Reading Settlers 3: Settler Trade Unionism and Anti-Imperialism
Added 2023-08-25 08:59:01 +0000 UTChttps://readsettlers.org/ch4.html
song: Lupe Fiasco - El Mural, Jr.
Comments
For the part about imperialism and the socialist movement, the Italian SP and the Bolshevik in relation to the Russian intervention again the Iranian constitutional revolution would be probably the early and very concrete link between the socialist movement and anti-imperialism.
Francois xavier
2023-08-28 18:20:22 +0000 UTCGood episode. Just one point on the brief reference to Ukraine: A Ukrainian national consciousness already did exist, the Bolsheviks did not have to invent it. Completely ignoring it, or declaring it the invention of a few petty bourgeois intellectuals as Rosa Luxemburg put it simply isn’t historically accurate. It led those who believed themselves genuine internationalists to stumble into Russian chauvinist conceptions of ‘Little Russia’ by the back door in considering an emerging nationality a pure anachronism. Worth remembering that the leading and dominant figures of Ukrainian nationalism may have rejected Bolshevism in 1917, but they were not hardcore reactionaries - they were generally liberals, progressives or moderate socialists, like historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, head of the Central Rada (parliament) 1917-18, who I suppose if you wanted to draw a direct historical analogue could be considered a Kerensky-like figure, arguably a better version. Not to speak of the various forerunner figures of both Ukrainian socialism and nationalism like the semi-anarchist autonomist, federalist and socialist conceptions of Mykhailo Drahomanov in the 19th century, or Lesya Ukrainka, 19th to early 20th century Ukrainian Marxist and poet who translated the Communist Manifesto into Ukrainian. In essence, whatever independent interests of a putative Ukrainian Soviet Republic which the Bolsheviks did set up in 1917-18 as an alternative to the parliamentary Ukrainian socialists and liberals who rallied around the Rada - which begun as quite popular but quickly lost its popularity much as the Provisional Government in Petrograd had - while that Soviet government was formally equal with the Russian Federal Socialist Republic, its needs were constantly sacrificed to military exigencies during the civil war, i.e. the desperate need of the ‘centre’ for resources during that conflict. Having an attachment to being Ukrainian or speaking Ukrainian was regarded as peasant backwardness stirred up by little more than nationalist intellectuals by many Bolsheviks in Ukraine despite their formal commitment to self-determination (with the notion that if they such intellectuals and nationalist activists were removed or suppressed, such national conceptions would evaporate because they had no other basis) as opposed to the modern, advanced cities where Russian was the most widely spoken language, the lingua franca of ‘civilisation’, with entry into Russian culture seen as an educational and cultural advance - quite a few workers in Ukraine were almost fully Russianised and had little investment in an idea of an independent Ukraine in and of itself, it is true. Ukraine was indeed highly multi-ethnic and full of different nationalities, and the left currents leading up to 1917 were a mixture of independentist and others which were not, or more precisely saw it as secondary or irrelevant. Yet the looking down on precisely that aspect, up to and including viewing speaking Ukrainian as automatically a feature of intellectual, political, and cultural backwardness excluded so much of the population as to prove completely disastrous and make both city and country (overwhelmingly Ukrainian speaking) mutually incomprehensible to each other; Russian transplants/others often felt no need to learn the language - after all what was the point? Russian was the language of administration, business, politics, culture. The Bolsheviks realised the extent on their mistakes in the 1920s and shifted policy, which opened the way to a broad and inclusive multi-ethnic multi-national Ukrainian cultural renaissance and a firmer position for their political project in Ukraine, which was then tossed overboard a great deal (though not entirely) by Stalin with a wave of later Russification. Dealing with the nationality issue appropriately need not = any renunciation of internationalism or the struggle for a future borderless socialist future. A really good book on the workers movement and the Ukrainian national question 1897-1918 is by Marko Bojcun, available from Haymarket.
Victor Osprey
2023-08-26 04:37:56 +0000 UTCYour glibness makes these readings entertaining while also being educational.
Nicolay Hristozov
2023-08-25 20:59:37 +0000 UTCTo my White Surprise… I’ll be entertained by a fresh Antifada episode this Friday evening shift
MoldyTolge
2023-08-25 20:09:00 +0000 UTCthe entire culture around Settlers online is pretty glib, I wouldn't worry about that too much
dusted
2023-08-25 12:39:57 +0000 UTC
