24.02.2022

Going over to Washington

James Harvey looks at how former leftwinger, Paul Mason, has made his peace with the US and Nato, and become a full-blown social-imperialist

In the February 22 debate on the Johnson government’s decision to impose sanctions on Russia, the Labour Party leadership’s unswerving loyalty to Nato and US policy was clear for all to see.

Indeed, Sir Keir Starmer successfully outdid Boris Johnson in his calls for even tougher action against Putin’s regime. Britain, he urged, “must be prepared to go further” and exclude Russia from the global Swift payment system, ban trading in Russian sovereign debt and the prevent Russian news channel, RT, from broadcasting “its propaganda around the world.”¹ In the hours after the debate Labour spokespeople lined up to back Starmer’s’ ‘hard-line’ approach and show that in a crisis Labour could act responsibly in support of vital western interests. For leading Labour rightwingers, like Chris Bryant, Boris Johnson’s sanctions were “a weak and chaotic reaction, offering too little, too late.”²

But, if this unconditional support for a tougher line was to be only expected from the likes of Margaret Hodge, David Lammy and Chris Bryant, where were the voices of the left MPs during the debate? True to form, they kept their heads down, doing little beyond signing a Stop the War Coalition statement condemning “the British government’s aggressive posturing” over the Ukraine crisis.³ Alongside the 13 Labour MPs (including Jeremy Corbyn) who were ‘brave’ enough to sign the statement, Young Labour joined in with rather pious criticisms of the Labour leadership and called instead for Starmer to stand “wholeheartedly for peace … constructive engagement with activists and deliver international policy around peace and cooperation.”⁴ A similar trust in reason and diplomacy can also be found in the StWC leadership, which urges the British government to choose diplomacy over war and to act in the statesmanlike manner of France and Germany!⁵

But, if the social-pacifist platitudes of the official Labour left, and their fellow travellers in the StWC and the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain, are worse than useless in building a principled opposition to the drive to war, the real prize for the complete degeneration of the politics of the left must go to Paul Mason and the ‘left wing’ Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.⁶ The USC purports to

organise solidarity and provide … support for Ukrainian socialists and trade unionists campaigning for working class and democratic rights, against imperialist intervention and national chauvinism … [The USC] supports the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their own future free from external intervention from Russian or western imperialism.⁷

Amongst the affiliates of the USC are the National Union of Mineworkers, Aslef, the Labour Representation Committee, Labour Briefing, Anti-Capitalist Resistance, and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Given the social-imperialist politics of groups like the AWL, we should not be too surprised when they oppose “external intervention” or use the language of ostensible neutrality to put a democratic gloss on their support for US foreign policy and the eastern expansion of Nato, directed against Russia.

This open support for the US and Nato has long been a feature of the AWL’s politics, but in the position adopted by Paul Mason social-imperialism has plumbed new depths. Mason’s journey from a member of Workers Power, through an outrider for Corbynism, to a supporter of Keir Starmer’s pro-imperialism has been well-documented. A talented self-promoter, Mason has long ago lost any credibility he might once have had as an authentic voice of the left.

Earlier this week he was part of a delegation which visited Ukraine on a ‘fact-finding mission’ to hear the “voices of Ukrainian workers, LBGT+ people, ethnic minorities, and human rights defenders”, with the express aim of countering “a concerted campaign of misinformation against Ukraine in the west”.⁸ Mason is being too modest about the reasons behind his visit. Before he went to Kiev/Kyiv, he had gone over to Washington and the pro-imperialist politics of the Labour right. Far from being an independent, critical voice, the scourge of the establishment, Mr Mason now provides a rationale for supporting nuclear weapons, Nato and the Starmer leadership.⁹

At the same time as he was pictured giving the clenched-fist salute of workers’ solidarity within Ukraine, he published an article supporting sanctions against Russia, alongside “massive and unashamed military aid to Ukraine, to help its people defend themselves against further aggression. And that’s just the start.” Indeed, it is, for Mason is seeking nothing less than the political and moral rearmament of US imperialism and its client states:

