Fellow socialists and leftists, it is time to dispel that
illusion that somehow Putin’s Russia of today is somehow positively connected
to the former USSR of yesterday.
That
simply is not the case.
In this, the
year of the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (a revolution
that didn’t even last seventy-five years!), not only does Putin repudiate
Bolshevism’s legacy in its entirety, he even repudiates the February Revolution
of 1917 in Russia that preceded the Bolshevik-led October revolution.
(See, on this, “Putin Likes to Pretend 1917
Never Happened,” the
Atlantic,
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/russia-putin-revolution-lenin-nicholas-1917/521571/.)
It was the February Revolution that overthrew
the Czar and ushered in a whole new era in repressive, backward, even Oriental
Despotic, Russia, a short-lived era of freedom and creativity that made even
Lenin marvel that Russia was now “the freest country in the world.”
The Bolshevik Revolution was going to extend
this freedom in the “freest country” even further, not through just a political
revolution at the top, but by a social revolution from the bottom that would
free the peasantry and the workers from exploitation.
But this Russia of 1917 is anathema to Putin, who sees
himself as heir to the Czars, and whose dedication to Russian nationalism is
strictly Czarist in tone—as is his contempt for dissent and opposition, as is
his devotion to pan-Slavism, as is his support for Russia’s corrupt crony
capitalist economic system. Not surprisingly,
Putin sees spreading “chaos” in the West as a good way to advance Russian
nationalist goals, and in furthering such, finds agreeable help in Russophile
right-wing populists such as France’s Marine le Pen and, of course, the US’s
Donald Trump, now our President. Nor is
it surprising that Russia actively tried to influence the French and US
elections in favor of these candidates, which is now the matter of grave
concern in the US; and over which Putin was confronted directly to his face by
newly-elected French President Marcon in Paris.
For, certainly standing to reason from the Putin/Russian nationalist standpoint,
is sowing “chaos “ in the West by helping Russophile politicians such as Le Pen
and Trump win office—which the Russians failed to do in France, but which is a
major point of contention in the US: did
Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election actually help Trump win?
Whether or not there was actual “collusion” between the
Trump campaign and the Russians, or whether there were just vast, intertwining
interests involved, but short of actual “collusion,” is a moot point. After
all, it’s these extensive involvements of Trump campaign and, later,
Administration officials with the Russians, in business deals, as lobbyists, and
as government officials, that are currently under investigation; and despite
all those who claim there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election, it certainly
seems clear that there was such interference.
Russian state and business interests are far more closely intertwined in
Russia than they are in the US; and the connections between Russians such as
former Trump campaign manager Paul Monafort; the forced-to-resign Trump
national security advisor Michael Flynn;
the major business concession now-Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson negotiated as head of Exxon/Mobil with the Russians;
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s secret meeting with Russians which he failed
to disclose at his confirmation hearings; the attempt by Trump’s son-in-law and
major advisor Jared Kushner to set up a “back channel” private line with the
Russian government that would be sited in the Russian embassy in the US—just these
alone have been the subject of numerous media headlines and stories, as have
been other contacts with the Russians by campaign and Administration
officials.
(Which seem to be like the
Biblical Hosts of the Lord—their number is legion!)
Certainly the appearances are anything but
“innocent,” or “just doing international business,” as certain commentators of
the right have complained; the most recent one being a
Forbes contributor,
Paul
Roderick Gregory,
who writes on “domestic
and international economics from a free-market perspective”:
“There Remains No Evidence of Trump-Russia
Collusion,”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/05/23/there-remains-no-evidence-of-trump-russia-collusion/#abfd1c6242cf.
But it is not the
right’s enamoring, absolution, of Russia that concerns me here. After all, Western capitalists have always
being willing to do business with authoritarian regimes when lucrative markets
and investment capital have been available from them; and Trumps/s businesses
themselves have been the beneficiaries of a considerable influx of investment
capital from Russian business oligarchs.
Russian plutocrats also have far more direct ties with the Russian state
apparatus than their Western counterparts, so good governmental relations are
just good business. Also, Western
capitalists have never had any political problems with authoritarian or even
fascist regimes, as long as “business as usual” remains. We see that is the history of European
fascism in the 1930s, with dealings with the Pinochet regime in Chile in the
1970s, and with other unsavory regimes across the world. As stated by two leading conservative
political theorists in regard to capitalism and authoritarian regimes: Frederick Hayek stated, “[M]y personal
preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic
government devoid of liberalism” (“liberal” here meaning as in the 19th
Century sense, an unregulated free-market capitalist economy); while William F.
