“All we can do is to join our chosen party, work within it, but also work outside it to build mass movements that can pressure your party, and provide people who can become 'professional' politicians and perhaps resist the wrong outside influences.” — Doug 1943
“For us patriots, the DSA's work inside the Democrats seems like something worth studying and maybe learning from.”
The choice to work within one or the other major parties to effect change is certainly available to anyone, including so-called “socialists.” The Democrats attract most “democratic socialists” and the Republicans attract most “national socialists” — aka fascists.
But the tiny “hard left” (and fascist right) usually clearly distinguishe themselves from both mainstream capitalist parties — or at least their traditional leaders.
The war in Ukraine has not only torn apart “democratic socialist” mini groups in Russia and Ukraine, but its powerful nationalist hysteria and war repression has mostly crushed their very existence.
Meanwhile, in the West “anti war” socialists and “hard leftists” are divided as to how exactly to respond to Putin’s bloody invasion, as well as to U.S. / NATO’s seemingly ever-increasing financial and military support to Ukraine. Left groups differ radically over this war. In this they are not much different than most ordinary Republicans.
Of course being divided about how to proceed on their own, real “Left” organizations are also divided over how or even whether to make any “United Front” temporary alliances with the right. Still, we will probably eventually see more “anti- Ukraine war” demonstrations like the one in D.C. earlier this month … as this war grinds on and becomes even more bloody.
The European “hard left” (and “hard right”) face similar issues, whether inside or outside of British Labour or European Social Democratic parties, or as “anti-war” factions organized in other parties.
The normal slogans used by principled internationalist socialists (like Eugene Debs in WWI) offer a few helpful hints. The Democratic Socialists of America (largest socialist formation in the U.S.) and even the ancient “U.S. Communist Party” do their best to work out a strategy they see as in the interests of peace and working people everywhere — opposing the Russian invasion, demanding its immediate withdrawal from Ukraine, looking to end or limit “U.S. arms escalation” … proposing an end to hostilities and peace negotiations.
Of course the CPUSA, now fully independent from Russia and hardly a threat to anything, is crippled in the U.S. by its name and past association with the USSR.
But all these “Left” groups at their best cook up only a very weak broth, as everybody knows that until the military battles in Ukraine end either in “victory” for one side or the other, or regime collapse of one one side or the other, or in mutual exhaustion, there will be no peace discussions, let alone a lasting peace agreement.
I mostly limit myself to opposing the ultra-partisanship of much MAGA criticism of Biden’s help to Ukraine, which sometimes reaches the weird level of being pro-Putin and pro-Russian Invasion. I try to explain the complexity and tragedy of this war. I don’t consider taking a balanced and humanitarian view — an internationalist view — as being necessarily “leftwing.”
It is all good to oppose U.S. imperialist wars (as I have throughout my life) and make criticisms of neo-cons and neo-liberal warhawks, to discuss historical errors the U.S. may have made in dealing with now manic Russian authoritarian leaders like Putin … but what road forward?
One way to prepare for and ease into an eventual ceasefire and negotiations (which most of us hope for) is to raise the issue of “self-determination” for Ukraine. I haven’t seen this slogan raised at ANY of the peace rallies in Europe or the U.S.
To insist Ukraine is part of Ukraine — which is the official U.S. position of the Biden Administration and of hard Ukrainian nationalists — is to be excessively “legalistic,” ignores Crimea’s history, and ignores the traditional “right of self determination” recognized at the end of WWI. It also ignores the Crimean population’s evident desire (though that can certainly change). Most importantly, perhaps, it strengthens the Russian people’s nationalism and support of Putin, supports Putin’s argument that this is a Western world conspiracy to tear it apart completely.
This “ultimatist” Ukrainian and U.S. demand thus will probably lengthen this tragic war and increase the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear end to it.
