Lenin’s crusade against imperialist war: lessons for today - Spectre of Communism Podcast

[@JackDraak]

This has been yet another fantastic discussion, thank you! Solidarity from Canada!

[@revcomintern]

Thanks comrade! Solidarity ✊️

[@EntitledMillennials]

New to your content here. Solidarity from our little independent political analysis channel to y'all.

[@revcomintern]

Solidarity! Thanks for tuning in ✊️

[@afaqahmed5393]

Red salute from Pakistan section of RCI🚩🚩

[@Jamhael1]

@@afaqahmed5393 Solidarity from the Brazil section (OCI), Comrade!

[@revcomintern]

Lal Salaam!

[@thomaskloos6409]

Mashallah you're consistently uploading ❤🎉

[@revcomintern]

Twice a week! One joint finale episode next week then back in the new year.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

Another narrative that I often heard about WW1 is that the attack of Austria-Hungary on Serbia forced all the other countries to join because of alliances. But the same people also say that Italy broke it's alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany and joined the Entente. Which proves that alliances don't force imperialist powers to anything. It sometimes seems that bourgeois history has this idealistic focus on superficial phenomena to hide the actual power mechanics of imperialist wars.

[@Jamhael1]

In the case of Italy in this situation, the alliance they had was "defensive", and because A-H and the German Empire declared war first (an "offensive" action) Italy saw that the clauses of their alliance were not valid. Also, there was the issue that A-H still hold parts of the territory Italy declared "theirs" (the "Irredent" territories) so it was another reason why Italy didn't joined.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

@@Jamhael1 I am quite sure that the alliance also didn't allow attacking Austria-Hungary, which they did. And for sure their legally unbased territorial claims were no valid reason according to what then was considered international law to still start a war. Thus just shows that imperialist powers only obey international law if it suits them.

[@Jamhael1]

@rfvtgbzhn no - the situation presented here on Italy is that: - Italy had a DEFENSIVE pact with the German and A-H Empires that declared that, if any of those nations were attacked by a foreign nation, all members were considered attacked as well. In the case of this specific situation, A-H and Geman Empires were the ones who ATTACKED first by declaring war against Russia, which made this agreement, by the Italian perspective, completely null and void; - Italy had LOTS of disputes with A-H thanks to the "Irredent" territories since the Unification of Italy, and there was not a single piece of document claiming that said defensive pact demanded any kind of restriction on attacking any participant in case of non-agreement; - While WW1 is, in the end, a war between imperialist nations, we must NEVER ignore the "spirit of the time", for the study of History must NEVER be tainted by our modern day bias, because the people of the past did not had the hindsight we today have. In fact, in History we like to say: "The Past is a horrible place, with the only gift it provides is MISTAKES for us to learn and not repeat them."; Therefore, we must not employ a "purist" ideological blindfold, while ignoring the materialist-historical dialectics necessary to have a sober and factual analysis of a historical period.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

@Jamhael1 simple logic. If you are in a defensive pact you can't attack allies because in this case you would have defend them against yourself.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

@Jamhael1 and if you really would have done a materialist-historical analysis you would know that countries obey international law only if it benefits them. From my knowledge there was no generally agreed upon international law before capitalism, but in capitalism the contract theory of international law was established and prevailed at latest at the Vienna Congress of 1815. Still since then states with all kinds of capitalist governments violate international law if it suits them and the most powerful ones violate them most often (in the last few decades the USA). Which actually has to be the case in capitalism, and especially in imperialism because of the role of the state as "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie" (Marx, Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party). If it is in the interest of the national capitalist class to violate some treaty, the state does violate it.

[@ChrisMackinder]

Another intelligent discussion and analysis in the growing ‘fog of war’. Glad the Spectre continues to haunt in 2025✊

[@revcomintern]

The Spectre will haunt one more week in 2024, then return to its usual schedule of haunting in the new year.

