anti-militarism

By Christian Zeller - Red Green Labour, March 23, 2022

Translated from the German- originally published here.

Exit from the fossil economy and rearmament, solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance

We live in a time of abrupt turns. [1]

Global warming is accelerating. The climate is changing faster than previously thought. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is largely aimed at the territorialconquest of a neighbouring state, the destruction of its army and the overthrow of its government. [2] This is something that has not existed in Europe in this way since 1945.

Even before this assault, the NATO countries, Russia and China started an arms race. The antagonisms between the various imperialisms intensified enormously. [3]The wave of rearmament that was already being prepared and launched before the war in Ukraine is an expression of intensifying competion for access to scarce resources that are so urgently needed in connection with the energy transition.

Global warming, this war and the danger of wars to come are interconnected and should be understood in a common context.

By Oleg Vernyk - International Socialist League, March 18, 2022

To the workers of the world: we need your help!

The Independent Trade Union of Ukraine “Zakhist Pratsi” is directly involved in the resistance to the invasion by Russian imperialism. We are fighting along side the working class and the Ukrainian people on various fronts of resistance. Some organizations of our union, such as the “Zakhista Pratsi” miners’ union at the “Selidov-ugol” firm, are protecting us and our future with weapons in their hands and in the most difficult conditions of the hostilities. Many activists of our union are now resisting the rocket and bomb attacks of the Russian troops, supporting the difficult conditions of the bomb shelters, saving their children and their families from certain death.

The war unleashed by Vladimir Putin united the trade union and labor movement in Ukraine. The invaders were counting on a quick lightning victory and on being accepted by Ukrainians as “liberators.” However, they met rejection and resistance everywhere. They failed to win the support of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine, who faced the Russian army as invaders and bravely resisted the armed aggression for more than 20 days.

We have never had any illusions about the intentions of the NATO bloc in Ukraine. And now we see all its cynicism, which convinced us of the correctness of our criticism of NATO even before the war and of our position against all the imperialist blocs.

Dear comrades of the labor and trade union movement: We know that anti-war mobilizations and actions against Russia’s military aggression are taking place all over the world. Thank you for this support! We are facing a very strong enemy who, desperate due to the popular resistance to its aggression, is willing to transgress the entire framework of international humanitarian law. Therefore, we now need increasingly active international solidarity with our anti-imperialist resistance movement.

We reiterate our labor appeal to the Russian working class and its trade union organizations to stop the aggression of the Russian government and the authoritarian-bureaucratic regime of Putin against Ukraine. And we call on all the workers and peoples of the world, on political, labor and social organizations to mobilize resolutely against the war!

We resolutely oppose the anti-social policy of our government, aimed at the adoption of anti-worker and anti-union laws to please Ukrainian and foreign oligarchs. The armed aggression of Russian imperialist capitalism complicated the direct struggle for workers’ rights, for the rights of trade unions and free workers’ associations. But it set the immediate agenda for the Ukrainian labor movement: stop the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine!

Our classist trade union “Zakhist Pratsi” defends the demands of the working class against the interests of national oligarchic capital and right-wing politicians.

Many of our union members have lost their jobs, are on the front lines, were forced to move to other cities or take shelter from bombs in shelters. Our families are doing their best to survive without surrendering to the Russian occupiers. For these reasons, we also urgently need your financial and other aid. Fighting, eating and healing wounds are daily tasks for which we need the support of the world’s frontline workers. Therefore, we appeal to strengthen active solidarity actions with the Ukrainian labor movement and, in particular, with our independent trade union.

Workers of the world, unite!

By John Molyneux - Global Ecosocialist Network, March 15, 2022

The Global Ecosocialist Network Steering Committee meeting on the 27 February adopted the following Emergency Statement on the War in Ukraine:

1. We condemn unequivocally the Russian invasion of Ukraine and express our solidarity with the suffering people of Ukraine and anti-war protests in Russia.
2. We oppose NATO escalation as disastrous for both the people of Ukraine and the people of Europe.
3. Modern war and modern war machines run overwhelmingly on fossil fuels. They are major carbon emitters and catastrophic in terms of their impact on the environment as a whole including biodiversity and this war also reinforces the danger of continued dependence on oil and gas fossil-fuels.

This statement was ratified By a large majority by our International Members Meeting on 13 March and now becomes the statement of the Network. We recognize its limited ‘minimalist’ character but we wanted to make a statement that would command the support of the broad majority of our members.

By various - European Trade Union Institute - March 8, 2022

By Ted Franklin - System Change not Climate Change, March 8, 2022

At a time when the entire world needs to focus on radical climate policy changes, he has thrust us into a war that might be as existentially dire as the climate crisis.

On day three of the Russian invasion of Ukraine a worldwide group of scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) gathered on Zoom to put the final stamp of approval on the UN body’s latest devastating report on the world’s feeble progress on climate.

