“It is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought, but the point of view of totality." Georg Lukács, The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg (1923)
Introduction
The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war is of world historic significance. Whatever the eventual outcome, it will have consequences that will resonate for decades into the future.
The war has divided the left internationally into those who defend the Russian invasion (or at least, accept the ongoing Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory) and those who defend Ukraine’s right to self-determination free from Russian rule.
This note is intended as a contribution to the ongoing debate by attempting to clarify some of the ideological foundations of those on the US left who (either implicitly or explicitly) defend the Russian invasion or occupation as as the outcome of a proxy war between Russia and US/NATO. I call this perspective proxy war reductionism. I contrast this position with an an alternative view, based on anti-imperialist intersectionality, internationalism, and socialism from below.
Proxy war reductionism and the twofold war
Reductionism, in the context of the Russo-Ukraine war, is an attempt to understand or explain the historical, political, and military complexities of the war in terms of a simplified, one-dimensional causal narrative. Many on the self-identified anti-imperialist left have reduced the causes of the Russo-imperialist war to a single factor, the so-called proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia.
Reductionist explanations are neither valid nor invalid in the abstract. They become problematic when a reductionist explanation loses sight of significant (perhaps even more significant) additional or supplementary causal factors. Reductionism may also become problematic when properties emerge within the totality which are not simply derived from the individual explanatory parts, like the rise of Ukrainian nationalism in response to Russian revanchism.
The proxy war narrative
Proxy war reductionism rejects or marginalizes Ukraine’s autonomy, and its right to national self determination. It denies, either explicitly or implicitly, that the war has at least a two fold character. That is, the war is both a war for Ukrainian self-determination in which the people of Ukraine have their own agency, and also a tool for the US and its allies to weaken Russia, their imperial rival.
Consider two examples.
In a statement from the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) titled: “End the U.S.-NATO proxy war with Russia”, UNAC calls for “an end to NATO expansion [...] in this present U.S./NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine” And later, “This conflict is not between Russia and Ukraine, it is a war between U.S./NATO and Russia, one in which they are using Ukraine as a proxy and are prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian.” [emphasis added]. The question of Ukrainian self-determination appears nowhere in the statement.
Then there is the prominent antiwar organization, CodePink. The CodePink-initiated Peace in Ukraine Coalition “opposes the Russian invasion while recognizing that the expansion of NATO led to this crisis […]. We need the White House and Congress to come to their senses and stop fueling this proxy war between the US and Russia with billions of dollars in weapons.” As with UNAC, there is no recognition of Ukraine’s right to defend itself beyond a pro forma statement of opposition to Russia’s invasion.
The twofold nature of the Russo-Ukraine war
Understanding of the twofold nature of the Russo-Ukrainian war provides a meaningful alternative to simple proxy war reductionism. That is, the wars origins lie not simply in the inter-imperialist conflict between the US/NATO and Russia. They also lie in a war of imperialist revanchism on Russia’s part against the Ukrainian nation’s right to self-determination and national liberation. That is, these two causal factors – the proxy war and Russian revanchism (along with others of lesser explanatory value) intersect to bring us to our current military and political impasse.
It may be useful to make explicit the obvious point that the fighting and dying is taking place almost entirely within the pre-2014 Ukraine borders in a war over control of Ukrainian territory. This should arguably give the rights of the Ukrainian people a privileged position in any dialog over the war and the war’s end.
If we don’t recognize the war’s twofold nature, we will ignore the voices of Ukrainians who oppose Putin’s invasion and occupation. We will never understand why the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians support the war to drive out the Russian invaders in spite of the incredible hardships faced by every family in Ukraine.
We should recognize that the Ukrainian people themselves are not a single homogeneous mass. They are, as in other capitalist states, divided by social class, by nationality and language, and by ideology, including over the question of Ukrainian nationalism and oligarchic corruption. Military defense of Ukrainian national rights does not imply political defense of the Zelensky government. These and other related issues require a fuller account that can be addressed in this brief essay.
