‘Controverses’: Internationalist Positions on the War in Ukraine

The following statement of the Forum for the Internationalist Communist Left is completed by an updated review list of internationalist statements and analyses produced both by political groups and individuals from diverse backgrounds and tongues. We recommend readers with a mastery of foreign languages, especially of Spanish and/or French, to consult it, as it provides a somewhat broader scope than the selection we present on this site in English. We also would like to encourage readers with language capabilities to contribute crafting proper English translations of the most interesting texts, that may appear both at Controverses and here.

The editor

No to the Imperialist Mobilization around the War in Ukraine!

An international leaflet by ‘Le Prolétaire – Proletarian’ (March 8, 2022)

The following statement treats the, foremost, humanitarian campaigns that are permanently waged in the Western hemisphere, notably in a Europe that has to cope with a massive influx of refugees, mostly women and children, elderly and “foreign nationals”, who escape from the war in Ukraine. There is a real concern among the populations in Europe with those desperately displaced who often not only have fled from their homes, but most tragically also have left their relatives and friends behind, of whom the adult men are drafted into the Ukrainian military. The leaflet attempts to lift the veil of democratic humanitarianism that the ruling classes in the West throw over the grim reality of a barbaric inter-imperialist carnage they are deeply co-responsible for.

On the Russian (and American?) Invasion of Ukraine

I.O.D. on the war in Ukraine and the proletarian perspective (March 4, 2022)

Overcoming their initial surprise by the Russian state’s assault on Ukraine since last Thursday February 24, I.O.D. has resumed their analysis, and has issued a formal statement on the tangle of interests involved in this worsening conflagration. It goes well beyond any rhetoric about the indubitable Russian culprit versus the “reasonable” rest of the “international community” (minus some distinct renegade states), as a perpetual media campaign in the Western hemisphere will have it. Trying to shed light on the questions: who profits from the crime? and: what is the international situation heading towards? it provides a brief balance sheet of the imperialist contentions and shared interests implicated at world level, and formulates the dire stakes this poses, eventually for the survival of humanity.

Secondly, a concise critical assessment of the situation the world proletariat and its political minorities find themselves in, is set forth, issuing a call for their renewal: to go beyond “the same [old] theoretical and organizational framework of the Third International”, by “taking note of the many changes in the organization and in the international division of labor” since the times of the October Revolution of 1917, in order “to proceed to a new systematization of all the elements inherent to the condition of the modern proletariat” in view of “building a new communist party on a world scale.”

The Redivision of the Capitalist World has Begun…

Pantopolis on the meaning of the war in Ukraine

(February 24, 2022)

Thus, at 4 AM this Thursday, February 24, 2022, Russian troops commanded by the autocrat Vladimir Putin, worthy heir of Tsar Nicholas II and Joseph Stalin, invaded and bombed Ukraine with the aim of annexing it partially or totally. This was a decisive step forward in the field of military conflicts in Europe after the war in the former Yugoslavia. (¹) The bombing of fifteen Ukrainian cities, the beginning of a macabre count of civilian and military deaths, the deployment of the Russian army on three fronts, the occupation of military airfields and the Chernobyl nuclear site, the programmed fall of the Ukrainian government to form a team of puppets under the orders of Moscow, the beginning of a huge emigration to the neighboring countries of the European Union, all this undoubtedly translates into an acceleration of history, which could in the medium and long term – with the involvement of China in the conflict – lead to a third world conflict.

The Ukrainian Powder Factory

I.O.D. on the threat of war looming over Europe (February 3, 2022)

The following article published by the Istituto Onoratio Damen (I.O.D.) presents a brief summary of the escalation of the stand-off over Ukraine and warmongering talk that took place in the course of the last few months, which has come to dominate even the latest issues and squabbles related to the Corona-virus pandemic. It provides a sober evaluation of this conflagration from an internationalist perspective and an answer to the question whether a major war in Europe is on the agenda.

A comment on the political crisis in Germany

Over the month of June the political business of the German bourgeoisie has been dominated by the outburst of a long-smoldering conflict within its government apropos of issues of migration and refugee policies, which has put the historic party alliance between the CDU and its Bavarian junior partner CSU in jeopardy and has risked the fall of Merkel’s coalition government on the very threshold of its first 100 days in office.

Has “German Europe” exhausted itself?

‘Nuevo Curso’ on the EU-summit of 28 – 29 June

» It was after four o’clock in the morning [on Friday, June 29] when the EU summit finally came to a conclusion document for a directive on migration. (¹) The “principle” defended by Italy was enshrined: shipwrecked persons, migrants and refugees arrive, whatever their point of entry, in the EU and before the EU and not before the country of arrival, seeking refuge. The infamous Spanish model of the Detention Centers for Foreigners (²) is enshrined under the name of “platforms” and is possibly extended to Macedonia and Albania. Spain and the countries that organize the new detention centers will receive EU money. Macron stressed that the great success was that asylum had been “mutualized” and therefore has replied to the challenge posed by the German Home Secretary who was putting the German political apparatus in crisis and threatening to sweep Merkel along. (³)

The political crisis in Germany and the tortuous road to a “European bloc”

‘Nuevo Curso’ apropos of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe (June 25, 2018)

1.  The anti-immigrant revolt of the German petty bourgeoisie

» In December last year, we alerted on our Telegram channel that the CSU, the Bavarian party associated with Merkel’s CDU, was turning to the right in an increasingly nationalist discourse. In the context of the stagnation of the bourgeoisie in Germany, which – like the British, Italian or Spanish bourgeoisie at the time – had not yet found the ways and means to renew its political apparatus, the advance of identity politics, beyond the electoral progress of the AfD seemed significant to us. Significant because it pointed out that the nationalist revolt of the European petty bourgeoisie was beginning to condition even the heart of European continental capital. And this up to the point where the “migration question” – the center of all suspicions and fears of the Central European petty bourgeoisie – has come to fracture the most solid German party apparatuses this June.

France: strike at the SNCF, struggles and conflicts in all sectors, students and pensioners’ demonstrations

An intervention by the IGCL (March 28, 2018)

We reproduce the leaflet that the International Group of the communist Left (IGCL) has been distributing in France before the start of the strike of April 3^rd at the state railway company, the SNCF, followed by its evaluation in a communique of April 10, after a week of ‘union action days’. (AFRD)

“The workers at SNCF are presently suffering a direct attack by the Macron government, meaning: by the state and the French ruling class. The difficulty for French capital is that it happens while various sectors or factories have been on strike these last weeks and months or are passing through more or less open conflicts in the midst of a generalized increasing discontent in front of the many measures adopted by the government.

‘Nuevo Curso’ on the trade war, the imperialist tensions and the EU

Topic: the international Situation

The following three articles by ‘Nuevo Curso’ highlight the latest developments at the international scene at the level of the trade war that has been resuscitated by the US administration’s recent tariff measures on steel and aluminium trade; the discord that cuts through the European Union at different levels simultaneously, faced with the attempt the relaunch its French-German axis after the installation, after 6 months, of a new edition of the ‘grand’ coalition government under Merkel, and the subsequent ‘winter offensive’ by the German bourgeoisie to make up for the lost time and ground.

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