How Trump’s second term would echo Mussolini’s 'fascist strongman leadership': historian

Alex Henderson

ALTERNET

May 16, 2024

The New Republic has published a series of articles focusing on presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's plans for a second term if he defeats President Joe Biden in November, and the series' theme is "What American Fascism Would Look Like."

The series tackles a variety of ways in which the writers believe authoritarianism would imperil the United States if Trump returns to the White House in 2025, from immigration policies and the country's borders to public education to severe restrictions on the media. Columbia University professor Kian Tajbakhs, in one of the articles, focuses on the challenges Americans would face managing their day-to-day lives during an authoritarian crackdown.

The series also includes an in-depth essay/think piece by historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who delves into the history of fascism — including the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, a.k.a. Il Duce, during the 1920s — and emphasizes that Trumpism has many fascist elements.

READ MORE: Trump's plan to 'aggressively' reshape government would create 'army of suck-ups': report

"During his 21 years in power, 18 of them as dictator, Il Duce framed fascism as a revolution of reaction against the left, against liberal democracy, and against any group that threatened the survival of white Christian civilization," Ben-Ghiat explains in her article, published on May 16. "Carrying out a violent destabilization of society in the name of a return to social order and national tradition, fascism pioneered the autocratic formula in use today of disenfranchising and repressing the many to allow the few to exploit the workforce, women's bodies, the environment and the economy."

The historian/author continues, "Trumpism is in this tradition. It started in 2015 as a movement fueled by conservative alarm and white rural rage at a multiracial and progressive America. It continued as an authoritarian presidency envisioned as 'a shock to the system' that unleashed waves of hate crimes against nonwhites and non-Christians. It culminated in the January 6 assault on the Capitol, which was a counterrevolutionary operation in the spirit of fascism."

Ben-Ghiat lays out some reasons why she finds Project 2025, Trump allies' blueprint for a second term, so disturbing.

"The fascists believed that you have to destroy to create, and this is what a second Trump Administration would do," Ben-Ghiat warns. "Project 2025 is a plan for an authoritarian takeover of the United States that goes by a deceptively neutral name…. The plan promises the abolition of the Department of Education and other federal agencies."

READ MORE: 'Essence of authoritarianism': Expert warns 'Project 2025' would create a Trump 'autocracy'

Ben-Ghiat adds, "The intent here is to destroy the legal and governance cultures of liberal democracy and create new bureaucratic structures, staffed by new politically vetted cadres, to support autocratic rule. So new agencies could appear to manage parents' and family rights, Christian affairs, and other pillars of the new order. The Department of Health and Human Services is poised to have a central role in governance, given the priorities Trumpism places on policing sexuality, weaponizing motherhood, persecuting transgender people and LGBTQ communities, and criminalizing abortion."

The historian notes that Mussolini, during the 1920s, enacted "public security" laws that "justified the arrest of anyone deemed a security threat — meaning anyone who opposed fascism from a liberal democratic or leftist point of view." And she believes that Project 2025 has similar aims.

"Given Trump’s repeated threats to carry out 'retribution' against his enemies," Ben-Ghiat warns, "expect prompt and showy announcements of trials and investigations of the political opposition, members of the January 6 Select Committee, and anyone who sought to hold him accountable….. Trump has worked hard since 2015 to condition the public to see the strongman brand of leadership as the only choice for America."

READ MORE: Mary Trump: Here's why Ivanka and Don Jr. haven't showed up to their father’s 'tawdry' trial

Ruth Ben-Ghiat's full essay for The New Republic is available at this link.

From the genocide in Palestine and Ukraine to the fascist threat: Working toward a revolutionary, Marxist-Humanist response

Peter Hudis
Kevin B. Anderson
Heather Brown
Lyndon Porter
Fernando Baleia
16 May, 2024


First published at The International Marxist-Humanist.

Part I: Does Today’s Objective Situation Represent the Midnight of the Twenty-First Century?

Today’s global capitalism is sinking into unimaginable levels of barbarism. It is exemplified by Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine; Russia’s escalating attacks on Ukraine; the violent suppression of mass movements in Peru, Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, and China; and in the growing threat posed by the neo-fascist far-Right in India, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Argentina, and the U.S., where the re-election of Donald Trump in November looms as a real possibility.

Nowhere is this barbarism more glaring than in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its intensifying attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. The 32,500 officially recorded killed in Gaza as of this writing is horrendous enough; but the dehumanization visited upon Palestinians extends even further. Almost 20,000 (mainly women and children) are missing and presumably buried under rubble, while well over a million-and-a-half are facing outright starvation and disease. The devastating impact of Israel dropping 30,000 air-to-ground munitions (not counting artillery shells and demolitions by its ground troops) on an area not much larger than Manhattan has birthed a new acronym—WCNSF, “Wounded Child with No Surviving Family.” According to reports from several human rights organizations, 17,000 Palestinian children fall under this category. Israel’s totally disproportionate response to the Hamas attack of October 7 has become one of the most horrendous catastrophe ever visited upon a people in our lifetime.

This is being done by an Israeli government that includes “moderates” as well as far-Rightists and which openly broadcasts and even boasts about its murderous onslaught. As Pankaj Mishra recently wrote,

We find ourselves in an unprecedented situation. Never before have so many witnessed an industrial-scale slaughter in real time. Yet the prevailing callousness, timidity and censorship disallows, even mocks, our shock and grief. Many of us who have seen some of the images and videos coming out of Gaza—those visions from hell of corpses twisted together and buried in mass graves, the smaller corpses held by grieving parents, or laid on the ground in neat rows—have been quietly going mad over the last few months. Every day is poisoned by the awareness that while we go about our lives hundreds of ordinary people like ourselves are being murdered, or being forced to witness the murder of their children.

All of this is made possible by continuous U.S. arms shipments and financial aid to a government whose ministers make no secret of its desire to “clear” Gaza of its populace. As the war continues, Israeli settlers, aided by the state, have also been murdering Palestinians and taking over land in the West Bank, which has received little publicity in the global media. From October 7 to the end of March, over 7,000 West Bank Palestinians have been arrested and 1,100 killed by Israeli forces or Jewish settlers, leading to what some Israeli officials privately call “a volcano” ready to erupt.1

Israel’s plunge into total depravity risks setting off an even-wider regional conflagration, as it extends its attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon while even contemplating taking on Iran.

These developments clearly represent a global political turning point. Mishra does not overstate the case: “Israel today is dynamiting the edifice of global norms built after 1945, which has been tottering since the catastrophic and still unpunished war on terror and Vladimir Putin’s revanchist war in Ukraine.”2

Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu are united when it comes to at least one thing—both insist that the peoples they are violently suppressing (Ukraine in one case, Palestine in the other) have no right to exist as national entities. For years prior to Russia’s imperialist invasion (which actually started in 2014), Putin insisted, “Ukraine is a fiction, it has never been a real nation”—the same kind of verbiage employed for decades by leading Zionists about Palestine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov let the cat out of the bag in February in stating, “Israel’s declared goals in Gaza are similar to Russia’s in Ukraine.” Ramzy Baroud, an editor of Palestine Chronicle and who supports Ukraine’s right to defend itself from Russia and also condemns the West for opposing Russia while supporting Israel’s war against Palestine responded, “Lavrov’s position is bizarre and greatly offensive…because it resembles some kind of a political nod for Israel to continue with its lethal war on Palestinian civilians without worrying about a strong Russian response.”3

Lavrov’s comment may indicate that Putin is looking ahead to a Trump presidency, which would almost certainly pull the plug on U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Toning down criticism of Israel for the sake of cementing an alliance with Trump’s white nationalism is not a big step for Putin, since he is a white nationalist himself (as is Netanyahu, who has refrained from criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine).

