2022 러시아·우크라이나전쟁의 원인과 본질, 결과
로젠가튼 Rozengarten | 우크라이나
(러시아와 우크라이나) 두공화국은 20세기 가장 끔찍한 전쟁인 2차세계대전 나치독일과의 전쟁에서 승리를 보장했다. 부르주아노선으로 전환하면서 그들은 소련의 유산을 분할하기 위한 극심한 경쟁과 주도권다툼을 위한 줄다리기를 피할수 없었다. … 경제적이해관계, 동력과 그동기들, 내외적요인들의 영향이 매우 복잡하게 얽혀있는 이런 과정들은 특정정치활동분야에서 표면적으로는 변형된 형태로 보일때가 있으므로 본질을 통찰하는 분석을 요구한다.
우리가 유일하게 견지하는 제국주의에 대한 규정은 레닌의 정의다. 간단히 말해 <제국주의는자본주의의독점단계이다.그주요징후중하나는자본주의국가에의해점령되지않은지역으로자유롭게확장하는식민정책에서지구상의영토를끝까지나눠독점소유하는식민정책으로전환하는것이다.> 즉 제국주의는 자본주의발전의 한단계로 질적으로 새로운 형성물이 아니며, 한마디로 우리시대에 존재하는 자본주의의 특성이 변화한것을 의미할뿐이다.
… 제국주의의 본질을 밝힐때에는 각각 체계에서 개별나라가 차지하는 지위가 중요한것이 아니라 전체로서의 제국주의체계가 어떤 특징을 가지고있느냐가 중요하다. … 따라서 공동주의자들사이에 어느 나라를 제국주의라고 부르고 어느 나라를 제국주의라고 부르지말아야하는지에 대해 논쟁이 벌어진다면 우리는 그문제의 공식화는 근본적으로 잘못된것이라고 생각한다.
우크라이나영토에서 벌어진 이전쟁에 대해 제국주의당사자들 중 누가 러시아연방에게 <위임장>을 발급했는지, 또한 우크라이나에게 발급했는지 이해해보자. … 범인을 찾는 유일한 방법은, 레닌의 글을 인용하자면 <누가이득을보는가?>라는 질문을 하는것이다. 그리고 우크라이나 유혈사태가 미·중간의 대리전이라고 완전히 확신하기에는 너무 이르지만, 동시에 지금 이야기하지않는다면 경종을 울리기에 너무 늦을것이다.
부르주아전쟁이 반파쇼전쟁일수 있는가? … 반파쇼는 반자본주의다. 부르주아국가는 그렇게 될수 없다. … 노동자의 이익으로부터 출발해 나아가는 공동주의자들은 부르주아국가가 그들의 조국이 아닌 노동자들과 마찬가지로 이전쟁에 관여할 일이 없다. 제국주의도 파시즘도 자본주의에 반대되는것이 아니라 경제적, 정치적, 관리의 측면에서 자본주의의 한형태일뿐이다.
전쟁은 강대국들과 그안의 다양한 계급들이 수행해오던 정책의 연속이다. 다만 폭력적인 방법이 동원되는것이다. 그리고 전쟁의 성격은 어떤 계급이 전쟁을 벌이는지, 특정한 전쟁에서 어떤 정책을 계속 펼치는지에 달려있다. 어떤 형태로든 부르주아계급에 의한 부르주아전쟁은 정의롭지않다.
제국주의자들사이에 정의의 전쟁은 없다. 노동자민중이 이런 전쟁에서 얻을수 있는 이익은 없다. 노동자민중은 스킬라(Scylla)와 카리브디스(Charybdis)사이의(진퇴양난의_편집자주) 민중처럼 서로 경쟁하며 울부짖는 포식자들사이에 있는것이다. 유일한 탈출구는 프롤레타리아혁명이다.
