In mid-June a meeting of Ukrainian socialists in Kiev founded a new left-wing party, “Social Movement” (SM). According to an interview with some of its leading members, published on the website of the Russian Socialist Movement:
Activists from five of Ukraine’s biggest cities attended the meeting: Kiev, Odessa, Cherkass, Dnepropetrovsk and Krivy Rog. Politically, they ranged from “moderate social-democrats” to “radical Marxists”.
Trade union activists were particularly well represented at the meeting, including members of the “Defence of Labour” union, members of miners’ unions based in Krivy Rog, and union militants from other regions of Ukraine.
Rather than base itself on “this or that that social group”, the SM will participate in all anti-capitalist social conflicts. But the fundamental conflict in society is between labour and capital. What is needed is something “in the spirit of May ’68: an alliance of the working class and (progressive) intellectuals.”
The SM will advance “a fairly modest programme of reforms”. Nearly all layers of society recognise the need for such reforms. But what matters is whether it will be possible to “convince civil society of the need to struggle directly for these reforms”.
In the process of fighting for such reforms and winning the trust of the masses, it will be possible to put forward a new programme of genuinely revolutionary changes of society. The task of the revolutionary wing of the SM is to prepare that programme.
The SM will decide whether to contest elections on a case-by-case basis, using the criterion of whether it would advance the interests of social movements and the workers’ movement to do so.
But the danger of ‘anti-parliamentary cretinism’ is on a par with the danger of ‘parliamentary cretinism’. Winning some seats in the next round of local authority elections is a real possibility for the SM, and this would provide it with a tribune from which to promote their policies.
Recently passed laws on ‘de-communisation’ in Ukraine pose a threat to the SM. But the most likely impact of the laws is not mass repression of the left. The laws are an attempt to control how people think, to equate socialist ideas with Stalinist rule, and to manufacture a social consensus.
But the ‘de-communisation’ laws also express the danger of something more fundamental: “the creation of a form of ‘internal Putinism’ in Ukraine, with ultra-conservative social norms, political censorship, and an all-powerful military and oligarchy.”
The SM needs to ensure that it does not repeat past mistakes in attempts to create a broad left party. When members of what is now the ‘Borotba’ organisation called for such a party a few years ago, they wrecked the initiative by undemocratic manoeuvring in order to keep control.
The result: The initiative collapsed, and Borotba ended up as a sect – “wheeler-dealers who have found a comfortable life as servants of Russian imperialism.” (True to form, Borotba has also already made slanderous attacks on the SM: “Ukrainian ‘Leftists’ Adapt to Fascism”.)
If history is not to repeat itself, what is needed is “maximum openness, transparency and democracy in the process of unification. We will fight to create a genuinely left-wing and democratic party through and through.”
The SM is agreed on the nature of the Maidan protests (a popular uprising against oligarchy and oppression, but one “aborted” by oligarchic factions), the Kiev government (neo-liberal, pro-western-imperialist), and the Donetsk/Lugansk ‘People’s Republics’ (artificial creations of Russian imperialism).
But behind that basic agreement there appear to be differences of emphasis, differences of analysis of the precise role of the competing imperialisms, and differences in the specific conclusions to be drawn as a basis for future political activity and agitation:
“In the organising committee and in the party there are ongoing discussions about these and other basic issues. These are very complicated questions. There are several different approaches and in the discussions we are trying to reach a common denominator.”