Ukraine Positions

Ukraine: The risks of supporting the Maidan protesters is the unleashing of fascism (Svoboda, Right Sektor). If the nationalists can avoid witch-hunts, be inclusive, and leave the far right behind, then that would be positive, but I doubt this can happen, since it would mean abandoning what they are and have fought for. Now rightist identity politics is in power (ostensibly) it usually asserts itself in scapegoating ways rather than reconciliation – the start of this may be the focus on revenge and on Yanukovich, the ousted president.

The deaths that have occurred are sad, tragic, as they always are, but if this is a revolution, then the events have in fact been remarkably peaceful (so far, perhaps), especially given the involvement of the far right as the spearhead..

But it is not really a revolution (so far at least), it is more akin to a coup, with outside interference (EU, USA), in a situation where the masses are fairly passive about politics, due to the particular history of the country.

Historically, Russia has more right to 'interfere' in Ukraine than the EU, and this fact has been trampled on, but we can only support the Russian leaders, who are also only interested in exploiting Ukraine, insofar as they act as defenders of self determination for Ukraine and against sectarianism and terror. In this situation Russia is and would be right to assert itself against the elements of neo-Nazism in the coup and the west.

The peculiar and telling aspect is actually its lack of assertion of such rights and the weakness of the ousted leadership it seemed to be backing.

The latter itself points to corruption and the rule of capitalists in both Ukraine and Russia, they are vying for profit and 'reforms', the Russian bourgeoisie vacillate, not too sure that they would not actually benefit from an even more rightist capitalist neoliberal Ukraine. This is the class dimension of the picture. The Ukrainian 'oligarchs' (big capitalists) think the same, some seeing the EU as a source of new openings and new ways to exploit their working class, others will have ties to Russia.

So we have capitalist powers, including Russia, competing for Ukraine's wealth and strategic position. The hypocrisy of the west's rhetoric can be grasped clearly when you look at Bahrain, with its protests, where the USA has a naval base just as Russia has a naval base in Ukraine (on the Black Sea). The USA did not support the protests in Bahrain for democracy, even allowed the sending in of tanks to quell the popular uprising. The USA has of course far less claims with regard to Bahrain than Russia has to Ukraine, although we must remember Russia also interferes in Syria to support the dictator Assad. All of this is cynical imperialist competition.

Sometimes the western 'soft' Left is confused and confusing about these complications, they stick to Russia like a limpet from the Cold War, and so do the rightists, whose identity politics sees the differences as essential to human nature anyway, so a Ruskie is always a Ruskie and a commie. In fact we have here the two great identity politics opposing in a false dialectic (left v right), and this is always the pincer movement of bourgeois ideology that we see in the mainstream press, because the concept of class is disallowed and they must resort to some other interpretation of global political events. It is an ideological strategy that allows in fascism though, and this is its danger in the present conflict for Europe and the EU, which is edging noticeably towards the far right in its ideology.

Mr Lavrov added that "it is in our interest for Ukraine to be part of the broad European family" but against Russia's interest to "allow the radicals and nationalists who are clearly trying to take centre stage to prevail."http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26333587

Some useful links:

Description of far right Svoboda party

http://www.ucsj.org/2013/08/22/svoboda/

Nuland phonecall on Ukraine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM#t=89

Left-Gramscian interpretation wuth local knowledge

http://revolution-news.com/maidan-contradictions-interview-ukrainian-revolutionary-syndicalist/

Democracy and Law

If you have just laws, you have no overwhelming need for elections, the laws and accountability through these laws (i.e. constitutional and general law including employment law) can form the essence of democracy and protect the citizen and provide for an accountable system of government; elections are in contrast something of a lottery, and they can rarely provide a result that really represents the majority interests, although it always holds this promise out to the electors. The law is something that is crafted over time by society to, ostensibly, provide social justice; it is in this sense science at the level of politics. But this science meets with the anti science of current economics, the science that wishes to ignore science and opt for chance; the anarchy of the markets, it sees order and the idea of a 'command economy', an economy guided by humans, to be the enemy. It therefore likes lotteries. Here therefore it has met the rigors of the class struggle. The struggle for just law sits alongside the struggle for more authentic democracy, it is the bedrock of the move to greater accountability.

The fact is that the law in current advanced capitalist societies has failed to represent the majority, and electoral democracy has also failed to defend their interests, and this is the major problem of our times, we have seen protests ranging from Brazil to Egypt via Turkey and Greece. This is a problem that cannot be solved by more and more elections with the same arrangements (as in Egypt is being tried, but at least the recent elections are over a constitution). Certainly, less corruption and more genuine accountability is always to be welcomed if it is at all possible or credible by election, but can this be achieved within most of the present corrupt parliamentary systems in Europe? Specifically Greece, Spain, Italy, the UK, or within the EU state apparatus that sits atop them, there is a democratic deficit.

The law in capitalism supports capitalism, this is obvious, which means it supports a system of wages and exploitation and the anarchy of the markets. Lately this system has bailed out massive corporations and banks, but called for austerity for workers, who are also intended to pay for these bail outs in their taxes. This is patently unjust, but there is no law that can really intervene; at best more obvious fraud may be tackled with ineffective fines and in a very few cases imprisonment of individuals (e.g. Madoff). So the problem of current democracy, even if it was at its best and most representative and accountable, always hits the wall of law which defends capital against its critics. The structures of exploitation are legal, so to abolish them would therefore be illegal, unless the law is changed. Can the law be changed by the elected lawmakers in parliament?

