WeeklyWorker

07.11.2024
Maidan coup in 2014 triggered civil war in Ukraine

Notes on the war

With the freezing cold of winter fast approaching, Ukraine is increasingly dependent on nuclear power. Then there is the Storm Shadow ‘red line’, threats of nuclear war and Donald Trump. Jack Conrad comments on recent happenings and developments

This coming winter is going to be a real trial for Ukraine and its civilian population in what is the third year of the war. Russia has been steadily degrading the energy infrastructure. Power stations, electricity grid sub-stations and storage facilities - all have been hit by drones and missiles. In a country where winter temperatures regularly stay below zero - and in the east and north-east they can go down to as much as -20ºC - demands on the “fragile” power grid will be substantial.1

Already some 70% of the population experiences an “unreliable electricity supply”.2 Even during the summer months shops and restaurants were regularly using diesel generators. So the expectation is that this winter will see a severe energy shortage - something that will surely be exacerbated if Russia continues to take out power stations, etc. Everything, of course, tells us that it will continue to do just that.

From a summertime 12 GW peak, this winter demand is expected to rise to 18.5 GW. Therefore, given the relentless drone and missile attacks, despite 1.7 GW being imported from the European Union, the expectation is of a 6 GW shortfall. That means prolonged power cuts, especially in front-line cities like Kharkiv … and for the infirm, the elderly and the sick, killer conditions.

Not that we should expect a collapse in civilian morale and people clamouring for surrender terms. Ukrainian nationalism has deep roots, which certainly cannot be easily overcome by Vladimir Putin and the FSB regime in Moscow. Nonetheless, energy supply remains a Ukrainian weak point and as such that leaves it ever more dependent on nuclear power.

Nuclear power plants currently provide 70% of Ukraine’s energy requirements, one of the highest levels in the world - even higher than France’s 65%. Fears of triggering a nuclear meltdown have meant that so far those NPPs have largely been untouched - though not their “substations and electricity switch yards” which feed power into the grid.3

Playing with fire is always a risky business, playing with nuclear rods and waste is even more so. Ukrainian forces have recklessly been taking pot shots at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP in south-eastern Ukraine - not the other way round, as crazily suggested by large parts of the western media. Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest NPP with six reactors and has, because of the war, been under ‘cold shutdown’. As such it produces no electricity - nonetheless it does require outside power to keep nuclear material cool and prevent a disastrous accident. That alone should be reason to be extraordinarily concerned. According to Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, given the attacks and grossly inadequate staffing levels, the prospect of a nuclear accident is “dangerously close” - this in a country which witnessed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.4

True, Zaporizhzhia is unlikely to explode: after all it is non-operational. However, shelling or a drone or missile strike on its nuclear storage facilities could still see significant amounts of deadly radiation pluming into the atmosphere. Depending on the prevailing winds, this could affect millions in neighbouring Turkey, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria.

The dial is constantly being upped. Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, talks about having a “duty” to intercept Russian drones and missiles in order to protect Ukraine’s “nuclear facilities.”5 Kyiv has certainly been pushing its sponsors to become more involved in the war, including providing air defence cover over western Ukraine from batteries located on Nato territory.

There are, despite all this, some left and leftish voices who positively advocate nuclear power: eg, George Monbiot.6 That despite the whole technology being inherently dangerous - not least given the potential of turning NPPs into weapons of war (like blowing up the Kakhovka hydro electric dam on the Dnieper river in June 2023, except with vastly more perilous consequences). Certainly when it comes to Russia, there must be the temptation, especially before Donald Trump is sworn in, of knocking out 70% of Ukraine power supplies simply by taking out its four remaining operational NPPs. Tit for tat, Ukraine could easily do the same with Russia’s nearby nuclear power plants: eg, Kursk’s NPP.

We have, therefore, been absolutely right to alarm bell this possibility of turning NPPs into weapons of mass destruction, and we have also been absolutely right to alarm bell the possibility of a Russia-Nato nuclear war in the event of Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadows on targets within the pre-2014 territory of the Russian Federation.7

The immediate issue here might have faded somewhat with the US presidential race entering the final straight and now with Trump’s clear victory. Nonetheless, because it could all too easily resurface - despite Trump’s 24 hour peace talk pledge - it is more than worthwhile revisiting.

