Ukraine is fighting for the right to determine its own future. This principle of supporting self-determination of nations was developed by Vladimir Lenin in 1914 and by Woodrow Wilson, then president of the United States, who elaborated what became known as the 14 points.
The principle of self-determination is absolute and applies even if the struggle is for a bourgeois democratic state rather than a socialist society.
Defence of the principle of self-determination is advanced concretely with a perspective of revolutionary transition beyond capitalism and the capitalist state.
Ukraine’s population has united to take up the struggle, with Russian-speakers rejecting the invasion. Citizens have been given weapons by the Zelensky government, creating a kind of people’s war.
We support the building of the independent workers’ movement of Ukraine and the development of a programme to end the power of the oligarchs and create a real democracy in place of the corrupted state.
Following the failure to develop a bourgeois democracy in Russia, the Putin regime has reverted to a Tsarist view of empire in theory and practice.
This nationalist view, which the Stalinists held in relation to the USSR, rejects a separate national and cultural identity for Ukraine (and for Belarus, Chechnya and other parts of the former Soviet Union).
Tsarism in its 21st century form under Putin has lapsed into proto-fascism, with stress on obedience to the state, ethnic identity and opposition to “modernity”.
The invasion of Ukraine is in part driven by a fear that its neighbour, which overthrow Moscow’s proxy in 2014, will “infect” Russian society with its drive to achieve a functioning democracy.
NATO’s “expansion” to take in the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic has nothing to do with the invasion and much to do with the history of those countries under Soviet occupation and invasion.
The crisis of the Russian state coincides with the decline of bourgeois democracy in the main capitalist countries. The political crisis in Britain swirling around Boris Johnson is part of this.
The totalitarian regime in Moscow is not identical to bourgeois democracies which are themselves in crisis. Both constitute a threat to each other’s power and influence.
The UK, US and other NATO countries are in particular defending their European economic space and markets of the EU & UK, in which neoliberal states with their emphasis on individual rights and markets prevail.
This has compelled the US, UK and others to support Ukraine with arms. Ukraine has the right to ask for and receive arms as the alternative is to allow Putin’s armies to destroy its independence. However, we should be aware that Washington and London will place their own interests above Ukraine’s if necessary.
We do not defend or side with the “democracies” per se versus totalitarian regimes. Neither serve the interests of the people and can’t in the future while they remain capitalist states.
Those on the “Left” who either call for peace, blame NATO, declare the conflict a proxy war between Russian and American imperialism, or claim that supplying arms to Ukraine prolongs the war, effectively side with Putin against the Ukrainian people.
This is the era of corporate-driven globalisation and neoliberalism, both of which are threatened and weakened by the Russian invasion. A growing economic crisis, marked by inflation and spiralling debt, dominates the global economy.
While we stand with Ukraine, we reject the hypocrisy and double-dealing of our own ruling classes expressed in interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, former Yugoslavia, etc and the suppression of rights at home.
We campaign for the withdrawal of the UK from NATO and the dissolution of the Cold War military alliance.
We are for a revolutionary transition from a failing bourgeois democracy into a real democracy which transfers actual power and sovereignty to the people in all parts and countries of the UK.
