Det här med försvaret av den historiskt existerande eller s.k. “realexisterande” socialismen är alltid en svår fråga, och detta försvar är ingenting jag generellt kan åta mig av det enkla skälet att från mina utgångspunkter marxismen som helhetlig filosofi, helhetlig historievetenskap, helhetlig ekonomi, helhetlig sociologi eller helhetlig någonting – helhetlig världs- och livsåskådning – måste avvisas.
Men om man däremot accepterar viktiga delsanningar i marxismen, är en kvalificerad, nyanserad, av kritisk urskillning präglad ny analys och diskussion av den historiska socialismen (som ju också fortlever på flera håll i världen) nödvändig. Denna socialism – från marxistiskt perspektiv endast ett stadium av socialismens förverkligande eller uppbyggande, givetvis aldrig en förverkligad kommunism – har existerat endast under en i jämförelse med kapitalismen mycket kort historisk period. I synnerhet från det perspektiv jag anlägger finns självklart centrala moment i dess under denna period framväxande verklighet som entydigt måste kritiseras och avvisas. Men när man diskuterar dess försvar måste man alltid hålla i minnet att den så mycket längre existerande borgerliga kapitalismen utifrån samma kriterier i själva verket i högre grad måste kritiseras och avvisas, att den såtillvida är i än större behov av samma typ av försvar.
Detta är emellertid naturligtvis något den inte, som fortsatt dominerande samhällssystem (eller “produktionssätt” o.s.v.), själv erkänner, något som dess företrädare inte själva erkänner. Någon ens tillnärmelsevis motsvarande diskussion om det förekommer därför inte.
I en ny rant av Mckay (från 38:45) med fokus på Ukraina och frågorna om fascismen och den postsovjetiska, restaurerade kapitalismen finns uppenbart mycket som kan problematiseras, många fakta och exempel som kan anföras som motargument på flera punkter. Men om några hundra år tror jag man även i väst ganska lätt och tydligt kommer börja kunna se att den stora, allmänna bild han får fram av förhållandet mellan även den högst ofullkomliga marxistiska socialismen i dess process av eller försök till historiskt förverkligande å ena sidan, och kapitalismen och fascismen å den andra, ändå i stora stycken äger en övervägande riktighet. Den kommer då antagligen ha rikligen bekräftats av den fortsatta historiska utvecklingen.
Mckays analys och argumentation är som vanligt av central betydelse för en ny, alternativ och i de överordnade värdenas mening konservativ socialism. En socialism som, bortom de historiska resultat Mckay gör anspråk på, uppger den helhetliga marxismen och dess åtföljande, av makten påtvingade existentiella idioti – vilka liv ska människorna leva, vilket innehåll ska fylla dem, vilken typ av människor ska de bli – som utan tvekan också ofta och i stor utsträckning präglade sovjetsystemet och folkdemokratierna.
Frigörelse från den borgerliga kapitalismens specifika människoformation innebar inte i sig att den historiskt existerande socialismens blev bättre. Få saker är mer horribla och deprimerande än kommunistregimernas himmelsskriande enfaldiga men totalitärt effektiva ansträngningar att tvinga sina befolkningar att begränsa sin uppmärksamhet och sina intressen till det förbiflimrande materiella livets nivå, med tvångs- och våldsmedel hålla deras medvetande kvar, hålla det nere, inom det vanliga världsliga livets hopplöst skränkta horisont.
Just detta var värre än vad som förekommer under den borgerliga kapitalismen, och det är tillräckligt för att man ska förbli antikommunist; det ytterst enda väsentliga är etablerandet och spridandet – långt utöver och i motsatsställning till den blotta profanhumansmen – av en ny, allmän, högre-kosmopolitisk esoandlig kultur anpassad till vår tid och framtiden.
