vance’s comments make clear, MAGA has in its sights not just trans people but all LGBTQ+ people; women who defy their attempts at control; men who do not uphold toxic patriarchal ideals, whom the right lampoons as too feminine; and all others who fall outside into their narrow definitions of gender and of family.

The policing of a narrow vision of gender, sex, and family is central to the MAGA vision for fascist, patriarchal control. This vision is clearly articulated in Project 2025’s four “promises” to America. The first of these promises, around which all others are articulated, is to “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”

They are speaking about a certain type of family: white, heterosexual, and Christian. The framing of “protect our children” implies that all those who fall outside those lines are dangerous. This sinister pledge is crucial to their deeply dystopian vision centered on a strict, punitive vision of the heterosexual family, in which women must be mothers and submit to their husbands, even in violent marriages; a man is a father and the authority figure within the family; and the “postmenopausal female,” in J.D. Vance’s words, holds no worth in society except to care for grandchildren.

These are not idle words or empty rhetoric: the right is putting them into practice through law. The reality of life in red and blue states is becoming ever more starkly different.

In MAGA-led states that have banned abortions like Tennessee and Georgia, doctors face agonizing decisions of whether to risk felony criminal charges to provide care when pregnant patients present to the emergency room. While the doctors and lawyers and hospital administrators argue, women have bled out or suffered permanent organ damage while waiting in ER waiting rooms or after being sent home without care. The Republican-led states that are forcing families to have children are the states that provide the least support for families and respond to lack of familial resources punitively by jailing parents and taking away their kids. States with abortion bans are struggling to provide basic gynecological care as doctors move to states where they are not risking felonies by providing care, and medical residents avoid taking residencies in states where they cannot learn the full range of gynecological care.

Trans people and their families are facing desperate choices, too. As Republican legislatures have passed outright bans on puberty blockers and hormone therapy, families with trans kids are fleeing their home states. Trans adults in MAGA-led states fear arrest for using the bathroom or having their drivers licenses revoked.

3. The Dark History of Fascist Patriarchy in Europe and the United States

Why is the MAGA movement so doggedly pursuing harsh and punitive restrictions on abortion, trans healthcare, and other gender issues? These restrictions are a means of exercising social control. Access to abortion and birth control gives people a choice in who they love and marry, and sex and childbearing no longer function as a method of control and submission. And the very existence of trans people undermines the Right’s strict lines of gendered social control as people, both trans and not, are no longer forced into immutable gender roles and instead have the opportunity to make their own way in life. The right is attacking gender precisely because gender rights undermine their ability to exercise social control.

MAGA’s attacks on gender are among their clearest articulations of a fascist vision, and they emulate the fascist movements of the 20th century in their regressive views on women and LGBTQ people and harsh authoritarian restrictions on abortion, repression of LGBTQ people, and attempts to criminalize freedom of movement. Early in their rise to power, Nazis attacked Magnus Hirschfield’s Institute for Sexual Science, where some of the earliest 20th century work on trans healthcare and queer sexuality had been pioneered. Later, the Nazis passed harsh laws outlawing homosexuality and imprisoned gay men, lesbians, and trans people in concentration camps. Likewise, in Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain, women’s ability to participate in public life and employment was severely curtailed, alongside harsh punishments for abortion.

German propaganda poster showing the Nazi eagle behind an image of the “ideal” family

The fascist definition of the family was central to social control in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy, and Franco’s Spain. Women played the role of mother to the fascist homeland and embodied a fascist vision of fertility and femininity, raising children to be or to birth future fascist soldiers. Men were expected to adhere to a strict image of strength and masculinity, serving as fathers and enforcers of fascist discipline within the home and soldiers to the fascist state outside the home. The patriarchal vision of the family occurred alongside and was dependent upon the subordination, exploitation and/or elimination of bodies, families, and communities perceived as sexually deviant, racially or ethnically other, politically dissident, or otherwise “inferior.” In the fascist regimes of the 20th century, the valorization of “the family” was part and parcel of a genocidal project denying many actual families the right to the term.

But we don’t have to look across the ocean to find examples of the interconnection of fascism and patriarchy. US racial capitalism was formed around patriarchal relations that developed through the enslavement of African people, the exploitation of non-Black people of color and poor whites, and the extermination of Indigenous peoples, and the policies of European fascist states drew heavily on the mechanisms of slavery in the US. Within this context, the creation and enforcement of strict gender and sexual roles was a crucial mechanism of social control and economic exploitation and included the repression and extermination of Two-Spirit and gender-non-conforming people, laws banning interracial families, and widespread sexual violence by white male enslavers against enslaved women. The “cult of domesticity” that restricted wealthy (and, later, middle-class) white women to the role of mother and homemaker is inextricable from the oppression of the many other women and gender-oppressed people to whom any pretense of “family values” was denied. This was made most brutally clear by the commodification of the reproductive capacity of enslaved Black women upon which the perpetuation of slavery depended, particularly after the closing of the legal Atlantic slave trade. Even after abolition, the valorization of “the family” as a private refuge from public life continued to depend on the exploitative, low-wage domestic labor of poor and working-class women and women of color.

4. Project 2025: Restore What and for Whom?

These early foundations echo into the current structures of US capitalism in which reproductive labor is unvalued or undervalued, to the detriment of the health of the entire society. Care work and reproductive labor include having and raising children, teaching, healing the sick, caring for the elderly, domestic labor, janitorial work, and many other crucial jobs that allow our society to function and reproduce itself. These fundamental contradictions underlie US capitalism, and the right’s current project seeks to exacerbate and crystallize them further.

It is with this context in mind that we must evaluate the right’s supposed promise to “restore” the family. We must immediately ask: restore what, for whom? The preface to Project 2025 states:


“In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives—and the life of the nation—is the family.

The right’s vision of “the family” draws on a long history of policing people’s bodies and reproductive capacity. All people with wombs must be forced to live as women, and all women forced to birth children, whether to reproduce a dominant elite (for white, Christian, middle class, and upper class women) or a dominated labor force (for everyone else). Policies that create greater ease and security for women and children are actually counterproductive to this fascist project. Meanwhile the rhetorical juxtaposition of “natural” and “unnatural” “loves and loyalties” makes very clear who does and doesn’t count as family, paving the way for the subsequent call for the forcible suppression of trans people, who the right calls an “ideology.” Likewise, the invocation of “real people” who care about “community” implies, chillingly, the existence of other, unreal people who do not. Here again, MAGA’s “family values” involve the extirpation of families considered less than fully human and outside the body politic—a core component, always, of fascist logic.

It takes a particularly contorted, deceptive logic to wrap an assault on the social welfare state in the shroud of “defending the family.” The right is not actually pro-children or pro-family at all. MAGA’s policy platform is horrible for families and children: it provides no paid maternal or paternal leave, slashes funding for public education, heavily restricts Medicaid and WIC, attacks access to healthcare, and seeks to turn a profit on our already badly damaged healthcare system by closing hospitals or converting them into badly funded and poorly staffed for-profit facilities. If we follow MAGA’s vision, working mothers, fathers, and parents will have to work more hours to put food on the table at jobs that abuse them and do not respect their rights; immigrant families will be torn apart; our seniors and loved ones will fall ill and not seek care until it is far too late, and then languish in dangerously understaffed facilities; and our children will go hungry.

And yet despite this, we should not underestimate the attraction of the right’s appeal to “family.” Most Americans deeply value family and community. And historically, the terrain of “family values” is one that the left has been willing to cede to the right. Given the deep entwinement of the white Christian, nuclear, patriarchal family structure with forms of racial, gendered and class violence, this is partly understandable. But if we are to successfully combat MAGA’s racist, genocidal, and patriarchal vision of the family, the left must fight for our own vision rooted in radical principles of self-determination, interdependence, and collective care.

