Platypus Review 145<\/a><\/em> | <\/em>April 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>WHY IS THERE WAR? Because capitalism is self-contradictory, and this is expressed in conflicts among workers as well as among capitalists, and between \u201cnational\u201d working classes and capitalist states, between politicians and political parties both within and between nation-states, and often these conflicts are violent. But this does not mean that economics determines politics in capitalism. Quite the opposite. Neither does politics determine economics. Indeed for Marxism politics means the \u201cclass struggle\u201d \u2014 and the class struggle means overcoming capitalism in socialism \u2014 and anything less than that is not really politics at all \u2014 not struggle for the direction of our freedom \u2014 but just Darwinian struggle for existence and gangsterism: eating and being eaten.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is thus no alignment of economic and political interests. There is not only independence of politics from economics but also within politics. The Marxist approach to socialism is in crucial ways fundamentally different from capitalist (pseudo-)\u201cpolitics\u201d in that it seeks however conjuncturally \u2014 in revolution \u2014 to line up economic and political interests in proletarian socialism, but this is not normative and applies to literally no other form of politics and is moreover critical in character: that economics and politics should be made identical so that they can be overcome through their mutual contradiction. Indeed this is the very point of Marxism: in capitalism there is not only no alignment of economics and politics, but they are in direct contradiction to each other. The proletarianized working class is the most self-contradictory of all subjects of capitalism: they have no objective interest other than their self-abolition as laborers \u2014 though they have a subjective interest in their self-fulfillment as workers.[2]<\/sup><\/a> The workers\u2019 individual and collective interests are contradictory.[3]<\/sup><\/a> The capitalist bourgeoisie can seem by contrast to have identical political and economic interests \u2014 and identical collective and individual interests \u2014 and hence appear to represent the interests of society as a whole in a non-self-contradictory way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lack of contradiction leads us to the slaughter. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt that the present conflict is between the Ukraine and Russia. Under present conditions it makes no sense to say that it is a conflict between Ukrainian and Russian capitalists to whom the Ukrainian and Russian workers and other people are subject. Nor does it make sense to say that this is a conflict between imperialism and anti-imperialism \u2014 however one might regard this, whether of U.S.\/NATO imperialism and\/or Russian imperialism. This is not only because national-communitarian conflict predates the current crisis \u2014 the breakaway Russian-majority provinces in the Donbas region of Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalist militias as well as the Ukrainian government\u2019s attempts to suppress them \u2014 but because there is no possible or potential alternative political leadership in the current conflict other than capitalist ones; only an alternative opposition to capitalist leadership would make the present leadership specifically capitalist as opposed to something else \u2014 other than simply nationalist.[4]<\/sup><\/a> The Ukrainians and the Russians have the leadership they do in this moment, and this shapes the nature and character of the conflict. There is no point to pointing to contrary \u201cunderlying causes\u201d for this conflict other than the obvious ones: it really is Putin vs. Zelensky; and, yes, Zelensky is receiving support, albeit qualified, from the U.S. and NATO (as well as from the greater \u201cinternational community\u201d i.e. other capitalist leaders \u2014 from whom Putin also receives support, including from the U.S., for instance through oil sales). That war is a horror show and miserably sordid affair is captured well by the image of rusting Russian tanks swerving to crush fleeing cars and shooting up apartment blocks in their invasion of the Ukraine. \u2014 Superfluous labor and capital indeed.[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A Marxist approach hence has little if anything \u2014 perhaps nothing at all \u2014 to say beyond what in the capitalist policy debates is already being said.[6]<\/sup><\/a> For example, the \u201cRealist\u201d academic International Relations professor John Mearshimer has criticized the U.S. political consensus of liberal humanitarian interventionism and neoconservatism that has dominated policy for decades \u2014 except Trump.[7]<\/sup><\/a> As was observed recently by Christoph Lichtenberg of the former Spartacist \u201cTrotskyist\u201d Bolshevik Tendency, Fox News conservative pundit Tucker Carlson has a more accurate analysis of the Ukraine war and its causes than most ostensible \u201cMarxists.