Mckay förtiger allt detta i den historiska socialismen, och delvis kan han inte annat eftersom han själv är en helhetlig marxist eller marxist-leninist, eftersom han inte förstår marxismens gränser och felaktigheter som helhetlig åskådning. Flera gånger har han visat sin allmänna oförståelse i detta avseende, i synnerhet när han talat om religionen och andligheten, och inte bara den primitiva och från tsarregimen oskiljbara exoabrahamism som bolsjevikerna – med visst undantag för Stalin – motarbetade, utan även exempelvis buddhismen. Han svarade en gång en buddhist att han trodde att denne kunde finna allt han sökte på sin andliga väg i hans egen typ av engagemang för den kommunistiska revolutionen.
Men ändå har Mckay samtidigt, och som framgår inte minst i den nu aktuella ranten, ett föredömligt sensorium för vissa andra traditionella kulturella värden som marxister ofta nästan helt saknar, om än inte i samma grad som den av honom bekämpade, groteska postmarxistiska kapitalvänstern i väst idag, som tagit det destruktiva i den gamla kulturradikalismen till helt nya nivåer. Och att starka inslag av kulturellt bevarande och kulturell förnyelse i denna anda förekom i det “forna östblocket” står utom allt tvivel. Däri har Mckay entydigt rätt.
Och det var denna insikt jag gradvis tvingades fram till under 10-talet, en process som kulminerade när den svenska populistnationalismen, vars genuint kultur- och i ny mening socialkonservativa potential jag hoppats på, visade sitt rätta ansikte genom att ansluta sig till den vanliga atlanthögern och delvis fascismen.
Den realexisterande socialismen var trots allt i väsentliga avseenden mer konservativ i min mening än den samtida globalistiska och imperialistiska atlanticismens finansialiserade monopolkapitalismen. De senaste åren har detta blivit bedövande övertydligt. Västs kapitalistiska system är åter på väg att avskaffa den demokrati från vilken den försökt låna det mesta av sin moraliska legitimitet. Den har reducerats till Trump, Merz, von der Leyen och Netanyahu. Och, i några länder, deras hjälplöst men av allt att döma ofta också villigt medsläpade socialdemokratiska stödtrupper.
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“The ‘great Ukrainian nationalists’, these people who shout and scream about the glory of Ukraine: it is important to actually look at the record of these people since they came to unrestricted power. They have had power to one degree or another in Ukraine for a long time.
They had a degree of power under Yushchenko following the coup known as the Orange revolution in the west, that saw a third round in voting in the presidential election. Yushchenko was so completely useless that he lost the next one by a great majority, and, of course, although Yushchenko did make advances towards building the cult of Bandera, this was then taken further by the Maidan coup in 2014. So we’ve had Ukrainian so-called nationalists in influential positions in Ukraine for over 20 years.
Now, given all their babble about the glory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian language, preserving the Ukrainian culture that was stamped out by the cruel Soviet imperialists and the even more cruel Russian imperialists, what is the record of those great nationalists, because what is the nation if not its people? What is a nation if it doesn’t have the Ukrainian people within it? If it doesn’t have Ukrainian culture and language being valued in a serious way, what can these people claim to be nationalists of?
An abstract concept, and nothing else. Because in actual fact, since capitalism was restored in Ukraine 34 years ago, the population has collapsed, from close to 50 million down to 41 million before the war began, and now hovering at round about, some official estimates from the Ukrainian government say 28 to 29 million, some say its far fewer, some say it’s in the low 20s now. So they’ve presided over a collapse of at least 20 million in the terms of the Ukrainain population.
They’ve presided over the complete asset-stripping and de-industrialization of the country, they’ve presided over the reign of organized crime, they’ve presided over a birthrate collapse – now, according to a German government study, the maximum number of Ukrainians who would be prepared to return to Ukraine from their boltholes in Europe where they have very sensibly fled to, the maximum number that the German government found would be prepared to return in the event of peace breaking out in Ukraine is only 47%. So over half of the Ukrainian refugees who have fled aren’t going back. I think 47% would be a generous estimate, I would put it far lower, probably my guess would be only around a third, especially those who have raised children in the west, most of them won’t be going back.
