Putin Gets Jared's Vote

["Owen Jones" <owen.jones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Dear Lou,
>
> The post is intended to show how people are viewing the US, from outside.
> What seems to be true of Putin is: he is resisting the US.  Evidence: the
> full scale fight back against the Chechen "rebels", the threat to use nuclear
> weapons to protect Russia, increased coordination of defense with Belorussia,
> apparently stronger stance on Yugoslavia - and much increased attacks in the
> Western press.
>
> Best
> Jared

 I find this pretty hard to stomach, unpalatable even by your standards.
Putin should not be characterised as an 'ideology', or a "Yeltsinite" as
Louis terms him. He is the front man of the Russian bourgeoisie, the ruling
oligarchy. The oligarchs deposed Yeltsin because he was increasingly a
sinking ship and they did not want to go down in it. Putin was put forward
by the ruling class, a particularly slimy leader of the corrupt bourgeois
state machinery as leader of the secret services, selected mainly by Yeltsin
and the oligarchs around him (known as 'The Family') to ensure a leadership
hostile to their interests would not come to power, and that their property
would be protected, as well as preventing their corruption being exposed.

 The leaders of the imperialist nations have been courting him. There's a
bit of a romance developing. Clinton called him a "liberal reformer" who
"liberated Chechnya". Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary, had a very
friendly meeting with him in which he described that mass-murdering
reactionary tyrant with some very kind words (yeah, the same bloke who shook
hands with Suharto). In a recent interview on British TV, Putin suggested
that one day Russia could join NATO. And indeed, as even Louis pointed out,
Clinton offered him the services of the FBI to hunt down "Chechen rebels".

 Yeltsin's regime was propped up by the imperialist states who directed the
restoration of capitalism in the former USSR. Putin is the same regime; the
fact the face is different is rather irrelevant. The character of the regime
is the same, a puppet of the Russian oligarchic bourgeoisie, propped up by
Western imperialism. Indeed, both Putin and Yeltsin's regime have used
anti-imperialist rhetoric - and that is all it is, empty words when in
practise they're in bed with imperialism - solely because of an upsurge of
nationalism in Russia which they cannot afford to not buy off. There is also
the fact the interests of the Russian bourgeoisie do come into conflict with
Western imperialism - mainly the expansion of imperialism into Eastern
Europe, which was given its biggest bolster since the collapse of the Berlin
Wall with the war with Yugoslavia; and over the oil in the Caucasus. Yet it
does not combat Western imperialism as a whole on the basis of this, because
it relies on imperialism for its own very existence, so only reacts on a
local basis with empty rhetoric so weak and irrelevant it is.

 The Chechen War was nothing more than a conspiracy on behalf of the Russian
bourgeoisie. Their puppet regime had less than 2% support amongst the
masses. Its reaction was quite simple; Russian security forces exploded a
few apartments in Russia as a pretext for a war against Chechnya, solely in
order to stir up nationalism to deflect the growing mass opposition to the
regime and the bourgeoisie, and the heightened class consciousness. There
was also the matter of oil in the Caucasus, enforcing Russian imperial
hegemony in the region, and frightening other potentially similar minded
republics into submission. A loss in Chechnya or enough damage inflicted on
occupying troops would have sent the regime into crisis and in the medium
term threatened social upheaval - if we remember, loss for the Russian
ruling class in war in 1905 and 1917 triggered revolution. Class
consciousness amongst the Russian working class had been steadily growing
particularly in the past two years, and now nationalism has stifled it. The
Russian ruling class has headed off, for the time being, the biggest crisis
since it gave birth to itself from the old Stalinist bureaucracy.

 The Chechen rebels were thoroughly reactionary in nature, but that was
irrelevant to this question. We unconditionally support the right of
self-determinations to *nations* if that is the democratic will of the
masses there. Though we cannot give political support to the Chechen rebels,
we give military support to the force attempting to suppress
self-determination for Chechnya - the Russian State. The Russian ruling
class practically liquidated the entire nation to enforce their stability -
that's a despicably reactionary war by the bourgeoisie.