\u201d[8]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cLeft\u201d has fallen out over Ukraine depending on which capitalist politicians they want to tail after and follow in the present conflict, cheering from the sidelines in the usual ways of unseemly sports spectatorship. Some on the \u201cLeft\u201d are positioned as \u201canti-fascist\u201d \u2014 whether Russian or Ukrainian \u2014 in Russia\u2019s \u201cmilitary operation of denazification\u201d of the Ukraine; others of the \u201canti-imperialist Left\u201d lick their chops in hopes of a new anti-war movement \u2014 which will not happen out of fear that criticizing the Biden Administration will help Trump\u2019s otherwise inevitable return to the U.S. Presidency: the \u201cLeft\u201d in all its varieties is as ever switched on and off as needed by the Democrats; and the Democrats are beating the drums for war against Russia, convinced by their own lies about Trump and other Republicans\u2019 \u201cRussian collusion;\u201d and anyway desperate to stem their coming rout in the 2022 midterm Congressional elections due to their cascade of failures from COVID to crime to inflation \u2014 and now Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Millennial Left was born in the anti-war movement against the George W. Bush Administration that vanished upon Obama\u2019s election in 2008.[9]<\/sup><\/a> Its revival in Occupy Wall Street and other anti-austerity protests in the Great Recession led to the rebirth of the Democratic Socialists of America under the leadership of Jacobin<\/em> magazine\u2019s editorial board convened by Bhaskar Sunkara, boosted by the Bernie Sanders campaign that was part of the same moment as Trump\u2019s election in 2016.[10]<\/sup><\/a> It is telling that DSA today is equivocal on the war: they have nothing new to say; neither does anyone. \u201cWorld War III\u201d is just yet another 1980s remake streaming on multiple platforms. Condoleezza Rice said that she didn\u2019t want the \u201csmoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,\u201d but we know that was never going to happen. Now, after the death of the Millennial Left,[11]<\/sup><\/a> a new generation can come back full circle to the terrifying spectacle of war 20 years later \u2014 long enough to have forgotten the last war and requiring the same lessons to be learned \u2014 which weren\u2019t \u2014 again.[12]<\/sup><\/a> They won\u2019t be.[13]<\/sup><\/a> | P<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/sup><\/a> See my letter, \u201cPlatypus \u2018position\u2019 on \u2018imperialism\u2019,\u201d published as \u201cPlatypus fuss\u201d in the Communist Party of Great Britain\u2019s Weekly Worker<\/em> 964 (May 30, 2013), available online at <https:\/\/weeklyworker.co.uk\/worker\/964\/letters\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cThe dictatorship of the proletariat and the death of the Left,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 141 (November 2021), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2021\/11\/01\/the-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat-and-the-death-of-the-left\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cThe negative dialectic of Marxism,\u201d prepared opening remarks for the Platypus Affiliated Society public forum panel discussion on \u201cThe politics of critical theory,\u201d transcript published in Platypus Review<\/em> 140 (October 2021), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2021\/10\/01\/the-politics-of-critical-theory-2\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cInternationalism fails,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 60 (October 2013), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2013\/10\/01\/internationalism-fails\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/sup><\/a> See Moishe Postone, \u201cHistory and helplessness: Mass mobilizations and contemporary forms of anticapitalism,\u201d Public Culture<\/em> 18, no. 1 (Winter 2006), available online at <https:\/\/read.dukeupress.edu\/public-culture\/article-abstract\/18\/1\/93\/31815\/History-and-Helplessness-Mass-Mobilization-and>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/sup><\/a> See Spencer Leonard, \u201cNothing left to say,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 10 (February 2009), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2009\/02\/03\/nothing-left-to-say-a-critique-of-the-guardians-coverage-of-the-2008-mumbai-attacks\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cWhy not Trump again?,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 123 (February 2020), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2020\/02\/01\/why-not-trump-again\/>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8]<\/sup><\/a> See the Platypus Affiliated Society public forum panel discussion \u201cCrisis in Ukraine! The Left and the Current Crisis,\u201d held on March 10, 2022 in New York City: watch online at <https:\/\/youtu.be\/Uyoe5ml05LQ>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [9]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cIraq and the election: The fog of \u2018anti-war\u2019 politics,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 7 (October 2008), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2008\/10\/01\/iraq-and-the-election-the-fog-of-anti-war-politics\/>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [10]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cThe Sandernistas: The final triumph of the 1980s,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 82 (December 2015 \u2013 January 2016), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2015\/12\/17\/sandernistas-final-triumph-1980s\/>; Postscript on the March 15 Primaries, Platypus Review<\/em> 85 (May 2016), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2016\/03\/30\/the-sandernistas\/>; and P.P.S. on Trump and the crisis of the Republican Party (June 22, 2016) appended to the prior Postscript. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [11]<\/sup><\/a> See my \u201cThe Millennial Left is dead,\u201d Platypus Review<\/em> 100 (October 2017), available online at <https:\/\/platypus1917.org\/2017\/10\/01\/millennial-left-dead\/>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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