Reconciling proxy war and national self-determination
How can socialists, internationalists, and anti-imperialists address this twofold character? Every war must be understood in its historical specificity. The proxy war narrative reduces the war to one aspect only, a war between two imperialist states, and their respective allies.
Any position on the US/Russia proxy war taken by socialist internationalists should be internationally consistent. Begin with the recognition that both Russia and the US are imperialist powers, though of differing scale. To be cpnsistent, US internationalists should not support a Russian victory while Russian internationalists support an American victory. We should be for the defeat of imperialism from whatever its source, either in Russia or in the US, all else equal. While our main enemy may be at home, it is not our only enemy.
In the real war between Russia and Ukraine, there are clear reasons to support militarily the Ukrainians over the Russians. A victory for Ukraine would open opportunities for both Ukrainian sand Russians to their own popular movements from below.
The ideological appeal of proxy war reductionism
Consider some explanations for the attraction of the one dimensional proxy war reductionist narrative.
The proxy war narrative is favored naturally by Putin and his allies. They can use it as a simple argument absolving them of responsibility for a brutal war that has caused over 500,000 casualties on both sides so far. Since Putin apparently fails to recognize either the existence of a Ukrainian nation or its right to self-determination, this is clearly a convenient position.
All belligerents in modern warfare want to control the information battle space, including both traditional and new media. Russia is no exception. This is why RT (formerly Russia Today) and Radio Sputnik exist, and why the US attempts to ban them within the US infosphere. It is also clear that the most significant Russian state’s talking points have been adopted by the proxy war left. This includes the primacy of the proxy war explanation itself. It also encompasses more peripheral themes like the role of the US in the Maidan “coup” and the ostensible neo-nazi nature of the Zelensky regime. It is but a short step from the proxy war narrative to conclude that Russia is the victim and that the US should not be sending weapons to Ukraine.
Attributing the ideological acceptance of proxy war reductionism solely to Russian propaganda is fundamentally incomplete. Propaganda or not, it begs the question as to why these ideas (regardless of their source) are able to win over adherents. To be successful, propaganda must fall on receptive ears.
US imperialism and the proxy war narrative
What is it about US antiwar ideology that makes so many so receptive the proxy war reductionist view?
Two factors play an essential role in the dominance of proxy war reductionism, in my view. These are (1) the dominant global role of US imperialism since the end of World War II, and (2) the organizational, political and theoretical weakness of the US left.
Postwar US imperial dominance has provided fertile ideological space for a US-centric perspective to emerge, including within the left. It has become perversely natural to consider the US as the center of the world. Certainly, this view is widely within the US ruling class, always struggling to maintain its hegemony, both domestically and internationally. Unfortunately, this narrow national and US-centric perspective has diffused within the left as well.
It was the US that was responsible for the second Vietnam war, the Afghan War, and the Iraq war (none of which did the US win). For some leftists, it seems to follow naturally that the US is solely or principally responsible for the Ukraine war as well, in this case through NATO expansion intended to encircle and disable post-Soviet Russia. In this view, the Ukrainian people are little more than the passive victims of the US empire and its NATO collaborators. Ukrainian agency, in this narrative, is either denied or ignored.
Even the US government and its allies may occasionally do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons. In the case of Ukraine, western arms are essential for Ukraine’s survival as a nation, although the US government has no interest in the Ukrainian people except as subjects for exploitation. This is not a reason, however, to deny Ukraine the right to obtain arms to defend itself. As Oksana Dutchak has observed, the “[i]magined principle [of] opposition to own government is simply used, again, as a justification of opposition to Ukrainian resistance.”
This does not mean that we absolve US/NATO imperialism of responsibility. As Rafael Bernabe notes, a consistent anti-imperialism “rejects the notion of NATO […] as a democratic force.” Rather, it is an arm of US and western imperialism, which for its own reasons is arming Ukraine in its war against Russian imperial annexation.
The failures of the US left
The term “left” covers a broad and contested ideological territory, from progressive Democrats to revolutionary socialists, anarchists, and assorted other-ists. Here I am interested principally in the Marxist left, those who self-identify in the tradition that includes Marx (most importantly), and also some of his successors, including Lenin, among others. This covers a broad terrain, ideologically heterogeneous, organizationally dispersed, and politically marginalized.
