Common Sense and the Ukraine War
The Ukraine war entered its current phase following the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. It has become one of the defining historical events our lifetimes. The largest land war in Europe since the defeat of Nazi Germany in May, 1945, it evokes frightening echoes of the Cuban missile crisis of October, 1962.
Like other pivotal events in history, the Ukraine war has a characteristic identity with its own specific features. It cannot be reduced simply to familiar stories from the past. Because of the novelty, the complexity, and the significance of the Ukraine war, it has given rise to differing and counterposed narratives within the left, both internationally and within the US. These differences are seen most sharply over the question of US and the EU providing weapons, ammunition, and other aid to Ukraine.
In this note, I am concerned primarily with an understanding of the differing ideological positions that divide the left over Ukraine, especially within the US. My starting point for this analysis goes back almost a century to the prison writings of Italian revolutionary activist and intellectual Antonio Gramsci1 and my understanding of Gramsci’s treatment of common sense and ideological hegemony. I beg the reader’s patience for this methodological diversion before returning to the “common sense” of the Ukraine war.
Common sense
For much of the US left, it seems like common sense to oppose US military aid to Zelensky’s Ukraine. Didn’t we oppose US intervention in Vietnam, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere? Why should Ukraine be any different?
For Gramsci, common sense refers to the often contradictory assumptions which form a typically incoherent whole on which to base our understanding of the world2. Gramsci identifies common sense with “the spontaneous philosophy of the multitude”.3 It constitutes a generally unexamined substrate for assimilating, understanding, and interacting with our social and natural environment. Common sense varies both within and between societies and social subgroups, based on life experience, communal inheritance, identity, social class, and political affiliation, among other factors.
Common sense is a contested ideological domain. As Gramsci scholar David Forgags notes, common sense “is contradictory – it contains elements of truth as well as elements of misrepresentation – and it is among these contradictions that leverage may be obtained in a ‘struggle of political hegemonies’.”4 Common sense is the terrain over which the hegemonic battles are fought. To understand the divisions within the Left over Ukraine, begin by excavating the faults lines that mark these contradictory strata.
Ideology and hegemony
As I have written elsewhere5, we may understand an ideology to be a conceptual, explanatory, descriptive, and shared cognitive frame work that accounts for the experienced social universe. The hegemonic ideology of a particular historical period and geography derives from that of the hegemonic class of that period and geography. Capitalist ideology is a more or less rational, coherent, and explanatory narrative that account for the apparent historical necessity and superiority of currently existing (i.e., capitalist) social relations.
Ideology is contested territory. Gramsci was focused on the ‘macro’ (national or international) scale and the contest between present and potential future ruling classes. However, struggles for ideological hegemony can and must play out within smaller scales (like the antiwar movement), with their own characteristic features.
The genesis of campism
What we are interested in is the development of a common sense ideology among a significant segment of US antiwar activists. We call this ideology “campism”.
As Jason Schulman and Dan LaBotz write, campism is an approach to “world politics from the standpoint that the main axis of conflict is between two hostile geopolitical camps: the ‘imperialist camp,’ today made up of the United States, Western Europe, Saudi Arabia, and Israel (or some such combination) on one hand and the ‘anti-imperialist camp’ of Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other less-industrialized nations on the other”.6
The use of the word “camp” in the Marxist tradition to denote a political grouping or orientation can be traced back to the writings of Marx7. It came to have something like its current usage in the US the context of the factional fight within the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930’s over the class nature of the Soviet state. This is illustrated in Figure 1, where the two camps of international capital are counterposed to the third camp of international socialism8.
The soil in which contemporary US campism is rooted is a product of twentieth century defeats of the working class and socialist movements. After the victorious Russian revolution of October 1917 failed to spread to Germany or elsewhere, the Stalin counter-revolution built its ideological foundation around the keystone principle of socialism in one country. From this foundation, it was straightforward to see the world as divided into two camps, identified as the supporters and the opponents of the Soviet Union. Campism as we now know it was born.
Following World War II, the McCarthyite attacks weakened the US left, driving class conscious militants out of the labor movement and decimating traditional left wing organizations. In parallel, the Chinese revolution, the success of anti-colonial liberation movements, and the apparent strength of of the post-war Soviet Union, including its expansion into eastern Europe, seemed to provide an alternative to traditional reliance on from-the-bottom-up workers movement within the US.
Figure 1: The third camp - Join the army of international socialism
The US emerged from the allied victory in WWII and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the globally hegemonic power. In the intervening four decades since then, US hegemony has been forced to confront military and economic competition, from China, and now from Russia.