Buckley, Jr. wrote notably,
Let the individual keep his dollar—however few he is
able to save—and he can indulge his taste (and never mind who had a role in
shaping it) in houses, in doctors, in education,
in groceries, in entertainment, in culture, in
religion; give him the right of free speech or the right to go to the polling
booth, and at best he contributes to a collective determination, contributes as
a rule an exiguous voice. Give me the
right to spend my dollars as I see fit—to devote them, as I see fit, to travel,
to food, to learning, to taking pleasure, to polemicizing, and, if I must make
the choice, I will surrender you my political franchise in trade, confident
that by the transaction, assuming the terms of the contract are that no
political decision affecting my sovereignty over my dollar can be made, I shall
have augmented my dominance over my own affairs. (Quoted in Yale Alumni Magazine,
April 1978, p. 37; Buckley was a Yale alumnus.)
Hence for conservatives then and
now, from hallowed intellectuals such as Hayek and Buckley to the frequently
ill-regarded politicians of today’s Republican Party, up to and including
Trump, the “freedom to shop” is the ultimate freedom that overcomes and
subordinates all other “so-called” freedoms!
Unfortunately, sections of the US
left, because of visceral anti-Hillary Clinton hatred, have caught this same
Russophile pro-Putin virus. During the
2016 campaign, Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein charged that, if
elected, Hillary Clinton would get the US involved in a war with Russia over
Syria, while, to the contrary, Trump would “normalize” relations with Russia. Left philosopher Slovoj Žižek announced
publicly his support for Trump as President because he would “shake things
up.”
Not that I doubt Hillary Clinton is
a neocon hawk; not in the least. But
there is certainly good reason to believe that she would have demonstrated probity
in office that Trump has certainly not shown; because what Trump has shown is that
he is the proverbial loose cannon, an impulsive man who makes decisions on the
spur of the moment. Also, that he is
guided by a pro-Putin attitude that most resembles a high-school crush on someone
he admires as a strongman. Consider
that, when Bill O’Reilly, of all people, declared in an interview with Trump
that Putin was “a killer,” Trump agreed with O’Reilly, but then, went on to
say, nonetheless, he “respects” Putin! (Perhaps because Putin does to his
opponents what Trump would like to do to his?)
Trump continued, saying that the US does the same thing, and has blood
on its own hands, which is true; but, more likely, when Trump said it he was
merely being the blind squirrel who occasionally finds an acorn. It is unlikely that Trump has any serious knowledge
of how the US overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala, overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and
installed the Shah, overthrew Allende in Chile and installed Pinochet, or waged
war against Saddam Hussein and set Iraq onto the road to destruction and
perpetual sectarian warfare. It’s really
doubtful that Trump is that informed or that smart. But what it does mean, I aver, is that the
Russians, under Putin especially, have taken lessons from the US playbook and,
in this cybernetics, cyberespionage and cyberwarfare age, have been able to do
nonviolently what it took actual physical intervention by the US to accomplish!
(Same also in France with Le Pen vs. Marcon.)
Nothing for the left to be proud of, either in singling out only the US for
scolding, or in automatically exonerating the Russians.
Same goes for the charge by certain
US leftists that the US government is initiating a “new Cold War” by accusing
the Russians of what evidence indicates they did—interfered to tilt the results
of the US Presidential election in favor of Trump. (Whether or not they actually succeeded, or
whether, in fact, Hillary Clinton defeated herself, is a moot point that may
never be settled definitively.) But that
is assuming that Putin’s Czarism-revering nationalist Russia is somehow the
equivalent of the former USSR, a bastion of “peace” and “socialism,” and that
somehow Putin is another Khrushchev or Gorbachev, or even a Brezhnev, Stalin,
or Lenin: committed to a left-wing
“socialist co-existence” rather than to a resurgent Russian nationalist, and
strictly right-wing capitalist, form of Great Power politics and foreign
policy. Certainly, Trump’s own avowed
admiration for Russia and Putin should put that charge to rest. Even at his most bellicose, when he fired
Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian airbase in retaliation for Russian-allied
Syrian leader Assad’s gas attack on civilians, Trump was careful to warn the
Russians beforehand. No, Putin’s
crony-capitalist, repressive Russia is hardly the former Soviet Union, and it
certainly can be argued that Russia has very similar imperial ambitions as the
US or any other Western capitalist power; and much prefers pliable Russophile
right-wing governments in power in the West, same as in Eastern Europe. What blinds the Western left to these actual
geopolitical realities is the left’s own naïvete toward Great Power foreign
policies, and its mistaken view that imperialism, and imperial ambitions, can
only occur among traditional, well-established, Western capitalist powers—in
other words, global politics even in 2017 follows as though straight out of the
Marxist playbook as articulated in Lenin’s 1916 Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Thus, Russia can’t possibly have Great-Power
imperialist ambitions, or a shady and dubious foreign policy!