A dark gloom hung over the proceedings as war threatened to derail global action on climate for years to come. Then Svitlana Krakovska, a Kyiv-based Ukrainian climatologist leading her country’s delegation to the virtual meeting, breached the IPCC’s longstanding commitment to apolitical discourse with a trenchant observation.

“Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots — fossil fuels and our dependence on them,” she reportedly told her colleagues during a break from the air-raid sirens blaring intermittently in the Ukrainian capital. “The money that is funding this aggression comes from the same [place] as climate change does: fossil fuels. If we didn’t depend on fossil fuels, [Russia] would not have money to make this aggression.”

After Krakovska spoke, scientists and climate diplomats from the 195 IPCC nations listened in amazement as Oleg Anisimov, the head of the Russian delegation, apologized “on behalf of all Russians who were not able to prevent this conflict.”

By staff - Three Way Fight, March 2, 2022

In this post we offer an annotated list of resources on Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the background to the crisis. We don't agree with every point in all of the articles, but we believe that all of them provide important information and make important contributions to the discussion. We will update this post as we learn of new resources to include.

Voices from Ukraine

Taras Bilous, “A letter to the western left from Kyiv” (February 2022) (Cached here.)
This open letter by a young Ukrainian leftist challenges those western leftists who have refused to criticize Russia out of a distorted concept of anti-imperialism. “Part of the responsibility for what is happening rests with you.”

“War and anarchists: anti-authoritarian perspectives on Ukraine” (CrimethInc., February 2022)
This text, written by several anti-authoritarian activists from Ukraine, offers an anarchist perspective on events from the Maidan protests of 2013-2014 to the eve of the 2022 Russian invasion. It provides helpful information about events and some of the political forces, but has also been criticized for minimizing the reality of Ukrainian far right nationalism. The Russian group Anarchist Fighter (or Militant Anarchist) offers a useful response here.

“War and occupation: life and death across the front line: Interview with Olena Skomoroshchenko of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine” (Transnational Solidarity Network, November 2019)
This 2019 interview with the SDPU’s representative to the Socialist International discusses Ukraine’s economic and social situation, the war in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the impact of Volodymyr Zelensky's 2019 election as president.

By Angele Alook, Emily Eaton, David Gray-Donald, Joël Laforest, Crystal Lameman, and Bronwen Tucker - The Breach, January 20, 2023

These days, anyone proposing ambitious new social programs—not to mention a generation-defining agenda like the Green New Deal—is bound to be met with a particular refrain of concern-trolling: “but how are you gonna pay for it?”

The most effective way to combat this is to point to tangible and truly giant expenditures that actively harm our communities—and which too often remain politically invisible. 

For decades, Canadian neoliberalism has ushered in an era of austerity, but the impacts haven’t landed equally. We’ve seen budget cuts for working people and the environment—borne most disproportionately by Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people and communities that are made vulnerable in our society. On the other hand, fossil fuel companies, the military, police, large corporations, and the wealthiest families have all actually received more support from the government. 

We have starved public goods, land, and life in order to feed Big Oil, corporate profits, and the security that capitalist growth requires.

But there are plenty of options to pay for a new direction: taxes on high earners and polluting firms, cutting military expenditure, long-term investment in green infrastructure, to name a few. The real issue is political will and political power. 

The money is there — we just need to seize it

Just think about the impressive government policies put in place in the span of weeks when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. This crisis has shown us that, when it comes down to it, the money and policy tools are there. And it is worth pointing out to anyone who asks this question that what we do not spend on climate action, adaptation, and upholding Indigenous sovereignty today will make this work much more expensive later on.

Including the large flows of public money as part of what’s up for debate helps to open up an accessible and potentially transformative conversation about what we could build instead. By asking tangibly what it would look like for the police to have less power over our communities—and particularly Black and Indigenous communities—we can start a public conversation about imagining and building a truly safe world.

The “refund” part of this strategy would include supporting many solutions, from universal public transit, to direct Treaty-based funding for Indigenous Nations, to affordable energy-efficient public housing, to community-owned renewable energy, to Canada forgiving illegitimate debts and paying reparations abroad to make space for a globally just transition. 

The exact demands can and should be made more specific to communities as they organize. In most of these cases, as we phase out funding for programs that are not serving communities, there are also other programs that will need to be built up at the same time. For example, we need mental health support and public housing alongside the defunding of police and prisons, as many abolitionist groups like Movement for Black Lives and The Red Nation have sketched in more detail.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of $180 billion a year in public money in Canada that could be cut, shifted, and phased out to lessen harm and free up both money and the public imagination towards a decolonial and just transition. 

Winning even one-quarter of this amount in the next few years would free up more than five times what the federal government was planning to spend each year on climate- related infrastructure and programs as of 2021. 

These figures are taken from a 2017 to 2019 average where possible to avoid potential anomalies in government spending during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For context, in 2019 the federal, provincial, and municipal governments together spent a total of $750 billion a year.

By Francesca Hannan, Stephen Buhler, and Simon Black - The Socialist Project, April 4, 2021