Peoples between Scylla and Charybdis : Causes, Essence and Consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian War of 2022
Rozengarten | Ukraine
발췌 extracted
Imperialism is not a qualitatively new formation; it is a stage in the development of capitalist society. The nature of its this development is uneven, therefore, in clarifying the essence of imperialism, it is important not what place each individual country occupies in its hierarchy, but what characteristic features the imperialist system as a whole has. Any aggressive, expansionist action both within the country and in the “foreign policy” field will be imperialist in nature and be a manifestation of “imperialist policy”. And, therefore, it means, if necessary, building up one’s territories by both direct seizure of someone else’s, and indirectly – by acquiring new markets, expanding the sphere of influence of one’s monopolies, etc. This is what is happening today with the Russian Federation as with a bourgeois state and drives the policy of its ruling circles. The same motives have been drawing all the new states of the united West into the alleged “Russian-Ukrainian” war.
Such is the materialized logic of the development of capitalism which is called to remove rose-colored glasses in a failed attempt to determine which of the bourgeois governments is “one’s own”, which one deserves to be supported? The ultimate beneficiaries of any wars will be the formalized non-territorial class of the bourgeoisie – the financial oligarchy, whose competing detachments issued their “powers of attorney” in this war on the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Nevertheless, which imperialist parties in this war on the territory of Ukraine “issued a power of attorney” to the Russian Federation to conduct it, and which ones to Ukraine?
Today, more than 90 days after the beginning of this war, we already see those who have received and continue to receive their dividends. These, of course, are not the peoples of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, and, in general, not even their governments. On the other hand, the United States has significantly strengthened its position in the international market for the sale and supply of raw materials, crushing the EU fuel market. In turn, China is increasing the supply of raw materials from Russia at a reduced price.
In any conflict – be it ethnic, internecine, civil – each side will always defend the interests of one of the major, often external, imperialist powers. The only way to find the culprits, quoting Lenin, is to ask the question “Who benefits?”. And although it’s too early to say with absolute certainty that the bloodshed in Ukraine is a proxy war between the United States and China, but at the same time, if we don’t talk about it now, it will be too late to sound the alarm.
Now, another question arises – can a bourgeois war be anti-fascist?
Fascism, as an instrument of the dictatorship of finance capital, differs from democracy only in that dictatorship under fascism has an open, terroristic character. The bourgeois dictatorship in the form of democracy, parliamentarism, is replaced by a terrorist dictatorship at the moment when the living space of one or another financial monopoly is at stake. In this sense, U.S. anti-fascism in World War II was not, in its essence, real anti-fascism, because the goal was not to defeat fascism as a phenomenon, but to defeat German Nazism as a regime of the imperialist state (i.e. competitor). Therefore, when in the publications of various communist organizations, primarily Russian, it is proposed to support the Russian bourgeois government in its struggle against fascism, we see a slogan about supporting the Russian bourgeois government in the spirit of 1914, but by no means the Soviet slogan about the fight against fascism of the 1941 model.
To be anti-fascist is to be anti-capitalist, which, by definition, a bourgeois state cannot be. Despite the fact that the Russian Federation deftly manipulates anti-fascist rhetoric at the level of public consciousness of the nostalgic part of its population and the population of other post-Soviet countries for socialism.
As long as the labor movement of countries is weakly organized and in decline, all the proletarians and other unprotected sections of the population will suffer the consequences of the war. Whatever its results, none of the representatives of the bourgeois elites will suffer real losses. Whatever the outcome of the war, ordinary families around the world will suffer from it: physically die, like the inhabitants of Ukraine, or suffer from sanctions and possible reparations, as in the Russian Federation, and also lose their civilians and military, or feel a decrease in the level of life due to the rise in the cost of utilities in the EU countries.
The Communists, who proceed from the interests of the workers, have nothing to divide in this war, just as the workers, for whom the bourgeois states are not their fatherland. Neither imperialism nor fascism are opposed to capitalism, but are only its forms in economic, political and managerial terms.
In the communist movement, unfortunately, there is still no unity in the assessment of the ongoing war. We share the positions declared in the Joint Statement “No to the imperialist war in Ukraine”, signed by 42 communist parties and 30 communist youth organizations on Solid.net.