While the Ukrainians fight on, they have clearly been set back their heels in recent months by declining military support from the West. Russia on the other hand is obtaining huge amounts of armaments from Iran and North Korea while evading the impact of U.S. and EU sanctions by expanding economic links to China. Last year, China’s exports to Russia increased 54% and half of Russia’s oil was exported to China. Overall trade between the two countries has increased 64% since the 2022 invasion. As a result, Russia’s economy is expected to grow 2.6% this year, outpacing each of the major industrial economies in the G7.

If Ukraine is defeated by Russia, it will embolden the far right everywhere—not only in Europe but also in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, where Putin is providing support to military regimes in Libya, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and the Central African Republic after having enabled Bashir Assad to crush the opposition in Syria.

The global far-Right includes forces allied with U.S. imperialism and it includes forces opposed to U.S. imperialism. It is a ubiquitous political phenomenon that has deep roots in the economic morass that increasingly characterizes contemporary capitalism.

Although the global economy has avoided for now the major recession that was widely feared only a year ago, it is expected to slow for the third straight year in 2024 and is headed for its weakest half-decade since the early 1990s. Rising levels of debt and lower than average rates of labor productivity are the main culprits. And the (relatively meager) economic growth that is occurring is accompanied by ever-growing levels of inequality, as millions of rural laborers are forced off the land, rising number of migrants cross international borders in response to the impact of climate change, and tens of millions of workers worldwide are displaced by labor-saving devices (such as robotics, AI, etc.). Economic distress and insecurity are not the only factors driving the growth of the far-Right, but they are clearly one of the determinants.

The growth of the far Right is being enabled by the pitiful effort of neoliberals and social democrats to counter it. Neoliberals have no solution to the economic morass afflicting global capitalism—and this has a lot to do with why the far-Right is on the rise.

This was demonstrated on a political level earlier this year when Biden proposed a bill on “immigration reform” (supported by most Democratic and some Republican senators) that adopted virtually word for word Trump’s anti-immigrant policies—even though these same Democrats denounced them as cruel, inhumane, and racist when he was in power. Senator Chris Murphy, who helped write the bill, confessed: “They—the Republican Party—told us what to do. We followed their instructions to the letter. And then they pulled the rug out from under us in 24 hours” when Trump chose to not let Biden get credit for his own policies.

This is typical of neoliberals and social democrats everywhere: They often seek to meet rightists “halfway” by attempting to steal their thunder only to have such weakness further embolden them. Given this, it is not a stretch to recall the fate of Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s: the compromises and vacillation on the part of some claiming to support bourgeois democracy inadvertently paved the way for its destruction.

Trump and his supporters have made no secret of their plans if they win the November U.S. elections: the immediate deportation of millions of immigrants, the annulment of innumerable health and safety regulations, a push for a national ban on abortion, prohibiting discussions of race and racism in schools, gutting the NRLB to make it harder to unionize, unleashing the police against Black people, and restricting gender-affirming care for transexuals. And they have worked out detailed plans to make it harder for workers and minorities to vote—and to annul the results of any election that threatens their all-consuming drive for total state power.

Especially serious is the threat posed by climate change. Last year was officially the hottest one on record and temperatures in July broke the record as well, according to NASA.4 The Biden administration has touted its Inflation Reduction Act as key to solving the climate crisis, but its programs to develop clean energy and help workers transition to new jobs is too little and too late. It is too late because the effects of climate change are already apparent, and we may be at or very close to a tipping point of no return to “normal.” It is too little in the sense that the bill operates under a capitalist logic, providing subsidies to businesses to invest in clean energy, for example, while at the same time allowing fossil fuel production to continue.

The U.S. is now producing record amounts of fossil fuels for domestic and international markets. It has approved new drilling in Alaska, liquified natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, and greenlighted the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia,5 illustrating yet again how the needs of capital and its denizens for “cheap” oil and big profits eclipse the long-term survival of human beings.

Moreover, the Biden administration is touting the purchase of one million new electric vehicles in 2023 as a major ecological and economic success.6 Certainly, for purposes of future greenhouse gas emissions, electric cars are better than gas powered ones. However, the productivist logic remains in place. Electric cars produce less greenhouse gas in their lifetimes, but new vehicle production is still environmentally costly regardless of the type produced. More electric vehicle production is not in and of itself carbon neutral. Only by overcoming the productivist logic that greater output is inherently better for humanity and the environment will we begin to overcome this ecological crisis. That productivist logic will surely be further implemented if rightwing authoritarian nationalism consolidates its hold on state power.

Brazil offers a dramatic example the inability of neoliberalism and social democracy to counter such threats. After the coup d’état in 2016, Michel Temer and especially Jair Bolsonaro promoted a destruction of the environmental laws and institutions that have been helping to protect Brazilian forests. Bolsonaro’s administration (2016 to 2022) protected the criminals who followed his orders: the former Environmental Minister, Ricardo Salles, who was convicted of fraud against natural reserves;7 the secretary for agrarian questions, Luiz Antônio Nabhan Garcia, onetime leader of a militia that killed 21 militants of the Landless Workers Movement (MST)8. Then, with Bolsonaro’s help, a group of landlords in the 2022 elections won most of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, even as Lula won the presidency.

Two of The Bolsonaro administration’s most iconic symbols were the “day of fire,” when a group of landlords managed to burn down large portions of the Amazon Rainforest,9 changing almost 50% of the Nature Reserves into a pasture,10 and an attempted genocide against the Yanomami people.11 After Lula of the Workers’ Party (PT) won the 2022 election, the federal government tried to help the Yanomamis by providing food, healthcare and police protection. However, the gold prospectors continued to attack and invade their lands; the efforts of the PT to end this environmental and human crisis ended up a huge failure.

The PT and Lula can try anything they want to improve environmental protections, but the landlords, many of whom are deputies in the Brazilian Congress, won’t approve any laws that don’t benefit them. It’s a kind of mafia-ization of politics. Ever since Dilma Rousseff’s administration (2011 to 2016), Brazil has witnessed a massive commodification of nature, such as with REDD+, which pays farmers to “protect” a small area of their lands. Bolsonaro further developed this law and institutionalized payment for environmental services. And now Lula is trying to approve the newest version of a Brazilian carbon market. Since most laws approved and developed by the PT to protect the environment are subsumed under the interests of capital, it becomes hard to fight back against the landlords and the far-Right trying to set fire to the Rainforest and invading the Yanomami’s land.

Massive threats also loom regarding gender and sexuality. After the Dobbs decision in the U.S., abortion is either greatly restricted or completely illegal in 23 states, making it difficult or sometimes impossible for women to get the procedure. But as was indicated by a ruling of the Alabama Supreme Court, the goal of Christian fundamentalists is much broader. Using a law that grants a fetus personhood at the moment of conception, the Court ruled that an IVF clinic was liable for the destruction of embryos stored at their facility, causing a number of clinics to close their doors until the law was clarified. After much backlash, legislators carved out an exception to fetal personhood for IVF providers. However, the concept of life originating at the moment of conception remains in place, all but eliminating women’s reproductive choice in the state. It is far from surprising that other rightwing-dominated states are looking to Alabama as a model.

Along with anti-LGBTQ legislation and violence in the U.S. we have witnessed an effort in many African nations to criminalize LGBTQ individuals. In fact, 30 of 54 countries in Africa criminalize homosexuality.12 Many of these laws date back to colonial times, yet a new wave of legislation is being enacted. Last year in Uganda, a law was passed that made “aggravated homosexuality” a capital offense. Included in this category is any sexual activity involving people with HIV,13 a policy that is not only egregious, but one that is likely to have a horrifying effect on containing the AIDS crisis as people will go without testing and treatment to avoid criminal prosecution.