Britain, France and Italy - the joint manufacturers of Storm Shadow - appear to have been given permission to give Volodymyr Zelensky the go-ahead for their use by Joe Biden, but none, at least as far as we know, have dared cross that particularly dangerous red line.

After all, not only do we now have president elect Donald Trump. Vladimir Putin has warned that, if this line is crossed, Nato would be “at war with Russia”.8 Dmitry Medvedev, former president and prime minister, has also talked of war and ominously threatened to reduce Kyiv to a “giant melted spot”.9 Sabre-rattling, perhaps - but as we have repeatedly said, well, till the moment when it is not.

Ukraine, it should be stressed, could not effectively deploy such cruise missiles without Nato technical and military back-up - crucially US cartographic data, M-code signals and satellites. Storm Shadows use three navigation systems during midcourse flight. According to the website of MBDA - the UK, French, Italian weapons system consortium - that means inertial and satellite navigation, as well as Terrain Reference Navigation.10 This technology scans the terrain below and compares it with a preloaded reference image tied to exact coordinates. In the final phase, a thermal imaging seeker activates to locate and guide the missile to the exact target based on pre-stored data.

Yet the fact of the matter is that without active US help, Storm Shadow would lack accuracy and have to rely solely on civilian L1 C/A global positioning system signals, making it vulnerable to Russian electronic warfare systems that “could easily disrupt it”.11 Problematic, to put it mildly, not only because such missiles are expensive - they cost around £2 million apiece - but also because their stock is limited. Ukraine simply cannot afford to waste such a potent weapon.

Though they can hit with great accuracy and penetrate hardened or buried targets, Storm Shadows should not be considered a war winner for Ukraine. Yes, at the top of Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’ is the west giving the green light to such cruise missile attacks on the Russian Federation. Yes, the liberal media chimes in with a resounding call for the west to “give Zelensky free rein, now North Korea has joined the war”.12 In reality, though, Storm Shadows will make only a marginal difference. They will not, cannot turn the tide of what is a war of attrition that will ultimately be decided by GDP, arms production capabilities, manpower resources … and political willpower.

Nonetheless, Russia’s warnings should not be lightly dismissed. While the ‘western community’ disputes Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhiya and Kherson, it accepts Russia’s sovereignty over the rest of its territory. Therefore, Russia has a right to treat attacks on its sovereign territory differently from attacks on territory over which its sovereignty is disputed. Under circumstances where a Nato weapon navigates through sovereign Russian airspace, using guidance signals beamed by US military satellites, to strike a target in sovereign Russian territory, this could indeed be deemed an act of war against Russia by the US-Nato, according to international law. US-Nato would be co-belligerents.

Complacent left

Amazingly, given the death toll in the Russo-Ukrainian war and its potential to “phase into World War III” (Donald Trump), the left has been remarkably - criminally - complacent. Perhaps none more so than Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st century - an “eco-socialist, feminist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist organisation” with definite Cliffite antecedents.13

Though the comrades have recently agreed a pretty positive resolution on Ukraine,14 when I last searched its website using the word, ‘Ukraine’, only one statement and two articles on the war came up! An RS21 steering group statement, ‘On the invasion of Ukraine’ (February 25 2022), ‘Understanding the contradictions of Ukraine’ (Sam O’Brien, October 17 2023) and ‘From Ukraine to Gaza: imperialism, resistance and solidarity’ (Pete Cannell, February 28 2024). That’s it, that’s all!

The basic thrust of this single statement and two articles is that the world is divided between imperialist powers and rival blocs: the US merely being the strongest. RS21 thereby considers China imperialist and Russia too ... but what about Iran, India, North Korea and Venezuela? We are not told.

RS21 innocently announces that “we don’t live in a unipolar world”. Hence, in support of its multipolar thesis, we find the indisputable claim that “China projects its economic power on a global scale”, while Russia, though it has a much smaller economy, “uses its military strength to project power well beyond its borders”.15

There can be no doubt that historically tsarist Russia was a colonial power and built a vast prison house of nations. Beginning as the autocratic feudal principality of Muscovy, there was - especially with the decline of the Mongol empire - huge expansion to the east and the south. Moreover, tsarism dismembered Poland, took over the Baltics and established its rule over Finland too.