Superficially this is the role of the executive power, but we can readily see that no party or representative is so radical as to suggest the abolition of the employment laws that allow for exploitation, on the contrary, we even, since the onset of the crisis, have witnessed a return to near slavery with the expansion of zero hours contracts in the UK and 'mini-jobs' in Germany. Precarious kinds of labor are rife these days. Electoral democracy has stagnated not because it has the possibility of ever actually functioning perfectly but has merely lately slipped into bad ways, but because we have reached its political limits within the capitalist economy and the laws that maintain it and it maintains. This has been shown to us by the crisis. The crisis has revealed the truth of electoral representative democracy, that it has limits of representation, and so is limited democracy, limited by law and by economics, There will be calls, against this, for a new constitutive power, new law, and new kinds of democracy; we have seen the start of these with the Occupy type movements. But many of these calls avoid looking at the issue of class, and therefore tend to ignore the necessary role of the majority working class in protests, which is likely to lead to fragmentation. Recently more working class protest has broken out in Burgos, Spain, which have so far been successful and have not been shy of this dimension.

Gary Tedman

General Strike in France to Protest Economic Crisis

By Jim Genova

On 19 March 2009 millions of French workers led by the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) went on strike to protest President Nicholas Sarkozy's handling of the global financial crisis in France. According to the Agence France Presse (AFP), marches of workers were expected in over 200 cities with the largest slated for the capital, Paris. In fact, the expected number of protesters in Paris has forced the police to open two march routes instead of the customary one. In January more than 2 million French workers poured into the streets to protest Sarkozy's attempt to deal with the economic crisis by bailing out large corporations. Those protests forced the government to introduce an extensive stimulus plan centered on "a package of social benefits worth 2.6 billion euros."

In the current demonstrations the CGT, other labor federations, and the parties of the left are demanding that the government "hike the minimum wage, increase taxes on the rich and scrap plans to cut public sector jobs." According to the AFP a recent poll found 78 percent of the French population in support of the strike action. "This is not just a day of protest," said Francois Chereque of the powerful CFDT union. "We have made hard proposals, and the government has to give us some serious answers. We no longer understand the government's policies or its goals," he told RMC radio, while Bernard Thibault of the biggest union, the CGT, warned "the government is going to have to agree to new talks."

According to French media reports, the victorious six week strike of workers on Guadeloupe has emboldened workers in France. On the Caribbean island, workers fought valiantly for big wage increases, extension of social benefits, job preservation, and advanced the fight for independence. Despite more than 1,000 special police ferried to the island by Paris to suppress the movement, the workers held out. Finally, the government recognized its untenable position (after the police murder of a Guadeloupean worker on the barricades) and agreed to settle with the unions. The emerging solidarity between workers in France and those in its "Overseas Departments" is a potent demonstration of not only the global reach of the economic crisis, but the attendant emerging consciousness of the common interests shared by workers around the world.

Today's demonstrations and strikes across France are the latest in a string of popular actions confronting inept governments around the world that are bent on propping up those capitalists in the financial sector who have created a global Ponzi scheme that has crashed to the ground in the past two years, taking with it the jobs and livelihoods of millions of workers. Demonstrations have paralyzed or led to the fall of governments in Iceland, Latvia, and Estonia. Protests have spread across Europe (France, Italy, Spain), Asia (Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines), Latin America (Argentina and Peru), and in the U.S.

There is mounting pressure on governments around the world to abandon their strategies of pumping trillions of public sector dollars into failed financial institutions so that they can continue paying bonuses and exorbitant salaries to executives. Instead, workers and progressive forces everywhere are united in calling for real economic stimulus (actual money used to employ people in productive work), an end to tax breaks for the rich, recovery of money looted from public treasuries, nationalization of banks and other essential industries, and extension of social benefits to protect workers from the fallout emanating from the greed of those in the financial sector who have plundered the pension plans of millions of workers for their personal profit. As the crisis spreads and deepens, the protest movement it likely to grow and add to the global momentum for meaningful structural change to the world economy.

South Koreans Demonstrate Against US Beef Imports

Thomas Riggins

"The South Korean government contends that the lifting of the ban was overdue since last September, when the World Organization for Animal Health [OIE] ruled that American beef did not pose a health risk."

This quote is from today's NYT article on the protests over the import of American beef into South Korea. What the Times did not say is that the ruling was due to a CHANGE in the definition of what was a risk. A country was at risk unless seven years have passed without a Mad Cow discovery-- dated from the time of the discovery. The last Mad Cow in the US was in March 2006, not as the Times reported 2003. By this the US would be on the risk list until 2013. The NEW RULE dates the risk from the time of the birth of the cow. By changing the rule the US is no longer a high risk country.

People fear there is MAD COW in American beef and it is unreported due to the practically non-existent inspections in the US and the ban on private inspections even of one's own cows!

The Korean government is yet to back down (it is being told what to do by the Bush administration which is threatening negative trade consequences). This is a real democratic uprising by the Korean people.

Real democratic movements are the last thing the US and its allies want to see.