Is Russia "Invading" Ukraine? Or Reacting to an Ongoing Occupation?

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO

EU policy is also determined in Washington pretty much. Imagine the situation if the European workers, many of them in socialist or communist or social democratic leaning unions, or lets put it this way, are led by individuals claiming such affiliation, were to intervene here demanding the right of the Ukrainian workers to determine their fate and so on. 

This should have happened when the Greek workers voted against the Troika in the referendum that Tsipras and Syriza called and rather than act on the Greek workers' decision they capitulated to EU capital. Having a party and the support they did, they could have sent thousands of Greek workers throughout Europe, calling on others to join them in a Europe wide movement against capital.

That is what should happen here (and in most unresolvable capitalist crises from the Middle East to climate change ) including  in this instance the call for disbanding NATO. Of course, the leaders of the workers political organizations and unions are socialists in name only. They do not believe the working class can govern society. They worship the market and can see no alternative to capitalism, so what is the point of organizing an independent Europe wide and indeed international movement against this madness, for them it can only lead to chaos.

Capitalism goes in to crisis they move to bail it out but always at the expense of the working class but there are only so many bailouts before the catastrophe sets in and with each band aid and a million deaths here and there the closer to the tipping point. This lack of a leadership, or more accurately, the existence of a leadership whose purpose it is to hold back the workers movement, agents of the capitalist class in our organizations, means the big battles ahead may well come after some serious hocks and violent upheavals before a leadership emerges that takes the bull by the horns. As things stand, the price is that many workers may lose their lives not because we are weak, but because we are leaderless in that sense. 

Revolutionary moments demand revolutionary leadership.

There are no guarantees though, especially with the existence of nuclear weapons and the maniacs in the Pentagon and Washington are the world's number one when it comes to that.  It's no longer socialism or barbarism as Luxemburg said, it is now socialism or annihilation.