On 2014-05-02, at 5:30 PM, JOANNA A. wrote:
> Long, but well worth the read
>
> http://links.org.au/node/3838
Very much so. Especially Kagarlitsky's critique of middle class leftists in Ukraine and elsewhere who echo NATO propaganda that the current crisis has been provoked by Russia, and that the working class protests in eastern Ukraine have more in common with fascism than do the right-wing forces which led the Euromaidan movement in the western regions of the country.
* * *
The people who have been protesting against the authorities in Donetsk, Lugansk and many other Ukrainian cities have not had any particular knowledge of politics, or even a clear program of action. The confusion in their slogans, along with their simultaneous use of religious and Soviet or revolutionary symbols, must undoubtedly offend strict connoisseurs of proletarian ideology. The trouble is that the ideologues themselves have been so immeasurably remote from the masses as to be unable and unwilling not only to instil “correct consciousness” in their ranks, but even to help them make sense of current political questions. While the movement has groped its way spontaneously and with difficulty along its political path, coming up with a general expression of the mood of anti-oligarchic and social protest, the members of the left, except for a few activists in Donetsk and Kharkov, have occupied themselves with abstract discussions in the expanses of the internet.
It was completely predictable that the liberal intelligentsia, both Ukrainian and Russian, should have met the protests of the masses with an outburst of hatred and contempt. The workers who took to the streets came in for a great deal of spiteful name-calling. They were derided as “lumpens”, “trash”, “hooligans” and most amusingly, vatniki [“quilted jackets”]. On the whole, however, the caricature figure of the vatnik, copied from the American cartoon hero Spongebob, suggested precisely an individual unswervingly loyal to the state authorities and completely taken in by government propaganda. In this respect the people in Ukraine who deserved most to be regarded as vatniki were the intellectuals, who repeated uncritically any propaganda put about by the new government, even the most absurd.
It should be noted that in the lying competition waged by the propaganda services of Moscow and Kiev, it was the Ukrainians who clearly took out first prize. It was not that the Russians lied less, but the Kievans lied more recklessly and inventively, showing not the slightest regard for the truth and not even considering whether the television images they showed bore any relation to the commentary. The latter consisted solely of impassioned accounts of armoured vehicles heroically beating off crowds of Russian special forces troops, who were trying to force-feed the hungry soldiers with jam and home-made pickles.
It is not at all surprising that the liberal intelligentsia should have viewed the ordinary people of Donetsk, or anywhere else, as enemies and a threat to “progress” (as the intelligentsia understood it). Far more interesting is to ponder the reasons why a certain sector of the left on both sides of the border spoke out in the same vein as the liberals. As events proceeded the Ukrainian left-liberals at least refined their views and acknowledged that some of the demands of the Donbass were justified (this can be gauged from the materials of the Kiev conference “The Left and the Maidan”). But their Russian and Western co-thinkers took a position of complete irreconcilability, solidarising fully with the Kiev government and the leaders of the European Union. Significant numbers of “Eurolefts” also expressed such views, especially those among them who earlier had stressed the need to focus on such themes as multiculturalism, tolerance and political correctness.
Observing this, the Kiev political scientist Vladimir Ishchenko noted despondently: “It’s a strange feeling, when the army is already with the people, and many leftists (anarchists!!!) are still with the authorities.”
Obviously, this situation cannot be explained purely on the basis of ideological logic. The people and groups involved here seek to trace their political pedigrees to a mythologised and prettified 1917 revolution. It is significant that in many cases they employ the same arguments against the revolution now actually occurring in south-eastern Ukraine as were used against the Bolsheviks by their opponents a little less than a hundred years ago.
We have now seen a quarter-century of reactionary hegemony, with the political and moral collapse of the left movement (not only on the territory of the former USSR, but in other countries as well). Over many years, play-acting at political correctness and the observance of minority rights is supposed to have taken the place of class and mass politics. None of this, of course, has passed without having an effect. On the level of social consciousness we have been thrown back a century and a half. Part of the responsibility belongs with the intelligentsia, which long ago forgot its popular mission and has occupied itself with refined cultural and ideological games instead of working with the masses and for the masses.
Precisely for this reason, the movement in Donetsk with all its contradictions and even absurdities, such as icons and tricolours alongside the red flag, has provided a first-rate picture of the stage of development out of which workers’ actions arose in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile the Donetsk Republic, if we examine it attentively, recalls more than anything the spontaneous political formations that working people created “prior to the advent of historical materialism”.
