Unite the left to defend Ukraine

An appeal from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty to the international left and individual socialists.

Comrades: Ukraine is being destroyed by a predatory Russian imperialism. The Ukrainian left and trade unions need our solidarity.

Labour movement bodies, working-class communities and numerousleft-wing individuals have mobilisedin solidarity with Ukraine and taken a strong stand against Russia’s invasion.But there is a crisis in the established organisations of the British and international left. It is a scandal that much of the Marxist left will not support Ukraine against Russian imperialism. Instead these socialists evade the need to positively back Ukraine, and hide behind a slogan that most of the world now agrees with: end the Russian war.

Knee-jerk anti-Americanism, the idea that the US’s enemies are our friends, the idea that any damage to the West is to the working-class’s benefit, is discrediting us. We need a socialist movement which sets its course independently by positive aims of working-class emancipation, not just by negating whatever it sees as the main enemy.

Of course we oppose NATO. But NATO has not gone to war in Ukraine. The threat to Ukraine comes from Russia. The main risk from the NATO powers is of them pushing Ukraine into a bad settlement which allows them to regain stable relations with Russia.

In the UK most of the Marxist left groups are refusing to join the pro-Ukraine protests. The groups which told us Russia would not invade Ukraine now, without a word of self-reproach or self-criticism, tell us they are against the Russian aggression. But still they refuse to positively back Ukraine. Some, in fact, still support Putin’s Russia in this conflict, or do so in practice by stressing an end to war, in general terms, and saying this must be done by negotiations based on something like Minsk 2, i.e. by offering strong guarantees for Putin in Ukraine.

We call for left unity around the following:
• International workers’ solidarity to defend Ukraine! Support Ukrainian self-determination and Ukraine’s fight to defend itself
• Arm Ukraine.
• Russian troops out of Ukraine, now.
• Down with Putin! Defend the anti-war activists in Russia, release those that have been arrested.

We invite individuals and the organisations of the left to sign up to this platform and collaborate with us on this basis. We propose joint initiatives, leaflets, statements, motions and actions. We urge UK activists to build the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. Within this framework of joint political campaigning we urge the left to work for clarity on the roots of this political crisis on the left. Without clarity we will repeat, again and again, the stupidity of refusing to back Ukraine, standing back while Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv burn.

In solidarity, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty
awl@workersliberty.org