Contemporary campism received theoretical elaboration through Sam Marcy’s Global Class War theories.9 Working together with Vincent Copeland (best known as arguably the original “tankie” for his defense of Russian suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution)10, the so-called Marcy-Copeland faction of the US Sssocialist Workers Party went on to form the Workers World Party (WWP) in 1959. WWP then became a vehicle for the introduction of campist ideology to the antiwar movement.
Within several years of the founding of WWP, a mass antiwar movement developed over resistance to the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the American War). In parallel with the fight for Black civil rights that had begun earlier, and the somewhat later emergence of second wave feminism, these movements were the most important sources of mass resistance to capitalist rule since the labor upsurge of the 1930s.
The civil rights movement won significant victories, bringing legal Jim Crow to a formal end. It later lost much of its its political independence as its leadership became assimilated into the Democratic Party. The right wing of the antiwar and feminist movements assimilated themselves into the Democratic Party as well, through the campaigns of Gene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Bela Abzug, among others. The antiwar left failed to reorient itself after the Vietnam war (and, with it, the draft) came to an end. Faced with internal weaknesses and factionalism, the Maoists broke apart following the death of Mao and his replacement by Deng Xiaoping. Each for different reasons, the two most prominent independent left groups, the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party failed to negotiate the transition to a new period.
Workers World persevered, due to its organizational stability, the attraction of its activist orientation, and its militant anti-imperialism. When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Workers World initiated the ANSWER Coalition. They maintained their leading role within ANSWER until 2004. In that year, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) split from Workers World, a split whose political basis (if any) seems never to have been explained publicly. In any case, PSL obtained the ANSWER franchise. WWP later went on to play a central role in organizing the United Antiwar Coalition (UNAC),. The result is two antiwar coalitions, both of which share very similar views, since both of which are led (though to varying extents) by inheritors of the campist tradition that originally emerged with the Marcy-Copeland faction in 1959.
On nation and class
Left-wing political history alone is only a partial explanation for the origins of campism. We also need to look further into the role of ruling class ideological hegemony.
Capitalist ideology privileges the role of the state in explanations of war, identifying national interests with its own class interests. In the Ukraine case, the US and Russian states have competing interests in the Ukrainian state form that will emerge at the war’s end.
This is not usually noteworthy, since, with the exception of civil wars and wars for colonial independence (where there are typically pre-state formations on one side and state actors on the other), wars have generally been between states, or between state-based alliances. Campists adopt this nation-based ideological perspective. The Ukraine war is reduced to a one-dimensional proxy war between the US and Russia. In this account, shared with influential neoconservative and neo-realist academics11, Russia’s invasion is understood and often justified as a defensive war against eastward NATO expansion.
As Ukrainian socialist Volodymyr Atiukh has observed12, this narrative has given rise within the subjectively anti-imperialist left to a US-centric reference frame, resulting in what Atiukh calls “US-plaining” (or, more generally “West-splaining”13): “[T]he Western left is doing what it has been doing the best: analysing the American neo-imperialism, the expansion of NATO. It is not enough anymore as it does not explain the world that is emerging from the ruins of Donbas and Kharkiv’s main square.” The resulting simplification of the slogan that the ‘main enemy is a home’ leads to an overly simplified analysis of the imperialist rivalries between the US, Russia, and China, and the role of the left.
“The injunction that the main enemy is in your country” Atiukh writes, “should not translate into a flawed analysis of the inter-imperialist struggle. At this stage appeals to dismantle NATO or, conversely, accepting anyone there, will not help those who suffer under the bombs in Ukraine, in jails in Russia or Belarus. Sloganeering is harmful as ever.”
It follows naturally from the US-centric framing to conclude that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As Paul Shäfer, a member of the Die Linke fraction of the German Bundestag, has observed14, “The newly discovered affinity between left-wing ‘anti-imperialism’ and the neorealist approach is evidently rooted in the assumption that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ — and that this friend is exclusively anti-American. From this perspective, any analysis of the direct participants in the war — Ukraine and Russia — fades into the background and does not need to be pursued further.” The particular social conditions, processes, and conflicts remain conspicuously absent. “[W]hen some leftists talk about geopolitics and proxy wars or call for an end to solidarity with Ukraine,” Shäfer notes, “they are not only invoking old friend-enemy paradigms (‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’), but also blurring the line between perpetrator and victim in this war. This is morally unacceptable and politically foolish.”
