> > On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 07:09 PM, Mark Baugher wrote: > My position is that Ukrainians have the right to self-determination in > defending their national sovereignty from an invasion that seeks to end > it. And this has nothing to do with the applicability of permanent > revolution (Trotsky'st not Marx's). > >
Or maybe, since you don't provide any analysis, your claim is mistaken. Now it's the easiest thing to claim Ukraine is engaged in a battle for self-determination. but saying so doesn't make it so, no more than "poor little Belgium" was engaged in a battle for self-determination against Germany during the world wars....or (my favorite) Kuwait was engaged in a battle for "self-determination" against Iraq in 1991. I think the Iraq-Kuwait "model" is more applicable to the Ukraine-Russia conflict than the (mis) application of anti-colonial categories, and I base that conclusion on the virtual identity of the modes of production, the class relations of the opponents. So what is the social base for your designation of a battle for self-determination? The fact that Russia is bigger? Russia invaded? You advance this "right" as an abstraction, without any social content. So when the current ruling class advocates as "self-determination" its intention to join the EU and NATO are they exercising their "right" as a ruling class? Maybe, based on some understanding of the demands of accumulation, the cause of the war is the similarity -- the equality in modes of production, and this is one more example where substituting abstract rights for concrete analysis actually works to preserve the causes of the war, empower the destruction of the prospects for an independent class-based opposition to the ruling classes of Russia, Ukraine and the NATO countries. I mean you don't think that all the overproduction of natural gas and the billions the US invested in LNG would precipitate a conflict where the US could force the EU to cut supplies from Russia and make the market more open for US sources? Do you? I know it appears a bit reductionist, but maybe it captures the real dialectic. Just maybe. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#34630): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/34630 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/110506717/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-