5. A Left Vision for Gender Liberation and Family

Rather than ceding this ground to the right, we must fight both to redefine what family means and for the fundamental freedom of people to freely form family when and how they choose. We must recognize that all of the far right’s attacks across different elements of gender are connected: when MAGA attacks trans children, or access to abortion, or mixed families, they are attacking all of us.

The beginnings of a left defense of gender rights are increasingly cohering into a unified line. The majority of the country supports access to abortion and opposes abortion restrictions. In the 2022 elections, backlash against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade was a key driver of Democratic victories and victories in a number of referendums either codifying the right to abortion or rejecting bans on abortion. Most Americans are at least moderately opposed to bans on trans healthcare, and many feel the Right is overemphasizing trans people and should probably just leave them alone. The pro-democracy united front is increasingly hostile to attacks on families, such as JD Vance’s recent comments.

The seeds of our line are right in front of us, in our defense of access to healthcare, freedom of choice, and the value of both paid and unpaid care work. Our vision of family includes mixed and multigenerational families, immigrant families, queer and chosen families, childless cat lady families, etc. We must uplift the value of collective care and fight for a policy platform that provides what families actually need: childcare and senior care, paid family leave, strong public schools and hospitals with unionized teachers and nurses, and a robust and accessible healthcare system that gives the freedom to access all healthcare regardless of income, including abortion and trans healthcare. Policies like universal healthcare access and paid family leave are popular with the American public and would have a tremendous impact on quality of life for the average American.

Left and progressive forces within our united front should take every opportunity to fight back against abortion bans and attacks on trans rights. Our base is mobilized by these issues, particularly abortion, as are many in the middle who may be swayed one way or another. Equally important, we must resist the siloing and demonization of vulnerable groups of people, whether trans people, patients seeking abortions, or immigrants. The right’s attempts to make these groups into scapegoats are dangerous and signal their fascist intentions.

The task in this moment is clear: we must block the fascists from taking power, broaden our united front to unite with the widest possible array of forces, and build the left to take leadership in the front. Through this struggle, we have the opportunity to articulate a vision that recognizes family as expansive and truly and deeply values reproductive labor, care work, and the responsibilities we have to care for one another.


Eli Brown is a member of Liberation Road. He currently serves on the National Executive Committee and is a member of the Oppressed Gender Work Team.

 SELF VALORIZATION; FOUR DAY WEEK

Study reveals lower school attendance on Fridays in England

Economists from the University of Bath believe that end-of week-absenteeism could be linked to beating bank holiday traffic.

University of Bath

Economists from the University of Bath have found a significantly lower school attendance rates on Fridays across England, with a 20% higher absence rate compared to other weekdays.

The “Friday” effect highlights children are much less likely to attend primary and secondary school at the end of the week.

Published in the British Educational Research Journal, the study used daily level attendance data at local authority level collected by the Department for Education (DfE) from the beginning of the academic year 2022/2023.

Key Findings:

• Absence rates are 17% higher on Fridays compared to the rest of the week in primary schools.
• Absence rates are 22% higher on Fridays compared to the rest of the week in secondary schools.
• Overall, absence rates are 20% higher on Fridays, compared to the rest of the week, across all schools in England. To put this into context, eliminating this 'Friday effect' (i.e. setting the Friday absence rate to that of the Monday to Thursday) could mean around 130,000 more students attending school each Friday.
• The “Friday effect” is more pronounced in areas with higher levels of deprivation.

Why is there a Friday effect?

Dr Jonathan James, from the Department of Economics, explains the possible reasons behind this trend:

We found no evidence to suggest that parents working from home are driving the higher absence rates on Fridays. We also rule out strikes. However, our research indicates that Friday absences are more common in weeks leading up to bank holidays or half-term breaks, suggesting that families might be extending their holidays or trying to avoid holiday traffic Addressing these patterns could reduce the effect by one-third to a half.

This is the first study to highlight a "Friday effect" in school attendance, but Dr. James believes it's not a new issue. While examining National School Admission Registers & Log Books from 1870 to 1914, Dr. James found a note from Merrow Church of England School in Surrey, dated 1899, which stated: "Of late, several children have absented themselves on Friday."

Recent data supports the idea that “The Friday effect” has worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic. A study by Gunter and Makinson (2023) looked at data from 6,000 schools and found that Friday absences in secondary schools used to be lower compared to the rest of the week. In 2013/14 school year, Friday absences were 0.7 % lower than the weekly average. By the 2018/19 school year, this had flipped, with Friday absences being 0.9% higher. This gap widened even further by 2022/23, with Friday absences being 1.4% higher than the weekly average. Dr James said:

There might be a cultural aspect to this—perhaps there's less stigma about taking Fridays off now. With the cost of living crisis, people may be more understanding of the financial pressures families face, such as the high cost of holidays. However, we do not yet have concrete evidence to fully support this hypothesis.” 

Why does it matter?

The researchers think addressing the “Friday effect” could improve students' academic performance and even their future earnings. Co-author Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg said:

Tackling these patterns of weekly absences can help raise attainment levels and reduce educational inequalities.”

The University of Bath research team hopes these findings will inform policies aimed at reducing school absences. Dr Clifton-Sprigg added:

Simple measures like sending newsletters, emails, or text messages to remind parents of the negative impact of absences on academic performance could be effective. Additionally, schools might consider scheduling engaging activities on Fridays, such as award ceremonies, to boost attendance."

---

Journal

British Educational Research Journal

DOI

10.1002/berj.4066 

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The ‘Friday effect’: School attendance over the week†

Group of MPs issue call for four day week in

government department

John McDonnell, Clive Lewis and Ian Lavery are among those to sign the Early Day Motion

Chris Jarvis Yesterday

 Left Foot Forward

A group of MPs have issued a call for the UK government to trial moving staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) onto a four day working week.

The MPs have all signed an Early Day Motion in parliament which argues that “a four-day week with no loss of pay could lead to increased productivity, while also bringing benefits to workers, employers, and wider society”.

The motion highlights the four day week trial in South Cambridgeshire District Council and claims that this “showed huge benefits, including cost savings, better staff retention, lower sickness rates and improvements in service delivery”.

The Early Day Motion comes off the back of a campaign from the PCS union to secure a trial four day week in DEFRA. Earlier this year, PCS said that DEFRA management had “agreed to work collaboratively to explore the idea of a four-day week”. However, the department is yet to to commit to implementing a pilot.

At the time of writing, 11 MPs have signed the Early Day Motion. The following MPs have added their names:

John McDonnell – Independent
Clive Lewis – Labour
Ian Lavery – Labour
Andy McDonald – Labour
Liz Saville Roberts – Plaid Cymru
Kim Johnson – Labour
Ann Davies – Plaid Cymru
Ben Lake – Plaid Cymru
Llinos Medi – Plaid Cymru
Neil Duncan-Jordan – Labour
Jon Trickett – Labour

In 2023, the largest four day week trial in the UK concluded, with 56 out of the 61 organisations involved deciding to continue to operate on a four day week. The trial saw a significant decrease in the rates of stress and illness among workers who took part.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy of development at Left Foot Forward

1933

 

Free the Leftist, Anti-War, and Anti-Nationalist Political Prisoners in Ukraine

by Trotskyist Platform / August 14th, 2024

LONG READ

Above: Political prisoner in Ukraine, Inna Ivanochko sits in a dock in a court. Inna Ivanochko is the head of the Lviv organisation of Opposition Platform — For Life, which was Ukraine’ second largest party in parliament until it was persecuted and then banned. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started – which the Ukrainian regime have now retrospectively deemed to have been in the service of Russia. Her supposed “offences” include allegedly participating in a September 2015 protest rally over living standards grievances and violations of constitutional rights, taking court action in 2018 against a city council decision to knock down a monument to Soviet World War II soldiers and advocating turning Ukraine into a federal state during a 2018 television interview.
Photo: Supplied

In late April 2024, the Albanese Labor government in Australia announced yet another $100 million in “aid” to Ukraine. The new “aid” package includes air-dropped bombs and drones. The package was announced by deputy prime minister, Richard Marles during a visit to Ukraine where he encouraged the Ukrainian regime to continue its war against Russia. Marles also affirmed the continued participation of Australian soldiers in an operation training Ukrainian troops in Britain. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops have already been trained in this U.K.-led operation. The U.S. and European NATO powers and their allies, like the Australian imperialist regime, are prepared to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood to advance their proxy war against Russia.