In Ghana, a bill has been passed by parliament that would increase penalties for same sex acts, criminalize organizations that advocate for LGBTQ rights, and criminalize the “failure to report an LGBT person to the authorities and to report anyone who uses their social media platform to produce, publish, or disseminate content promoting activities prohibited by the bill.”14 This draconian law has been criticized by many prominent Ghanaians including Samia Nkrumah, a former member of parliament, chair of a prominent political party, and child of Kwame Nkrumah, who has called for the president to veto it.

Despite these human rights setbacks, we shouldn’t lose sight of the other side. Since 2015, six African nations have decriminalized same-sex acts.15 Moreover, despite the repression that they face, LGBTQ advocates are continuing to pressure governments to change the laws while at the same time showing their humanity to the world at large. For example, as the #Endsars protests took off in Nigeria against the brutal tactics of a special police unit, LGBTQ activists joined in, pointing out the ways in which this police unit targeted them as well. They continued to protest even as many in the #Endsars movement were openly hostile.

Also, the recent mass protests in Senegal show a democratic opening, albeit one fraught with opportunism and other dangers.16

In light of these and other crises, does the rapaciousness of today’s global capitalism-imperialism signify that we are entering the midnight of the twenty-first century—that is, a plunge into utter darkness? And what does our organization need to do and become given that question?

Part II: Subjective forces of resistance — Accomplishments and contradictions

The development that provides hope that we are not plunging into utter darkness are the massive protests worldwide against Israel’s ongoing war against Palestine. These protests, sometimes consisting of half a million at a time, have brought a new generation into the streets. Hundreds of thousands in the UK and U.S. alone, and many more worldwide, are becoming radicalized through these actions; the Israel-Palestine issue has for many become a baptism of fire for questioning existing society.

It is already having a palpable effect—as in compelling many governments, including ones that have long uncritically defended the Israeli state, to distance themselves from it by providing at least verbal support for a ceasefire to end hostilities.

The protests are facing enormous push-back, especially from those claiming that any substantive criticism of Zionism constitutes antisemitism. The latter is on the rise today and it is hardly unknown among leftists. But its most predominant expression in the U.S. is coming from the far right, whose attacks on “East Coast elites” is a not-so-veiled version of stereotypical complaints about “Jewish cosmopolitans” who allegedly control the media, finance, and education. That nothing stops such reactionaries from fully embracing Israel for serving as the U.S.’s major military partner in the Middle East shows that support for it long ago ceased to have much to do with defending Jews.17

In the U.S., where this new McCarthyism is strongest (and has even toppled the president of Harvard University), opposition to it is being led by some courageous intellectuals, which owes a lot to the solidarity of Black intellectuals with the Palestinians and for democratic rights. Labor unions and Black churches have also spoken out courageously, in contrast to the shameful silence of the heads of universities, the cultural establishment, and the NGO sector, dependent as they are on corporate and state support. Also of note is the solidarity of two countries that have experienced forms of colonialism that blatantly touted ethno-racial domination, South Africa and Ireland.

Even more important has been the steely resilience of the people of Gaza. To date, there has been not one report of a Gazan turning in a Hamas hideout or hostage location, something Israel surely would have bragged about had it occurred. Many Gazans remain in or keep returning to the center and the north, despite the danger, in order to continue claiming their homes and land. This is rooted in a deep sense of national solidarity and the refusal of a people to be extinguished. The social formations involved at the village level deserve notice here. As Peter Linebaugh has shown, the Palestinian people have for centuries maintained a communal system of land tenure and village self-administration—similar to what Karl Marx described in his late writings on Russia—which they have retained, albeit in weakened form, through British and Israeli occupation.18

Even as we condemn Hamas’s indiscriminate violence on October 7, it is clear that it changed utterly the world situation, placing the decades-long resistance of the Palestinian people back on the agenda, not only as a factor the imperialist powers cannot count out, but also for the global mass movements for social justice and liberation.19 From the U.S. to France and from Germany to the UK, the new movements of and for the Palestinian people have exposed, in ways not seen in decades, the bankruptcy of so-called “liberal democracy” and especially what remains of reformist social democracy, whose leaders, from UK Labor Party leader Keir Starmer even to “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, have refrained from a strong, unequivocal support for Palestine even in this hour of genocide, all the while trumpeting support for Ukraine.

Despite the enormous destruction Israel continues to wreak upon Gaza—the ramifications of which will be felt for years and even decades to come—one thing is clear: Israel has lost the battle of ideas. Once that happens to any regime, it is only a matter of time before it loses the battle in material terms.

In the Call for our 2022 Convention, we called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 of that year a global turning point. It was a geopolitical turning point, since it initiated a new Cold War between Russia and the U.S., the solidification of a Russo-Chinese axis, and resulted in a refurbished and expanded NATO following Russia’s invasion. Israel’s response to Hamas’s brutal attack of Oct. 7 also marks a global turning point—but not only in terms of geopolitics. It also marks a potential subjective turning point, since Israel’s actions has been met with a mobilization of millions that is breathing new life into social movements around the world.

This is reflected in the support extended to Palestinians by many Indigneous people, Latinx and Blacks in the U.S. and elsewhere. The issues raised by the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—especially the police murder of young people of color—may be less visible in 2024, but they are smoldering under the surface, especially given the fact that both Trumpist fascists and mainstream liberals have blocked the passage of laws that would in any meaningful way restrain the police or even limit their budget.

The counterattack against BLM got seriously underway by 2022, with vicious campaigns against the teaching of Critical Race Theory or the use of books like The 1619 Project in schools. Although these anti-racist efforts may have limitations, such as their tendency to downplay the significance of capital and class, it’s important to note that they are not being targeted by racist reactionaries for this reason. Instead, they are outraged that these educational tools, which dare to speak of “systemic racism,” are moving the public discourse toward a more historical and materialist interpretation. Black intellectuals have been at the forefront of this struggle and have paid the price. This was seen in how the rightwing was able to force the resignation of so highly placed a person as Harvard’s President Claudine Gay, the first Black woman to hold that post. This was accomplished by an unholy alliance of neoliberal cheerleaders for the State of Israel and reactionary racists complaining of alterations in the curriculum and affirmative action.

Outside the universities, a key development in the Black struggle in the U.S. has been the new Poor People’s Campaign, organized by Reverends William Barber and Liz Theoharis. Their call for a Third Reconstruction states, “We must simultaneously deal with the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of health care, militarism and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism that blames the poor instead of the systems that cause poverty.”20 Similarly, Black legislators in California introduced a groundbreaking reparations bill aimed at providing compensation to the descendants of enslaved Black individuals. The proposed measures encompass affirmative action initiatives to combat poverty and enhance educational achievements, restitution for families affected by discriminatory policies leading to property loss, the prohibition of forced prison labor, and the allocation of resources to community-driven alternatives to traditional policing methods.21

The searing anger in impoverished communities of color burned its way to the surface in another bourgeois democracy, France, as seen in the June-July 2023 urban insurrection. In the wake of police killing Nahel Merzouk, an unarmed 17-year-old of North African descent, youth expressed their outrage toward both the police and the system, staging 240 attacks on police or gendarme stations and injuring 700 police officers. What France’s leading newspaper called “an unprecedented” level of destruction is a sign of the times, and not just in France.22

These and other ongoing struggles have the potential to develop into movements and campaigns that oppose occupation, repression, and racial exclusion wherever they occur. Potential, however, is not the same as actuality. We are still a long way from an anti-capitalist alternative which opposes all form of capitalism-imperialism—whether generated by the U.S. or its adversaries—on behalf of universal human emancipation.