[@inambuneri3989]

Greetings from Peshawar Afghanistan

[@Jamhael1]

@@inambuneri3989 Solidarity from Brazil, Comrade!

[@revcomintern]

Greetings!

[@alexanderpalmer302]

Great episode!

[@revcomintern]

Thanks!

[@hossamfouad8060]

😢تحية ثورية من القاهرة.

[@casca5853]

Can someone please help me with rebutting the following attack on Lenin. I keep coming across the argument thrown at me that Lenin was a puppet of the German military who put him on a train to Russia in 1917. What is the counter argument to this claim? Thanks

[@revcomintern]

Hey, it’s actually addressed in the video!

[@walruscoocoocachu26]

Joe definitely looks like he's been through a war this morning

[@josephattard3964]

Thanks for noting my commitment to the theme.

[@adnanabdouu]

@@josephattard3964😂😂

[@benhaylock7097]

Could I please get some clarity, does this channel support Russian imperialism? Are Russia allowed to expand and Annex their neighbours territory? I genuinely enjoy your content but it's important for me to understand your position on this. Cheers

[@revcomintern]

Hi! We do not support the capitalist Putin regime and consider the war in Ukraine to be wholly reactionary. We also do not support NATO, which helped provoke this conflict and plunged Ukraine into an unwinnable bloodbath on behalf of the narrow interests of US imperialism.

[@benhaylock7097]

While I disagree that NATO is at all responsible for the war as I don't believe countries are owed a sphere of influence or control over the governments or neighbouring countries I appreciate your condemnation of the Putin regime. I consider myself a socialist and look forward to learning more about communism. Thanks for the reply

[@LuisAldamiz]

Very much in agreement with this interesting coversation, although I have two caveats: 1. The October Revolution was in November (and the February Revolution was in Mach, specifically March 8th). 🤓 2. More importantly: while I strongly agree that the national revolutionaries should not back the national bourgeoisie, it's very hard to see how can that happen while there is still a national bourgeoisie, which is felt as "lesser evil". I wonder if (or maybe I actually believe that) the achievements of Russia and later other underdeveloped semi-colonial countries owe much to the lack of a proper national bourgeoisie and the *national* need to replace that power vacuum by something else such as a socialist intelligentsia, which acted as "ersatz national bourgeoisie" of sorts (in the aspect of national development specifically). Almost invariably the matter of capitalism vs socialism manifests as one of national empowering (liberation at the bottom, imperialism at the top) and if there is a stron national bourgeoisie, then these become the "natural leaders" of the workers (and that's how you can explain someone like Trump, for example, at least to some extent). In this regard, I feel that the obliteration of European national bourgeoisies, now totally under the thumb of Wall Street and being turned into client "comprador bourgeoisies" as we speak, points to a very interesting opportunity in Europe in the near future, one we should prepare for, as there's no way that Europe can regain its sovereignty without socialism anymore.

[@manjiy4185]

In society, as the class struggle develops, grows the need to overthrow the ruling class for progress. When you look at history, there where plenty of times in the dominating capitalist countries faced mass revolutionary struggle. What was missing wasn't revolutionary fervor in the masses nor illusions of lesser evil. What was missing was a strong leadership ready to take power. As for saying that a strong bourgeoisie can undermine revolution is true. But the capitalist crisis is also the crisis of the bourgeoisie. Lenin said revolutions happen when the masses don't want to live like before and when the ruling class can't rule like before. In the case of trump, we have a lot of videos about that that you can look at. What the situation in the united state and elsewhere represent is not a strong bourgeoisie. But a weak one. As for the situation in europe I don't know much about that but I don't think europe has a strong national struggle character to it. Or at least nothing progressive. But I am not very knowledgable in that topic.