So the Ukrainian population has collapsed, the birthrate has collapsed, Ukrainian industry has been destroyed, Ukrainian agriculture severely damaged or sold off to the western “partners”, Ukrainian mining operations bundled up and supposedly given to the Americans. So what on earth did these Ukrainian nationalists actually achieve? The answer is of course the very opposite of all the things they said they wanted to achieve.
And now Ukrainian government sources are saying that they need to secure waves of migration from sub-Saharan Africa and south-east Asia if they are to rebuild the country. They’re already talking about encouraging migration from the poorest African nations in order to make up the shortfall of workers. Because so many have fled and so many others have been recruited into the army and so many others have died. So the Nazis in Ukraine, these fascistic scumbags, have presided over the death of the Ukrainian nation. This is what they have done.
But then again, why should this be a surprise? This is what they’ve done everywhere. Everywhere where the socialist systems of the peoples’ democracies were destroyed, the nations that grew and thrived under them have been destroyed by the restoration of capitalism. The peoples that the nationalists claimed to want to thrive and were chafing under the horrors of Soviet control, well, the peoples have been destroyed. The cultures that these morons and these hypocrites babbled on endlessly about, the language, the traditional dress, the traditional religion – all of this was destroyed by the restoration of capitalism; all of this was destroyed by the unrestricted looting of the domestic oligarchy; all of this was destroyed by the very people who shouted and screamed and waived the flag the hardest and crossed themselves ten times before the holy vision of Christ on the cross etc., etc.
The truth be told, the Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Yugoslav, Ukrainian nations, the Baltic nations, the ones which scream about the horrors of the Soviet period, they were far more nations in the Soviet period. Their language, their culture, their strength as nations was far greater when they were Soviet republics, or peoples’ democracies in the case of eastern Europe, than they are now under capitalism where all of these nations are withering away before our very eyes.
Ukraine is withering away before our very eyes. The nationalists – ‘nationalists’ – who came to power first in the late 1980s, then solidified their criminal rackets over the country with the fraudulent independence in 1991, and then again with the Orange revolution coup in 2004, and then again in 2014: at each stage that these people solidified their control they only murdered the Ukrainian nation ever more.
Far more people have perished in Ukraine as a result of the restoration of capitalism than ever perished in the Ukrainian crop failure of the early 1930s. These hypocrites and liars and fools who are in charge of Ukraine now, and their supporters who scream loudly about the glory of Ukraine from an academic ivory tower in the north-east of the United States, who cry about the crimes of Stalin: these are the people who have killed the Ukrainian nation, these are the people who have extirpated the Ukrainian people, these are the people who have mortgaged what is left of Ukraine to Wall Street and the City of London, these are the people who have killed infinitely more than ever died in the Russian revolution and in the crop failures of the 1930s.
The Ukrainian nation in the 1930s thrived, it grew, the Ukrainian language and culture were protected, Ukrainian society was stable and peaceful. And what has been brought by the fascists is only the criminal cartel-like control of the imperialists, and the destruction of all the things they said they actually value.
Because fundamentally, even if – this is a big if – even if a fascist is completely sincere in his beliefs, as we’ve been covering recently when we were talking about the dialectical materialist method of analysis, what does the dialectical materialist method of analysis tell us about even a fascist who is absolutely 100% sincere in what he wants?
Let’s assume that some of these Azov leaders are absolutely 100% sincere in what they want to do: well, for all your shouting and your screaming and your melodramatics and the mass killings and the tortures and the rapes and everything else that the Azov men like Biletsky have inflicted on other Ukrainians, they cannot escape their purpose. They cannot escape their material origin point. They can do a lot of damage and destruction, they can cause all kinds of horrendous things to happen – they can’t escape what they are. What they are, are the paid servants of a despotic, corrupt, corpulent Ukrainian oligarchy which just wants to export its wealth to the West and asset-strip the country.