One sign of this is that many leftists oppose Ukraine’s fight for its national existence because the U.S and EU have provided it with arms—at least until recently.23 It is of course completely hypocritical for the West to send weapons to aid Ukraine’s fight for self-determination while providing Israel with weapons to suppress Palestine’s fight for self-determination. But it is no less hypocritical to take their ground by supporting the national liberation of the struggle of Palestine but not Ukraine. It is surely possible to defend the right of those resisting imperialism to get arms from wherever they can without endorsing either its leaders (Zelensky in the case of Ukraine, Hamas in the case of Palestine) or the regime that supplies them (the U.S. with Ukraine, Iran and Qatar with Palestine).24

At issue here is not simply taking “the right political position” but the fate of a humanist alternative to capitalism. It cannot be advanced by opposing U.S. imperialism while writing a blank check for Russian imperialism; nor can it be advanced by doing the reverse. sSerious revolutionaries don’t get to pick and choose which forms of statist oppression are more agreeable than others. Refraining from targeting all forms of class society necessarily results in an impoverished vision of human emancipation.

It therefore bears noting that the parts of the organized Left that is presently growing most rapidly are Marxist-Leninists and other vanguardist tendencies. In a way this is understandable: the move of many leftists into social democracy has become highly problematic given political developments in recent years. But that does not mean it isn’t a problem.

In this context, as many are returning to the writings of V.I. Lenin, it is important to note what his real contribution was: Though he is known for his many contributions as a revolutionary leader, his deep study of Hegel from 1914-1915 marked a turning point in his intellectual development. Through this study, Lenin moved beyond the confines of mechanical materialism, embracing dialectical principles like “transformation into opposite” that would inform his theory of imperialism. Lenin’s dialectical understanding enabled him to grasp the contradictions inherent in imperialism, particularly the emergence of new forms of oppression and resistance from outside the European working classes. Imperialism had created an internal differentiation of the proletariat in oppressor and oppressed nations and the need to connect their struggles for a successful social revolution. Through his analysis, Lenin illuminated the interconnectedness of class struggle and national liberation, laying the groundwork for a revolutionary praxis that transcended the Marxist orthodoxy of the Second International. His writings provide unique insight into the aspirations of oppressed groups striving for an alternative to capitalism. For Marxist-Humanists in an era marked by resurgent imperialism and colonialism, Lenin’s original contributions to dialectics and analysis of imperialism remain as relevant as ever. Nevertheless, while Lenin, as well as Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, deserve to be studied anew, their limitations as “post-Marx Marxists, as pejorative,” also needs to be discussed in depth.

What also bears noting is the reactionary character of Middle Eastern states and militias that trumpet their support of the Palestinian resistance, as does the kind of conservative nationalism represented by Hamas, which originated as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.25 These forces, which are key components of what Iran calls the Axis of Resistance, are reactionary and fundamentalist in their internal politics: the Houthi regime in northern Yemen that is attacking Red Sea shipping, the counter-revolutionary Syrian regime, and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iranian regime, both of which played major roles in repressing the Syrian revolution.

It should not be forgotten that the Islamic Republic of Iran experienced a near revolution in fall 2022. Young women and members of the Kurdish and Baluchi oppressed minorities spearheaded this movement, which was touched off by the police murder of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa (Jina) Amini, for not covering her hair to their satisfaction (improper hijab). Despite massive repression, women have carved out hijab-free public spaces in the cities that they and youth continue to defend over a year later. In an interview smuggled out from prison on the occasion of International Women’s Day, leading feminist and Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi declared, “The Iranian people have turned the page on this regime,” adding that “women constitute the most radical, the most powerful, and the most widely engaged force opposing the authoritarian theocracy.”26 Along with oppressed minorities and the working class, they may yet give the regime another jolt, even as it attempts to identify itself with the Palestinian resistance. Again, this shows that there are two worlds in every country, that of the dominant classes and that of the working classes and oppressed groups.

If the global left and Palestinian support movement fail to take note of reactionary character of the regimes in Syria, Yemen, Iran and elsewhere, this will muddy the waters about what kind of resistance can actually lead toward genuine liberation, toward a humanist alternative to capitalism.

Since our founding in 2009, we have argued that the central problem facing today’s struggles is the absence of a viable alternative to all forms of capitalism—whether statist or “free market.” Much of our theoretical work has been devoted to this issue, such as the publication of a revised translation with an extensive commentary of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program. But how do we promote such an alternative in the face of the growing power of the far-Right, the ongoing genocides in Palestine, Ukraine, Myanmar, etc., and the likelihood that the ecological crisis may soon (if it has not already) reach the point of no return? Speculating about “what happens after the revolution” when revolution seems nowhere in sight can readily fall on deaf ears. So, what exactly must we do as an organization in response?

Central to this is showing that a viable concept of the transcendence of capitalist alienation is not a matter of speculating about some distant utopia but is urgently needed to adequately respond to the most pressing political realities. When an alternative to capitalist value production, patriarchy, racism, and class domination recedes from view, what results in the long run is an accommodation to the limits of the given.

To be sure, it is part of our “organizational DNA” to support grassroots movements and stress the importance of horizontal, grassroots forms of organization. But that by itself does not address the problem of how to fill the void in articulating an alternative to capitalist value production, patriarchy, racism, and class domination.

This is why our founder, Raya Dunayevskaya, stressed, “Yes, the party and the forms of organization born from spontaneity are opposites, but they are not absolute opposites…the absolute opposite is philosophy, and that we have not yet worked out organizationally.”27

This was part and parcel of her insistence, “Without such a vision of new revolutions, new individual, a new universal, a new society, new human relations, we would be forced to tailend one or another form of reformism.”28 Today we might add, and/or forced to tailend one or another form of abstract revolutionism. Radicals that cannot find room in their hearts and minds for opposing dehumanized conditions of life wherever they exist are abstract revolutionists. Needed is a concrete universalism that is rooted in all forces of revolution and their reason.

Part III: Organizational tasks and challenges facing the IMHO

Despite these contradictions, there are signs of a growing recognition of the need for a humanist alternative to capitalism. This is reflected in several new works discussing the work of Dunayevskaya and Marxist-Humanist philosophy.29 One recent essay in a major leftwing journal states,

Marxist and socialist humanism have had a lasting impact on how we think about autonomy, social transformation, and radical democracy … Today, the influence of Marxist humanism, particularly as developed by Dunayevskaya’s merging of philosophy and practice, as well as her intersectional analysis of race, class, and gender formulated long before intersectionality came into vogue, are to be traced in such organizations as the International Marxist-Humanist Organization.30

Such discussions testify to the impact, admittedly still modest, that the publication of the collection Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism is beginning to have.31 Of course, these reconsiderations of Marx’s humanism hardly predominate. And for a basic reason: the radical intellectual horizon for the last 40 years, inside and outside of academia, has been defined by the disparagement of any form of humanism. The tendency to conflate bourgeois or Enlightenment humanism with Marxist Humanism is ubiquitous, as are claims that Marx left behind any “residual” humanism when he turned his attention to the critique of political economy, that humanism reeks of “speciesism,” or that a universalist perspective focusing on the transformation of human relations is necessarily hierarchical and oppressive.32 It goes without saying that such conceptions have direct political ramifications, as noted (in part) above.

Hence, our foremost goal as an organization is to work out how we can raise a revolutionary humanist banner within today’s movements—and do so in a way that will convince those drawn to such a perspective to join and help build our organization.

As of now the IMHO publishes a web journal, The International Marxist-Humanist, and at times holds public or zoom meetings on political and theoretical topics. Far rarer do its members come together at rallies and other events to distribute our flyers and literature and invite people to our upcoming events. As a result, many do not view us as an actual organization…because in some ways we have yet to become one.

This doesn’t mean members of the IMHO aren’t involved in important work. Vital activity has been done promoting our ideas at conferences, publications, and podcasts; the same is true when it comes to activity in Palestine and/or Ukraine solidarity, prisoner support, labor solidarity, and care work. But we are largely doing so as individuals rather than presenting ourselves as an organized tendency that poses an alternative to other variants of Marxism.

