Achcar clarifies and expands his argument on the position the left should take on peace in Ukraine
A response to Jean Vogel’s critique of Achcar’s “For a democratic antiwar position on the invasion of Ukraine.”
Some basic principles for avoiding the twin dangers of favoring the aggressor and extreme nationalism.
Campism does not know how to separate states from nations, nations from populations, and populations from communities. Its social understanding starts and ends at states and organizations. One must separate the Ukrainian state from the Ukrainian people, and one must separate the Ukrainian people from the ethnic minorities of the region.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is a conflict that exposes the deep chasms on what self-proclaimed internationalists perceive as internationalism, what self-proclaimed anti-imperialists perceive as anti-imperialism, and even what self-proclaimed socialists perceive as socialism. Many organizations of the “anti-war left” in the West have taken a route of intellectual laziness, frequently regurgitating Russian state narratives directly from the Kremlin as they are most convenient to counter Western state narratives.
An open letter from union members to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union calling on it to maintain its opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Over 400 years ago, long before Woodrow Wilson or Vladimir Lenin, Bartolomé de Las Casas developed a theory of the right of nations to self-determination that can be applied to many other countries today, including Ukraine.
In order to understand Putin’s war against Ukraine and its people, one must take a close look at the place that Ukraine, its state, language, and culture occupy in the imperial and national imagination of Russians.
Russian soldiers had committed war crimes, including many cases of torture, executions, rape (including of children), bombing of civilian areas sometimes leading to separation of families from their children.
Bombing Auschwitz would not have diverted significantly from the actual war effort. It would have saved thousands or tens of thousands of lives and would have let the world know that Allied moral outrage was more than feel-good propaganda.
A new anti-militarist movement must uphold solidarity with the civil as well as armed resistance of the Ukrainian people, and with the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian leftists who oppose the Putin regime’s war.
The NGPU and our leading organizations consider Russia’s attack to be a cynical attempt by the Russian regime to destroy Ukraine and its people.
On September 25 Italy will hold elections following the resignation of Prime Minister Pario Draghi and the concern is palpable.
Modi’s India, Putin’s Russia, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Orban’s Hungary, and soon Giorgia Meloni’s Italy and maybe Trump II’s United States, the picture is far from being exhaustive but it still gives an idea of the seriousness of the threat that now hangs over humanity.
The Democratic Socialists of America organized a panel discussion on Ukraine on August 28, but it made no reference to the central issue of Ukraine’s right to self-determination.
While I share the apprehensions of many, those of us on the international socialist left also have hopes that war in Ukraine can lead to making the world a better and safer place.