There are leftist transgender lesbians in saint Petersburg.
People get kidnapped and tortured in Ukraine already by military recruitment enforcement.
Hence the "why kill many more people"
Errico Malatesta’s response to the Manifesto of the Sixteen28
“Except the popular Revolution, there is no other way of resisting the menace of a disciplined Army but to try and have a stronger and more disciplined Army; so that the sternest anti-militarists, if they are not Anarchists, and if they are afraid of the destruction of the State, are inevitably led to become ardent militarists.
In fact, in the problematical hope of crushing Prussian Militarism, they have renounced all the spirit and all the traditions of Liberty; they have Prussianised England and France; they have submitted themselves to Tsarism; they have restored the prestige of the tottering throne of Italy.
Can Anarchists accept this state of things for a single moment without renouncing all right to call themselves Anarchists? To me, even foreign domination suffered by force and leading to revolt, is preferable to domestic oppression meekly, almost gratefully, accepted, in the belief that by this means we are preserved from a greater evil.
It is useless to say that this is a question of an exceptional time, and that after having contributed to the victory of the Entente in “this war,” we shall return, each into his own camp, to the struggle for his own ideal.
If it is necessary to-day to work in harmony with the Government and the capitalist to defend ourselves against “the German menace,” it will be necessary afterwards, as well as during the war."
Myth 2: Without military operations, it would be impossible to protect the lives of the Ukrainian population and resist the Russian empire.
It is perfectly legitimate to protect the lives of the people of bombed-out cities. But to do so in the form of conventional warfare is effectively to protect the integrity of one State or another. Moreover, it is questionable to claim that it is in this way that the maximum number of lives can be saved. Continued war mobilization leads to the progressive brutalization of war and the death toll rises. At the same time, staying in bombing sites increases the risk of death. Moreover, it is possible to stop the bombing in other ways than by sending one’s own troops to the front.
The Ukrainian army has chosen a frontal military confrontation, which by its very nature cannot take place without people dying in large numbers. Not engaging in a warlike form of combat, however, does not mean sacrificing the population exposed to the bombs, because it is not simply a matter of refusing to fight, but also of organizing non-warlike forms of protection of threatened lives. Some organize the movement of the most endangered people to safe places. Others are attacking the economic, political and military power of the Russian empire, often doing so from various locations around the world.
The effects of militaristic propaganda are devastating. Some people came to really believe that State-led war is the most appropriate way to save lives, and moreover, in their view, the only way.
“We refuse to enter into this deadly logic and we stand with all the courageous opponents who in Russia and Belarus, despite the brutal police repression, oppose this warlike madness.
We are in solidarity with all desertions and we call on Europe to open its borders to all those who flee or refuse to participate in the war.”6
“Oh, comprehensive coverage of anti-war boycott, sabotage and other direct action is the main topic of our English international rubric7 since the first days of the full-scale invasion! Along with this, we should understand that the national unity of Ukrainians around Zelensky’s power rests only on fear of an external threat. Therefore, anti-war subversive acts in Russia are indirectly a threat to the Ukrainian ruling class as well, and that is why we consider its informational support to be an internationalist act.”8
Myth 8: By getting involved in the war on the Ukrainian side, the interests of the working class in the Ukrainian region are defended.
Let us ask ourselves what the military operations actually save. We have already mentioned the problematic nature of the claim that it is about human lives. Next, we could deal with the material facilities that are destroyed by shelling and bombing. For those working in Ukraine, these are mainly houses, apartments, cultural centers, shops, the infrastructure of urban transport and other services. All of this is mostly owned by the bourgeoisie or the State and is used to accumulate profits extracted from the workers who use them. Even if all of this serves in part to meet the needs of the workers, it is done on the basis of exploitative principles.
We are sympathetic to situations where militiamen in the Spanish Civil War fought to save buildings and infrastructure under workers’ control. But why should workers in Ukraine die fighting to save bourgeois property and territory administered by the State? The workers of Ukraine own and manage only a tiny percentage of local wealth. We believe that international solidarity can provide adequate compensation for the facilities taken from the workers by the war. We understand how hard it is to give up what we see as our home and favorite places. But to put our lives on the line in defense of such places seems to us an unreasonable sacrifice, especially when we know that it is mainly a defense of the capitalists’ property, in the management of which the workers have a negligible share.