Before us is the real working class—crude, muddle-headed and devoid of political correctness. Anyone who dislikes the present ideological and cultural state of the class should go and work with the masses. The good thing is that no-one is stopping people going to this crowd with red flags and socialist leaflets (unlike the case with the Maidan, where the flags were torn up, and left agitators were beaten and thrown off the square).
The future of the Donetsk Republic remains undecided, and this represents a huge historical opportunity of which there was not even a trace during the Maidan demonstrations, whose leaders could not always control the crowd, but kept rigid and effective control of the political agenda. By contrast, the Donetsk Republic formulates its agenda from below, literally on the run, in response to the public mood and the course of events. Strictly speaking this republic is not even a state—rather, it amounts to a coalition of diverse communities, most of them self-organised. In essence, it is the perfect embodiment of the anarchist concept of the revolutionary order. Curiously, the anarchists themselves refuse to have anything to do with it, preferring to repeat the state and patriotic rhetoric of the new Kiev rulers.
It is not hard to work out that the reason why the self-organisation of the Donetsk Republic functions relatively well is because the remnants of the old administrative apparatus carry on with their everyday operations as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening, while all the questions of government are reduced ultimately to the organising of defence. But is this so different from the Paris Commune (not the idealised and romanticised commune, but the one that actually existed)? If the people’s republic in Donetsk survives for much longer, it will inevitably change, and it is far from certain that this will be for the better. But in waging its first battle, the republic has already demonstrated the huge potential of the self-organisation of the masses. Unarmed people succeeded in stopping units of the Ukrainian army and in carrying on agitation with the soldiers, blowing apart the “anti-terrorist operation” that Kiev had initiated. This peaceful resistance will not only go down in history, but will also become an important part of the collective social experience of Ukrainian and Russian workers.
Catastrophe of the middle class
The events in Kiev that began in the winter of 2013 can legitimately be described as the latest “revolt of the middle class”. If we start with the beginning of the new century, these uprisings have rolled literally across the entire world, from the United States to Brazil and the Arab countries. Russia and Ukraine have not been exceptions. But although these revolts have had a whole series of features in common, their political agendas have not by any means always been similar. In some cases general democratic slogans have been combined with the demand for progressive social reforms in the interests of the majority of the population, while in others these slogans have been intermixed with the most primitive group egoism, effectively transforming democratic rhetoric into a cover for programs that in essence have been clearly undemocratic.
This incoherence is no accident. Because of the extremely insecure intermediate position the middle class occupies in contemporary society, it is also extremely unstable in ideological and political terms, prone to lurching both to left and right. Equally, it is not by chance that in the countries of the global “centre” middle-class protest is more often than not progressive, while on the periphery the reverse is true. The larger the middle class, and the more conscious its members are of their position as hired workers, the fewer illusions the class has concerning its position, its attributes and its prospects. By contrast, the narrower middle layers in the countries of the periphery and semi-periphery are more often inclined to elitist illusions, and to viewing their position as being threatened not by the implementation of neoliberal reforms, but by the claims of the dispossessed and invariably “backward” lower orders to a bigger share of the pie. Meanwhile the self-appraisal of the middle class, its idea of its own abilities and prospects, often amounts to a set of the most improbable illusions and myths. The more peripheral the economy of a country, the more preposterous these views turn out to be.
These misconceptions can, of course, be cured. Provided a country has a strong civic tradition and a left movement is present, a project of radical democratic modernisation may be developed, and even in such circumstances this will draw in behind it a part of the middle class—as has happened, for example, in Venezuela. But as soon as such a project encounters difficulties or ceases moving forward, we see how a section of the middle class turns sharply to the right.
The paradox lies in the fact that the movement of the left intelligentsia, which for many years has lacked any connection with working people but has been of one flesh with the middle class, has shared for the most part in the vacillations of its social base. For the left to maintain its ties with the middle class does not pose any great problems, considering that the social structure of modern society is now very different from what it was in the time of Marx. But the task of the left is to work toward the formation of a broad social bloc in which the middle class with the majority of society, and above all with the working class. Otherwise, the political agenda of the middle class becomes reactionary, and the left, in serving this agenda, not only finishes up misleading and confusing its comrades, but objectively (and not only objectively) furthers the interests of reaction. Ultimately, the victims of this process include the middle class itself.