As millions of low-paid workers, working-class youth, unemployed workers and pensioners suffer under soaring rents, Australian governments have failed to provide adequate funding for the public housing that could help drive down rents across the rental market. Meanwhile, governments of all stripes refuse to substantially boost the crushingly low Jobseeker payments. They say that there is a need to be “prudent” to avoid fueling inflation. Yet, when it comes to fueling death and destruction in distant lands to shore up Western imperialist domination of the world, successive federal governments have had no trouble finding large financial resources. The April announcement brings the Australian regime’s total military assistance to its Ukrainian counterparts to $880 million. Earlier announced Australian military support included the provision of armoured vehicles, six M777 155mm howitzers and artillery shells.

This military assistance is backed by all the parties in the Australian parliament, the entire mainstream media and all of Australia’s influential political think tanks. Yet despite this and the ruling class’ intense propaganda campaign supporting the proxy war against Russia, many Australians do not buy the government’s “rationales” for its military support to its Ukrainian counterparts. Indeed a poll conducted this month by the Australian government-controlled ABC news outlet found that a (small) majority of Australians actually want the government to wind back or end support for Ukraine.

One of the main narratives that Australia’s ruling class and other Western imperialist ruling classes use to justify their massive military backing of Ukraine is their claim that they are “defending a fellow democracy against an authoritarian power.” However the Ukrainian capitalist regime is no “democracy” of any kind! Fascist forces play a prominent role in Ukraine’s state organs. For example, a key part of Ukraine’s National Guard and prominent part of the regime’s ultra-nationalist folklore is the fascist Azov Assault Brigade. Formed in 2014 by neo-Nazi politician Andriy Biletsky, the Azov Assault Brigade sports Nazi regalia and trains its members in white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology. It is notorious for murdering, raping and assaulting numerous leftists, members of ethnic minorities and civilians sympathetic to Russia. The character of the Ukrainian regime can also be seen from the fact that in 2015 it made two Nazi-collaborating, anti-Soviet paramilitary groups (the UPA and the OUN), “heroes of Ukraine.” During World War II, the UPA and OUN between them murdered 100,000 Polish people and tens of thousands of Jewish people, while helping their Nazi allies to carry out the Holocaust. The Ukrainian regime has also renamed many streets after the fascist leader of the OUN, Stepan Bandera; and have also erected numerous statues and other monuments to this Nazi-allied war criminal.

Capitalism and Democracy

Of course, the Western regimes using Ukraine are hardly true “democracies” themselves. To be sure Western governments are elected and citizens are theoretically able to advance their political views. However, in practice it is the wealthy capitalists, in great disproportion to their small numbers that have the means to shape public opinion and hence steer election outcomes. It is they who own the media, establish and finance the political think tanks, provide much of the funding for political parties and political NGOs and have the financial resources to pay for expensive political advertising and lobbyists. Thus in terms of political influence, “democracies” under capitalism run more on “one dollar, one vote” rather than the nominal, “one person, one vote.” Moreover, due to their tremendous wealth and control of the economy, the capitalists are able to ensure that all the key state institutions remain tied to them by thousands of threads irrespective of which political party is elected to govern. Therefore, in all nominally “democratic” capitalist countries, the form of “democracy” masks the reality that the system is in fact just a form of dictatorship of the capitalist class. To the extent that there is any real democracy it is only that the different capitalists and pro-capitalist factions are able to freely and “democratically” debate their differences and arrive at a majority decision about which policies best serve the interests of their class. Moreover, just as in more openly authoritarian forms of capitalist rule, whenever the rule of the capitalist class faces a serious challenge, the ruling class will resort to the most brutal authoritarian repression to protect their interests.

Nevertheless, as far as the working-class and other oppressed are concerned, this pseudo-“democratic” form of administering capitalism is preferable to other forms of capitalism – like fascism, military dictatorship etc – because it allows the masses comparatively greater freedoms with which to organise resistance against capitalist exploitation. That is why in capitalist parliamentary democracies like Australia, we oppose every attack of the ruling class on the limited democratic rights that the masses do have. And as decaying, late-stage capitalism is increasingly unable to meet the needs of the masses, in nearly every capitalist parliamentary “democracy” around the world the worried capitalist class is chipping away at the political rights that it had previously conceded to the masses. Just look at the hardline anti-protest laws that have been enacted in NSW and other Australian states and the federal government’s draconian “foreign interference” laws which are aimed at suppressing expressions of sympathy for socialistic China.

Teacher from Kiev, Alla Dushkina. (Photo: Supplied). She spent three months in a Ukrainian jail for correspondence with an acquaintance from Russia, in which she expressed doubts about the correctness of Ukraine’s political course. Later, she was granted bail and managed to leave the country without waiting for the verdict. Ukrainian journalist Pavel Volkov managed to interview her. Here is an excerpt from what Alla Dushkina told the journalist:

I was arrested with my son in Khmelnitskiy [a city in Western Ukraine].
Five cars surrounded us, and then they interrogated me for 72 hours, trying to get a confession. I didn’t sign anything, we were beaten, wrapped in a black and red flag [the flag of the Nazi-collaborating OUN-UPA]. I had to confess that I made some marks [for Russian bombs and missiles] and that I had given shelter to Kadyrovites [Chechens who are fighting for Russia], whom I had never seen in my life. And they took fingerprints, and forced me to pass a lie detector, and threatened to take me in the city square with an announcement that I was putting tags [was a missile gunner] so that the mothers of the murdered soldiers would beat me. Then they realized that I wouldn’t sign anything, put bags on my son and me and started leading us somewhere. They brought us to Kiev, my son was shoved into the basement in front of me, they demanded from him to say that I had killed people, pressed on my conscience, threatened. I was taken to the SSU building on Askold Lane, then to the Lukyanovo pre—trial detention center. The jailer showed me videos on her phone every morning – as far as I can understand, she was instructed to do this – how in both men’s and women’s buildings people were beaten, dipped their heads in the toilet, bullied. They demanded a confession from me to avoid the fate of people on these videos.

Today’s Ukraine – Not Any Kind of Democracy At All

Today’s capitalist Ukraine does not even have the truncated, “democratic” form of the dictatorship of the capitalist class that exists today in Australia, the U.S., France and other so-called “Western democracies.” Political parties and activists genuinely opposed to the Ukrainian government’s policies face severe and brutal repression. Such repression greatly intensified after a 2014 far-right coup, engineered by Washington and the European imperialist powers. That coup overthrew the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych who attempted to simultaneously maintain friendly ties with both Russia and the EU. Yanukovych’s government was replaced by a rabidly Ukrainian nationalist regime that was as fiercely anti-Russia as it was pro-Western. The new regime enacted laws discriminating against the Russian-speaking populations in the east of Ukraine as well as against other non-Ukrainian minorities. When the post-2014 regime inevitably met with opposition – especially in the east and south of the country – this was met with extreme repression supplemented by the terror of fascist gangs. In 2015, the regime banned the sizable Communist Party of Ukraine and two smaller other, nominally communist parties. Meanwhile the regime jailed or threatened political opponents and journalists.