Horst Kahrs and Klaus Lederer have written that the friend/enemy paradigm leads to a view that the world’s people “are at best residents occupying imperial spheres of interest and putty in the hands of great powers. On the other hand, the progressive transformation of Russian society into a repressive autocracy, Putin’s sustained collaboration with global right-wing radicalism, Russia’s attempts to destabilize liberal democracies, and the Ukrainian population’s democratic desire to avoid submitting to Russian paternalism hardly seem worthy of active critical consideration.”15
How campism became common sense
Imagine that you are an American leftist opposed to war and to US imperialism. You grew up in a culture that privileges the causal role of the nation and diminishes or ignores the role of social class. Then you see that both major antiwar coalition in the US, ANSWER and UNAC, are saying essentially the same thing (with subtle variations): the war in Ukraine is reduced to a proxy war between the US and Russia. This position becomes hegemonic, at least within an influential segment the US left. Within your antiwar community, campism has become common sense.
This identifies the source of ideological hegemony with organizational dominance. This is clearly important for ideological diffusion, but it is hardly a complete explanation. To look into this more deeply, we need to consider both the social substrate within which the ideology develops, and also the decisive questions to which the ideology is addressed.
What is left out of this approach is any meaningful reference to the intrication of state and class. In particular, both the Ukrainian and the Russian working classes have an existential interest in the Ukraine war. It is Ukrainian and Russian workers who supply the troops (and the casualties) on both sides. It is Ukrainian and Russian workers whose lives will be affected by the war’s outcome. Although both sides in this war are capitalist states, Ukraine and Russia are not both imperialist powers. Putin’s war aims prominently and publicly include the geographic restoration of the tsarist empire, in large part through the re-annexation of Ukraine16. Most Ukrainian socialists whose writings I have seen believe that the Ukrainian working class would be better off within an independent Ukraine than as part of a restored Russian empire.17 In emphasizing class, I have put to one side the intersectional identity spectrum. It may be noteworthy that Ukrainian feminists have also come to the defense of Ukraine.18
In an article entitled “Our Slogan is War Against War”, the Russian Socialist Movement had this to say:
“Moscow’s rhetoric is parroted by certain European and American leftists who oppose supplying arms to Ukraine (to “save lives” and prevent a nuclear apocalypse). But Russia is not willing to withdraw from the territories it has captured, a condition that Kyiv and 93% of Ukrainians consider non-negotiable. Must Ukraine instead sacrifice its sovereignty in order to appease the aggressor, a policy that has very dark precedents in European history?”19
From campism to socialist internationalism
Socialist internationalism is the principal left-wing ideological alternative to US-centric campism.
Socialist internationalists (or simply, internationalists) understand the Ukraine war as having both a class and a national basis. It starts by attempting to identify the interests of the working classes within the various direct or indirect belligerent nations, and especially within Ukraine itself. This means listening to the voices of Ukrainian socialists20, feminists21, trade unionists22, anarchists23, Greens, and other leftists. It means listening to the voices of Russian socialists and antiwar activists24.
Campism reduces the Ukraine war to a one-dimensional proxy war between the US and Russia. Internationalists recognize that the Ukraine war has (at least) a dual aspect. It is a proxy war between the US/EU/NATO and Russia. But of equal or greater significance, it is a real war between Russia and Ukraine. It is Russia that invaded Ukraine. It is Russia that is occupying about one fifth of Ukraine’s territory. It is Russia that seeks to assimilate Ukraine into a restored Russian empire.
The US and Russia are both imperialist powers with differing historical experiences and differing paths to empire. For Russia, empire means domination of the Eurasian land mass once controlled by the Soviet Union, and before that by the tsarist empire, as Putin has made clear.25 For the US, empire means global military, economic and political dominance, either direct or indirect. This dominance is threatened not only by Russia, but, more systemically, by the emergence of China. US hegemony has also been shaken by self-inflicted defeats following the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, going back further to the US defeat in Vietnam. For internationalists, there is no lesser evil between the imperialist powers. Neither victory for Russia nor victory for the US would, by itself, advance the fight for working class power.
The war between Ukraine and Russia is distinct but entangled with the US/Russia conflict. On the ground in Ukraine, we do not have two imperialist powers. Rather we have imperialist Russia on one side, and the Ukrainian nation on the other. Ukrainian history is one of national subjugation from an array of imperial powers, of which Russia is the most important, but only the most recent.26
Ukraine, like other nations, has the right to self-determination and the right to establish its own state. Ukraine has the right to defend itself against imperial subjugation by Russia. The right to self defense entails in practice the right to obtain arms from whatever sources are available. This includes arms from the US and the EU, regardless of the motives of these states.
Supporting the military victory of Ukraine over Russia does not imply that we should have illusions in the Zelensky government (neoliberal by not ‘nazi’ as Putin and some campists assert).27 Ukrainian socialists defend Ukraine, sometimes by sacrificing their lives, because they understand that opportunities for the left, and the working class more generally would be qualitatively better under the limited democracy that Zelensky offers, compared with Putinist authoritarian rule within an expanded Russian empire.
