What position should socialists take?
On 1 March, in response to the row between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the national executive of the Left Party passed a resolution that is, unfortunately, analytically wrong and politically far removed from an independent socialist position. It is a doomed attempt to formulate a solution to the war in Ukraine that renounces military logic but remains within the framework of existing capitalist relations. The national executive (PV) is once again making the mistake of wanting to pursue coalitionist government policies without being in government – apparently the majority of executive members have not yet abandoned the hope that in the future the party’s renewed strength will make it possible for it to try to be a partner of the SPD and the Greens in pro-capitalist government coalitions. But instead of this approach the task of a socialist party in such a situation should be to expose the class character of the policies of all capitalist powers, including the German government.
For the Left Party PV, there is apparently a simple division of good and evil or perpetrators and victims in the Ukraine conflict. Unfortunately, the PV is thus giving in to the pressure of the German capitalists and their parties, who are using this view to justify their war policy. Russia is identified as the sole aggressor and Ukraine is absolved of any (shared) “guilt”. Trump is portrayed as a brutal villain who tramples international law underfoot, as if he were the only one of his kind. And the German government, the EU, the UN, China and the BRIC countries are presented as the forces that can bring peace and that are called upon to act. Unfortunately, this has little to do with reality.
Proxy war
Even though the war in Ukraine began in February 2022 with the invasion of Russian troops and even though leftists must, of course, demand the withdrawal of these troops from the territories that have been occupied since then, this does not mean that Russia is solely to blame and that the Ukrainian government and the ‘West’ are not also responsible – not least for the fact that this war is still going on three years later. And it does not mean that the Ukrainian government under Zelensky should be supported and armed, because it is reactionary, nationalist, undemocratic, and pro-capitalist. Since 2014, Ukrainian governments have been waging war against the separatist areas in the east of the country and before this war were passing measures that restricted the rights of national minorities within Ukraine. Now it is waging the current war on behalf of the Western capitalist states with the aim of weakening Russia militarily and economically to such an extent that it is no longer able to make military advances in the foreseeable future and loses out in the economic competition. ‘War is the continuation of politics by other means’ it is said: Not only Russia, but also the USA and the European Union, have been wrestling for influence in Ukraine for many years. All of them have actually prepared for an escalation and accepted it.
Trump
Now the strongest power in the West, with Trump’s assumption of office, has changed its position on the war in Ukraine because it is introducing a fundamental strategic turn in US foreign policy, and wants to enforce a ceasefire as quickly as possible so that the war in Ukraine does not further burden the US national budget. In addition, there is the consideration of accepting that Russia will not withdraw from the occupied territories and reducing economic sanctions against Russia in order to break Russian capitalism from its alliance with China. Trump is only pursuing what he understands to be the interests of the US ruling class. The fact that this could lead to an end to the fighting and the thousands of deaths in the current situation (at least temporarily) does not make Trump an angel of peace, as his support for the state of Israel and its brutal treatment of the Palestinians shows.
In this struggle for power and influence between major capitalist powers, there is no ‘side’ that socialists could support. In the current situation, adopting a statement that does not contain a single word of criticism of Zelensky fails to recognise that it is primarily the Ukrainian government that is currently making demands for security guarantees and the withdrawal of Russian troops, including from the areas that were under Russian influence before the February 2022 invasion (Crimea and the separatist areas of Luhansk and Donetsk), which prevent an immediate ceasefire. If you watch the entire 45-minute video of the press conference between Trump and Zelensky, you can see how Zelensky had apparently gone to Washington with the promise of signing the raw materials deal and then suddenly publicly raising the demand for security guarantees – which were not provided for in the agreement.
Now, the Left Party’s national executive is calling on the German government and the EU to ‘clarify’ the situation, but this ignores the fact that the German government and the EU have been very clear for over three years that Ukraine would be supplied with weapons in order to continue the war but not with enough to drive the invaders back. The Left Party should instead point out that the German government is not pursuing a policy of ‘national defence’ or ‘defence of democracy’, but rather of defending the economic and political interests of the German capitalist class. It should unequivocally declare that under no circumstances will it agree to the expansion and rearmament of the Bundeswehr, the German military, which also only serves these capitalist interests.
The Left Party should not counter the fear of war that exists among millions of people by talking about a threat from Moscow, but by explaining that ‘capitalism carries war within it like clouds carry rain’ and that the Left Party therefore strives for a socialist transformation of society as the only realistic peace policy. And it should call on the trade unions to join the fight against militarisation and armament, because every euro spent on the Bundeswehr or on military aid to Ukraine or Israel means one euro less for necessary investments in education, health, climate and social issues. The hope spread by some trade union leaders that an expansion of the arms industry could save threatened industrial sites and jobs must be rejected. Instead, the transfer of these factories into public ownership under democratic control and management by the working class must be demanded, so that production there can be converted to socially useful goods.
China?
To pin one’s hopes on a Chinese peace initiative and to seek salvation in a ‘response’ by the United Nations General Assembly to Trump betrays illusions in a supposedly ‘better’ Chinese imperialism and in a General Assembly that consists of capitalist governments. To these are to a large extent autocratic and dictatorial regimes all of which represent their own economic and geo-political interests and not the interests of ordinary people in Ukraine (or elsewhere). Why should the EU, China and the UN be more likely to make any decision in the interest of the people of Ukraine or any other country than Donald Trump and the USA?
