Presentation of Chapter IX:
Conclusions
Finally, the reader will find Chapter IX in which the fundamental theoretical and programatic conclusions are synthethised, which the authors considered essential to highlight.
“Ukraine: between the interimperialist disputes and the occupation war”
This chapter begins with an article that was written by Carlos Munzer, coauthor of the book, moments before going to press, which attempts to address in particular the conclusion of the international situation and the Ukraine war that has been going on for 5 months when this book comes to light.
In that article we insist that are the Ukrainian masses who pay all the cost with thousand of deaths and millions of refugees. And also the exploited of the world, and the European ones particularly, are who see their hardships and sufferings redoubled in the midst of this counterrevolutionary offensive, with the increased cost of living, skyrocketing rises in service fees, job loss, etc.
We can alreadty see at these moments how, while the masses suffer these attacks, capitalists line their pockets and increase their profits. Recently, with the mediation of Turkey, Ukraine and Russia negotiated the opening of ports to the exportation of several million tons of grain, as Cargill and the other imperialist grain companies have demanded. This shows that in the midst of the war there is not any shortage for capitalists but only a sidereal increase in their benefits and their coffers' content. So much so that the recent spike in commodity and food prices in record number has made three more members of the Cargill familiy enter the list of the biggest multimillonaires according to the Bloomberg magazine, joining the other two that were already in it.
As we have seen, the world working class and the Ukrainian one particulary have tried to stand up and fight tirelesslty, presenting battle every time capitalists and imperialisms tried to advance in throwing on the shoulders of the exploited the costs of the crisis and the crash, which the former two themselves and their voracity have provoked. And a thousand and one times these fights were betrayed and a thousand and one times the masses were stabbed in the back by the same leaderships they have had at their head.
Because of this, the principal conclusion which we higlight in this 9th chapter is the same one that has gone through this work from beginning to end, the greatest crisis the world proletariat face: the crisis of revolutionary leadership, which, in other words, mean the overabundance of leaderships that capitalism has bought to save itself in the midst of this catastrope and crash.
At every step the labor bureaucracies and aristocracies, Stalinism, the social-imperialist parties and even today also the former Trotskyists, have gathered in a single party under the name of “New Left”, which has sown in the exploited false illusions so that they trust that “the lesser evil” of Biden against Trump in EEUU, Castillo against Fujimori in Peru, Boric against Piñera in Chile and a long etcetera, could resolve their hardships. In Ukraine we see the Stalinist currents and like-minded Renegades of Trotskism supporting Puttin in his invasion war “as a lesser evil” against NATO; on the other hand, we see antoher variant of Reformism affirming that Ukraine will find its way out going together with the “Democratic Imperialisms”. In this way they have erased and concealed any struggle for socialist revolution and for the seizure of power by the proletariat.
Only by understanding this premise it is possible to explain how this rotten system has survived
We present here the article:
“In the Ukraine war and in the international class struggle two theories and two programs are confronted:
On the one hand that of class collaboration and the “revolution by stages” of Stalinism; and in the other hand that of Trotskyism and the theory-program of permanent Revolution”
The struggle of Trotskyists focuses on setting up again the party of the world socialist revolution, the Fourth International and its program of 1938.
That is why we present here the last article that makes up the 9th chapter of Ukraine at war:
“The task of the moment: to recover the flags of the Fourth International and regroup revolutionary cadres of the international working class”
Here we give an account of the fierce battle in which our international current finds itself and consequentially, we prepose:
- “The Fourth International is not dead. It lives in this sharpening of the conditions of crisis, wars and revolutions. Now it is about its living in new revolutionary combat organizations. The time has come to put this task into action again. All our forces as a Trotskyist nucleus for the international socialist revolution, are committed to this.”
***
As an appendix to our work, we bring closer to the reader:
The position of the Bolsheviks-Leninsts and the Fourth International on the Ukrainian question in the early and mid-twentieth century.
Comprising “The National Question”, a chapter of the History of the Russian revolution by Leon Trotsky, “The Ukrainian Question” by Leon Trotsky (1939) and “The Independence of Ukraine and Sectarian Confussion”, also by Leon Trotsky (1939).
***
As we say in the conclusions of this work: “The last word has not been said. A speed race is ongoing. On one hand, between the development of the crisis and the capitalist catastrophe that opens the way to war, and, on the ohter hand, the struggle of the masses, who needs to have at their head the leadership they deserve. Entering this speed race for the masses to triumph is the key task of every party that claims revolutionary Marxism. This party has the obligation of arriving with a just policy at the right time to the class struggle and wars, such as that of Ukraine, to open the way to socialist revolution”
In Ukraine the left that proclaims itself “revolutionary” worldwide has broken with any independent Soviet strategy in the war, to submit to the bourgeois gangs that dispute the nation among them. Ukraine is at present being both torn apart and occupied, and will end up transformed in colony and with its working class divided.
That is why we reaffirm: either Ukraine will be Soviet and independent or it will rest a tutored colony.
For the Socialist United States of Europe!
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