The operational goal of our 2024 convention is to work out how to move from individuals grouped around a website to becoming a real organization that can continue Marxist-Humanism. The latter is by no means assured. Ideas don’t live and develop on their own. They need living people to embody them, to commit their lives to, otherwise, they become mere footnotes to history.

There are objective barriers standing in the way of assuming such organizational responsibility. We were determined to form an international organization when we moved to create the IMHO in 2009. That we achieved this is our greatest strength, but it also means we are dispersed and rarely get together. That is why attendance at our bi-annual Conventions is vital for every member.

There are also the barriers of everyday life, where we face many obligations and responsibilities that means we must choose what commitments to prioritize and emphasize. This is important given that bourgeois society overburdens some communities more than others, such as workers, women, Trans, and BIPOC communities. This is why we strive to create a space where we can continue to challenge any and all manifestations of racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism and classism inside as well as outside the organization.

Are we willing take the responsibility to maintain and build such an organization? The major barrier facing us is one that afflicts all revolutionary groups that reject the model of a vanguard party. Vanguardists have no problem explaining why others need to join their group—after all, a revolutionary seizure of power “needs leadership” and they are there to provide it. It is harder to get across the necessity for an organized revolutionary group to exist that rejects such an elitist view. This is one reason why anti-vanguardist currents (whether Marxist or anarchist) either do not last long or become insular sects (as News and Letters Committees has become).

A clear example is C.L.R James: though he was surely a serious theoretician, after breaking from vanguardism he failed to explain why an organization of Marxists needs to exist apart from the spontaneous struggles. And the reason he failed to do so is that he recoiled from making the transition from state-capitalist theory to Marxist Humanist philosophy.33 Hence, though he had a small organization following his and Grace Lee Boggs’s break with Dunayevskaya in 1955, it dissolved in the late 1960s just as the mass movements were reaching their peak and a new generation of activists were joining Marxist organizations en masse. In a way, the dissolution of James’s group makes perfect sense: what basis is there in the end to have an organization if it lacks a philosophy of its own and sees its goal simply celebrating the movements and their revolutionary creativity?

In many respects, James’ failure to sustain an alternative form of organization was anticipated in his most important theoretical work—Notes on Dialectics (written in 1948). In rejecting the concept of the vanguard party, he held, “The task today is to call for, to teach, to illustrate, to develop, spontaneity—the free creative activity of the proletariat.” He went so far as to envision “the abolition of the party.”34 So, what kind of organization would replace it? He envisions a mass party along the lines of decentralized formations like the soviets during the Russian Revolution—one created by the spontaneous actions of the masses. No role was specified for an organization of Marxist theoreticians and activists even though he was a member of one.

This lack of specificity was not just James’s problem. It is ours. Marxist-Humanism has made great theoretical strides; having them become embodied and developed organizationally remains our most unfinished task.

History does have a way of repeating itself, but we surely do not want to repeat the history of what happened to James’ organization—any more than we want to repeat the history of News and Letters Committees after Dunayevskaya’s death, when it turned Marxist-Humanist philosophy into a stale ideology.35 This is why we say that the greatest gift we can offer to those joining the IMHO is to take part in the development of a philosophy of liberation—which means working out, consciously and critically, one’s own conception of the world, and in connection with the labor of others, taking an active part in the creation of the history of a new world.1

Jean-Philippe Rémy, “Cisjordanie: l’autre guerre menée par Israel,” Le Monde, Jan. 31, 2024.
2

“The Shoah After Gaza,” by Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books, March 7, 2024.
3

See “Sergey Lavrov and Vulgar Anti-Imperialism,” by Howie Hawkins, Against the Current, March 2, 2024 https://againstthecurrent.org/atc229/sergey-lavrov-and-vulgar-anti-imperialism/
4

Bardan, Roxana. “NASA Analysis Confirms 2023 as Warmest Year on Record,” January 12, 2024. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-analysis-confirms-2023-as-warmest-year-on-record/
5

Hu, Akielly. “What it might look like if President Biden really declared a climate emergency,” August 14, 2023. https://grist.org/climate-energy/what-it-might-look-like-if-president-biden-really-declared-a-climate-emergency/
6

“FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Takes Action to Accelerate America’s Clean Transportation Future,” December 14, 2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/12/14/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-takes-action-to-accelerate-americas-clean-transportation-future/
7

“Ricardo Salles foi condenado por fraude em plano de manejo,” by Sabrina Rodrigues, Oeco, Dec. 20, 2018, https://oeco.org.br/noticias/ricardo-salles-foi-condenado-por-fraude-em-plano-de-manejo
8

See https://mst.org.br/2018/10/26/o-que-e-a-udr-e-quem-e-nabhan-garcia-cotado-para-ser-ministro-de-bolsonaro/ and also https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2018/11/26/entidades-ligadas-ao-campo-denunciam-influencia-da-udr-no-governo-bolsonaro-entenda
9

“O que se sabe sobre o ‘Dia do Fogo’, momento-chave das queimadas na Amazônia,” by Leandro Machado, BBC News Brasil, Aug. 27, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-49453037
10

“Dia do Fogo, “Tres anos depois: mais de metade da florista queimada na Amazonia viour pasto,” by B.A. Garridoi, Infoamazonia, April 24, 2023, https://infoamazonia.org/2023/08/04/dia-do-fogo-tres-anos-depois-mais-da-metade-da-floresta-queimada-na-amazonia-virou-pasto/.
11

“Sob Bolsonaro, mortes de yanomami por desnutrição cresceram 331%” by João Fellet e Leandro Prazeres, BBC News Brasil, Feb. 17, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cw011x9rpldo
12

Muhumuza, Rodney. “Uganda’s new anti-gay legislation includes death sentence in some cases,” May 29, 2023. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/ugandas-new-anti-gay-legislation-includes-death-sentence-for-in-some-cases
13

Ibid.
14

Nantulya, Carine Kaneza. “Ghana’s Leaders Push Back on Anti-LGBT Bill,” March 12, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/12/ghanas-leaders-push-back-anti-lgbt-bill
15

Ferragamo, Mariel and Kali Robinson. “Where African countries stand in their struggle toward more inclusive LGBTQ+ laws,” June 18, 2023. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/where-african-countries-stand-in-their-struggle-toward-more-inclusive-lgbtq-laws
16

See “Standing in Solidarity With Senegal,” by Ba Karang, The International Marxist-Humanist, March 17, 2024, https://imhojournal.org/articles/standing-in-solidarity-with-senegal/
17

For more on this, see “Challenging the New McCarthyism: Charges of Antisemitism Weaponized,” by Peter Hudis, Against the Current, March-April 2024, https://againstthecurrent.org/atc229/charges-of-antisemitism-weaponized/
18

Peter Linebaugh, “Palestine and the Commons: Or, Marx & the Musha’a,” Counterpunch, March 1, 2024 https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/01/palestine-the-commons-or-marx-the-mushaa/
19

See the statement issued by the International Marxist-Humanist Organization within days of the Oct. 7 attack, “The Middle East and the World After October 7, and Israel’s War on Palestine, by Kevin Anderson, https://imhojournal.org/articles/the-middle-east-and-the-world-after-october-7-and-israels-war-on-palestine/
20

See https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/join-us-as-we-build-the-third-reconstruction/
21

Austin, Sophie. “California lawmakers say reparations bills, which exclude widespread payments, are a starting point,” February 21, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/california-reparations-compensation-slavery-c3b8d7a4de973adf218b93e396af8fe1
22

Antoine Albertini and Luc Bronner, “Violences: Un bilan sans précédent,” Le Monde, July 4, 2023.
23

For example, the “March on the DNC” group organizing protests at the Democratic Party Convention in August lists opposing aid to Ukraine among its demands. See https://www.marchondnc2024.org/our-demands
24