Naturally, Lenin roundly condemned Russian colonialism and saw tsarism as both socially and politically anachronistic, but also increasingly as a servant of big capital. In his Imperialism, though Lenin included Russia amongst the great imperialist powers, he did so almost wholly because of its colonial possessions. In terms of the number of subject peoples, it ranked behind Britain and France, but ahead of Germany, the US and Japan (1914 figures).16 However, Russia’s large-scale industry and banks were mostly foreign-owned - or dependent - and the tsarist state was massively in hock (mainly to the French financial oligarchy). Overall the country was dominated by peasant agriculture and characterised by extreme economic backwardness. Exactly why Leon Trotsky wrote about Russia’s development giving it a “semi-colonial” character.17 In other words, Russia was a semi-colonial colonising power.

I shall not set out my views on the nature of the 1917-91 Soviet state here, except in terms of a few salient negatives: eg, post-1928 and the first five-year plan ideas about a workers’ state, degenerate or otherwise, are simply not tenable. Workers were atomised. They did not, could not, rule in any meaningful sense. Nor does the notion of the Soviet Union being “bureaucratic state capitalism” convince: the rouble was not money; there was an absence of wage labour; there were products, but not commodities; the law of value did not operate; and production was not driven by profit.

What of post-1991 Russia? The idea that the Russian Federation is an imperialist aggressor is a standard trope that effortlessly trips off the lips of just about every mainstream bourgeois politician. Of course, nowadays the words, ‘imperial’, ‘imperialist’ and ‘imperialistic’, carry entirely negative connotations. Long gone are the glory days of direct European colonialism and the white man’s burden. Hence when it comes to the leading capitalist powers (eg, the G7), they proudly boast of being democracies, and imperialism is used either in reference to what is admitted as a slightly guilty past or, more likely, wielded as an ideological weapon against current enemies and rivals.

Inevitably there is a current on the ‘left’ which apes and echoes the dominant ideology and therefore either openly or sneakily sides with their ‘own government’, when it comes to foreign policy. So here in Britain there are the routine economistic complaints by papers such as Solidarity about Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves presiding over the full panoply of Thatcherite anti-trade union laws, cancelling winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, cutting disability benefits and boosting so-called defence spending by £2.9 billion. Yet the same ‘left’, putting guns over butter, demands more arms deliveries for Ukraine and tougher sanctions on Russia. As if domestic and foreign policy were not intimately connected … foreign policy being the continuation of domestic policy.

Yes, there exists a distinct social-imperialist camp. Not, as we have repeatedly explained, Sir Keir, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and the Parliamentary Labour Party. There is nothing remotely social(ist) about them. They are just plain, everyday, career bourgeois politicians and, as such, just as committed to the Atlantic alliance as the Rishi Sunak government before them. No, on the far right of the far left we have the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign - along with a rogues’ gallery of affiliates, supporters and outriders, such as the Labour Representation Committee, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Anticapitalist Resistance, John McDonnell, Nadia Whittome, Gilbert Achcar ... and until a short while ago RS21.

For the lot of them it is an open-and-shut case: Ukraine is fighting a “just war” of national defence and Russia is an imperialist country conducting an “unjust war” of aggression. Science though is noticeably lacking. Imperialism is simply equated with territorial expansion and foreign wars.

Imperialism

RS21’s steering group declared back in February 2022 that “Russian imperialism is not a ‘lesser evil’ in this conflict”. It went on to list the “series of expansionist successes” scored by Putin’s Russia: reasserting its post-cold war geopolitical role through its military intervention in Syria; annexing Crimea; setting up the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk; suppressing the popular rebellion in Kazakhstan; and propping up the Lukashenko regime in Belarus.18

If one wants to define imperialism as nothing more than intervening in another country and expanding territory, so be it. Athens and its Delian League, the Roman republic and Tudor England were imperialist. That is no problem - imperialism existed well before capitalism took command over the state. But Marxism has done us the great service of locating modern imperialism in the context of a capitalism dominated by finance, giant monopolies and a system of global domination and exploitation with a definite, but never fixed, pecking order. Hence in the 17th century England successfully challenged the Dutch for global hegemony, Britain saw off the French challenge in the 19th century and the German in the 20th century, but finally succumbed to the US in the 1940s.

True, the more sophisticated tell us that monopolies are the essence of imperialism and Russia, irrefutably, has its share of monopolies: eg, Gazprom, Rosneft, Lukoil and Sberbank. That, however, would make countries such as India, Brazil, South Africa and even Ukraine imperialist too. After all, each has its own batch of home-grown monopolies (ie, oligopolies, to use standard bourgeois economic jargon).