It is not my goal here to write a critical history of the US left, except to make one point. In my view, one of the most important contributions to understanding left history was Hal Draper’s 1966 essay, “The Two Souls of Socialism”.
Draper identifies an ideological divide between “socialism from above” and “socialism from below”. He wrote:
“What unites the many different forms of Socialism-from-Above is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control in fact. The heart of Socialism-from-Below is its view that socialism can be realized only through the self-emancipation of activized masses in motion, reaching out for freedom with their own hands, mobilized "from below" in a struggle to take charge of their own destiny, as actors (not merely subjects) on the stage of history.”
Adherence to socialism from below avoids the proxy war reductionist trap. It is but a small step to go from the abstract idea of working class self-emancipation to the understanding that the Ukrainian people are fighting for their national liberation and self-determination. That is, to understand the Russo-Ukraine war is to understand its twofold character as both a proxy war, and also as a war for national liberation. This entails respecting the agency of the Ukrainian people.
It is not an accident that the principal socialist tendencies within the US that have managed to avoid proxy war reductionism are those who descend from the socialism from below tradition. These include the Tempest Collective, Solidarity, and New Politics, along with unaffiliated individuals, many of whom identify with the Ukraine Solidarity Network (US). A functionally similar perspective is shared internationally by several groups affiliated with the International Viewpoint website, including perhaps most significantly, the Social Movement in Ukraine and the Russian Socialist Movement, as well as the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine. This view is counterposed to the campist tendencies within the US, like the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Workers World Party, who are among the most energetic proponents of proxy war reductionism.
The Ukrainian people will not realize their own emancipation while under Russian occupation. Putin will never “hand down” liberation. Neither will Zelensky, for that matter. Ukrainian leftists understand that winning the battle for self-determination and national liberation is essential for building a strong working class movement in Ukraine that can take on Ukrainian and international capital.
Within the broad left, we might also note a residual sympathy for the former Soviet Union. This has managed to morph into support for the Putin regime. Russia is seen in some sense, as a successor to a USSR that still retains its romantic attraction, if not its formal content, with Putin playing the role of Stalin reincarnate.
Towards and anti-imperialist intersectionality
Intersectional analysis now plays a central role in left discourse at the national and local levels. Since the 1990’s, most socialists have come to realize that social class must be supplemented with factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, and so forth, to attain a more complete understanding of social reality as a totality. We might call this social intersectionality.
Social intersectionality points to the need for an anti-imperialist intersectionality. That is, we should understand, as in Ukraine in particular, how causal factors intersect. In the context of the Russo-Ukraine war, as I have argues throughout this essay, this takes form as both a war of national liberation and also as an inter-imperialist conflict. The Russo-Ukraine war, both its origins and its current unfolding are driven principally by the intersection of these two factors.
The question of proxy war reductionism is not simply an abstract ideological debate. It has real-world implications, and these are especially stark for the people of Ukraine. Reducing the Russo-Ukrainian war to one dimension, either exclusively a war for self-determination or exclusively an inter imperialist war, will lead us astray.
As Ukrainian political economist Yulia Yurchenko has written:
“Peace at any cost is not just a phoney peace – for Ukrainians, it means sanctioning genocide of them in occupied territories, erasure of their collective identity and the diversity of their “we-understanding” by Russia’s annihilation by assimilation. For people of the Russian Federation who oppose Putin, it means persecution, torture and even death. The peace demanded is violence.”
Reductionist approaches to the Ukraine war are not limited to the proxy war issue. Many defenders of military aid to Ukraine simplify their position by making resistance to aggression the only consideration. This allows them to sweep away all considerations of Ukraine's internal political conflict and the toxic ultra-nationalism that precipitated it. The war could have been averted by diplomacy, but the U.S. and its NATO allies refused to consider any Russian security concerns. That is why both sides bear a share of blame for this terrible war.