Some Ukrainians have made courageous efforts to detail the persecution that others are facing at the hands of the Ukrainian regime. Among these is Ukrainian journalist Pavel Volkov. Volkov was himself imprisoned from 2017 for thirteen months for merely writing articles critical of the 2014 right-wing coup and for sympathising with the plight of the people of the eastern, mostly Russian-speaking, Donbass region who were attacked for their opposition to the new ultra-nationalist order. For this, he was accused of “separatism,” “terrorism,” and “collaboration with the enemy”. Due to the efforts of out of court supporters and a dedicated team of lawyers, Volkov eventually proved the charges false in court. However, this was a very rare case where the Ukrainian regime’s trumped-up charges against opponents have been defeated in the regime’s courts. Most of those targeted end up in prison or worse. Pavel Volkov described what he observed in the years 2018-2020:

… people have been tried under `separatist’ and `terrorist’ articles for laying flowers at the Soviet monuments; paying taxes for DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) [a pro-Russia rebel government that was established in the eastern Donetsk region by opponents of the post-2014 far-right regime]; organizing `Pushkin Balls,’ and so on. Any activity that can be interpreted as the glorification of the Soviet past, the valorization of the Russian culture, or the recognition of the authorities of rebellious Donbass came to be acknowledged as ‘separatist’ and ‘terrorist.’

Ukrainian journalist, Pavel Volkov, in court.
Photo: Supplied

Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, the Ukrainian regime has used the cover of the war and the mantra of “defending national security against treason” to persecute its opponents to a yet more extreme degree. In June 2022, the regime banned the biggest opposition party, the Opposition Platform — For Life, a party which just 17 months before had been leading Ukraine’s opinion polls. Similarly, the regime banned several other parties – accusing all of either “collaborating with Russia” or “violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine” or “destabilising the social and political situation in Ukraine”. Among the parties that the Ukrainian regime banned include Viktor Yanukovych’s former party, the Party of Regions as well as Derzhava, Nashi, Opposition Bloc, Socialist Party of Ukraine and Union of Left Forces.

Anyone in Ukraine who expresses even the mildest sympathy for Russia or who advocates peace talks is targeted. Other dissidents are falsely accused of pro-Russia sympathies in order to silence them. As journalist, Pavel Volkov put it:

Today, there are thousands of civilian prisoners in Ukraine who are deprived of their liberty and human rights for ‘likes’ under ‘incorrect’ social-media posts, Internet discussions of projectile impact location, frank correspondence with relatives in Russia via messengers, performing professional duties (like teaching) in the territories occupied and then abandoned by Russia, and so on. The retreats of the Russian Armed Forces from the Kiev region, parts of the Kharkov region, and parts of the Kherson region in later 2022 were marked by mass arrests, which continue to this day. This is what the SSU [Security Service of Ukraine] calls `the stabilization measures.’ Only in the summer of 2022, as a result of these `measures’ – apartment-by-apartment sweeps – 700 people were detained in Vinnytsa and Nikolaev – two regional centers in the southern part of Ukraine bordering the Odessa region.

Although Volkov himself was forced to flee Ukraine in the latter part of 2022, he and his colleagues have since then painstakingly analysed the open source data of the various enforcement agencies of the Ukrainian regime in order to estimate the number of political prisoners there. They found that from the time of the 2014 far-right coup to the start of the Russian intervention in early 2022, the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office brought 643 cases to the court on political charges. This repression then escalated such that in 2022 and 2023 alone the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office and regional prosecutor’s offices opened up 26,821 cases on political matters of which 4,315 have already been brought to the court with an indictment. Moreover, when the cases brought by the Ukrainian National Police and the SSU secret police are also included, Volkov and Co. found that the Ukrainian regime had opened up over 74 thousand criminal cases on politically motivated charges. This means that the number of people in today’s Ukraine who are in either prison or pre-trial detention on the basis of political charges is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

Among the laws that Ukrainian regime have used to persecute dissidents is Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code which nominally prosecutes people for: justification, recognition as legitimate or denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine or glorification of its participants. Articles 110 and 110-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code also targets people for expressing dissident views but does so under the official charge of: trespass against the territorial integrity or inviolability of Ukraine or financing of such actions. Volkov’s research shows that under these three articles of the criminal code alone, Ukrainian prosecutors in 2022 and 2023 have opened up 14,411 political cases of which more than 1,400 were already brought to court during that period. Under the likes of these type of pretexts, Professor Sergey Shubin from the Nikolayev region was sentenced to 15 years in prison for merely making reflections in his personal diary on what life would be like in the region if it were occupied by the Russian army. A pensioner from Sumy region Lyudmila Vazhinskaya was sentenced to six months jail for advocating peace talks between Ukraine and Russia while talking with people in a queue for milk. In a high-profile case, Inna Ivanochko, the head of the Lviv (city in western Ukraine) organisation of Ukraine’ second biggest parliamentary party (until it was persecuted and then banned), Opposition Platform — For Life, was arrested in August 2022 and has been in pre-trial detention ever since. She is facing up to 15 years in prison for expressing her political views in the years before the war started. These include allegedly participating in a September 2015 rally against low pensions, increased tariffs and violations of constitutional rights, taking legal action in a Lviv court (!) against the 2018 decision of the Lviv City Council to knock down a monument to Soviet World War II soldiers and advocating turning Ukraine into a federal state (an idea which is branded “separatism” in contemporary Ukraine) in a television interview in 2018. Outrageously, the three lawyers who defended Inna Ivanochko have also all been arrested. The latest of her lawyers to be arrested was Svetlana Novitskaya who was seized on February 20 of this year and has been imprisoned ever since. She is accused of violating Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, “denying the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” … for her statements in court defending her client, Inna Ivanochko! Defence lawyers imprisoned for their submissions in court defending their clients – such is the “democracy” that the Australian and other Western capitalist rulers say that they are “defending” through sending huge quantities of weapons to their proxy!

Volkov’s research found that in 2022 and 2023 Ukrainian prosecutors had also opened 3,126 cases of suspicion of “High treason” under Article 111 of its criminal code and 7,058 cases on “Collaborationism” under Article 111-1. Most of the people imprisoned under such charges are those who worked in public institutions in the areas occupied by the Russian army. After the Russian troops withdrew from some of the areas, these public sector workers have been persecuted as “traitors” and “collaborators”. People like Anatoliy Miruta, a man from the Kiev region who was jailed for 10 years for negotiating with the Russian military to take local residents to the hospital and distributing Russian humanitarian aid. Or like, Valentina Ropalo, a resident of Volchansk in the Kharkov region, who was hit with a five year prison sentence for working as the head of the housing and communal services department while the Russian army was in her city, which was deemed to be “collaboration with the enemy”. Meanwhile, Olga Galanina, Deputy Chairman of the Berdyansk Administration for Humanitarian Affairs, is facing a life sentence because she agreed to continue her work in Berdyansk, Zaporozhye region, under the Russian administration. SSU officers kidnapped her student son in Dnepropetrovsk, illegally held him in detention, forcing his mother to come to the territory controlled by Ukraine, where she was arrested.

