CPI-ML Revisionist Liberals Devoid of Rigor or Marxism
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) in name only, Libbing it up for Ukraine.
CPI-ML and its Liberalism on the Ukraine War
We’re going to dissect and dismantle this article today.
Putin said “You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.”
I remember watching this speech and I was like, while that’s antithetical to our goals of re-communization, it was probably one of the most chilling statements of the speech. And a really really good troll.
Liberation writes:
‘Note that for Dugin, opposition to the US or NATO is not based on “anti-imperialism”; it is a straightforward opposition to liberal democracy. He openly calls for a world where powerful nations will be free to run totalitarian, authoritarian, and fascist regimes and invade neighbouring nations, without having to be accountable to the UN or any international body for violations of “human rights” and “democracy” which Dugin deems to be “western” values that are alien to “Eurasia” and the “East”. India’s PM Modi strikes a very similar note when he brands “human rights” to be an alien and western concept, and like China, shifts the goalposts to claim that “economic growth” and “national security” (war on terrorism) are human rights in the true sense of the term.”
This blew my mind, that to tie Putin to fascism Liberation had to invoke Dugin (they couldn’t do it with Putin himself, so they invoked the scary bogeyman and guilt by association. Dugin, who is a traditionalist and Eurasianist, not even a fascist, and the tactic still failed.
The strangest line was *not against imperialism, but against liberal democracy itself* ….um yeah, that’s kinda the point of communism, to change the state of things, from the liberal democracies of modernity into a higher social order of societal organization wherein people are better represented by the government than in liberal democracies.
Liberalism, literally what we intend to dispose of in place of true collectivist society and abolition of want on the basic levels of human need, is the dialectical stage of history prior to socialism. First, some basic Marxism 101.
In the history of class society, all of it has been a recurring cycle off one group (the oppressed class) overthrowing the oppressing class . From slave society we moved to feudalism, from feudalism, to industrial capitalism, from industrial capitalism to imperialism, and from imperialism, the overthrowing class (the proletariat) is aiming to overthrow the bourgeois ruling class that currently exists. Always, Marxism analyzes these class relations and contradictions. And we are at the imperialism stage. Yes, it’s a crude analysis, but for the purposed of this article, it’s sufficient as a more in-depth framework required for the point I’m making.
Digging into the Liberation article
Grant Scott Fellows, in his thesis ‘The Foundations of Aleksandr Dugin's Geopolitics: Montage Fascism and Eurasianism as Blowback’, University of Denver 2018, observes: “Dugin’s direct influence on the path of policymaking in Russia is difficult to trace, as he has had no formal positions in either the military or government,
So not only doesn’t he article tacitly admit that Dugin has no position in any part of the Russian Government, he is continually invoked as the sole responsible party for influencing the Putin administration’s “rejection of modernity” and alliance with fascism. Did you also notice that no other sources were used other than “trust me bro” on the Dugin thing.
Having read some of Dugin’s works, it’s a gross misrepresentation, even though I disagree with much of his Political Platonism and fourth position politics, the writer in the article doesn’t even get that correct.
Next,
On the national question, I turn merely to Stalin. And a great twitter thread by @leninbol Skeptomai. (Like and follow him for a great wellspring of information on what socialism and Marxism-Leninism looks like in the 21st century, with sound theoretical backing).
Lenin after reading this article:
Pt 2 - deconstruction. The author quotes Lenin in Pravada saying
“ The Bolsheviks will not make this a subject of difference and disunity, they do not regard this as an obstacle to concerted proletarian effort...In this long and hard fight we Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers must maintain the closest alliance, for separately we shall most definitely be unable to cope with the task. Whatever the boundaries of the Ukraine and Russia may be, whatever may be the forms of their mutual state relationships, that is not so important; that is a matter in which concessions can and should be made, in which one thing, or another, or a third may be tried—the cause of the workers and peasants, of the victory over capitalism, will not perish because of that”
Stalin clarified Lenin in saying, there are limits to the national question, making an appeal instead to the internationalism that defines Marxism-Leninism: And offers this solution (in pic.)
Compare the above clarification by Stalin to the article’s interpretation of Lenin on the national question. Lenin and Stalin are in agreement, and Lenin seems to be using the exact framework of what constitutes a nation as Stalin, as you’ll soon see.
He expressed his concern that the bureaucratic state apparatus was still “a bourgeois and tsarist hotch-potch”, and as a result, “the ‘freedom to secede from the union’ by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk.”
However Lenin himself dismantles this Great Russian narrative, concisely.
In this situation, the proletariat, of Russia is faced with a twofold or, rather, a two-sided task: to combat nationalism of every kind, above all, Great-Russian nationalism; to recognise, not only fully equal rights, for all nations in general, but also equality of rights as regards polity, i.e., the right of nations to self-determination, to secession. And at the same time, it is their task, in the interests of a successful struggle against all and every kind, of nationalism among all nations, to preserve the unity of the proletarian struggle and the proletarian organisations, amalgamating these organisations into a close-knit international association, despite bourgeois strivings for national exclusiveness.
Pt 3. Kulak Rehabilitaiton. Seriously?
Ukraine in particular bore a terrible brunt of the Stalin regime’s exploitation and repression. Soviet Ukraine, often called the “breadbasket” of the USSR, suffered a terrible man-made famine in 1932-33, in which some 4 million Ukrainians starved to death due to Soviet policies of forced and mismanaged collectivisation resulting in unharvested and rotting crops; coercive grain procurement from the Ukrainian peasants; followed by cutbacks in rationing. Ukraine remembers this famine as the “Holodomor” – a phrase which means “to kill by starvation.”