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@manjiy4185 - I am not convinced by your answer, which leaves everything to the "great men" like conservative historians like to think. Marxism is about the objective socio-economy (class dialectics included) and I can't accept that the issue is only about "great mean" or "strong leadership" (same thing ultimately). It may play a role, sure, but, would be only that, then we wouldn't observe such a marked pattern of 20th century (bolshevik model) revolutions succeeding in "primitive" or "underdeveloped" societies with weak and almost illiterate proletariat and with no or very weak national bourgeoisie. Eventually most of the colonies and semi-colonies revolted (not all with a revolutionary socialist leadership, much less a successful one) and all the developed countries remained stuck in endless capitalism. This can only be explained because the imperialist national bourgeoisies managed to still suckle lots of wealth to these countries and thus bribe the proletariat with the usual crumbs (which in some cases, like Denmark, can be quite "socialist", achieving massive social equalization even if in overall capitalist parameters). Anyway there are many instances of strong leadership willing to take power that failed, for example Che in Bolivia, Sankara in Burkina Faso, Lumumba in Congo and even the Spartakists in Germany or Bela Kun in Hungary. I'd rather seek the issue in strong grassroots mass organization, which the 1917 Russian soviets achieved (initially not under bolshevik direction even), or not. As for the USA, their high burgeoisie controls the state like no other and also much of the rest of the world. It is financiarized and globalizing and that weakens them (I concur with the idea that we're sliding down the slope of the terminal capitalist crisis) but it's still mega-powerful. What I meant is that Trump represents, leads, the nationalist bourgeoisie and by extension the client segments of the US proletariat to which he messages: "your salaries depend on us, make sure that we, the Murican nationalist bourgeoisie, succeeds". And this is basically what the national bourgeoisies have always done by promoting "nationalism" (of the wrong kind): "if my company falls, you worker fall to unemployment, precarity, lower salary with me" or also "if our country falls, you will not better off than with us in power". That's very difficult to counter especially after socialism has been officially declared "a failure". Re. Europe: separate answer.

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@manjiy4185 - As for Europe, how do you think that the USA can get Germany to literally march to suicide and accept even terrorist attacks against its energy lifeline, meaning the collapse of its industry? Because the media and everything that matters belongs to Wall Street. And it's the same across the subcontinent: Wall Street decides what we are supposed to believe, how are we supposed to get distracted from reality, what we shouldn't care about (like Palestine) and who we are supposed to vote. They own our media, our industries, our banks and our very homes. The European bourgeoisie is growingly mere petty burgeoisie and the few that can still be considered great bourgeoisie are totally entangled with US great capital and their business hyper-globalized, they know well that they depend much more on Washington D.C. than on anything that any European government could do. That's not what happens in that other Europe that is Russia, not since Putin consolidated power by forcing the oligarchs to choose between loyalty to him (abstaining from politics primarily) or being punished and destroyed. That's what Putin did in Russia and that's pretty much what the "communists" did in China by other means (avoiding the Yeltsinist chaos): and they succeeded in generating national bourgeoisies. India also has largely succeeded at that thanks to anti-colonial "socialist" (social-liberal) policies through many decades. And that's why they're sovereign, even if capitalist, while (suppossedly more advanced and more historically advantaged) Europe isn't and is seeing its economy being essentially looted by the USA with no resistance whatsoever... or almost so. An instance of resistance can be the election of Robert Fico, who is respectable but leads a tiny country and arrived too late to impede the destruction of their main industry: the largest aluminum metallurgy on Earth, totally dependant on cheap Russian gas. Another instances of resistance can be seen in France maybe, with endless struggles since Macron the privatizer came to power and the recent success of Duralex workers on collectivizing their historical glass industry into a cooperative. The class dialectics are always at play but overall the situation in Europe is one in which there is no "national" bourgeois leadership anymore and that feels extremely painful (and benefits the extraction of value by the USA, its great bourgeoisie, in many ways: from apartment rent to hyper-expensive LNG purchases).

