The main contradiction on the question of peace, for those wishing today to represent the immediate and prospective interests of the proletariat and the popular masses, lies in the political positions of those groups and individuals who deny that there is an inter-imperialist war going on in Ukraine.
To contend that the war in progress is chiefly a war of aggression by Western imperialism and NATO against Russia or, vice versa, to contend that it is a war of aggression by Putin against a free sovereign State is in fact to push into the background the inter-imperialist character of this war. It is to create confusion and obfuscate the central issue.
The question that determines all the others is that of the nature of the war in progress. To set the question out incorrectly inevitably results in jingoism, i.e. to a reactionary policy. A policy that foments warmongering, nationalist and racist views and sentiment and that divides in Italy, Europe and the world the proletariat and the popular masses and leads them to obtusely subordinate themselves to the interests and impostures of this or that imperialism, which in fact favours, beyond the best and most pious intentions, fascio-populism or the most hidden and devious red-brownism of the “left”.
There can be no real battle for peace against this reactionary war, which is a further step towards the outbreak of the Third World War, unless a fundamental struggle against imperialist chauvinism is waged at the same time.
The logic, the spirit, the interests that today drive US and European imperialism on the one hand, with its obvious retinue of reactionary states and statelets, and Russian and Chinese imperialism on the other, with their respective allies, are the same. The general terminal crisis of imperialism accentuates to an unfathomable degree the expansionist aims of these powers that aspire to world domination. This is the cause of the war in Ukraine, a war that now means direct confrontation between opposing imperialist camps.
The proletariat and the masses of the people throughout the world must be told that to place oneself in the hands of one imperialism or another is a short-sighted and suicidal path, as well as a despicable betrayal of proletarian internationalism, which instead gives pride of place, against the various monopoly capitalisms of the various powers, to the unity of the proletariat and the masses of the people for world revolution, socialism and communism.
Without this internationalist message, this dissemination, this type of activity, there can be no development of class consciousness, there can be no truly communist parties or truly class unions, today or in the future.
If the demonstration of 5 March in Rome is any illustration, behind the chatter about peace and disarmament, of nationalist, social-fascist and jingoist propaganda at the service of US, European and Italian imperialism, emphasised also by the yellow-blue colouring of the initiative, there is no doubt that, on the other side, the apologia for Russian or Chinese imperialism represents the current form of nationalism carried by ‘left-wing sovereignism’.
To call for an exit from Europe and NATO without making it clear that Italy is a country that can truly oppose the inter-imperialist war and become truly independent, in national terms, only with a democratic, popular and anti-fascist system of power and government on the road to socialism, is tantamount to wanting to safeguard the interests of imperialist Italy, bringing it into the orbit of Russian and Chinese imperialism. It means working to move Italy from one form of dependence on the USA and the main European countries, to another form of dependence, oppression and a tendency towards deployed fascism.
Only a new resistance today can ensure real opposition to the war, a new democratic constituent process, real safeguarding of the immediate economic and social interests of the working class and the less privileged strata of the young and the petty bourgeoisie, and real national independence. The watchword for the fight against the inter-imperialist war today is that of an anti-fascist popular front against the war for a popular government that imposes these programmatic points. Communists, anti-fascists and sincere democrats must unite to support this approach and develop a compliant initiative among workers, youth and wherever there are mass initiatives and mobilisations on questions of war and peace.
Nuova Egemonia Blog
CONTRIBUTI TEORICO-POLITICI PER LA COSTITUZIONE DEL PARTITO MARXISTA-LENINISTA-MAOISTA 