Other defended facilities are industrial, manufacturing and warehouse buildings, as well as agricultural fields, mining and construction companies. Although these are the places where capital retains the exploited class, already long before the war many Ukrainian workers fled from them to other countries in search of a better life. What interest do workers have in defending these places directly linked to their misery, places where they are exploited, humiliated and exhausted?
The war is also aimed at defending the existing political and economic system, that is, the particular capitalist form that depends on the exploitation of workers and the domination of the State over the population. This war aims at nothing else than capitalist functioning and it is not in the interest of the workers to shed their own blood in defense of such a system.
We are not saying that Ukrainian workers cannot save anything that is meaningful to them by waging war. It’s just that we see that war is much more focused on protecting bourgeois property and privilege, as well as the infrastructure of State power. And this is not really in the interest of the workers. We say yes to defending the lives and personal backgrounds of the working class. We say no to dying and getting maimed in defense of bourgeois property and privilege. In the case of the war in Ukraine, it is primarily the latter that is being defended.
“Fortunately or unfortunately, we are the only anarchist collective in Ukraine whose fame has grown significantly during these 6 terrible months. Probably, because we give useful information for workers in their daily confrontation with bosses or officials, and our position with the condemnation of both warring states – the aggressor commits open genocide against everything Ukrainian, the “small suffering democratic victim” keeps most of the population as hostages to show more bloody pictures abroad demanding more money, also robbing its serfs by all available means, while not a single Russian missile has yet flown into the government quarter – is quite close to those who have nothing to defend in this bleak hole with no clear future.”24
“We are not experts in geopolitics, not even amateurs; we are not experts in energy, industrial or agricultural reserves. In fact, we are experts in virtually nothing, only in our job and at work as the laborers we are. And that is precisely what gives us the legitimacy to denigrate the war waged against us as rooted we are in the reality of working-class people. Because this, even if they tell us otherwise, is not about the homeland, or even historical territories, it is about capitalism and the exacerbated hatred of this system against the people, a hatred stemming from the desire to make more and more money and achieve more and more power.
They can tell us that one or the other is the bad guy, but the reality is much simpler: the reality is again what the working class suffers from, regardless of their nationality: death, suffering, exile…”25
“Putin did not invade Ukraine for the benefit of Russian workers. Neither the United States, nor Europe, nor NATO have stationed troops under Russia’s nose in the interests of the Ukrainian workers or the interests of the European and American workers. The expansion of NATO to Ukraine, or anywhere else, is capitalist militarism and hostile to the interests of workers. Just as the Russian military offensive is capitalist militarism and against all workers. The NATO presence in Ukraine, or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are plans that end in favour of the world’s capitalists. The blood and lives of ordinary people are being lost. Our homes are being ruined, but they are making their profits.”26
“If we compare the government-controlled part of Ukraine with the EU countries… Believe it or not, even the historic downtown of a typical Ukrainian city, including ours, may be a much less habitable thing than the Western slums. We have nothing to defend here, except for the thrones of authorities and the fields of corporations. That’s why our officials are so afraid of the free departure: army service to defend the plantations of the oligarchy is not the most desirable option for many soldiers but the single available income in such conditions.”27
Myth 9: An open dictatorship is a less favorable terrain for self-organization than the liberal democracy for which Ukraine is fighting.
This claim is purely speculative. It cannot be shown that the working class will organize more and better on democratic terrain than on non-democratic terrain. If such speculative reasoning is acceptable in the context of discussion, it cannot be accepted as a justification for the self-sacrifice of the working class for war. As the Proletarchiv project clearly said, “The proletariat in the Czech Republic has not been able to use the terrain of democracy for the last 30 years and in Ukraine the proletariat should die for the supposed democratic terrain (pure ideological idea).”28
In the world we can see various more or less democratic or authoritarian terrains. In some places the class struggle is in decline or stagnating, in others it is developing in quality and quantity. To conclude that the struggles are declining automatically in dictatorships while rising in democracies is very inaccurate. In the debate, such a position is just the result of a flawed analysis. On the ground, however, it means shedding the blood of thousands of people while justifying this by that very flawed analysis.