See the statement by the Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.) of February 24, 2024, “From Ukraine to Palestine: Occupation is a Crime!” https://linktr.ee/ukrainesolidaritynetwork
25

On this, see Joseph Daher, “On the Origins and Development of Hamas,” Tempest, December 27, 2023 https://www.tempestmag.org/2023/12/on-the-origins-and-development-of-hamas/ and more generally Gilbert Achcar, Israel’s War on Gaza (London: Resistance Books, 2023).
26

Ghazal Golshiri, “Voix des dissidents jaillies de prisons d’Iran,” Le Monde, March 1, 2024
27

“Presentation on the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy” in The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel, by Raya Dunayevskaya (Lexington Books, 2002), p. 9.
28

Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, by Raya Dunayevskaya (University of Illinois Press, [1982] 1991), p. 194.
29

See especially “The Self-Education of Rae Speigel (Raya Dunayevskaya): Child Radicalism and Abolitionist Pedagogies at the Crossroads of Great Migrations,” by W. Chris Johnson, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Vol. 17 (1) 2024, pp. 127-54; “She-Marxist Raya Dunayevskaya: Forgotten Comrade of Left-Wing Intellectuals,” by Sofya Nikiforova and Yekaterina Mikheyeva, Journal of the Higher School of Mathematics, Vol. 6 (4), 2023, pp. 84-104; and “’A Way of Knowing: Adrienne Rich’s Marxism and the Poetics of Revolution,” by Megan Behrent, Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 78 (2), 2022, pp. 13-42.
30

“Humanism and Post-Humanism,” by Sunyoung Ayn, Historical Materialism, 31.1, 2023, pp. 68-9.
31

See Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Class, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation, edited by Kevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin, and Heather A. Brown (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
32

For a fine critique of the latter two claims, see “Humanism: A Defense,” by Karen Ng, Philosophical Topics, Vol. 49 (1) Spring 2021, pp. 145-63.
33

See Dunayevskaya’s Introduction to the 1988 edition of Marxism and Freedom, from 1775 Until Today (Columbia University Press) entitled “Dialectics of Revolution: American Roots and Marx’s World Humanist Concepts”: “When, in the 1950’s Miners’ General Strike, I again used Marx’s Humanist Essays—and my own activity showed the beginning of Marxist-Humanism—C.L.R James also recoiled from Marx’s Humanism” (p. 2) [emphasis in original 1985 speech].
34

Notes on Dialectics, by C.L.R. James (Lawrence Hill, 1980), pp. 117, 141.
35

See “Towards an Organizational History of the Philosophy of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.,” by Peter Hudis, The International Marxist-Humanist, September 8, 2009, https://imhojournal.org/articles/towards-an-organizational-history-of-the-philosophy-of-marxist-humanism-in-the-u-s/

Ukraine’s fight for freedom: A socialist case for solidarity and self‑determination

Paul Le Blanc
8 May, 2024

The text is based on a talk that Le Blanc delivered on April 15, 2024. 

First published at Anti*Capitalist Resistance.




It is necessary for those who support socialism and democracy to support Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion of their country. Here I want to offer some historical and political background as to why I think this is so.

There have been many economic, political, and cultural similarities between Russia and Ukraine – in part because Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire since the reign of Catherine the Great in the late 1700s. The Russian Empire was long known by revolutionaries as “a prison-house of nations” precisely because it was made up of the gradual conquest and forced absorption of multiple nations and peoples into an expanding territory dominated by the powerful, violent authoritarian monarchy of the Tsars.

The economy was initially a form of feudalism, in which a mass of peasants were brutally exploited by a wealthy minority of hereditary land-owning nobles, supported by the Tsarist regime. In the course of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, the Tsars also sought to advance a process of capitalist industrialization throughout the Empire, to make Russia more competitive – economically and militarily – in the global power struggles of the time.

This had the unintended consequence, however, of helping to generate socialist and labor movements that were increasingly drawn to the banner of Marxism, and which culminated in the Communist revolution of 1917 led by Lenin and his comrades which – after a three-year civil war – replaced both feudalism and capitalism with what many hoped would blossom into a socialist economy. Instead, as the regime of Lenin gave way to that of Joseph Stalin, a bureaucratic-authoritarian order dominated most of what had been the Russian Empire, including what is now Russia and now Ukraine. A state-controlled “Command Economy” drove forward, through brutal means, the modernization of the economy of what became known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR).

Despite the economic gains of this new system, it was beset by deep-rooted contradictions and instabilities. These were related to the oppressiveness of the bureaucratic system, with its systematic violations of human rights and popular aspirations; it was also related to ongoing hostility and economic rivalry from highly advanced capitalist sections of the world. Such problems and pressures eventually led to the collapse of the economic and political system of the USSR. One aspect of this collapse was a resurgent nationalism which caused the break-away of oppressed territories out of the old “prison-house of nations,” leading for example to the independence of Ukraine in 1991. The collapse also involved elements in the upper strata of the bureaucratic dictatorship embracing a transition back to capitalism, while taking what had been publicly owned resources and wealth into their own hands. The rise of these capitalist “Oligarchs” occurred throughout the disintegrating USSR – in Ukraine and Russia alike. The economy of both has been privatized, giving rise to domination by these self-interested economic oligarchs. This is combined with breath-taking corruption and soaring inequality, at the expense of the great majority of Russians and Ukrainians. Such capitalism, in the period of the Russia-Ukraine war, is the dominant mode of production on both sides.

Some elements in the nationalist resurgence in the former USSR had connection with old versions of extreme right-wing, authoritarian, racist (often antisemitic) nationalism prevalent throughout Eastern Europe – very much including in Ukraine and Tsarist Russia. While this was antithetical to Marxist and Communist ideology, since the collapse of Communism it has sometimes taken the form of neo-fascist and neo-Nazi ideologies and organizations, particularly on the war front, and on both sides. Serious analysts, however, note that this is marginal – as would make sense, given the horrific experience of the murderous Nazi onslaught during World War II.

On the other hand, there are significant differences between the Putin and Zelensky regimes — as well as one significant similarity: that neither is worthy of socialist support.

We can look first at Russia. When Boris Yeltsin displaced the reforming Communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, leading to the destruction of the USSR, he introduced transition policies marked by corruption, chaos, and the downward spiral of the economy and of Russian living standards. This was accompanied by the ballooning power of the Oligarchs.

Out of this catastrophic situation, Vladimir Putin came to power, imposing a so-called “managed democracy” and a regulated capitalism. The Oligarchs were cut down to size, forced to follow new rules set by Putin’s state.

Putin and those close to him were able to secure their hold of colossal wealth, but in order to justify the increased centralization of political power and to provide an ideological rationale for an increasingly unified Russian state, they voiced the conservative ideals from the old Tsarist order: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. By “Orthodoxy” such ideologists referred to the dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church. By “Autocracy” they referred to a despotic regime that does not tolerate challenges to its authority and makes use of brutally violent Cossacks and other repressive forces to intimidate critics and crush all serious dissent. By “Nationality” they referred to the aggressive domination of a vast empire in which all ethnic groups were to abandon their distinctive cultures and languages, adopting instead those of a unified Great Russia. Putin has explained his outlook in terms such as these.

One source of Putin’s power he owed to his largely (but not entirely) inept predecessor Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin found himself challenged, in his inegalitarian and corrupt policies of capitalist transition, by a semi-democratic parliament established in the wake of Communism’s collapse. With support from the army, he rode roughshod over Russia’s parliament, finally physically assaulting it and ordering its dissolution. He pushed through a new constitution that created an authoritarian executive branch of government to enable him to rule by decree. This paved the way for Putin’s later mode of operation, prevalent today.