Fortunately, these naïve illusions are laid well to rest in
Stephen Shalom’s definitive article in the Winter 2017 issue of the Third Camp
semi-Trotskyist socialist journal
New
Politics, “Russia and the Left” (available online at
http://newpol.org/content/russia-and-left-0).
Shalom’s carefully-reasoned article justly
points out that, when Russia was the former USSR, many well-meaning Communists
and other leftists supported the Soviet Union because it was seen as
“socialist,” a “workers’ state,” and a progressive, leftist force that
supported labor rights, civil rights, and anti-colonialism—even though its own
internal practices were highly repressive and its foreign policy checkered, to
say the very least.
But such can’t even
be remotely said for Putin’s Russia, which is not only clearly repressive, but
even openly right-wing.
Contemporary
Russia’s foreign policy is not progressive or anti-imperialist, anti-colonial,
in the least; but is imperialist, allied with truly noxious regimes, and has
one clear goal—to undermine the US specifically, and the West generally; and
does so to advance a regressively right-wing, openly chauvinist, Russian
nationalism that smacks more of inter-imperialist rivalry than of anything
else.
Not that Russia doesn’t spout
“anti-imperialist” and “anti-status quo” rhetoric; it clearly does, and
assiduously courts allies across the ideological spectrum and among Third World
regimes through this.
Such is prevalent
in patently state-controlled media outlets such as RT and Sputnik.
But for those of the left to fall for this
appearances-only show—either, as Shalom suggests, from, nostalgia or from a
narrow “An enemy of my enemy is my friend” perspective—such is both
disingenuous and a betrayal of truly left ideals.
Further, in order to advance his agenda,
Putin and the Russian state apparatus he dominates assiduously court whatever
“anti-Western status quo” forces they can, aiming appeals both to the far
right, and to the far left, and finding allies in both camps.
Such disingenuousness toward Russia is notably found in US
Green Party 2016 Presidential candidate Jill Stein, much to the dismay of
European Greens—as shown by articles showing her uncritical pro-Putin
apologetics: both in the often center-right
Daily
Beast, Casey Michel’s “How Putin Played the Far Left,”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/how-putin-played-the-far-left;
and in left-leaning
Raw Story’s
summary article on the
Daily Beast
revelations by Travis Gettys, “Here’s How Jill Stein helps Putin promote his
right-wing agenda to the American left,”
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/heres-how-jill-stein-helps-putin-promote-his-right-wing-agenda-to-the-american-left/.
Notably, Jill Stein made a visit to Moscow in
December 2015 on the tenth anniversary of the founding of RT, where she spoke
favorably of Putin at an RT forum, and was feted, even sitting at the same
banquet table as Putin and Michael Flynn (according to the
Daily Beast).
Who funded all
this, Stein has refused to say.
Fortunately, not all on the left are as naïve as Stein.
For example, delving deeper into the
Trump-Putin connection on the other side of the ideological divide is the
rather alarming article scheduled for the upcoming hard-copy version of leftist
investigative reporting magazine
Mother
Jones, David Corn’s “We Already Know Trump Betrayed America,” online at
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/trump-putin-russia-scandal-guilty.
Concerns about “politically incorrect” nationalist sentiments aside, we of the
left certainly should understand that if, for example, we regard the US as
ethically wrong when it overthrew Arbenz, then it’s equally ethically wrong for
the Russians to try and influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election;
or, for that matter, the 2017 French Presidential election. Because when
realpolitik trumps all (pun only
partially intended), then we live in a jungle where the only rule is, “Eat or
be eaten.”
And no, that’s
not “bourgeois sentimentality.”
That’s hardheaded expression of socialist ideals.