Without in any way treating Lenin’s Imperialism as a bible - it contains some clearly mistaken arguments - it is worth citing in this context. For Lenin imperialism is not only about monopoly and finance capital: it is the scale, proportion and dominance of overseas interest payments, dividends, rent and such. Hence Lenin emphasises parasitism and the fact that in Britain the “income of the rentiers is five times greater than the income obtained from the foreign trade”. This, he declares, is “the essence of imperialism and imperialist parasitism”.19

America, it should be added, pulls off exactly the same trick - and then one. Possessing uniquely powerful armed forces and with the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency, the US government can run a $1.83 trillion deficit through recourse to the simple device of what used to be called the printing press.20 Other countries thereby pay for Uncle Sam’s profligacy.

However, what Ellen Meiksins Wood calls the “new imperialism” no longer involves territorial expansion and colonial possessions.21 They do not belong in the American century, as the British and French found to their cost with the 1956 Suez crisis. Undoubtedly there are dotted here and there a few surviving genuine colonies; mostly, however, they are tax havens, which, especially in the case of Britain, serve as a means for the City of London to skim off profits from high-level state and business corruption, criminal operations such as the drugs trade and perfectly legal tax avoidance dodges.

No, the essence of the new imperialism is unequal exchange, the export of capital, and a global pecking order which sees the US exploiting other, more or less independent, states through a system of capital, which is now “structured in a complex relation of domination and subordination”.22

What Russia’s so-called oligarchs typically exported - ‘so-called’ because they do not rule - was money, not capital, ie, self-expanding value. Their wealth - well, till they were sanctioned - generally took the form of swollen offshore bank accounts, top-end London, Paris and New York properties, English football clubs and luxury yachts.

China is another matter. It is no match for the US and its allies. Nonetheless, it is a full-spectrum rival and can perhaps be classified as sub-imperialist, pre-imperialist, even fully imperialist, because it not only exports commodities, but capital. In 2022 Chinese outbound direct investments amounted to $2.75 trillion in 47,000 enterprises, which span 190 countries. This puts the People’s Republic amongst the “world’s top three”.23 Clearly the drivers here are internal laws and dynamics. Post-Mao, wage labour has become ubiquitous, including in the state sector. China now counts second only to America in terms of its number of billionaires.24 Though the party-state dominates politically, capital accumulation imposes an economic logic. The result is, however, incredibly complex and needs proper - ie, a thorough-going scientific - investigation … say something like Evgeny Preobrazhensky’s New economics (1926). Trite labels, lazy assumptions and prostituted apologetics are worse than useless.

Obviously, Russia does not parasitically exploit the world, or even its near abroad, in any meaningful way that can seriously be described as imperialist. Despite its 150 million population it has a GDP that ranks far behind Japan, Germany, the UK and France. No, it is in the third league, down with countries like Brazil and Mexico.25 Even taking into account oil and gas, geographic size and nuclear weapons, Russia is most decidedly not a serious rival to the US.

By contrast, though it maintains no colonial bureaucracy, the US empire of the dollar, bases, alliances, institutions and treaties - the G7, World Bank and IMF, Nato, the Five Eyes and Aukus - robs and exploits the entire world with a callous ruthlessness unequalled in human history. US banks and corporations suck in wealth from other countries like a never quenched vampiric monster. Britain is the junior partner, which benefits through the City and plays the role of yapdog, when it comes to wars such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine.

So Ukraine must not be seen in isolation. Behind it there stands the unmatched might of the dominant US-led imperialist bloc. The US violently pulled Ukraine out of the Russian orbit with the 2014 Maidan coup and then step by step set it up as a pawn in the great game to dominate Halford Mackinder’s Eurasian ‘world island’. America would then, if it were successful, have the ability to reboot its domination of the entire globe - a scenario that both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will surely resist, using whatever means they have at their disposal.

Sympathising with ordinary Ukrainians who have been killed, injured, lost loved ones, fled abroad, etc is perfectly natural. War is unimaginably cruel. But to wish for Ukraine’s victory, to support its war aims, not least imposing Banderite rule over the Russian-speaking majority in Donbas and Crimea, to demand that Nato ‘Arm, arm, arm Ukraine’ and call ‘Putin, Putin, Putin, out, out, out’ is to act in the direct interests of US imperialism. In Russia it might well be the case that principled communists would say that they ‘prefer to see a Russian defeat than its victory’. But, to state the obvious, we are not in Russia.