In addition to the political prisoners in Ukraine who have either been officially sentenced to jail or are in pre-trial detention, are a large number of others who have been abducted by the regime or its fascist auxiliaries. Among them is Sergey Chemolosov, a resident of the village of Ivanovka in the Kharkov region. Chemolosov had been distributing Russian humanitarian aid and helped restore the village’s electricity supply during the stay of Russian troops there. On 7 September 2022, Ukrainian military officers kidnapped Chemolosov and took him to an unknown destination. On September 9, Kirill Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the office of President Zelensky, published on Facebook a photo in which Chemolosov, with marks showing that he was severely beaten in custody, is sitting blindfolded with his hands tied. What later happened to Chemolosov or whether he is even still alive is unknown. It is also unknown the exact number of political prisoners that the Ukrainian regime has similarly abducted and is illegally detaining at secret locations.

9 September 2022: Sergey Chemolosov, a resident of the village of Ivanovka in Ukraine’s Kharkov region, is shown in a Facebook post, celebrating his detention, made by the deputy head of the office of President Zelensky, Kirill Tymoshenko. Chemolosov is blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back and with marks indicating that he was beaten in custody. Two days earlier, Ukrainian military officers had abducted Chemolosov and taken him to an unknown location. Chemolosov’s “crime” is that he had been distributing Russian humanitarian aid and helped restore the village’s electricity supply during the stay of Russian troops in his village. What later happened to Chemolosov is unknown.

Down With the Ukrainian Regime’s Persecution of Leftists!

The pro-Western Ukrainian regime has especially targeted avowed communists, leftists and others with sympathy for the former Soviet Union. Thus Pavel Volkov’s research shows that among the politically motivated criminal cases that Ukrainian prosecutors have opened up in 2022 and 2023 are 600 cases of suspected violation of Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code, which bans the production and distribution of communist symbols and propaganda sympathetic to communist “totalitarian regimes” (which is mostly aimed at supporters of the former Soviet Ukraine and the former Soviet Union). Already 322 people have been brought before the courts on these charges. Formally, Article 436-1 also bans Nazi symbols and propaganda sympathetic to Nazi regimes. However, that part of the law is never applied – especially since support for Stepan Bandera and his Nazi-allied OUN is a key part of the official ideology of the Ukrainian regime. Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code was indeed never meant to target neo-Nazi elements. The proscription of Nazi symbols in Article 436-1 was included purely to obscure the stridently anti-communist nature of the law.

Many of the leftists imprisoned have been prosecuted under trumped-up charges under other articles of Ukraine’s criminal code. Among them is left-wing activist from Zaporozhye, Yuriy Petrovsky who was hit with a 15 year jail term for allegedly providing assistance to the Russian military. Also imprisoned is Bogdan Syrotiuk, a leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists and who is associated with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). Syrotiuk was arrested eight weeks ago on trumped charges of “treason” because of his opposition to both the Ukrainian and Russian side in the war. If convicted by Ukraine’s thoroughly biased courts, Syrotiuk is threatened with a prison sentence of 15 years to life. The ICFI have held rallies outside Ukraine embassies in several cities demanding freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk, including a June 14 protest in Canberra conducted by the ICFI’s Australian section, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). We in Trotskyist Platform add our voice to the demand for immediate freedom for 25 year-old Bogdan Syrotiuk.

Trotskyist Platform demands the immediate release of all those imprisoned by the Ukrainian regime for expressing pro-Soviet, communist and other leftist sympathies. We say: Immediately scrap the anti-communist Article 436-1 of Ukraine’s criminal code! We also call for the immediate release of all those imprisoned in Ukraine for advocating peace in the war of for expressing sympathy for Russia or merely admiration for Russian culture. Those public sector workers branded as “traitors” and “collaborators” for performing their duties during Russian control of their villages and cities must also be immediately freed. Down with the Ukrainian regime’s mafia-style abductions of dissidents and those-branded as “Russian collaborators”! Lift the regime’s ban on the Communist Party of Ukraine! Lift the Ukrainian regime’s ban on all other leftist, anti-nationalist, anti-war and other opposition parties!

It should be noted that we support the campaign to free ICFI-associated Bogdan Syrotiuk despite our profound political differences with the ICFI and the SEP. Not least among our differences with the ICFI/SEP is our objection to their decision to “denounce the Russian military intervention in Ukraine” in February 2022 – a point which they have been reiterating of late – which undercuts their nominal position of opposition to both sides in the war and slants towards a position of partially defending Ukraine (a true defeatist on both sides stance would not have taken a position on the question of the February 2022 Russian intervention). Today, recognising that Ukraine’s war with Russia has become subordinate to the Western imperialist tyrants of the world, we in Trotskyist Platform call for the defence of Russia (despite its reactionary capitalist rulers) against imperialism and its Ukrainian proxies. In contrast, the SEP and ICFI continue to take a stated position of opposition to both sides in the war.

Ukrainian journalist, Pavel Volkov, pictured during his 13 month period of imprisonment, starting in 2017, for writing articles critical of the Ukrainian regime. Since his release, he and his colleagues have analysed open source data revealing thousands of cases of political persecution in his country. Pictured sitting on the left is defence lawyer, Svetlana Novitskaya, who herself has been in pre-trial detention since 20 February 2024. Novitskaya is being persecuted for her defence of many high-profile political prisoner cases. She is accused of violating Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, “denying the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” during her statements in court defending her client, opposition politician, Inna Ivanochko!
Photo: Supplied

Extreme Political Repression in Ukraine a Result of the
Early 1990s Capitalist Counterrevolution

The political repression in today’s Ukraine is far more intense and brutal than any repression that occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the last four decades of the socialistic Soviet Union. To be sure, in the mid-late 1930s when the, by then bureaucratised, leadership of the Soviet worker state, under the impact of profound international defeats for the socialist movement, moved to the right in many areas – from international policy, to economic and social policies, to backsliding on Lenin’s 100% correct insistence on being sensitive to the national rights of the Ukrainian and other non-Russian peoples – the Stalin-led bureaucracy sought to muzzle potential resistance to this rightist turn with murderous persecution of the most devoted and thoughtful communists. Soviet Ukraine was especially hard hit by this repression for a several year period. However, from the late 1950s onwards, the jailing of political dissidents in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (and indeed the whole Soviet Union) became relatively rare. Moreover, the political prisoners that did exist in Soviet Ukraine during this period were largely not leftists. Rather, Soviet Ukraine’s repression mostly targeted opponents of socialistic rule – something which even a workers state operating under the ideal form of workers democracy may be compelled to do during the transition to full socialism if it is facing a world where the richest, most economically powerful countries of the world continue to be under capitalist rule.

All this is important to understand because the fanatically anti-Soviet Ukrainian regime and its imperialist masters present today’s Ukraine as “democratic” as opposed to the “totalitarian” Soviet period. Similarly, they portray the period of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as an unending series of horrors in which the Ukrainian people were supposedly “oppressed” by Russians. However, during the Soviet Union’s hey days in the late 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the masses of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic enjoyed full employment, free high-quality education, free health care and a rich cultural, entertainment and sporting life. The 1917 great October Socialist Revolution not only freed all the toilers of the former Russian empire from capitalism but it liberated the people of Ukraine from the intense national oppression that they faced in the pre-Soviet days when they were under the thumb of Russian imperialist rulers. To be sure, during certain periods of Stalin’s administration of the Soviet Union, there were bouts of partial re-institution of policies offending the Ukrainian people’s legitimate national feelings. However, from the late 1950s onwards, although there remained a degree of Russian centredness in the Soviet bureaucracy, the culture of the minority nationalities of the socialistic USSR again flourished with renewed vigour along with the economic standard of living of their peoples. It could not be said that the people of Ukraine were nationally oppressed in this period. Indeed, by the latter days of the Soviet period, the average life expectancy in Soviet Ukraine was nearly a year and a half higher than in Soviet Russia.

