Gantry 5

 

Bulletin N53 decembre 2024  For several months, we have been witnessing both the development of military escalation in the imperialist war taking place on the territory of Ukraine [1] and signals indicating that the protagonists of this war intend to put an end to it, albeit temporarily, through negotiations in the form of a ceasefire.  From this point of view, the recent statements by D. Trump during his visit to Paris are significant in which he states: " There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives have been lost in vain, too many families have been destroyed, and if this continues, it could turn into something bigger, and much worse ." These two trends, escalation, ceasefire, if they appear contradictory, are not in reality. They cover the same logic, that of the nature of the clashes within the imperialist system. To understand these developments, we must return to the basis of imperialist wars in general and the one taking place in Ukraine in particular.
From this point of view, the contribution of VI Lenin to the analysis of this question is essential, starting with his work [2] : " Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism " where he describes the evolution of capitalism in its imperialist form. For our part, relying on Lenin's analysis, we have characterized the modern tendencies of the development of capitalism [3] and we agree with his point of view: " [i]n a capitalist regime, the equal development of different economies and different states is impossible. The only possible means of restoring the compromised balance from time to time are, in a capitalist regime, crises in industry, wars in politics ."
In this context, the emergence of new capitalist powers sharpens the confrontation for supremacy in the world imperialist system between the United States and China and intensifies the conflict between the Euro-Atlantic axis and the emerging Eurasian axis.
This assessment leads the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Greece to express himself thus [4] : ​​" Who does not see the time bomb on which the international capitalist economy is based, namely the overaccumulation of capital that cannot be invested with a satisfactory profit? They have tried the green and digital transition, as well as the old recipe for war, of which Lenin speaks, but the dead ends of the system persist. "
The crisis of the capitalist system, as well as war, are consubstantial with capitalism itself [5] . If the struggle for the territorial division of the colonies has been replaced by a fierce struggle for the control of raw materials, means of communication and labour power, this does not fundamentally change the fact that these divisions, as Lenin wrote, are carried out under the regime of force: "Under capitalism, division can have no other basis, no other principle than force. [...] To preach the "fair" division of income on this basis is... petty bourgeois and philistine philistineism. One can only divide "according to force". But force changes with economic progress. [...] To test the real strength of the capitalist state, there is and can be no other means than war. War is not in contradiction with the principles of private property; it is its direct and inevitable development. "
After three years of war, having exhausted the direct belligerents and their peoples [6] : Russia and Ukraine, the time has come to seek a temporary compromise. However, there should be no illusions, this compromise will not erase inter-imperialist rivalries, which range from trade and technology to military armament, from the Arctic to Africa and the Indo-Pacific Ocean, including space. On the contrary, it will be time for a reconstitution and reconfiguration of forces to take the conflict to a higher scale. Thus, the announcement of guaranteeing the security of Ukraine by the presence of NATO troops on its territory would be just one more step towards a direct confrontation between the Atlantic Alliance and Russia. At the same time, the Ukrainian people and those of the Russian Federation will continue to suffer the dictatorship of their capitalist oligarchy, which, in the name of reconstruction, will call for new sacrifices and new deprivations of freedoms. Lenin, denouncing the position of support of the social democracy for their own imperialism at the time of the First World War, was definitely right to say that only revolution could put an end to capitalist barbarism, and this is what the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia accomplished.
It is therefore time, high time to shout our will for the imperialist war in Ukraine to cease. Supporting the Ukrainian and Russian peoples means fighting against the involvement of France and the European Union in the war, it means fighting for France to withdraw from NATO, rejecting all the pretexts used by both sides, revealing to the peoples the real causes of imperialist wars and this one in particular.
 
Lenin VI; Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Éditions Sociales, 1952.
[5] Nils Andersson;   The Wars Announced: Capitalism is War ; Terrasses editions, 2024; Nils Andersson; Capitalism is War, Terrasses editions, 2021