The start of Russia’s military operation against the Ukrainian fascist regime represented a test for the communist movement. This test has compelled the movement to make new breakthroughs, but our period of trials has lasted longer than many expected, because the operation’s conclusion has been delayed. The capitalist forces within Russia have worked to frustrate the effort at fully defeating Kiev’s fascist state, and this obstacle is bringing the operation’s supporters to a crossroads: either we stick with the movement’s old forms, or adapt to our reality in which multipolarity has shown itself to not be enough for defeating capital. This means taking example from the Global South revolutionary movements, with their mass-centered way of operating.
The military operation that broke the old forms of socialist politics
Between the moment when the Soviet Union ended, and when Russia began its military operation to denazify Ukraine, the socialist movement was essentially just talk. It wasn’t doing much of substance at all, and didn’t have any openings to make a major impact. This was especially the case within the imperialist countries, particularly the United States with its heavily crippled workers movement.
The communist and worker organizations needed to rebuild themselves amid the 20th century’s defeats, yet they had already been taken over by opportunistic forces; it’s because opportunism gained so much influence within socialism that the USSR fell in the first place. The movement had been in a state of inertia for a full generation, unable (or rather unwilling) to build up a new mass workers movement amid the post-2008 depression. Then in 2022, when Russia’s communist party successfully pressured the country’s bourgeois government into fighting back against NATO, this established paradigm was broken. Communists now had an opportunity to play a pivotal role in history, if they chose to align themselves with the right side in this conflict.
Many communist or “socialist” organizations tried to maintain this inertia, and opposed the anti-fascist operation. But for those that made the right decision during that moment, new possibilities came their way, as well as new challenges that are unique to revolutionary political actors. The organizations which supported Russia during that moment had come to have a more serious revolutionary role, but to maintain this role, they would need to do so much more than take one good position.
They would have to live up to the traditions of Marxism-Leninism, and work to build up a new international workers movement. This would need to go along with an effort to put Palestine at the center of their practice, and combat the opportunistic forces which have sought to direct attention away from Palestine’s holocaust. When you take a correct stance at a critical moment, you’ve elevated yourself to a certain standard, and will rise or fall based on whether you live up to that standard. This was the commitment that the pro-Russian orgs had all made by taking this stance; but how many of them would fulfill this commitment was yet to be determined.
There are countless factors that can derail a movement’s progress, and tempt its ranks towards abandoning the revolutionary path. At the moment, the biggest of these temptations is right “populism,” with its promise that you’ll be able to defeat the system by adopting the practices of the bourgeois right-wing politicians. Our struggle against this kind of opportunism parallels the struggle that Russia’s communists are having to wage; this is the fight against the capitalist ruling class within Russia, which has consistently worked to obstruct or confuse the goals of the Ukraine operation.
To assist the Russian communists in this battle, and win the revolutionary fight on our own fronts, we must reorient our practice. We must truly discard the old forms of organizing, and act in accordance with the realities of today’s conditions.
No way forward other than to learn from those who’ve succeeded
The great lesson from Russia’s operation is that the emergence of multipolarity alone is not enough to win the class war; the only thing that can defeat the imperial forces is renewed proletarian power. It was always apparent that this is the case; but it’s hard to truly understand something until you’ve been able to see it demonstrated. And the developments we’ve seen since the Ukraine operation’s start have shown what it actually means when the proletariat isn’t strong enough. The delays which Russia has experienced in its military progress have proven just how easily the capitalist elements can undermine our movement’s gains, at least as long as the workers haven’t sufficiently built up their strength.
When the main change we’ve experienced is that the world has progressed beyond unipolarity, and the international workers movement still hasn’t recovered, we’re going to see obstacles like the one that’s appeared within Russia. This is the obstacle where an entrenched national bourgeoisie has prevented Russia from waging this war with the decisiveness and boldness that a socialist state would have; as the World Anti-Imperialist Platform’s Dimitrios Patelis observed this spring, this capitalist interference has led to stagnation in many areas of the operation. It’s an outcome of when those in charge of an anti-imperialist war still have a desire to reach “peace” with the imperialists, as a large faction within Russia’s ruling class certainly wants to do.
Putin originally wanted to join NATO, and he waited eight years to start the Ukraine operation; this was because while Kiev’s U.S.-installed regime bombed the Donbass, Putin still held out hope that Washington would warm to Russia. The ideological and class forces that were behind these imperial collaboration efforts did not simply go away when the operation began; they’ve continued to try to weaken Russia’s commitment towards fully defeating the fascist state.
Russia’s National Security Chair Dmitry Medvedev recently affirmed that Russia will not negotiate until the operation’s goals are fulfilled, and this is a good thing; it’s an outcome of Russia responding towards the Trump administration’s obstinately neocon policies. For this conflict to truly be concluded, though, the proletarian forces will need to gain much more power. Which is something that every one of us within the global anti-imperialist struggle must take an active role in bringing about.
This is why I speak of the anti-fascist operation in terms of it being encompassed by a worldwide movement, rather than just something that Russia is connected to. We all need to build up the united front behind the struggle against Ukrainian fascism, like we must do for the Palestinian struggle, for the effort to defend China, and for every other front in this fight. And to do this beyond what we’ve accomplished already, we’ll have to fully escape the old paradigm which has held back our progress.
We partly did away with this paradigm when we got behind the anti-fascist war, but we have to know what the next step is beyond that. The next step is to take example from the liberation struggles that have been waged by the peoples of the Global South, adopting the same mass orientation that’s allowed these struggles to get so much further than our movements in the imperialist countries have.
Since the USSR’s fall, Latin America has seen the emergence of multiple new socialist or anti-imperialist countries, and Africa has seen multiple countries break from neo-colonialism in the last five years alone. Many of the movements behind these victories share the trait of supporting Russia, as well as supporting the Palestinian resistance; and taking these correct stances is important, but we must understand that the correctness of the ideological positions within these movements is downstream from the real source of their success.
The essence of why they’re succeeding so much, and why they’re willing to act so principled, is that they draw power from the popular masses; not from tailing after the right, or from merely imitating the form of a communist movement, but through acting according to what the people need. The left opportunist forces which have opposed Russia or the Palestinian resistance view themselves as above the masses, which is why they’ve lost the relevance they had during the Biden era. That many in our movement have recognized the backwardness of these left forces has allowed us to transcend leftism, with its particular type of inert opportunism. Now is the time for us to take the next step, and not just recognize the problem but find the solution to it.
This solution exists within the lessons from the Global South movements, as well as from the historical revolutionary theoreticians who analyzed our own conditions as Americans. We need to read more from not just Global South heroes like Fanon and Sankara, but also American revolutionaries like William Z. Foster. This is the only way we can gain the direction to win the fight we’re faced with, where we’ve been shown that it’s not enough merely to cheer on positive historical developments. We must insert ourselves into the class struggle, and shape history ourselves.
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