Resolution: On the Ukraine War

Preamble 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been raging with red hot intensity since February of last year. Likely hundreds of thousands have already died from this vicious and bloodthirsty war of domination. Communists must call out this war for what it is: a proxy war of imperialist rivalry as the once supreme position of the global hegemon, the United States, is threatened by a “rogue” Russia and an ascendent China. Communists must maintain a line of revolutionary defeatism in the face of calls from American aligned imperialist ideologues to defend the “democracy” of Ukraine on the one hand whilst resisting Russian campists declare the Putin-FSB regime as “progressive” or “anti-imperialist” in its quest for “multipolarity” on the other. 

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This war has led to a flowering in social-imperialist and chauvinist tendencies within the workers movement. These traitors declare that our principled stance is veiled support for the Putinist regime. In unequivocal terms we declare these social imperialists as scabs who betray internationalist principles in their call for us to support the Ukrainian right to self-determination, a country whose state regime has become but a pawn of NATO-American imperialism in an effort to curb Russian expansionism. 

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The aggression of the Russian would-be imperialists doesn’t change the fact that any sheep dogging attempt of the social-imperialists to provide working class support to the ‘national liberation’ war waged by the Ukrainian-Banderite friendly state is providing support to the imperialist objectives of our own capitalist states. This is a great betrayal of the working class, to say nothing of a betrayal of communist principles. We reiterate our argument that neither Moscow nor Kiev nor Washington nor Canberra are innocent in this conflict! The imperialists would send the proletarian masses to the grave! Down with the social-imperialists who would see workers of the world die in their millions in the defence of false bourgeois “democracy”! The main enemy is at home, and communists must wage the class war to the end! The only hope for world peace is the international solidarity of the proletariat on the march to communism! 

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Theses 

1. The war in the Ukraine represents the return of great power imperialist conflict that risks a proxy war being rapidly escalated into a direct war between nuclear armed imperialist powers.

2. The strategy of the challenged hegemon, the United States, has evidently evolved from the containment of Russia into a policy of the destruction of the Putinist regime, the state's dismemberment and its economic domination by western imperialism. This is consistent with the general strategic aims of US imperialism to maintain its declining power within the capitalist world-system. The central objective of this strategy is the encirclement of China and the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party state-capitalist regime. 

3. In the bourgeois press, this policy is justified in terms of democratic liberties, the “Rules Based International Order”, and the rights of nations to self-determination. Communists must oppose this war drive and call out the hypocrisy of the imperialists. 

4. The war has been utilised by American imperialism to tighten its hold over its allies in NATO and in its associated sphere of influence. The collapse of German political independence in its eastern policy and the intentional syphoning of capital from the European Union by the US is emblematic of this. 

5. Outrageously sections of the socialist, workers, and communist movement across the imperial core have called for material support for the Ukrainian government - a policy which in practice would lend support to NATO arms shipments and the apparatus of American imperialism! These social-imperialists couch their calls for supporting Ukraine in the language of “national liberation” and the “defence of democratic rights”. In reality these rallying cries are for the working class to subordinate its interest to the imperialism of their own state! 

6. However, just as heinous are those ‘campists’ who wish to lead the workers movement behind the contenders for the dominant role in imperialism. There is no proletarian future with the Russian FSB regime or the Xi’ist Chinese capitalist technocracy! We condemn in no unequivocal terms the murderous “special military operation” of the Russian Federation. 

7. The position of the RCO is revolutionary defeatism. The primary enemy for proletarians of all countries is their own national bourgeois and their sectional interests. The RCO fights for a revolutionary party and proletarian movement that will overthrow the capitalist state regime globally and replace its repressive apparatus with a worker’s militia accountable to the masses. As such, we are wholly opposed to imperialist war, militarism, and the division of the world between imperialists. 

8. The illusions of the social-pacifists must be defeated. While capitalism prevails, war is a structural necessity. Communists must link the pervasive social desire for peace with the need for proletarian revolution. There is no road to peace without the disarming of the bourgeoisie, their political domination under the Proletarian Republic and the victory of international communism. We support neither their war, NOR their peace - neither their multipolarity, NOR their “Rules Based International Order”.

9. It is necessary for revolutionary communists to draw a clear line of demarcation against the line of the social-imperialists and the social-pacifists. Whilst it will be a tactical question whether or not to do work in organisations that hold social imperialists, it is absolutely necessary to draw a class line between our politics and theirs.

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