However, the Soviet workers state faced intense hostility from the considerably richer imperialist powers. The immense external pressure that capitalism exerted upon the Soviet Union resulted in a conservative bureaucracy being squeezed up to the top of the workers state. The rule of this bureaucracy, with its petty privileges, politically and economically weakened the workers state. Through suppressing workers democracy, the bureaucracy retarded the Soviet Union’s socialist planned economy from reaching its full and tremendous potential. Eventually, under the relentless pressure of the imperialist powers and the economic stagnation that this caused, the bureaucracy started making more and more international and domestic concessions to capitalism. This encouraged a layer of petty capitalists and speculators and highly educated, mostly younger, people – who were seduced by the promise that capitalism would bring them the standard of living enjoyed by the upper and upper-middle classes in the West along with “democracy” – to push for outright capitalist counterrevolution. They spearheaded their push under the cover of fighting for “democracy”. In Ukraine this was supplemented with virulent Ukrainian nationalism. Yet despite their promises and the massive backing they were gaining from the U.S.-led imperialists, most of the people of Soviet Ukraine did not support these counterrevolutionaries. In a March 1991 Soviet-wide referendum on whether or not to maintain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more than 71% of the people of Soviet Ukraine voted to maintain the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in a referendum that had a nearly 84% turnout in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, although the majority of the people of Soviet Ukraine – and indeed the whole Soviet Union – were wary of those who wanted to overthrow socialistic rule, lacking authentic leadership and being depoliticised by decades of bureaucratic rule, they were confused as to what to do and, to an extent, were even unclear about the need to forcibly resist the emerging counterrevolution. As a result, a relatively small layer of imperialist-backed counterrevolutionaries were able to destroy the greatest victory the working classes of the world have ever achieved, while the working-class masses watched on by.

A comparison of life expectancy of Ukraine and China from 1989 to 2021. In 1989, the year before Ukraine and the rest of the Soviet Union started diving rapidly towards its 1991-92 capitalist counterrevolution, the average life expectancy in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was three years higher than in socialistic China (which then still had a long way to go to catch up from the terrible poverty of its pre-1949, semi-colonial capitalist times). But after capitalist counterrevolution, the life expectancy in Ukraine collapsed along with the people’s living standards. Three decades later, in 2021 (which was the year before the war started), the life expectancy in Ukraine was still less than it was near the end of her socialistic days in 1989, despite all the advances in global medical science over the last three decades. By contrast, China, which has remained under socialistic rule has continued to see a strongly rising life expectancy. From having an average life expectancy that was three years below that of Soviet Ukraine in 1989, socialistic China’s average life expectancy by 2021 was more than eight years higher than in, now, capitalist Ukraine (it is today almost 11 years higher).
Source: World Bank

The 1991-1992 capitalist counterrevolution and the resulting conversion of collectively-owned, public enterprises into the private ownership of a few was a disaster for the toiling masses of Ukraine. Indeed it was a catastrophe for all the masses of the former Soviet Union. Unemployment soared, people were driven into poverty, industries were dismantled, the social position of women diminished and ethnic tensions intensified. And far from the “democracy” that the leaders of the capitalist counterrevolution promised, every part of the former Soviet Union saw political persecution of opponents. In October 1993, pro-Western “democratic” Russian president, Boris Yeltsin unleashed tanks against protesters and his own parliament, killing nearly 150 people.

Such political repression in all ex-Soviet countries is driven by two inter-related factors. Firstly and most importantly, the capitalist counterrevolution reduced the living standards of much of the population. Bitter about their position and having known a better life in the Soviet days, the masses could not be held back from opposing the new social “order” through propaganda and nationalism alone. The new capitalist rulers also needed to unleash brutal political repression to keep the masses in check.

Secondly, the political repression in the now capitalist countries existing in the lands of the former Soviet Union is partly connected with the particular forms of capitalism that arose from the capitalist counterrevolution. In the lands that have never been workers states, capitalism emerged from feudalism (except in some settler colonies when it was brutally imposed on first peoples often living in egalitarian hunter-gatherer type societies) as a higher, more progressive social system than the one that it replaced. Then, after having exhausted its initially progressive content, now decaying capitalism brought only suffering to the masses, social reaction, imperialism and catastrophic inter-imperialist wars; while still containing elements of its ability to develop the productive forces further than the feudalism that it had replaced. However, when capitalism was re-introduced to the lands of the former Soviet Union, it had absolutely no traces of the young, initially relatively progressive, capitalism that replaced feudalism. Instead, the capitalism that was transplanted into the lands of the former Soviet Union was entirely the decrepit, reactionary capitalism of the late 20^th century. Moreover, this capitalist rule was not replacing a still more oppressive feudalism but replacing a higher, more progressive social order – one based on collective ownership of the means of production and working-class rule. Therefore, inevitably, the new capitalist ruling classes dreamt not mainly of expanding the productive forces to boost profits but of looting the productive capacity that was already there and of making a killing by dismantling and selling off the former Soviet Union’s massive industrial base. The capitalism installed into the lands of the former Soviet Union was an especially corrupt and venal form of capitalism. Alongside the plunge in the masses standard of living caused by the reversion to a reactionary social system, capitalist restoration in the lands of the former Soviet Union led to a retrogression in the moral substance of the people. The destruction of a collectivist-based economic system and its replacement with one-based on exploitation and dog-eat-dog competition – especially in conditions of newly arisen poverty – has pushed many to abandon some of the caring, mutually aiding outlook that Soviet people were famous for in favour of a ruthless jostling for scarce jobs and assets. For all these reasons, the capitalism that arose on the ashes of the Soviet workers state has been a mafia-style capitalism, characterised by the close inter-twining of capitalists with criminal gangs and collaboration between state agencies and criminal groups. The brutality of the state organs in the now capitalist, ex-Soviet countries is then in part driven by their “need” to defend the interests of the particular capitalists-criminals that they are collaborating with by mercilessly suppressing the objections of both rival mafia capitalists and those citizens daring to challenge this corruption.

However, at the same time, more far-sighted elements within the capitalist classes in ex-Soviet countries see the need to bring order to their capitalism in order to ensure the efficiency and viability of their system. They seek a political force – typically centred around a “strongman” – to achieve this task. When such a political force is pushed into power by the dominant elements of the capitalist class, this force uses ruthless repression to make particular capitalists – and the sections of the masses that these bigwigs have brought around them – sacrifice some of their short-term criminal-linked plunder in order to ensure the overall interests of the capitalist class as a whole and the long-term survival of the capitalist order. This is the role played in Russia by Putin. The fact that he performs this function reasonably effectively is the reason why he has been backed by the majority of Russia’s capitalist exploiting class for so long – despite his occasional crackdowns on particular oligarchs. To be sure, the discipline to capitalism that such strongmen bring often does not apply to their closest friends and relatives within the capitalist class! That is why the capitalists closest to Putin are given favoured treatment – as long as they don’t drift into opposition to him (like late Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin did!).

Yet, even amongst the repressive capitalist regimes in the countries of the former Soviet Union, today’s Ukrainian one is especially brutal. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that the people of Ukraine have suffered from capitalist counterrevolution especially hard. Notably, despite all the advances in modern health science over these last three decades, Ukraine’s average life expectancy in the year before the recent war began (2021) was actually lower than it was in 1989, the year before Ukraine and the rest of the USSR started sliding rapidly towards capitalist restoration! Moreover, whereas at the end of the Soviet times in 1990, Ukraine’s GDP per capita (as determined by the more relevant PPP – Purchasing Power Parity – method) was 95% of Russia’s, i.e. basically the same despite being far more resource poor than Russia; by 2021, the year before the war began, her per capita income was less than half that of Russia’s (46% of Russia’s to be exact). By the way, this comparison alone should smash the notion that Ukraine was a “subjugated” nation in Soviet times that became “liberated” through the destruction of the Soviet Union! However, the main point for us here is that the working-class masses of Ukraine have suffered even more cruelly from the capitalist counterrevolution than the masses of Russia. Therefore, the regime enforcing capitalist rule in Ukraine has been compelled to use still more brutal repression to keep the unhappy masses in line.