Ukrainian fascism cannot escape its origins. It cannot escape its origins in terms of where it came from, way back in the days of the original Ukrainian Rada under the white armies, under the armies that were controlled initially by the German imperialists at the very end of World War I and at the beginning of the Russian civil war. The characters of those who were put in charge of Ukraine then by the Germans are absolutely no different to those who are in charge now. Those who are in charge now are of course the spiritual descendants of the Rada as formed in 1917 to 18, and this is the same result. Had those who were in charge in 1918 remained in charge in Ukraine then it would have been ground up and spat out by German imperialism. And had Hitler and his associates in the Ukrainian nationalist organizations, UPA etc., had they triumphed in the Great Patriotic War, Ukraine would have been reduced to a slave state.
You cannot escape your own origins. This is what always happens when these fascist types get into power. They cannot escape their origin point. And if their origin point is as servants of imperialism, that is exactly what they will always deliver in the end, no matter what bloodshed and melodramatics that they engage in.
It’s the same all over the place. The servants of imperialism always deliver the same things. It doesn’t have to be Ukraine. You can extend this analysis to many other places. Extend the analysis to Syria. Look at the clown fascists in charge there, all of course swearing by the great prophet Muhammad that they will strike vengeance upon the invader, the Israeli invader – at some point in the future maybe, but we’ve got to kill all these ethnic minorities first.
Same in, of course, a place like Argentina, where Milei the clown screams and jumps up and down and does rock concerts whilst the nation is pushed relentlessly into becoming a neo-colony of the United States where all the progress made in the period of the 1940s and early 50s is destroyed completely and the place is reduce to being, again, a slave of the United States, rotten domestic oligarchy.
There you go. This is what happens, by the way, when your politics is reduced to the level of aesthetics. This is what happens. You end up pouring petrol on you own funeral pyre and dancing as the flames lick higher and higher. This is fascism in its essence. Facsism in its essence, when it comes to the mass following it achieves, is something which is specifically based on the denial of material reality. It’s based on the denial of class conflict. It’s based on the valuing of aesthetics and performance and theatrics over anything else.
But then again that is perhaps the essence of bourgeois politics as a whole. Fascism, being bourgeois politics in crisis mode, expresses this most clearly. But bourgeois politics as a whole, again the fascists express it most dramatically because they are the most ruthless, murderous form of it. But there you go.
The fascists, the German puppets, when they were there in 1918 would have reduced the Ukrainian nation to slave status. Bandera and Shukhevych were trying to do the same thing 1941, 1945. And now, their successors have successfully delivered the bulk of Ukraine into the horrors of slavery: slavery not under Russians, but enslaved by Wall Street and the City of London. As a consequence of which the nation is dying. And not just because of the immense casualties on the battlefield, although that is part of it, but the nation is dying by capitalist restoration, just as all the other nations in eastern Europe are dying because of capitalist restoration.
Just as Russia itself has almost been pushed up to the point of death by capitalist restoration. This is why the flag-waving, the screaming and the jumping up and down of the tsarists and the monarchists and the liberals in Russia should be thrown back in their faces. Because their record is clear. Communism, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Stalin, built nations. Capitalism cannot. It cannot build nations anymore.
There will be those of course who try to say that its capitalism which is responsible for the growth of China. Had capitalism ruled in China after 1949, China would not be where it is today. It would still be a state run by compradors. It is only because of the severing and the destruction of the power of the compradors in China and the foundations laid by the Maoist period that any of the successes today in China were possible. And again, Russia is discovering that restoration of capitalism meant only death for the Russian nation. Yeltsin, for all his screaming about the restoration of Russia, meant death for the Russian people, which means death for the Russian nation.
Again, communism is the only system now, we are the only philosophy that can lead to the building of nations. Capitalism only leads to the destruction of nations. So anybody you know, who rants and raves about nation and brotherhood and blood and soil bullshit but who is a supporter of capitalism, because that’s what all fascists are, they’re all supporters of private property, the’re all supporters of capitalism – then these people are either dupes, fools, or liars. Because in actual fact, capitalism is just concentrated death, and you don’t need to look any further than Ukraine, and Israel, to see the full, horrible realities of it. Communism builds, fascism destroys. There’s really no other way that I can put it simply.”
- 2 nov.
