With lies and amalgams. The PO functional to Putin and against worker solidarity
In a note signed by Rafael Santos published in Prensa Obrera (1), The PO once again displays lies and amalgamation to attack the MST and the LIS, stands on the opposite side of internationalist worker solidarity by ranting against the International Convoy of Solidarity with Ukraine and, by the way, ratifies its semi-campist policy functional to Putin. A true “Russian salad”.
By Guillermo Pacagnini
Serial liar
The note, which aims to polemize with an article by Rubén Tzanoff - leader of SOL Español and LIS, for information from Santos that indicates him as being from the MST- repeats a series of lies and nonsense about the nature of the Convoy and our politics.
Santos' first lie: says that the initiative is“political support for NATO”, solidarity with him“Ukrainian-Otanist gang” in the "war waged against Putin”. Clear, does not provide any quote that supports such atrocity.
Second falsehood: is sent against the LIS, speciously wondering if we are going to intervene in the anti-war actions and“continue demanding that imperialist governments send weapons, bombs and deepen the attacks against Russia”. Again, all evidence is conspicuous by its absence.
Y, continue your text, appealing to an arsenal of vulgar amalgams. Pretending to put in the mouth of the LIS, individual statements by David Acosta, one of several Convoy coordinators, where it refers, among other issues to assumptions “military advice addressed to the imperialist powers”which have no relation to the official call for the Convoy and were extracted from a bulletin of the European Solidarity Network. And mixing in an endless tirade until the“ICE in the US”and the “Spain's persecution of African immigrants in Ceuta and Melilla”…All of these statements that we do not share and are manifestly not part of the policy and program of the LIS. A trade method, to try to prove the unprovable.
This modus operandi runs through the entire note, including assertions bordering on the ridiculous.: “The plan proposed by the Convoy (…) "Wants to confiscate Russian funds held/stolen by the US to buy more weapons for Zelensky's Ukrainian army.".
It is necessary to separate the much chaff from the little wheat of Santos' note to go to the essence of his statements. What are two?: attack a united front initiative to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine and, again from the campsite, ratify its solidarity with Putin and the armed aggression against said people.
The Convoy: unity of solidarity action with the Ukrainian people
As RT clearly explains in its note, The Convoy is a solidarity initiative of unity of action to support the people of Ukraine. (2) Activists and union organizations participate in it, social movements and political forces from different countries, including Ukraine. It seeks to articulate an international humanitarian campaign to collect and bring hospital supplies to the Ukrainian people., electric generators, vehicles and other necessary materials that can be purchased or received as a donation.
As the note also explains that beyond the transportation of logistical and humanitarian aid, The Convoy aims to become a political action to make visible and strengthen international solidarity with the attacked people, promoting broader participation of workers and popular organizations from different countries.. The LIS has joined this initiative, with our own identity and program, without signing the call document because it is unilateral, issue that we make explicit, but the OP's method of misrepresentations hides. Which we confirm in a new publication (3).
And we do it by continuing various internationalist campaigns and actions in support of the Ukrainian people in general and our comrades of the Ukrainian Socialist League/LIS who are part of the heroic resistance, even with fallen comrades on the front lines. And the people of Ukraine find themselves in an extremely complicated situation due to the destruction of hospitals and energy infrastructure., among other outrages perpetrated by the aggressor Russian imperialism that only the insensitivity and political foolishness of the PO can ignore.
An initiative that has many similarities with the Sumud Global Flotilla, wide action unit, around two light points: support for the Palestinian people and rejection of Zionist aggression beyond the important differences between its members. Then, the OP ended up joining the last mission. Nevertheless, in front of this convoy, What is the reason why the PO denies and fights a unitary action of internationalist worker and popular solidarity?? Surely, the genetic national Trotskyism of the PO, makes his predisposition to internationalist campaigns episodic, scarce and ordered by its national needs. But, essentially, It is his camp policy absolutely functional to Putin with which we have intensified the controversy since the invasion began.
Recharged camping
But the true essence of Santos' note is its functional nature for Putin's government.. As was the Athens Conference where the central demand for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the imperialist invasion was absent from its document.. (4) An forgetfulness that betrays that fondness for the campist positions of the PO, which in this note seems to appear increased and corrected..
For Santos, the essential“war between NATO and Russia” is that there is“an imperialist front that wants to impose a regime change in Russia, plunder their economic resources and super-exploit more than 100 millions of Russian workers. …. With a great imagination and out of all reality, In addition to stating that"The war started long before. We can take the Maidan coup in 2014 as a starting point…” (to make Russia appear as a victim?) resorts to an unusual historical comparison: a kind of“Treaty of Versailles” to impose economic conditions on Russia (sic).