This pro-Putin assiduousness on the part of some generally
thought of as being on the left even spills over into pro-Trump attitudes and
conspiracy theorizing about a “Deep State” plot by US intelligence and law
enforcement agencies, the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, to topple Trump.
As a really egregious example of this line of
reasoning, KJ McElrath, writing for the left-wing Ring of Fire Network,
https://trofire.com/2017/02/21/glen-greenwald-siding-deep-state-trump-extremely-dangerous/,
quotes pro-Putin, pro-Assad, Russian
election interference-denying reporter Glen Greenwald as stating,
“Trump was democratically elected and is
subject to democratic controls, as these courts just demonstrated and as the
media is showing, as citizens are proving;”
McElrath then goes on to suggest a “Deep State” conspiracy. But Greenwald, who’s guested on both leftist
media and Fox News, is wrong on two counts.
First of all, Trump was not
“democratically elected.” Hillary
Clinton received nearly three million more popular votes than he did. Trump was elected by the deliberately undemocratic Electoral College, which over-represents
less-populous states over those more populous.
Second, as for being “subject to democratic controls, as the courts just
demonstrated and as the media is showing, as citizens are proving,” those
“controls” have come flagrantly under attack from Trump himself, and require constant
vigilance to force what can only presently amount to forcing restraint from
Trump and the GOP. But further, whatever
the CIA, the NSA, the FBI think of Trump, they are not noticeably at all
preparing a coup against him. While
Trump would undoubtedly like to be himself a fascist dictator, even under his
bullying the US still remains a bourgeois democracy with a Bill of Rights in
place; even if these constitutionally-guaranteed rights are under vigorous
attack from Trump and others in his Administration (which certainly isn’t the
first time in US history that a President and his Administrations have tried to
quash dissent). Despite several popular
books on the CIA and other intelligence, law enforcement, agencies that portray
them as an “invisible government,” their actual power to launch coups has been severely
limited historically and to date, not only by legal safeguards and public
opinion, but also by the self-restraint and the studied apolitical,
above-the-fray stances of these agencies’ personnel themselves. And these are
most likely to continue. This is but
realism, fellow leftists, not complacency—for truly, “eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty.” But the US is not politically akin to a Latin American
banana republic, and it is hysteria to think so. Fear of a “Deep State” conspiracy against
Trump, of all people, thus remains but a conspiracist fantasy. Certainly for now. Lest we forget.
So, what should
the left be doing in the wake of all this?
Obviously, for a starter, we should press for a complete and thorough
investigation of the Trump Administration and its ties to Russia, to be
conducted honestly, transparently, and without being quashed or interfered
with; this is already happening, and we of the left should support it and press
for it to continue until all matters are settled. While, of course, continuing with all our
vigor to oppose and thwart those specific reactionary policies and proposals
independent of Russiagate that come from Trump and the GOP-dominated
legislative branches (e.g., the budget, Trumpcare). Second, as socialists committed to democracy,
especially grassroots democracy from the bottom up by the people themselves, we
should not be suckered into supporting one particular nation-state in its
rivalry with other nation-states. That
is not what we of the left are about, despite siren calls to line up on the
“correct” side, the “anti-imperialist” or “anti-hegemonic” side. It is not our business to declare left
allegiance to either the US or to Russia; this is a
dispute between two imperialist nation-states, not a college football
rivalry. Third, and very important, we
must recognize the potential war danger presently existent, not only between
the US and Russia, but also between the US and China, possibly over access and
control over the South China Sea; or between the US and North Korea. In this world fraught with nuclear-armed
powers, the danger of war is omnipresent; meaning that we need an antiwar
movement that does not arbitrarily, or in a partisan way, choose Great Power
sides. And last, the left must totally
abandon any penchant for an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality, as
today’s “friend” can be tomorrow’s “enemy,” and vice versa. Just considering the US in isolation, for
example, at one time it had as a “friend” an “enemy of its enemy” in—Osama Bin
Laden!
For
us of the left, a nuanced and sophisticated, not just ideological, approach is
what’s called for. Above all, a
commitment to grassroots democracy and genuine self-determination by the workers
and oppressed peoples themselves is called for, wherever and whoever they are: be they Kurds, Syrians, Russians, Mexicans,
Koreans, African Americans, or even displaced US white workers! This precludes, I say, taking sides in Great
Power rivalries; but instead, upholding “liberty and justice for all.” That’s what we of the left can take out of
this Russiagate imbroglio.