This kind of political centralization and authoritarianism did not crystallize in Ukraine, although as Yuliya Yurchenko tells us an “authoritarian neoliberal kleptocracy” – not brought to heal by a figure like Putin – has continued to shape policies in Ukraine, at the expense of a majority of the country’s laboring people. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected on an anti-corruption platform, yet the assessment of the Zelensky government offered by Social Movement activist Vladyslav Starodubtsev is shared by many Ukrainian socialists:

Even before the war, this has been one of the most popular governments Ukraine has had — which is not saying anything good about it, it was just not as awful as the previous ones. Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, has become the most progressive party in parliament on social issues such as LGBTQ rights, opposing violence against women, and so on. But most of these policies have been promoted with European integration in mind, and not because the party is itself progressive.

On the economic front, Zelensky’s party has a market fundamentalist orientation, adopting neoliberal legislation to deregulate labor relations, which has weakened the power of collective labor contracts and trade unions. Due to its market fundamentalist outlook, it views trade unions and any form of economic democracy as harmful to economic development.

We also must consider the global framework of the conflict, which involves the centrality of imperialism to world politics. Those who believe in socialism and democracy — rule by the people over our economic and political life — must oppose it. By imperialism, I am referring to military and/or political and/or economic expansion beyond the borders of one’s own country for the purpose of ensuring the well-being of one’s economy, including the need to secure markets, raw materials and investment opportunities. US imperialism is a reality in our world. This has been so at least since the 1890s, although it could be argued that this has been the case since the 1790s. But neither Lenin nor Rosa Luxemburg saw imperialism as representing a single evil country, but rather all countries in our epoch — oppressed by competing and contending elites of the so-called “Great Powers” — and reflecting the capitalist dynamics of the global economy. Both Lenin and Luxemburg saw imperialism as very much including both the US and Russia. That remains the case today.

Focusing for a moment on US imperialism, one must understand that a key imperialist instrument is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is a military alliance designed in 1949 to contain and push back the threat to capitalist interests represented by the Soviet Union and possible revolutionary insurgencies. Yet another instrument of capitalist expansion and stability has been the European Union (EU). Both NATO and the EU figure into a shrewd analysis developed by political scientist John Mearsheimer, an influential critic of recent US foreign policy. He asserts that US policymakers “have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.” He sees NATO expansion and EU expansion as seeking to make Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, at the expense of Russian power interests.

There are irreconcilable differences between Mearsheimer’s liberal-realist outlook and the revolutionary socialist approach of Lenin, which influences my own approach. I want to conclude by describing what amounts to a debate between Mearsheimer and Lenin.

Mearsheimer notes that the US power elite, when finding itself in a similar situation to that of Putin today, has overthrown “democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War because we were unhappy with their policies. This is the way great powers behave.” He sees as reasonable, therefore, Putin’s desire “to install in Kyiv a pro-Russian government, a government that is attuned to Moscow’s interests.” He believes that the US government and the Russian government can and should negotiate in way that respects each other’s “interests,” and work out a compromise consistent with those interests.

Lenin’s revolutionary Marxist approach is different from that of Mearsheimer. He emphasizes the reality of class conflict, refusing to blur all classes together with the governments of their specific countries. The foreign policies of the “great powers” are always in the interest of privileged and wealthy elites, and at the expense of the laboring majorities. He absolutely rejects the right of “great powers” to insist on having their way.

Mearsheimer tells us: “In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if the Ukrainians were free to choose their own political system and to choose their own foreign policy. But,” he admonishes, “in the real world, that is not feasible. The Ukrainians have a vested interest in paying serious attention to what the Russians want from them. They run a grave risk if they alienate the Russians in a fundamental way.”

No, Lenin responds. In an ideal world, the Ukrainians would have the right to self-determination – for a free and independent Ukraine, for political and economic democracy and a decent life for all. True, in the “real world” such things are not feasible. But instead of bowing to one’s oppressor, one should demand “the impossible” and fight to make what is “ideal” the new reality. This will mean fighting against Putin’s invasion, just as it will mean fighting against Zelensky’s neoliberalism. And one thing more – among “the Russians” there are people like us who hunger for political and economic democracy and a decent life for all. And there are such people among the Western Europeans, among the peoples of the Americas and Asia and Africa. The struggle must include all of us if we are to have a truly ideal world.

I want to add a couple of extra minutes to my presentation in order to take up an important question. Where will Ukrainian freedom fighters get their arms? They will get their arms wherever they can, however they can – otherwise their fight for freedom will inevitably go down to bloody defeat at the hands of their oppressors.

This life-or-death question has come up time and again down through history. And freedom fighters sometimes acquire such arms from rivals of their oppressors, even from sources representing the opposite of what one is fighting for.

One of many examples can be found in the American Revolution of 1775-83.1 Money, arms and direct military support from the French monarchy helped anti-colonial revolutionaries of North America to break free from the British monarchy. Some argue that imperialist powers provide such assistance to manipulate the situation for their own advantage. Absolutely — that is what imperialists always do. But revolutionaries and freedom fighters also seek to manipulate the situation for the advantage of their cause.

This leads to my final point. It would have been a mistake for American revolutionaries, in exchange for French assistance, to violate revolutionary principles by integrating themselves into the French Empire — just as it would be a mistake for revolutionaries of today to integrate themselves into NATO. But it is not a mistake, in a life and death struggle, for freedom fighters to accept weapons from either the French monarchy of 1778 or from nations belonging to NATO today. If the cause of revolutionaries and freedom fighters is just, they will be inclined to struggle for victory by any means necessary.
Paul Le Blanc is the author of works on the labour and socialist movements, including Lenin and the Revolutionary Party (1990), From Marx to Gramsci (1996), and Leon Trotsky (2015). He is an editor of the eight-volume International Encyclopaedia of Revolution and Protest, and a co-editor of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg.

Ukrainians and Palestinians are fighting occupation

Terrell Starr
Vladyslav Starodubtsev
Rita Adel
16 May, 2024

First published at Black Diplomat.

Terrell Starr speaks with two Ukrainians who support Palestine, humanitarian analyst Rita Adel and socialist historian Vladyslav Starodubtsev, about why they feel it is important for their countrymen and women to understand colonialism in other parts of the world.

They talked about Ukrainian socialism, what progressives in the west do not get about Ukraine and NATO and why Ukrainians are not privileged because they are “white.”

CHURCH & STATE

‘Georgia is now governed by Russia’: how the dream of freedom unravelled

Daniel Boffey in Tbilisi
Fri, 17 May 2024 

Protesters Ekaterine Burkadze and her nephew Paata Kaloiani: ‘We have to protect our republic and our peaceful future in the EU.’Photograph: Daniel Boffey/The Guardian


The army of riot police had finally retreated from Rustaveli Avenue, the broad thoroughfare in front of the parliament building, back into the barricaded parliamentary estate.

The last hour on the streets of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, had been violent. Snatch squads had grabbed protesters as officers, beating their shields with truncheons, surged forward to push the chanting crowds away from the graffiti-scrawled, imposing parliament building.

It was Tuesday afternoon and the MPs inside needed to get out after passing the hated “foreign agents” law – which they did. But the police retreat, under a light shower of plastic bottles and eggs, was raucously cheered nonetheless. Then the crowd started to sing: “So praise be to freedom, to freedom be praise.”

It was the Georgian national anthem, Tavisupleba, or Freedom, a bitter sweet reminder to some of the older protesters of a time of great promise – and disappointment.

Tavisupleba, composed by Zacharia Paliashvili, was adopted in May 2004, along with Georgia’s new national flag and coat of arms. They were symbols of a new era after the non-violent Rose revolution swept away the corrupt Soviet hang-over administration of President Eduard Shevardnadze, a former Soviet minister of foreign affairs.

If then there was hope, now there is anger. The significance of the “foreign agents” law may seem arcane to those outside Georgia, but for those on the streets it is an attempt to smear dissenting western voices as traitors.

