Russia: The far left just can't keep up with reality!

There was a time when I first got involved with politics that the various left groups had clear lines on what Russia and the other "socialist" countries were. Their main proponents in both the UK and the West was the official Communist Party of Great Britain publishers of the daily Morning Star. To them the defence of the Soviet Union and it's satellites in Eastern Europe plus Cuba was central to their political strategy and usually parroted whatever line the Soviet Communist Party used to pursue.

The CPGB also defended China, North Korea and  North Vietnam in their propaganda despite the Sino-Soviet split. Even today the Morning Star carries articles supporting the genocidal policy of the Chinese in Tibet.

The rest of the far-left was dominated by Trotskyism. The pro-Chinese groups were minute and mostly irrelevant. Trotsky considered the Soviet Union as "a degenerated workers state" and only needed a "political revolution" not a "social" one to remove the Stalinist usurpers.   This line was vigorously pursued by the Workers Revolutionary Party, International Marxist Group and the Militant Tendency amongst others.



Meanwhile Tony Cliff way back in the forties and fifties broke with "orthodox Trotskyism" and denounced the Soviet Union as "State Capitalist" and therefore Imperialist in nature when it came to the Korean War. This led to the famous slogan on the front page of Socialist Worker "Neither Washington nor Moscow.

That was then.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and despite an attempted coup the Communist Party was finally overthrown and the country briefly went towards democracy not that this lasted long. Putin and his ilk rose to power. Opposition is difficult and the state has aligned itself with the thoroughly reactionary Russian Orthodox Church. Putin has promoted Russian Nationalism and has sought to reassert Russia's influence in lost place like the Ukraine even to the extent of invading the Crimea and stoking conflict using "breakaway republics" on his borders with with Crimea and even tiny Georgia.

Russia is now very much a capitalist economy with imperialist  intentions. Same has happened with China, though the Chinese Communist Party managed to introduce capitalism itself and remains firmly in control. Their imperialist intentions are seen right across the south seas as disputes erupt over tiny islands and sandbanks in a battle for resources. Their claim to Formosa (Taiwan remains a major source of potential conflict.

Nobody except the left seems to retain any illusions about Russia and China, though North Koera remains a nightmare. The Morning Star regularly takes a pro-Putin line as do some of the trotskyist sects. The New Communist Party (a breakaway from the official CPGB in the seventies remains a fan of Russia, China and North Korea. Old habits die hard.



Even bloody Jeremy Corbyn couldn't get it through his blinkered outlook on international politics that Russia was responsible for the chemical attack on British soil. Only pressure has made him publicly at least appear to revise that line,but pro-Russia he remains.

This was illustrated by a couple of articles I read from the micro-left recently. Socialist Fight published a paper in which the organisation was encouraged to recognise the imperialist nature of China:

It is hard to let go of defending a country that Trotskyists deem progressive after it transformed and become reactionary. This is true in particular in regard to the degenerated/deformed workers state. After the successful capitalist restoration in Russia and the Eastern European countries, it took most of those who called themselves Trotskyists years to concede that capitalism has been restored in these countries. A similar process is taking place in regard to China. Some Trotskyists still consider China to be at best a semi-colony, while in reality, China has been imperialist for some time.

Meanwhile the tiny International Bolshevik Tendency, a split from the Spartacists (don't ask, maybe one day) has had it's own split over a spat about the nature of Russia:

In early October 2018 several members of the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) submitted a statement announcing they were leaving the organization. The grouping, led by Tom Riley and including comrades from different sections and the international leadership, had until their departure been in the majority in the IBT in a long-standing dispute over whether Russia is now imperialist.

A substantial minority of the organization argued that Russia had developed into an imperialist power over a decade ago. Building on natural resources in oil and gas and what remained of the economic base inherited from the Soviet Union, Russia had come to project its economic might abroad to extract value from less powerful countries, using its military weight to secure spheres of influence for future enrichment. Although considerably more backward than the established major imperialist powers, Russia plays an increasing role in inter-imperialist competition, particularly demonstrated in recent conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. The then-majority (composed of the Riley faction and others) described Russia as a non-imperialist regional power of similar status to Brazil.

These arguments taking place after so many years when the world has so clearly moved on and no one really sees Russia or even China as "communist threats" but powerful competitors in both economic and imperial ambitions.

The fact that Marxism-Leninism has failed everywhere seems to escape them. No different to wacky religious sects these groups continue to perpetuate long discredited ideologies.