[@manjiy4185]

@@LuisAldamiz What I said has nothing to do with strong man vision of history. What I am saying is that the revolutionnary conditions for the proletariat to take power in many countries of europe where present. What was missing (and what Russia had) was a strong marxist leadership that could lead the workers to take power and defend themselfs against reaction. Right here I am not saying that a strong leadership can escape the objective situation of the capitalist system. Our objective right now is to build a revolutionnary party that will be able to lead future revolutions to victory. That was what Lenin and the Bolsheviks did. One way to put it is ; the objective factor is leading the working class to revolt, we need to build the subjective factor to give this revolt the right strategies, ideas, and ultimately what kind of society to build (leadership). Marxism is not fatalistic and the socialist revolution will not win automatically. Once again, the reason a lot of revolutions ended up with endless capitalism is because the leadership was not marxist and so didn't have the right tools to free these countries. Freedom from these countries would have implied war against all major imperialist powers. But revolutions would have implied revolutions in neighbouring countries. Look at the arab spring for example. Such revolutions would have shattered the confort of the proletariat of imperialist countries and catapult the country into a revolutionnary situation. So on and so forth. The reason why communism is internationnal is because capitalism is an internationnal system. *What I mean by strong leadership is a leadership with the right ideas and the ability to propagate those ideas inside society through a strong party directly connected to every layer of society. Yes in the USA the bourgeoisie controls pretty much every aspect of the state. And they tried to use pretty much every aspect of the state to keep trump out of power. They failed. One of the reason among many is because he is repoppularising the working class and undermining the institutions of the bourgeoisie to get in power. Right now it is used to create illusions in the working class that if they vote for trump, he will fix all of their problems. They don't mind that particularly. But they rightly fear that the movement will swing sharply to the extreme left. (revolutionnary left). That will be big trouble. Trump doesn't care he just wants to be elected. Tldr : The bourgeoisie around the world is getting weaker and weaker preparing the ground for revolution. We need to build a strong revolutionnary marxist leadership in every country to not let any succesfull revolution get strangled to death. With that the bourgeoisie can be defeated.

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@manjiy4185 - Are you telling me that Luxemburg, Zetkin, Liebnecht, Bela Kun, Gramsci, etc. were not "strong Marxist leadership"? Are you telling me that the partisan forces in WWII or later as well were not "strong Marxist leadership"? No, I can't but that: the main reason why Lenin or Mao or even Castro succeeded was that bourgeois regime was extremely weak. And you're indeed falling back to "great men" (not necessarily "strong": Savonarola or Gandhi were meek but they are in that same "great" category, as are of course at least some women). Leaders and organization do matter, I can't deny that, but there are also the circumstances in which they exist and struggle and it's Marxist to also and even fundamentally consider that first and foremost. I disagree re. Trump: he's also the bourgeoisie and has been backed by other oligarchs since day one of his career, he represents a faction within the US bourgeoisie and much of the struggle around his persona is pretense anyhow, as is when Macron runs against Le Pen as "not Le Pen, please votez vous for the moderate extreme center-right of the banksters, my police baton is slightly softer than hers... or something". Else it's like claiming that the bourgeoisie tried to stop Mussolini, Hitler and Franco... they did not, these were their iron fist alternative to the wave of communist (and anarchist) revolutions and uprisings, against worker revolutionary self-organization.

[@justinallen2408]

Its not the fault of palestinians or the iraelis they were set up for war since the founding of both countries we cant blame israel for being forced into the aggressive stance

[@birdnog1831]

⛏⛏⛏

[@tanujSE]

There is no question of Lenin today,there is no question of working class,there exists division between physical and labour in capitalist state

[@proletariangoth2607]

these divisions are superficial and ideologically propagated by the capitalist class who has an invested interest in sowing division between workers

[@tanujSE]

@proletariangoth2607 There is difference in wage

[@proletariangoth2607]

@@tanujSE yes that is superficial, because in the end no worker no matter what wage they earn has democratic control over their workplace

[@tanujSE]

@proletariangoth2607 This is to hide why capitalism is going well and will be so

[@emiliopenayo4738]

i love comrade stalin tho