Do you know what Kulak meant when the term was being used? Tight fisted. As in greedy. The Kulaks we’re the more affluent and rich private farms, and they resisted the collectivization efforts of agriculture in the early days of the Soviet Union, going so far as to burn crops and slaughter livestock to maintain their class position as petit bourgeoise. They in fact hurt the young russian industrialization and collectivization by refusing to participate. The irony was, as the state collective farms became dominant, as agriculture technology and technique improved, the Kulaks became irrelevant, their vast private farms were no longer needed, and in their impending defeat as a class against the proletarian state, they either submitted and collectivized their farms into the public sphere, or their industry monopoly (and wealth) died with their stubbornness.
But, In typical liberal fashion, the author attempts to not only incorrectly attribute cause (famine) incorrectly to policy. That’s not to say the Lysenko agriculture experimentation didn’t exacerbate, but I’d never expect a Marxist-Leninist to try to rehabilitate the Kulaks. Ffs.
Liberation writes:
“Soviet Ukraine, often called the “breadbasket” of the USSR, suffered a terrible man-made famine in 1932-33, in which some 4 million Ukrainians starved to death due to Soviet policies of forced and mismanaged collectivisation resulting in unharvested and rotting crops; coercive grain procurement from the Ukrainian peasants; followed by cutbacks in rationing. Ukraine remembers this famine as the “Holodomor” – a phrase which means “to kill by starvation.”
The Holodomor, the literally Nazi talking points to discredit the USSR as it laid the heavy industry ground work in machines, electrification, and steel, necessary to expand into other industry, has historically been used by ultra leftist deviations within communist circles to discredit the material conditions of having just survived three wars, having an economy in shambles, and the need for stabilizing the economy before socialist modes of production and collectivization could even begin. Dr Brer speaks extensively on this here in this video.
The discount of the massive technological progress and industrialization in a command economy tormented by imperialist wars, a civil war, and a 14 country assault to try to restore the Tsars, cannot be understated.
Despite all that, the Soviet Union not only survived but thrived; with the union of oh so many nationalities uniting under the soviet banner. This unfortunate fact lies in direct contradiction when contraposed next to the the divisive CPI-ML rhetoric and ahistorical revisionism basically saying “oh the poor Kulaks.” Fuck the Kulaks, they’re just mad Stalin took their farms and made their monopoly and parasitic agriculture arrangement (they basically acted as farm land land lords) end. It’s the same as the Gusansos complaints that Castro took their “right to slaves and plantations.” Disgusting to rehabilitate such a bourgeois group that acted to harm the USSR for their own personal gain. Much like the author of the Liberation article, is whoring themselves out to the imperialist pimp, parroting the Western and Nazi talking points on the Ukrainian conflict and the Soviet Union. Philistine Revisionism at best.
Pt 4: Liberation writes “Ukraine, for the Right of Self Determination for all Oppressed Nationalities, Radical Socialist, 28 Feb) write of the Maidan movement, “There was a considerable far right presence, which included neo-fascists. In reality, only a tiny minority of the protesters at the rallies were from the far right. However, they acted in a united way and managed to mainstream their slogans.”
Yet we can look to miles and miles of evidence to the contrary, the Soros International Renaissance Foundation, the involvement of “Yatsenyuk is our guy” Nuland, the active provocateurs in Maidan that began sniping the protestors (CIA color revolution turned military Junta, perfected in their regime change model of the Jakarta Method) is completely whitewashed to demonize Putin. The article fails to even speak on the NATO US involvement in the 2014 Maidan coup. Disingenuous as fuck.
Oliver Stone covers all this and more and you and you can draw your own conclusions in the documentary Ukraine on Fire, found here.
The article also completely omits
The complete violation of the the Minsk Accords that Ukraine failed to abide by
the 8 year ethnic persecution of the Ukrainian Russians in Eastern Ukraine in the Donbas
The involvement of Soros and Nuland in the form of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Yatsenyuk is our guy leaked phone call
12 billion and counting in “aid” form the US and other NATO powers; basically shoveling arms into Ukraine and reaping astonishing military industry profits
In a mental gymnastic routine that would make Olympic gold medal winners look like amateurs, the self-determination value for Ukraine as a whole, is disregarded when it comes to Crimea and Donbas, as if the concept of self-determination we’ve explored herein only selectively apples.
The liberal logic selective apples to who it covers in regards to national self-determination, and also advances a metaphysical idea of what a nation even is, in direct contradiction of what Lenin and Stalin saw as what constituted a nation.\\
“It is unclear how and when the invasion by the fascist and imperialist Putin regime will end, and on what terms. We can only support the people of Ukraine and Russia who are resisting Putin’s war, and hope that their resistance can indeed end this war.”
The final statement of the article shows that the understanding of imperialism is that of the mercurial definition of “conquest” not of Lenin’s monopoly capitalist definition of imperialism. How disingenuous to uphold Lenin when it’s convenient, but then adopt an anti-Leninist stance on what imperialism is when talking about the character of the russian special military operation.
Warmaking in and of itself is not imperialism in the terms we refer to it as—the export of monopoly capitalism as a means to control and coerce—but the sophistry and philistine ideas of vulgar imperial conquest—that’s the liberal way of things, and the way of how the Liberation Organ shifts its frameworks to suit its narrative rather than acknowledge the conflict in a materially and ideologically consistent way. It reeks of Trotskyist underpinnings “The one true marxists” analysis, in its inconsistency.
The CPI-ML is not a Marxist Leninist organization in anything but name.
Shoutout to comrade Ioseb Jughashvili for the article and inspiration for this article and bringing to light the hypocrisy of the CPI-ML and its garbage rag “Liberation” for being utterly garbage and towing the imperial line as useful idiots masquerading as communists.
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