We need to rebuild the resilience of western democracies against the kind of attack Putin has unleashed. … we need to solidify Nato. As a defensive alliance that should avoid ‘out-of-area’ actions, it is now vital for deterrence. For, if Putin does invade the whole of Ukraine, its people will resist. And that will bring 21st century chaos to the borders of the EU.¹⁰

Imperialism

How does this differ from the position of Tory rightwingers, like Tobias Ellwood, or defence secretary Ben Wallace, with his ridiculously inaccurate historical references to the Crimean War? In essence, not at all, but there are some nice touches directed towards the left. Anyone who does not go along with Mason’s muscular, liberal intervention are dubbed, at best, self-deluding dupes or, at worst, tarred with the brush of Stalinism.

Like all the long line of social imperialists and traitors to real workers’ internationalism before him, Mason frames the current crisis as a clash of civilisations and a defence of freedom and self-determination. What he is really and quite openly saying is that the left must line up behind capitalism and give uncritical support to US imperialism in its encirclement of Russia and its coming confrontation with China. He argues that it is a moral choice:

We are in a global conflict between systems: democracy, science and the rule of law versus dictatorship, disinformation and armed anarchy ... What we’re choosing is a political ethos. Do it now and live, morally, with the consequences. For at least you have a choice. The teenagers of Kyiv, who spent last Saturday break-dancing and may spend next Saturday in a bomb shelter, don’t have that luxury.¹¹

Mason is right: we do have a choice and the position that we take should not be the one he offers us. It is the same choice that the leadership of the European working class movement had in 1914: fall in behind the ruling classes of Europe and send millions to die in the slaughter for ‘freedom and democracy’; or conduct an independent fight against, not alongside, the ruling classes and their system, beginning with ‘your own’. The Marxist tradition, as developed by Lenin, stood four-square against social patriotism and rallying around national chauvinism to defend ‘your country.’¹² The internationalist position he advanced was that, unlike the wars for national democracy and unification in the 19th century, capitalist and imperialist wars were not at all progressive in the epoch of imperialism in the 20th: he was not taken in by arguments about wars for democracy or the defence of small nations, and neither should we be.

At the time of writing, how events will unfold remains unclear. The imposition of sanctions by the US, the European Union and Britain in response to Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics will obviously ratchet up the tension. In the putative diplomatic preliminaries to a shooting war, this de jure recognition of realities on the ground in the eastern Ukraine has been defined by Nato as the beginning of a Russian invasion.¹³ Incidents continue across the ceasefire line and Russian troop movements are reported, as Ukraine calls up its reservists.¹⁴ If the breathless media reports of western correspondents are to be believed, the slide towards war is now gathering pace.

We cannot be sure how this crisis will turn out: perhaps a diplomatic deal brokered by Emmanuel Macron or a continuing low-intensity stalemate in eastern Ukraine, whilst the US and its client states continue to ramp up the pressure and intensify the warlike rhetoric? However, the basic geopolitical dynamics are clear. We are once again living in a period comparable to the great-power rivalries that Lenin was so familiar with and in which he fought against social-pacifism and social-imperialism. Like the British empire before World War I, the US hegemon is attempting to reverse its relative decline in the face of the rising challenge of China, its only serious rival. Russia is a military and regional rival to US interests in Europe, which in turn relate to the need to keep the EU onside in any future conflicts against China and Russia.

These interlinked global and regional rivalries will continue to generate crises, such as the current one in Ukraine. Thus, the potential for a major war between the great powers remains imminent, whatever happens over the next few weeks in Ukraine. Lenin’s revolutionary perspective of using the divisions and rivalries between those great powers, turning the imperialist war into a civil war, was predicated on the simple, but effective argument that the main enemy is always at home. Central to Lenin’s strategy was the independent action of the working class movement and its revolutionary potential to overthrow capitalism and imperialism.

The defeats inflicted on the working class in the developed capitalist countries in the last 40 years have made that strategy much more difficult, but it still remains the only way forward for the working class globally. Paul Mason’s collaboration with the US hegemon and Nato only offers us more wars and simply prolongs the agony.

We are not going over to Washington: for us the enemy is at home!