The party leadership claims: ‘One thing is certain: if Xi Jinping invites, Vladimir Putin will come too.’ This is an absurd statement, because if Donald Trump invites, Putin will come, and talks between the USA and Russia, between Trump and Putin, are already taking place. It is not a question of whether talks will take place, but in whose interest an agreement will now be reached. And no matter who will prevail: the ordinary people in Ukraine and the soldiers on both sides are only pawns for the great capitalist powers.
‘Debt brake’
The fact that the party executive – before the SPD and the CDU agreed to convene the old Bundestag to suspend the ‘debt brake’ (Schuldenbremse, the 2009 constitutional limit on new debt) for military spending only – already spoke out in favour of abolishing the ‘debt brake’ in a statement that addressed the war in Ukraine and Trump’s policies, is fatal and raises serious questions.
The left is against the ‘debt brake’ because it is a tool for the capitalist class and their representatives in the federal government in the class struggle against the working class. In this context, the left should not be in favour of the state getting into debt, but rather of the money being taken from the rich (and not in the form of interest-bearing loans, but through taxes and expropriations). Leftists can support taking on debt when the balance of power at a given moment does not allow for higher taxes or expropriations. This is also because when the balance of power changes in favour of the working class, interest payments and debt repayments can be stopped.
The suspension of the debt brake would have been a means for the capitalist class and its government in the class struggle against the working class to implement the planned rearmament (or rather it would be, in the unlikely event that the plans of the conservatives and SPD fail to get the necessary two-thirds majority due to the Greens). If we are to be concrete in our politics and not just represent abstract principles, then we have to base our position on the specific consequences of political decisions and not on abstractly possible consequences. Rearmament could have been (and would be) prevented by voting against the lifting of the ‘debt brake’. Under a Merz government investments in climate protection, health and social issues, or even infrastructure, would not be the main result of lifting the ‘debt brake’. For the Left Party to agree to this step when a two-thirds majority is required and then vote against rearmament, when the Party’s small numbers would not prevent the government gaining the simple majority this step needs, would simply be symbolic politics. In this situation, it would have been politically correct to be unequivocally opposed to the government’s direction and not to make opposition to the ‘debt brake’ an issue of principle. Instead, one could have explained that the Left Party is not in favour of increasing the national debt anyway, but rather of higher taxes for corporations and the rich. The best response in the Bundestag would therefore have been a motion to introduce a wealth tax and higher taxation of corporate profits.
For or against arms exports?
The fact that a majority of the Left Party leadership apparently sees this differently raises the question of whether this attitude is also a questioning of the principled rejection of arms exports – as openly questioned by many Left Party politicians – or even further rearmament. The state governments in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, both coalitions which the Left Party is part of, voted in favour of arms deliveries to Ukraine in the Bundesrat (upper house). Two years ago, Bodo Ramelow, then the Prime Minister of Thuringia and now a member of the Bundestag for the Left Party, said that he was fundamentally opposed to arms deliveries, but not in the specific case of Ukraine. Dietmar Bartsch, former co-chair of the Left Party’s Bundestag group, recently wrote: ‘In matters of foreign and defence policy, Die Linke faces programmatic challenges. Our 2011 Erfurt programme no longer fully reflects the global situation. The question of whether we categorically exclude arms deliveries forever and everywhere will have to be discussed.’ And the new Left Party co-leader Jan van Aken also stated a few months ago that it would not be possible to immediately stop arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Now, a majority of the population and very likely also many Left Party voters and (new) members are not against arms deliveries to Ukraine because they understandably want to support the Ukrainian population. However, these weapons primarily support the Zelensky government, which is now carrying out brutal forced recruitment and no longer has any democratic legitimacy, and are prolonging the bloodshed.
With Liebknecht and Luxemburg
The left urgently needs to debate this question openly and intensively and should reflect on the position of those in whose tradition it wants to stand: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and their principled opposition to the First World War and coalitions with pro-capitalist parties, to Liebknecht’s ‘The main enemy is at home’ and Rosa Luxemburg’s consistently socialist-internationalist position of not supporting any of the warring capitalist powers – whether strong or weak, formally an aggressor or not – and instead backing the power of the masses in the fight against the war. Why? Because the First World War was a struggle between the major powers for influence and control on a global scale, and the attitude of socialists could not be made dependent on who fired the first shot. That is why the Serbian social democrats refused to support the ‘national defence’ at the time, even though their country had been attacked – because they recognised that Serbia was only a puppet in the struggle of the great powers and that there was no dividing line between a defensive war and an imperialist war as long as the government was allied with one of the imperialist camps.
We can learn a lot from this, not least that an independent, socialist position must not fall into the trap of judging a proxy war between the major capitalist powers through the prism of attacker and attacked. Even if it seems far away: only the building of mass movements in both Ukraine and Russia against war and capitalism can fight for real peace, self-determination for all and prosperity. On this basis a future could be offered to both Ukrainians and Russians that would sweep away repressive regimes and the rule of the capitalist oligarchs. In August 1914, that also seemed a long way off, by the way – and in February 1917 the revolution broke out in Russia, followed by Germany in November 1918. These revolutions ended the war.