Yuri Samoilov, President of the Independent Trade Union of Miners and the Kryvyi Rih regional sector of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU), captured this contradiction in a speech at a Feb. 25, 2023 labor solidarity meeting in Warsaw, Poland:
“Our [Ukrainian] society is increasingly clearly, sharply divided into a privileged caste and a working caste. This has an eminently demotivating effect on the Ukrainian people as a whole. But on the other hand, let me remind you: a great many workers have already fought and will continue to fight at the front. They will all ask after the war: why I do not have a good life?”28
“In the case of Ukraine, it’s far simpler than many on the left think,” Ukrainian sociologist Alona Liashva notes29. “Ukraine was attacked by an imperialist army, and as a result we are in a struggle to defend our lives and our very right to exist as a sovereign nation.[...] This is not an abstract question for us. The international left can make a material difference in whether we are able to win or lose.”
US internationalists have come together to form the Ukrainian Solidarity Network,(USN)30, following the example of a similar European network31. The USN statement declares: “It is urgent to end this war as soon as possible. This can only be achieved through the success of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. Ukraine is fighting a legitimate war of self-defense, indeed a war for its survival as a nation. Calling for “peace” in the abstract is meaningless in these circumstances.”
War is barbarism. It entails hideous consequences for those who survive and for those who do not. Let us imagine and work towards a world in which war itself is unimaginable, a world in which our children or our grandchildren live free from exploitation, free from injustice, and free from war’s inhumanity.
We must stand for peace. We must stand against war. Yet when war is brought upon us unjustly and against our will, we must stand for the right of resistance, of self-defense, and of self-determination.
Notes
1 See e.g., G. Fiori, Antonio Gramsci Life of a Revolutionary, New York:Dutton and Co., 1971
2 D. Forgags, The Antonio Gramsci Reader, New York: New York Univ. Press, 2000, p. 421.
3 Forgags, op. cit., p 345.
4 Forgags, op. cit., p. 421.
5 R. Greenblatt, Rational Insanity, 2021, https://www.academia.edu/74556460/Rational_Insanity_How_late_capitalism_works_and_why_it_doesnt
6 https://socialistforum.dsausa.org/issues/winter-2020/against-campism-for-international-working-class-solidarity/
7 See e.g., The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Ch. 5, 1851-1852. The word “camp” was translated from the original German “lager”, http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me08/me08_159.htm
8 New International, 6(3), 1940, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol06/no03/editorial.htm
9 https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/marcy/gclasswar/index.html
10 V. Copeland (writing as V. Grey), The Class Character of the Hungarian Uprising, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/copeland/V-Grey-Class-Character-Hungarian-Uprising.pdf
11 J. Mersheimer, Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi8l43A6Mz9AhX4PUQIHXGvCWoQFnoECCsQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mearsheimer.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F06%2FWhy-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3ZxtQgQ_2lzy3EyaCYL0Sp
12 V. Atiukh, US-plaining is not enough. To the Western left, on your and our mistakes, https://commons.com.ua/en/us-plaining-not-enough-on-your-and-our-mistakes/
13 L. Mannheim, F*ck Leftist Westplaining, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ukraine-russia-european-left/
14 P. Shäfer, Myths and Facts bout the Ukraine War, https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/49988/myths-and-facts-about-the-war-in-ukraine
15 Cited in Shäfer, op. cit.
16 V. Putin, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, July 12, 2021, http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
17 e.g., https://newpäol.org/issue_post/the-war-on-ukraine/
18 https://newpol.org/the-right-to-resist-a-feminist-manifesto/
19 https://newpol.org/we-say-war-against-war/
20 e.g., https://ukraine-solidarity.eu/to-read/questions-about-ukraine, https://rev.org.ua/sotsialnyi-rukh-who-we-are/
21 https://newpol.org/the-right-to-resist-a-feminist-manifesto/
22 https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/; https://aflcio.org/2022/12/22/supporting-workers-rights-critical-ukraines-future
23 https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/06/09/meet-the-motley-crew-of-anarchists-and-anti-fascists-fighting-russia-in-ukraine
24 https://links.org.au/war-taking-place-same-reason-all-moscows-wars-colonisation-former-colony-does-not-want-remain
25 http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
26 https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/2022/04/13/ten-turning-points-a-brief-history-of-ukraine/
27 https://ukraine-solidarity.eu/to-read/questions-about-ukraine
28 https://laboursolidarity.org/en/n/2572/a-ukrainian-trade-unionist-talks-to-us
29 https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7997
30 https://againstthecurrent.org/solidarity-with-ukraine/
31 https://ukraine-solidarity.eu/
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