Civil society organisations and media receiving more than 20% of their revenues from abroad will have to register as “organisations serving the interests of a foreign power”.

The legislation is said to be part of an unravelling of all that has been achieved, albeit in fits and starts, since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Georgia has been protesting for 30 years,” said Ekaterine Burkadze, 45, as protesters’ horns sounded in the background and the rain fell. “But in the beginning they all seem more or less acceptable.”

Two decades ago it had been Mikheil Saakashvili, a US-educated and media-friendly ally of the west, leading the revolution. He became president with 96% of the vote but the support was genuine.

In his first term, his anti-corruption zeal and determination to bring Georgia closer to Nato and the EU won him accolades at home and abroad, and impressive economic growth.

By the second term, however, international monitors and domestic NGOs were warning of the growth of a kleptocracy and creeping authoritarianism. Saakashvili’s zeal and purpose, which had been so attractive, started to wear thin.

“The reforms were very top-down and they had to be fast,” said Ghia Nodia, who served as the minister of education and science in Saakashvili’s cabinet in 2008. “The idea was we don’t have too much time. There was a concentration of power and, of course, Saakashvili is a power junkie, if you will, and there was really no opposition.”

Related: The ‘foreign agents’ law that has set off mass protests in Georgia - podcast

Well-intended policies were executed in a manner that would store up long-term political problems.

Saakashvili wanted to reform Georgia’s universities, which were “rotting and corrupt”, said Nodia. Rectors were appointed by the ministry of education, academics forced to reapply for their jobs and institutions merged, all in a two-year frenzy.

The universities’ autonomy was restored but many intellectuals and opinion makers had been thoroughly disillusioned.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, after a confrontation between Tbilisi and Moscow over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, appeared on the face of it to replenish Saakashvili’s political stock.

When he announced a ceasefire after five days of conflict he was cheered by those who, a year earlier, had taken to the streets calling for his resignation.

But Russia continued to occupy 20% of Georgia. Saakashvili’s apparent disregard for upsetting Moscow would come to be portrayed by the opposition Georgian Dream party as reckless.

Then there was a major domestic scandal. Video footage emerged on the eve of the 2012 election, broadcast by the opposition-supporting channel TV9, that appeared to show a half-naked prisoner weeping and begging for mercy as two guards kicked and slapped him, before raping him with a broomstick.

Saakashvili called the incident “a horrific affront to human rights and dignity” and vowed to bring the guilty to justice.

Related: ‘We are very strong’: Georgia’s gen Z drives protests against return to past

The scandal spoke to a perception in Georgia that what had started as a “zero tolerance” approach to crime had warped into something far more sinister.

The mysterious billionaire and leader of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, issued a statement condemning “these acts of torture by the Georgian government”.

In the election, Ivanishvili’s party swept to victory on a platform that promised to restore civil rights and reset relations with Moscow while pursuing EU membership.

Saakashvili accepted the voters’ decision, in the first peaceful democratic transition of power in Georgian history.

More ominously, the Kremlin welcomed the result. Few saw the creeping danger.

David Katsarava, 46, is in hospital requiring surgery for fractured cheek bones after a brutal beating by riot police during the violent hour on Tuesday before the national anthem was sung.

He is well known in Georgia for his work monitoring the “line of occupation” between Georgian-held territory and where Russian troops now sit.

Katsarava supported Georgian Dream in 2012. “We thought that with the changing of this government we can come back again in the right direction,” he said. “This was a big, big mistake. Nowadays, we see that Georgia is governed by Russian government.”

The story of the past 12 years has been of Georgia talking up its prospective membership of the EU while pursuing incompatible policies – and getting away with it, he said.

Nodia, who today runs a thinktank, said it was after 2018 – when it had briefly appeared that Georgian Dream’s preferred presidential candidate, and eventual winner, Salome Zourabichvili, might lose – that the Georgian government turned.

“I think Ivanishvili believed that the west was behind it,” Nodia said. “Ultimately, he wants to stay in power.”

Anti-western groups, some on the far right and not formally associated with Georgian Dream, started targeting the government’s critics in the streets or at protests.

Saakashvili, who had left Georgia shortly after the election, was convicted in absentia in 2018 for abuse of office and sentenced to six years in prison. He was arrested on his return three years ago and remains in detention.

Giorgi Kandelaki, who was an MP in Saakashvili’s United National Movement party, said the reset in US-Russian relations under the then US president Barack Obama provided the context for what has happened, with the west willing to accept Georgian alignment with Moscow – all the way up to the Ukraine war.

“Ivanishvili had been saying all these things for years, but no one wanted to listen,” Kandelaki said.

It was only when Russia invaded Ukraine that the Georgian government had to pick a side – declining to join the west in imposing sanctions. Even then, it was granted EU candidate status in December.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, who was in Tbilisi this week, conceded the EU was culpable in “managing the decline”.

“I’ve been here before,” Landsbergis said. “We were saying the same things about electoral law, about the way judges are appointed, about so many things, and no steps were taken. It was escalating and we didn’t meet that escalation.”

Back among the protesters, Burkadze and her 21-year-old nephew Paata Kaloiani are facing many more days and nights on the streets. “We protested at the Rose revolution, we protested against Saakashvili. Now we are here,” she said. “We have to protect our republic and our peaceful future in the European Union”.



VIPER AT THE NATION'S NECK

Thousands mark Family Purity in Georgia as anti-govt protests simmer

Reuters
Fri, 17 May 2024 





People mark Day of Family Purity in Tbilisi


TBILISI (Reuters) - Thousands of Georgians led by Orthodox Christian clerics marked "Family Purity Day" on Friday, marching down the same central avenue in Tbilisi that has been the scene of some of the fiercest anti-government protests in the country's history.

The contrasting groups staging the marches - pro-Orthodox and conservative on one side and pro-European on the other - spotlight the deep divisions within Georgian society as it grapples with an unprecedented political crisis.

For over a month, thousands of protesters, many of them young people, have filled Tbilisi's streets on a near-nightly basis to voice their opposition to a draft law on "foreign agents" they condemn as authoritarian and Russian-inspired.

The United States and the European Union have repeatedly warned the ruling Georgian Dream party to drop the bill, which protesters fear will harm the South Caucasus country's bid to join the European Union.

Dozens of rallygoers have been arrested or hospitalised since mid-April after police deployed water cannon and fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades to disperse the crowds.

By contrast, Friday's march received the tacit support of Georgian Dream, whose leading members including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze took part.

Declared an official government holiday this year, the "Day of Family Purity and Respect for Parents" celebrates what the Georgian Orthodox Church calls the country's "family values" of marriage between a man and a woman.

LGBTQ rights are a contentious topic in Georgia, a traditionally Orthodox Christian country of 3.7 million.

Georgian Dream introduced a bill in March that would ban sex changes and adoption by same-sex couples, among other restrictions, a move seen by opponents as an attempt to boost its popularity ahead of elections later this year.

The Church began marking "Family Purity Day" in 2014, one year after an LGBTQ rights rally in Tbilisi was violently dispersed by crowds led by priests and conservative groups. May 17 is commemorated in many countries as the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.

On Friday, throngs of mostly families and elderly people paraded down Tbilisi's streets, brandishing Orthodox icons and Georgian flags.

Outside parliament, where just a few days ago protesters were led away by police, people queued for their turn to kiss a large icon held aloft by a priest clad in black robes.

"Today is a great day," said marcher Zviad Sekhniashvili, dressed in the traditional garb of Caucasian highlanders.

"Family is our fortress... That's why God created man and woman: to have a family, to have kids."

Other holidaymakers said they saw family as linked to the concept of the Georgian nation.

"Family is like a little state," a woman who gave her name as Mariam said. "If our family is good, it's good for the country."

(Reporting by Reuters in Tbilisi; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in London; Editing by Nick Macfie)