Fighting for liberal democracy on the grounds that we will have better terrain of struggle is like risking your life on a lottery bet in which there is the possibility of a big win, but there is nothing to eliminate the high risk of a tragic loss like death.
“Of what use to the dead proletarians is the democratic terrain?”, the Proletarchiv project aptly points out.
“In order to understand how some see militarism as justified for the defense of Ukrainian “democracy,” we have to address the tendency among anarchists and Leftists that is, implicitly or explicitly, partisan to Western liberal democracy. This tendency rests on the belief that the conditions of capitalist class rule afforded by liberal democracy are more favorable to liberatory struggle. However, this involves a progressivist view of history that forecloses on the very possibility of anarchy. Anarchy is the inseparability of means and ends. As the comrades wrote in At Daggers Drawn:
“Liquidating the lie of the transitional period (dictatorship before communism, power before freedom, wages before taking the lot, certainty of the results before taking action, requests for financing before expropriation, ‘ethical banks’ before anarchy, etc.) means making the revolt itself a different way of conceiving relations.”
There is no path “from democracy to freedom.” True collective liberation has only antagonism for liberal democracy.”29
“(…) the Ukrainian State is not “better”, “less bad”, neither more nor less “fascist” or democratic than the Russian State, since it does not differ qualitatively but only quantitatively from the latter, being smaller and with less imperialist power, but equally bourgeois and anti-proletarian (…)”30
“As for the collectives you mentioned, their lamentations about “free Ukraine defending the entire civilized world” are too boring to even waste time on their analysis. For those who are very worried about the Ukrainian democracy from abroad, we can only advise to renounce their European/American citizenship, apply for Ukrainian resident card and quickly move to here for delights of life!”31
“As social-revolutionary proletarians, communists, anarchists…, we have absolutely no material interest in siding in any way with the capitalist State and its democracy, whatever it looks like, with our class enemies, with our exploiters, with those who have always harshly given us back “bullets, machine guns and prison” when we struggle and take to the streets to claim our humanity.”32
Myth 19: Refusing to support Ukrainian military forces means sacrificing the population to the bombing by Russian troops.
We do not want to elaborate further on why not supporting the war does not necessarily mean denying aid to people who are resisting aggressors – both Russian and Ukrainian. We will only add the information that it is the Ukrainian State that, under threat of punishment, forbids the male part of the Ukrainian population to leave the country and recruits thousands of men into the army to effectively stay in the places where the bombing is taking place. It is the Ukrainian State that is sacrificing these people against their will, possibly by mobilizing them under the pressure of patriotic and nationalist propaganda. We, on the other hand, say that no one should be denied the opportunity to move to a place of safety when they are in danger of being maimed or killed by the bombs of the attacking imperial army.
“We can only imagine how many Ukrainians would be happy if the state loosened its grip as the result of the international anarchist movement’s campaign. If this movement had taken its anti-war statements as more than just words, we would have seen its massive rallies for opening the borders near Ukrainian embassies many months ago. What to talk about, if even on the May Day you found more important affairs? It seems that there is nowhere to wait for help, and one can only guess how many more Ukrainian families will die, because they don’t want to part with each other. How do you differ from politicians if you declare things that you are not going to fulfill?”56
“It’s simple, one question: what are we fighting for? An example, very quickly: a colleague woke up on February 24 and found out that the occupation was underway. He stayed at home in the cellar for fifteen days, it was impossible to go to Kharkov. He fled across Russia, without anything, only his identity documents [Diya]. In Russia, at the border with the Baltic States, they did not let him enter at first, but then they did. From there he went to Poland, closer to his native Ukraine. He bought a laptop, found a remote job, rented an apartment and worked! And then the call came: all men abroad – return to Ukraine or you will be fired! He thought about it and decided to emigrate to Canada!”57
Myth 29: In this war, democracy must win to prevent fascism/dictatorship from winning.