It intends to denigrate our policy of supporting the people, saying that the war“It is not defined by who invaded or shot first”. A tremendous atrocity when it is clearly the Russian army that invaded, occupied and bombed, destroying even hospitals. Ignoring the entire historical position of revolutionary Marxism.
Our policy, that of the revolutionaries, which we ratified in the resolution of the III Congress of the LIS (5), It is comprehensive and on the path of what Lenin and Trotsky advised.. Part of a Marxist analysis that takes all the elements of reality, that is, the three subjects involved in the conflict. Ukraine, which is a semi-colonial country, beyond the pro-NATO orientation of Zelensky's bourgeois government. Russia, that beyond the debate its level of development is an imperialist country, a great power (not “average”). The third subject, NATO, which of course has interference in the conflict, It is the imperialist military alliance led by the US. And a correct analysis takes the two processes that combine in this war: the invasion of russia, a great aggressor power, to a semi-colony like Ukraine, that defends itself, and non-direct Yankee imperialist intervention, which of course wants to condition Russia at the service of the dispute for hegemony and the new order that it wants to impose. Revolutionary politics must respond comprehensively to this double character.: a just war of national sovereignty against the invading power and, both, an inter-imperialist confrontation. Just as it is completely wrong to skip any of those processes, It is mainly to ignore the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people. Promote defeatism, is to place oneself in the camp of Russian imperialism. The policy of the revolutionaries forces us to combine the defense of the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people, with the repudiation of the Russian invasion and demand for the withdrawal of its troops and the interference and use of the conflict by the United States. and NATO. And in that framework, the sharp delimitation of the Zelensky government, as our colleagues from LSU/LIS have been doing.
That NATO supports Ukraine against Russia out of its own interest does not force the revolutionaries to ignore the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination.. As Lenin pointed out very clearly: “The fact that the struggle for national freedom against an imperialist power can be exploited, under certain conditions, by another 'great' power for the benefit of its purposes, equally imperialist, “It cannot force social democracy to renounce recognizing the right of nations to self-determination.”(6)
In the meantime, The PO remains locked in its dilemmas, believing that the capitalist restoration was not completed., there is a bureaucratic caste and Russia is just one“medium power”. Beyond the legitimate debate on the degree of imperialist development, with a more regional character or with a predominance of its military aspect, cannot ignore (as Santos does) which is the second army in the world (7) who attacks a semi-colonial country and who is deploying a clear annexationist strategy.
The“revolutionary fraternization of the workers of both countries and the establishment of workers' governments”, the corollary of Santos' note, becomes a salute to the flag, pure propaganda within the framework of a regressive and wrong policy from beginning to end.
The incurable heirs of Master Altamira
It is evident that the leaders of the Workers' Party, In each of their performances they demonstrate not only that they do not deny the genetic mark of their founder Jorge Altamira at all., but in some things they prove to be his favorite students.. Not only because of their catastrophic analyzes that lead them to place themselves poorly in the current world reality., addressing every conflict as a prelude to a third world war. But because of its non-scientific method of taking only one aspect of reality and drawing general conclusions that lead to wrong policies., reasoning shared by sectarians and opportunists and well addressed by Trotsky in his famous discussions with the POUM during the Spanish civil war (8). And that leads him to completely misplace himself when it comes to defining the character of this war..
But fundamentally it shows the Altamirist imprint in the method used for controversy., appealing to misrepresentation and amalgamation.
Trotsky stated that a Marxist is known by the method of obtaining information, rejecting the custom of those who accommodate reality to a pre-established scheme to demonstrate the unprovable.. He rejected the amalgam method consisting of choosing partial elements of reality., distort them , articulate them capriciously and season them in the service of demonstrating the unprovable. A question that he studied very well analyzing the method of Stalinism, expert in amalgamating and putting all revolutionaries and Trotskyists in the same bag as agents of imperialism.(9)
The PO has made this method of intrigues and lies a common framework to face debates and disqualify the opponent.
This is what Santos does in his scandalous article. It would be very bad if it were just a journalistic discussion.. But it's much worse, because it is about launching a campaign of worker and internationalist solidarity with a people subjected to criminal imperialist aggression.
- Ukraine: the LIS and the MST in a convoy to support the imperialist war
- International Solidarity Convoy to Ukraine – International Socialist League
- Ukraine: Why do we participate in the International Solidarity Convoy? – International Socialist League
- Down with imperialist wars! For the international revolutionary unity of workers
- III Congress of the LIS: Document on Ukraine – International Socialist League
- Lenin, firing several shots while trying to get other regiments to join. The right of nations to self-determination,Prosveschenie 1914.
- The 20 most powerful armies in the world | WIRED
- Trotsky, L.The ultra-leftists in general and the incurables in particular. 1937 in The Spanish Revolution Ed. EY
- Trotsky, L. A new milestone in the Stalinist amalgam. Writings, 1935