RS21 approaches

RS21’s Pete Cannell tells us that there are “two main approaches to Ukraine on the left”. One argues for “self-determination for Ukraine and effectively sides with western imperialism as a necessary evil for stopping an out-of-control Putin”. In other words the social-imperialist camp, which once, of course, included RS21 - that despite its evasive talk about a “dual war”: ie, Ukraine’s war for self-determination and a US-Nato “proxy war”. The other approach “sees Russia, however regrettably, as responding to western (US and Nato) provocation”.26 This, I take it, describes both the pro-Kremlin and the social-pacifist left.

Those socialists and communists who support the Kremlin, or who see something anti-imperialist in its war with Ukraine, might have landed themselves in a dreadful hole - after all the Putin-FSB regime is far-right, anti-working class and deeply reactionary. But at least the pro-Kremlin, the Z left does not support their own ruling class. These Stalinite and Trotskyite comrades - and I shall call them comrades - usually take their cue from this or that Lenin text and neatly divide the world into oppressing and oppressed nations. As Russia cannot be seriously categorised as imperialist - and it can’t - they consider themselves duty-bound to offer Putin ‘military’ support. Actually, this has nothing to do with raising an international brigade or sending money to buy arms. No, of course, military support is political support: ie, articles, leaflets and postings on the ephemera that is social media, calling for ‘Russian victory’.

The social-pacifist left is doubtless worse, because it serves to foster the illusion that there can be a peaceful capitalism, as long as governments act reasonably and abide by internationally agreed rules and standards. Eg, Stop the War Coalition, the Morning Star and the Corbynite swamp. In fact, war and capitalism are inseparable. Peace is only a moment between war, and war is merely the continuation of the same policy previously carried out peacefully through diplomacy, tariffs and sanctions.

However, the old RS21 position constitutes the most dangerous form of opportunism - ie, centrism - because it provides seemingly ‘left’ excuses for blurring principles and finding an accommodation with social-imperialism and thereby capitalism.

From the beginning - that is, February 2022 - and well before that, it has been crystal-clear that the US and Nato had been pushing, prodding and preparing Ukraine for conflict with Russia. As for a “dual war” that had been going on since the 2014 Maidan coup. Russian-speaking, Russian-backed separatists in the east fought the Nato-backed central government in Kyiv and Banderite fascist irregulars. What changed in February 2022 was that the dual war became a triple war. Given that conclusion - which hardly needs proving - we have to decide which war is dominant. Is it the war fought by Donbas speaking-Russians for self-determination, the Russo-Ukrainian war, or is it the US/Nato proxy war? The answer is pretty obvious. As in the case of ‘plucky little Belgium’ and ‘brave little Serbia’ in World War I, we must recognise that calls to stand alongside ‘heroic Ukraine’ serve as an excuse for siding with our ‘own’ imperialism.

For us, though, the main enemy is our own ruling class and that is why we emphasise the perspective of pursuing the class struggle at home - not only on the economic, the trade-union front, but, crucially, in the realm of high politics. Hence our call to abolish the monarchy, the House of Lords, MI5, the police and the standing army. Instead, we envisage a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales, a reunited Ireland, proportional representation, a popular militia, open borders, dealing with the climate crisis by employing radical control measures and constituting the working class as the ruling class - Europe being our main salient. See my Europe: meeting the challenge of continental unity (2002), Remaking Europe (2004), Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary strategy (2008) and the CPGB’s Draft programme (2023).

Meanwhile, it is certainly the case that the US-Nato proxy war in Ukraine cannot be separated from other wars and conflicts, not least Israel’s. The idea that the US, Germany, UK, France, etc are supporting a “just war” in Ukraine and an “unjust war” in Gaza, Lebanon and the wider Middle East is a stupid, hopeless, opportunist muddle. States which are committed to anti-trade union laws, austerity, restrictions on civil rights and the continuation of class exploitation at home pursue those very same class interests by other, violent, means abroad. If a war is supported by our capitalist state, then it follows that such a war is a criminal war. Those who urge on any such war in any way betray the working class and the cause of international socialism.