The second reason why repression is particularly severe in Ukraine is because the regime there took an especially fanatical anti-Soviet turn after the 2014 right-wing coup. They began knocking down monuments to the Soviet Union and to the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany. The regime even passed a law banning, under the threat of up to five years imprisonment, any singing of the Communist Internationale or the Ukrainian Soviet and Soviet anthems and any flying of the flags of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the former Soviet Union! Yet a considerable proportion of Ukraine’s population is either old enough to remember how much better life was in Soviet times or at least old enough to hear such accounts from their parents and their aunts and uncles. To people who remember fondly and are proud of the achievements of the Soviet Union and of the Red Army’s heroic victory over Nazi Germany, the extreme anti-Sovietism of Ukraine’s ruling elite and its hailing of anti-Soviet, Nazi collaborators are unbearably offensive. This is especially true for the peoples of the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, who have been less blinded by extreme nationalism than peoples in the western Galician region generally have. Thus to enforce its anti-Soviet laws, practices and ideology, the regime has had to use naked repression and intimidation against the significant percentage of pro-Soviet minded people in the country.

Thirdly, given that a significant part of Ukraine’s population speak Russian as well as other non-Ukrainian languages – including Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian – as their first language, the post-2014 Ukrainian regime’s discrimination against the use of non-Ukrainian languages inevitably provoked strong resistance. Such discrimination is itself a result of the majority of the capitalist class realising that it could only protect itself from the wrath of the masses, discontented as they are over high unemployment and poor living standards, through diverting their anger onto Russian-speakers and ethnic minorities. Ukraine’s rulers are hardly the only capitalist ruling class to enact language discrimination in order to divide the working-class masses and prevent united multi-ethnic mass struggle against themselves. And they are hardly the only regime to face a revolt as a result of such discriminatory language policies! For example, in Sri Lanka, the majority of the capitalist ruling class, terrified by a massive 1953 general strike, which united workers from both the majority Sinhala ethnicity and the minority Tamil ethnicity, in the following years introduced language laws that ostentatiously discriminated against Tamil speakers. It was this discrimination against Tamil language speakers that in good part eventually led to the rise of the Tamil armed national liberation struggle. And similar to Sri Lanka, the Ukrainian regime’s language and other social discrimination against non-Ukraine speakers can only be enforced with brutal state repression against those who resist.

Fourth, and in good part for the above three reasons, a significant part of Ukraine’s population does not want to fight a war with Russia. Many even sympathise with Russia, which is seen as less oppressive of pro-Soviet sentiment than the Ukrainian regime as well as obviously being more tolerant of Russian speakers. Terrified by this reality, the Kiev regime unleashes hysterical repression and violence against dissidents – both real and perceived.

Political prisoner, Professor Sergey Shubin in the dock of a Ukrainian court. The Ukrainian regime sentenced Shubin to 15 years in prison for merely making reflections in his personal diary on what life would be like in his Nikolayev region if it were occupied by the Russian army.
Photo: Supplied

Fifth, the Ukrainian regime has a sizable support base of fanatical nationalists from which to launch repression against its opponents. Although a significant part of Ukraine’s population rejects the regime’s extreme anti-Soviet and anti-Russian hostility, there is also a sizable part of Ukraine’s self-employed and middle class population who have fallen for the extreme Ukrainian nationalism that they have been fed by the majority of the country’s capitalist class. They have bought the ruling class’ lying anti-Soviet propaganda. However, there is also a genuine fear amongst Ukrainian people that they will be subordinated by a new Russian empire as the Ukrainian people truly were in pre-Soviet, Tsarist times. These fears are born of the reality that today’s Russian Army is not the Soviet Red Army that liberated Ukraine from the Nazi invasion (and from Bandera and other Nazi collaborators). And today’s Russia is no longer a Soviet Russia that proclaims “Friendship of the Peoples” but a capitalist Russia whose rulers openly hail the expansionist, Great Russian chauvinist, Tsarist times. Ukraine’s capitalist rulers manipulate their people’s fear of being subjugated by Russia and inject into those legitimate fears ultra-right-wing nationalism, fanatical anti-Sovietism and loyalty to the program of Bandera and other Nazi collaborators.

In summary, capitalist counterrevolution has not brought the masses in the former Soviet lands any of the prosperity and “democracy” that the counterrevolutionaries promised – not even the token form of “democracy” that exists in Western capitalist countries. Indeed, it has brought the very opposite! This is true throughout all the lands of the former Soviet Union – and is especially true in today’s Ukraine.

Above, Ukraine, July 2022: Prime minister Albanese meets with Ukrainian leaders during a visit aimed at encouraging the Ukrainian regime to maintain their war against Russia. Albanese is here holding a model of the Antonov An-225, the world’s largest aircraft that was sadly destroyed during the early days of the war. Ukrainian officials had presented the AN-225 model to Albanese as a symbol of Ukrainian national pride. The people of Ukraine should indeed be proud of the magnificent AN-225. Except the AN-225 was not made during the period of the post-Soviet, capitalist Ukraine but was manufactured in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with components and design also contributed by various other parts of the Soviet Union (Below: The AN-225 in Soviet times carrying the Soviet spacecraft the Buran). Yet today’s fanatically anti-Soviet, Ukrainian regime, that outlaws any use of Soviet symbols, ended up presenting to Albanese what is in reality a tribute to this marvel of Soviet engineering excellence! Inadvertently, that is an admission of how much more Ukraine achieved in Soviet times. For Ukrainian officials simply could not find any symbol of achievement from the more than three decades of post Soviet, capitalist Ukraine’s existence that was worthy of being presented as a gift to a foreign “dignitary”. For, given the extreme hostility to the Soviet Union of this Ukrainian regime, if there actually was such a symbol of achievement from post-Soviet Ukraine, they would have presented it, rather than having to claim as their own the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic’s – and broader Soviet Union’s – fabulous aircraft. In Soviet times, Ukraine was known for its aircraft manufacturing and other advanced industries, its beautiful tourist destinations and its hospitable people. In contrast, post-Soviet, capitalist Ukraine has been most known by the outside world as one of the scam capitals of the world; and even more so as a place from where large numbers of women facing poverty and lack of opportunity would seek to become “mail-order-brides” to men living in richer countries; or sex workers in the West (many of whom would end up being cruelly exploited by sex industry bosses). Capitalist counterrevolution has been an absolute disaster for most people in Ukraine and most people in all of the former Soviet Union.
Photo (top): X/Twitter @ukraine_world.
Photo (below): Peter Volek/JetPhotos.Net

Defend Russia Against Imperialism and its Ukrainian Proxies!