The trouble is that many parties seek to support one or another conflicting side in the imperialist war, although it is necessary to fight against capitalism as such. Opinions are sharply opposed: from the total accusation of the Russian Federation of an aggressive policy and, accordingly, support for Ukraine; to the full justification of the military invasion under the pretext of denazification and the consideration of the war as a fair, preventive special operation. Some comrades believed the anti-Nazi rhetoric so much that they even draw parallels between the armed forces of the Russian Federation and the Red Army.
Those comrades who support the Ukrainian regime are based on thinking in terms of the superstructure only, and not the entire socio-economic formation. Such comrades proceed from an understanding of imperialism as politics, and do not accept it in the Leninist understanding of the unity of base and superstructure. Of course, the Russian Federation demonstrates an aggressive, imperialist policy, but since its basis, productive forces and production relations have not acquired all the features of imperialism, moreover, the way the Russian economy is integrated into the world economic system has the character of a raw materials appendage, then it is simply impossible to call it an independent imperialist which is clearly demonstrated by all the indecisive, and even the disastrous nature of its actions.
The second position is shared by rather extensive group of comrades can be called a position of guarding, justifying the “special operation”. It has two varieties.
The first is generally formulated as the fact that the Russian Federation, like any other state, has the right to protect its interests, if they are infringed, by any available means, including preemptive strikes. They conclude that the Russian Federation is waging a just war.
Here the comrades forget that we are talking about the Russian Federation, which is a bourgeois state. Any war between two bourgeois countries in the era of imperialism, as Lenin showed in a dozen of his works, cannot be just by definition. Their understanding is based on international bourgeois law (which, with the collapse of the USSR and the socialist camp, has long ceased to work in international relations, having been replaced by the law of the strong), and not on a class approach and cannot be accepted as an argument. Lenin also answered the question of how the nature of war should be determined. War is a continuation of the policy of these powers and the various classes within them, carried out before the war, but by a violent method; and the nature of the war – whether it is just or unjust – depends on which class wages the war, what policy is continued by the given war. The war of the bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie in any form is not just: in any case, in the era of imperialism, it will turn into a war against the working people. What we already see in the rapidly deteriorating standard of living of workers, moreover, not only in Ukraine and the Russian Federation, but throughout the world.
And, finally, the position of “supporting your government” that has become quite widespread today under the pretext that the Russian Federation is allegedly waging a liberation war in the Donbass and throughout Ukraine, freeing its people from fascism. It is incomprehensible how the comrades did not get rid of such illusions after 8 years of the destruction of the people of Donbass, 8 years of hypocritical promises of support, but in fact 8 years of unsuccessful bargaining with “world partners”, after which Russian protégés emasculated the pro-Soviet essence of the uprising there, establishing in fact, military dictatorships in Donetsk and Luhansk.
There are no just wars between imperialists. The working people have no interests of their own in these wars. They are between howling rival predators as between Scylla and Charybdis. There is only one way out – the proletarian revolution.
The main demands of the international proletariat to their governments and imperialist alliances will be: the cessation of hostilities, the cessation of the supply of weapons by both NATO and the allies of the Russian Federation, the withdrawal from economic sanctions to political and judicial processes against specific persons in power and other persons guilty of unleashing the war; a fair and open trial of war crimes; expanding the participation of the proletariat through its representation in the negotiation process.
More specifically, they can be formulated as follows:
1. Workers of Russia, Ukraine, USA, EU and all over the world, unite in opposition to the imperialist war and in opposition to your own governments!
2. Workers of Russia, Ukraine, the whole world, prevent the production and supply of weapons!
3. Peoples of the world – go to action against the war with the slogan of the international solidarity of workers!
We demand:
1. An immediate cessation of hostilities and the resumption of open negotiations to resolve the conflict under the control of representatives of the working people: trade union organizations, committees for the struggle for peace, friendship societies between countries, etc.
2. Creation of an international commission of delegates from workers’ and trade unions to investigate war crimes.
3. A fair and impartial trial of all instigators and executors of the war.