While it is right to congratulate comrades Steven R, Alfie H, Andreas C, Harry H, Danny B and Callum F for their ‘Main enemy’ motion, which shifted RS21 in the direction of a principled position, more needs to be done.

There has to be an accounting for how RS21 began in the social-imperialist camp, when it came to the outbreak of the Russo-Ukraine war. Who proposed affiliation to the USC? Was there a left opposition? What position did the “brilliant and invaluable comrades” who still identify strongly with “the IS tradition” take? What about the “non-Cliffites”? Was there a vote on USC affiliation at an All Member Assembly? Did the steering group take the decision? Why did it take so long before there was a change of line? Was there a right opposition at the September 15 2024 AMA? Who were its spokespersons? Was there a vote? What was the margin? What were the arguments? Is the left opening up a comprehensive struggle against all the opportunist tendencies in RS21? If not, why not?

Writing in the Weekly Worker, Archie Woodrow boasts of RS21 being a “creative, forward-looking fusion”.27 Is that a fusion with social-imperialists, social-pacifists and centrists? Chumminess with rank opportunists is certainly nothing to boast about. Instead there should be open polemics conducted in full view of the entire left in order to clarify the depth and significance of differences. We should not have to guess, rely on rumour or read between the lines to understand what is going on. Everything must be concrete, clear and open. Polemics must necessarily therefore be sharp, angry if need be: indeed to write without “anger” about what is “harmful” is to “write boringly”.28

Naturally philistines will moan about bickering, squabbles, washing dirty linen, crushing dissent, etc, etc. Let them. Without full clarity, drawing the sharpest lines of demarcation and overcoming even incipient manifestations of opportunism nothing serious can be achieved.

  1. www.iea.org/reports/ukraines-energy-security-and-the-coming-winter/the-upcoming-winter-will-be-a-critical-test.↩︎

  2. Ibid.↩︎

  3. www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/23/winter-and-the-bumpy-road-ahead-for-ukraine.↩︎

  4. press.un.org/en/2024/sc15662.doc.htm.↩︎

  5. kyivindependent.com/polish-fm-poland-should-protect-ukrainian-nuclear-plants-from-russian-missiles.↩︎

  6. There is also Emil Jacobs’ ‘Nature’s gift to humanity?’ Weekly Worker August 22 2024 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1503/natures-gift-to-humanity) and Leszek Karlik’s ‘Another useful idiot’ Weekly Worker September 12 2024 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1506/another-useful-innocent).↩︎

  7. PCC statement: ‘Establishing a principled left’ Weekly Worker October 3 2024 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1509/establishing-a-principled-left).↩︎

  8. The Guardian September 13 2024.↩︎

  9. The Independent September 14 2024.↩︎

  10. www.mbda-systems.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019-STORM-SHADOW-datasheet.pdf↩︎

  11. en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/whats_the_us_provided_data_so_essential_for_unrestricted_storm_shadow_strikes_on_russia-11861.html.↩︎

  12. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/02/the-observer-view-on-ukraine-the-west-must-give-zelenskyy-free-rein-now-north-korea-has-joined-the-war.↩︎

  13. revsoc21.uk/about.↩︎

  14. revsoc21.uk/motions-and-policies.↩︎

  15. revsoc21.uk/2024/02/28/from-ukraine-to-gaza-imperialism-resistance-and-solidarity.↩︎

  16. VI Lenin CW Vol 22, Moscow 1977, p258.↩︎

  17. L Trotsky The history of the Russian revolution Vol 1, London 1967, p25.↩︎

  18. revsoc21.uk/2022/02/25/on-the-invasion-of-ukraine.↩︎

  19. VI Lenin CW Vol 22, Moscow 1977, p277 (my emphasis).↩︎

  20. fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ - retrieved November 5 2024.↩︎

  21. E Meiksins Wood Empire of capital London 2003, p7.↩︎

  22. Ibid p141.↩︎

  23. www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-outbound-investment-odi-recent-developments-opportunities-and-challenges.↩︎

  24. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires.↩︎

  25. www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country.↩︎

  26. revsoc21.uk/2024/02/28/from-ukraine-to-gaza-imperialism-resistance-and-solidarity.↩︎

  27. Letters Weekly Worker October 24 2024 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1512/letters).↩︎

  28. VI Lenin CW Vol 35, Moscow 1977, p48.↩︎