The Ukrainian regime’s imprisonment of tens of thousands of political prisoners blows to smithereens the claims of the Australian and other Western capitalist governments that they are backing Ukraine’s war in order to “defend democracy.” So what then is actually driving Ukraine’s war with Russia? When Russia first intervened in February 2022, the war was mostly an inter-capitalist squabble for territory. Ukraine wanted to forcibly keep lands in the eastern Donbass region where the majority of residents, mostly Russian speakers enraged at the fanatically anti-Soviet and anti-Russian character of the post-2014 regime, no longer wanted to be part of Ukraine. On the other hand, the Russian regime, encouraged by the ethnic/cultural solidarity of many of its people with the embattled Russian-speaking population in the Donbass region, wanted to not only grab the clearly pro-Russia portions of Ukraine but to gain additionally territory in regions where the majority of residents did not want to be part of Russia. Both the Ukrainian and Russian governments were driven by the needs of the respective capitalist classes that they serve to maximise the size of their guaranteed markets and the extent of raw materials under their control by maximising their country’s territory. For this reason, when Russia first entered Ukraine in February 2022, we called for opposition to both sides. At the same time, given that our “own” capitalist rulers and its U.S. senior partners were clearly backing Ukraine, we had a tilt that especially emphasized opposition to Ukraine. We demanded an end to all Western sanctions against Russia and an end to all Western military aid to Ukraine.

However, even from the first days of the Russian intervention there was another aspect to the conflict. The Western imperialist powers wanted to extend NATO to Russia’s borders in order to intimidate her. The imperialist powers wanted to prevent Russia from becoming a potential great power rival and hoped that they could instead, one day, again reduce Russia to the humiliated and dependent status that she had in the first decade after the capitalist counterrevolution. The imperial powers also hoped to pressure Russia into abandoning her friendly ties with socialistic China so that they could advance their main global strategic goal – to overthrow the Chinese workers state. Ideally, the imperialist powers hoped that through exerting pressure on Russia they could foster a “colour revolution” there that would bring to power a Western subservient regime – like the Yeltsin-Putin regime of the 1990s or the Ukrainian regime of today. Against these plans, Russia’s rulers understandably wanted to retard the encroachment of NATO to its borders.

Initially we judged that this driving force of the conflict was less a factor than the inter-capitalist squabble for territory. However, in our initial detailed coverage of the conflict, we foreshadowed the possibility that the antagonism between the Western imperialist powers and Russia could become the main aspect of the war. Within several weeks into the conflict, this is what indeed occurred. This was shown in late March-early April 2022 when Ukraine and Russia were on the verge of agreeing to a peace deal. However, that was scuttled by not only pressure on Zelensky from Ukraine’s fascist groups but by the diktats that the Western powers made to Kiev. Indeed on 9 April, then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kiev where he publicly told the Ukrainian government that no peace deal should be made with Russia. The following month, the U.S. announced a package of arms to Ukraine that was on a qualitatively greater scale than earlier military backing. It had become clear that although the element of inter-capitalist squabble between Ukraine and Russia remained, this was now the minor factor in a war that had become largely a conflict between Western imperialism and Russia, with Ukraine the proxy of the former. Although Russia’s capitalist rulers themselves long to build a new imperialist empire, they currently have neither the capital to do so nor the alliance of a wealthy imperialist power that could allow them to gain a stake in imperialist lootings through acting as a military enforcer for their ally. Therefore, what we now have is a proxy war between the real imperialist plunderers of the world and a capitalist but not imperialist Russia. Therefore, we in Trotskyist Platform called to defend Russia in the conflict, headlining in an article outlining our updated position: “Don’t Let the Western Capitalist Rulers Reinforce Their Tyranny Over the World! Defeat U.S., British, Australian and German Imperialism’s Proxy War to Weaken and Stifle Russia!” As our article explained:

Such a defeat would weaken the ability of the imperialists to mobilise further predatory interventions abroad. It would also deter their plans to use Taiwan as a proxy to pressure socialistic China or even to incite a world war against the socialistic giant. Moreover, any setback for the U.S. imperialists and their allies in this proxy war would give encouragement to the resistance struggles of all those being subjugated by the U.S. and its allies elsewhere, like the Palestinian people suffering under incessant Israeli terror. More generally, a defeat for the Western powers in their Ukraine proxy war could only encourage the toiling masses of Africa, Latin America, the South Pacific and most of Asia to resist in their own lands the various Western capitalists that super-exploit labour, plunder natural resources, leach loan interest repayments, seize markets and manipulate and stand over governments. Within the Western countries themselves, a defeat for the capitalist ruling classes in their proxy war would weaken their authority. It would thus open opportunities for the working class and oppressed to wage mass resistance against soaring rents and food and fuel prices, plummeting real wages, the incessant expansion of insecure work forms and brutal racist oppression of persecuted communities.

Our updated position meant that we were no longer calling for the Russian working-class to oppose the war effort of its own rulers – we were only making such an appeal to the Ukrainian masses. But for our work in Australia, the updated line did not change our fundamental slogans on the war. What it did do is to increase the urgency to oppose Australian military support to Ukraine as part of opposing the entire U.S.-NATO-led proxy war against Russia. As part of this it is necessary to campaign to free all leftist, anti-war, anti-nationalist and other political prisoners in Ukraine. This is not only to save tens of thousands of people from terrible suffering or even torture and death but to expose the lie of the Australian and other Western rulers that they are “working to defend democracy in Ukraine”.

Free the Political Prisoners in Australia Too!

It is possible through a campaign of exposure and agitation in Australia and other Western countries to make headway in winning the release of the political prisoners in Ukraine. This is because the Western regimes ability to make their own populations accept military aid to Ukraine depends on convincing their own populations that the arms are going to “defend a democracy against authoritarianism”. Therefore, exposure of the anti-democratic nature of the Ukrainian regime could significantly embarrass their Western masters and force the latter to push the Ukrainian regime to try and improve its image by releasing some of its political prisoners. In a similar but slightly different way that is how opponents of Cold War McCarthysim, demanding freedom for pro-North Korea political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi and an end to the broader McCarthyist persecution of supporters of socialistic states, ended up pressuring the Australian regime to give Choi a much shorter sentence than the regime had been planning. Since attacking socialistic North Korea and its socialistic Chinese ally over “human rights” is the key method that the Australian rulers use to mobilise their own populations behind their Cold War drive against these countries, our agitation, exposing how the Australian rulers were violating the human rights of a North Korea supporter and how this was symptomatic of both the bogus character of the regime’s claims to stand for “human rights” and of the biased, anti-working class nature of its “justice system”, was very politically damaging to them. And it is only when our struggle against the capitalist exploiting class – and the state organs that enforce their interests – does political damage to them does the capitalist ruling class ever retreat. So let us fight to win freedom for political prisoners in Ukraine by politically damaging the Australian and other Western rulers through exposing the mass incarceration of dissidents by their supposedly “democratic”, Ukrainian proxies.

We cannot call for freeing political prisoners in Ukraine without also calling to free the political prisoners in Australia. The latest of these is David McBride, the whistleblower who was last month despicably sentenced to 5 years and 8 months in prison for passing information to the media that had the effect of exposing a large number of horrific war crimes by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan. The other three political prisoners here are victims of the Australian ruling class’ enthusiastic participation in imperialism’s Cold War drive against socialistic China. The latest of these political prisoners to be jailed was Di Sanh Duong. Duong was outrageously sentenced to nearly three years in prison for supposedly “preparing to conduct foreign interference” on behalf of China, because he … publicly donated money to a Melbourne public hospital charity! Additionally, many Aboriginal people in prison, although not formally political prisoners, are in practice facing a political persecution. For they have been hit with not only over-policing but with especially harsh punishments because of the enduring racist nature of the Australian regime.

So we demand: Free the Aboriginal victims of Australia’s racist “justice system”! Free David McBride! Free Di Sanh Duong and fellow Cold War prisoners in Australia, Daniel Duggan and Alexander Csergo! Free the thousands of leftist, anti-war, anti-nationalist and other political prisoners in Ukraine!

Trotskyist Platform stands against the capitalist system. We struggle towards a socialist society where exploitation of labour, racism, oppression of women and colonial subjugation of “Third World” countries will become things of the past. Read other articles by Trotskyist Platform, or visit Trotskyist Platform's website.