There is no question that fascism/dictatorship is a problem. It’s just that the worst product of fascism is anti-fascism. Whenever the specter of fascism is raised as if it were the worst of all evils, the way is paved to support other forms of State – like democratic ones – with the consequence of supporting their crimes. Anti-fascist unity is nothing else but inter-class collaboration, where the proletarians collude with the bourgeoisie, which, despite the “temporary alliance”, never hesitate to crack down hard on all anti-capitalist and anti-State manifestations. Anti-fascist mobilizations tend to be justified by the need to confront totalitarianism, but they do so in a way that reinforces the authoritarian features of parliamentary democracy. As Gilles Dauvé has noted, “Antifascism will always end in increasing totalitarianism. Its fight for a “democratic” State will end in strengthening the State.”
Parliamentary democracy may represent a lesser intensity of State violence than a fascist regime, but it is no reason to fight and die for democracy. Those who claim that the working class is more and better organized in a liberal democracy are so caught up in their fantasies that they are out of touch with reality. Indeed, the militant working-class movement in democracy often tends to wither away; it is gradually absorbed into the structures of the State, which at the same time do not hesitate to stifle any radical tendency. It is doubtful that the democratic form of the State that has been achieved means the disappearance of authoritarian tendencies from the State apparatus. They will remain and manifest themselves whenever the working class raises its head and begins to act combatively as an organized autonomous force. In other words, liberal democracy will never be the antithesis or negation of dictatorship; it will always be one of the ways in which the totalizing capitalist order is organized. In fact, dictatorial and democratic forces are present in every State simultaneously and are not mutually exclusive. Their mutual relation depends on the (non)combativity of the working class and the (in)ability of the bourgeoisie to secure the rule of its class over society.
The State will only fall if we subvert both its dictatorial and democratic tendencies simultaneously. If we focus exclusively on suppressing one part, it will sooner or later be restored with the help of the other. Let us not forget that the democratic State retains the ability to introduce authoritarian measures, just as the fascist State sometimes pacifies the proletariat by democratic co-optation. The dilemma of fascism or democracy is false. In fact, internationalist revolutionaries know that there are only two options before us: capitalism or its revolutionary overcoming.
“The fascination of “armed struggle” quickly backfires on the proletarians as soon as they direct their blows exclusively against a particular form of the state rather than the State itself.”72
“If for Russia defeat in the war means some political changes (at least a palace coup, and possible disintegration into parts or partial loss of sovereignty), the future of Ukraine seems to be very sad in any case. Long before the war, Zelensky was often compared to young Putin not without reason, and as a result of victory, we can get a regime no less dictatorial than the Russian one. A very telling example came this month when he stated that the borders for men would not be open until the end of martial law (…)”73
“In short, both capitalist-imperialist blocs currently at war boast of being “the savior of democracy” and accuse their opponent of being “a fascist monster”. Thus justifying their warmongering and raving about repeating the “glorious” times of World War II. Enough to realize that “democracy vs. fascism” is a false antagonism or better said an inter-bourgeois and inter-imperialist war where proletarians are nothing but cannon fodder. (…)
Historically, when the bourgeoisie stopped using democracy to combat the advance of the struggle of the proletariat, then it resorted to fascism… and vice versa. Logically, although they are not the same in the form nor in the intensity of the violence exercised by the State of the rich and powerful over the exploited and oppressed, in essence they are the same or, to use a vivid phrase, democracy and fascism are two tentacles of the same octopus: the social dictatorship of Capital over proletarianized humanity all over the world. Therefore, like the left and the right, democracy and fascism are not opposites, they are complementary.
(…) the left of Capital opposes fascism and not democracy because it defends the latter, it is democrat; or better said, because it is social-democratic or reformist, even if it calls itself “Marxist” (various Leninists) or “anarchist” (liberal anarchists).”74
“Other interpretations follow different approaches, assessing Russian imperialism as a danger for the whole of Europe and beyond. These interpretations are also endorsed by some components of libertarian orientation. Without questioning the threat posed by Russia’s authoritarianism and militarism, we believe that it will not be Russia’s military defeat in Ukraine that will prevent an authoritarian turn in Western Europe. The authoritarian social processes that are evidently dominant in Russia and in the OTSC countries are also being acted since years in the European Union, and the war is now giving them a further acceleration. Furthermore, “democracy” is based on the condition of someone’s privilege. The vision that presents the European Union as a beacon of democracy, identifying instead Russia, China and their satellites as the heirs of totalitarianism combined with wild capitalism is the quintessence of a Westernism that does not belong to us.”75
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