As for the question of NATO, this is a question not so much of Ukraine’s incorporation into NATO, but of Russia’s exclusion—a point Putin himself emphasises quite often.
This is apparent, for example, from recently de-classified transcripts of conversations between Putin and George W Bush in the 2000s. In a recent article in the Washington Quarterly, political scientist Deborah Boucoyannis marshals evidence that NATO’s eastward expansion was not driven by fear of a Russian military threat as Russia was widely seen as quite weak in the 1990s. Rather, she demonstrates that this expansion was about filling the “security vacuum” left in Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Pact dissolved. In addition, local elites looked to anchor themselves within the Western civilisation, fearing that their own plebeian classes, hit hard by post-socialist transition, might become politically receptive to Russia.
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If Western corporations had been allowed to acquire ownership of Russian oil and gas in the 1990s, Russia would have been an earlier member of NATO than Poland. But this didn’t happen. The integration of the Russian economy and political system into Euro-Atlantic structures would have required much more profound change than was the case in Eastern Europe, which took a different “transition” path after 1989, including opening themselves to transnational capital.
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I’m trying to point to the material interests lying behind this conflict, not just the interests of the Ukrainian oligarchs.
If you think about the political dimension in the post-Soviet countries, we have to ask who organises the interests of the political capitalists. They’re not organised in a liberal-democratic way. They are organised by figures such as Putin and Lukashenko. Ukraine had to choose between the EU or the Eurasian Union. This was about economic interests. The EU offered a free trade zone that disadvantages advanced Ukrainian industries as these are uncompetitive against the stronger European corporations.
It was just those industries that Putin aimed to re-integrate into a Eurasian bloc of ex-Soviet states—Belarus, Kazakhstan and, importantly, Ukraine—in order to form a stronger sovereign centre of capital accumulation in the post-Soviet region. Ukraine was a vital part of the former Soviet economy, particularly in machine-building, aviation, munitions, missiles and armaments. These were the most advanced components of the remaining Soviet industry in Ukraine.
So, an analysis of political capitalism is a way of identifying the central contradiction driving conflict on both the domestic and the international level.
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Well, the divisions on the Western left are, I think, a reflection of the left’s weakness in putting forward an autonomous, counter-hegemonic politics, which is itself a manifestation of the weakness of independent working-class politics.
As a result, the left tends to take convenient positions. In Western Europe, it’s easy to align with the ruling class. Most social democratic, centrist or left-of-centre parties represent the interests of the political establishment rather than the interests of the working class.
It’s not the first time the left has been both so polarised and, in a way, so impotent. What should be done when, objectively, the political dimension of the working class is weak? Even if you take correct positions, it doesn’t have much real political influence.
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However, there are very systematic studies that show that contemporary revolutions, including Euromaidan, but also the Arab Spring, and more recently Nepal and other examples, do not lead to sustained democratisation.
Typically, they lead to a temporary opening, which is then used by forces who are more privileged, better organised and, in many cases, not of the left. Democratic gains then give way to regimes that become more authoritarian and corrupt—less representative. This may in turn lead to another Maidan-type uprising, reproducing a vicious circle. There are structural problems behind this dynamic. Fundamentally, this points to the political disintegration of the working class, which has both an objective and subjective dimension.
Yes, it’s about how we on the left organise class interests into a political force. But it’s also about what we can objectively do here and now. Do we really become stronger as a result of the new Maidans?
The Ukrainian left has become profoundly weaker as a result.