 There is no doubt that Putin will win the election. But I see a new crisis
looming for the Russian bourgeoisie. Sure, the Chechen war triggered a wave
of nationalism that hit the working class struggle, but the support
generated is indeed hollow. The masses will continue to sink into poverty,
the working class will continue to be unpaid and face unemployment and gross
exploitation, the peasantry will slink closer to starvation, the elderly
will not have their pensions paid, students will face no future - indeed,
the catastrophe will deepen. There will certainly be an increase in
militancy, which was already on the increase with seizures of factories and
whatnot. The bourgeois state will increase repression, and if the working
class movement becomes a sufficient threat, we could look at a looming
threat of military dictatorship or even fascism. The capitalists will not be
afraid to throw off their democratic paraphernalia to enforce their rule.
Hopefully, increased militancy amongst the working class could end with the
ousting of the present reactionary leadership of the Communist Party and its
replacement with something more revolutionary (or perhaps that's just
optimism...) Whatever, things simply cannot go on like they are now.

 But you Jared...you are a raving Chetnik who would probably make some of
the most passionate reactionary pan-Slavist nationalists blush. Your
anti-imperialist pretensions can easily be boiled down to supporting the
Glorious Slavs when anybody attacks them who you will denounce whether it be
the West or Martians, hence the fact you defended occupying NATO troops
against the damn MUSLIM Albanians, and those evil MUSLIM Chechens against
the Great Progressive Slavs. Your vehemently anti-working class bullshit is
exposed by support for a regime [Russia] that signifies the biggest defeat
for the working class movement since the 1930s when Fascism went on the
rampage, leading a counter-revolution that has caused the biggest economic
catastrophe to hit an industrialised nation in human history, impoverishing
the masses. You are just resisting admitting that you consider all Albanians
and Croats to be a bunch of raging Fascists predetermined by their race
(especially the Albanians, but now the Croats who joined the Partisans were
in fact Fascists who only jumped boat because Germany was losing!!!) You
defend a regime to the very last hair that includes a fascist component. You
intentionally and blatantly falsify history, to the extent of sheer
absurdity often bordering on the insane, e.g. Albanians segregated
themselves to get sympathy from Western journalists and then ethnically
cleansed themselves and burnt down their houses and destroyed their property
and shot their countrymen and exiled themselves in refugee camps...for the
same reasons; or that Tito curried favour with mystical Albanian fascists
under a [deformed] workers' state who were apparently in charge of Kosovo...

 You have no concept of class contradictions and nor do you believe this to
be a correct analysis. Instead you espouse struggle between nations and
divide the world into "reactionary" and "progressive" races, in which
nations are culturally, or indeed genetically, predisposed to fascism.
Milosevic is apparently the Saviour of the Slavs, despite, alongside Western
imperialism and fellow ex-bureaucrats-turned-counter-revolutionaries like
Tudjman, led the biggest catastrophe to befall the Yugoslav working class
since the Nazi invasion. If only Stambolic, the President of Serbia before
his former buddy Milo ousted him, had been given more credit when he warned
of the coming disaster...though how would he know it would be led by
Slobodan fucking Milosevic.

 I have received many emails from several disgusted comrades, many of whom
have even more contempt for your politics than I do apparently, though many
people simply unsubscribe out of disgust for your diatribes. Other comrades
have had the bravery to challenge your inane reactionary arguments despite a
list atmosphere which not only tolerates your propaganda but encourages it
and is blatantly biased towards it; as far as I know three people in total
have been expelled for challenging you in the past, but I'm sure more will
be punished for denouncing your arguments on a MARXISM list, even if they
are genuine Marxists and you certainly are not.

 I don't know why some self-proclaimed leftists have any sympathy with often
disgusting and lying vitriol, but I think that is very much reflective of
the state of the Left today. You represent the capitulation of a large
section of the Left to the Red-Brown but without the 'Red' attached as such.

 It's rather frustrating being such a young Marxist entering into a movement
facing disaster in the harshest epoch of reaction for 70 years. But THIS is
depressing. Jared and his followers are nothing but a symptom, of the
rotting of the Left that unfortunately has been a trend rather than an
exception, and they represent nothing better than that. And to think there
are still Stalinists out there even after the system they so loved committed
suicide for the capitalist afterlife... Sometimes I think, why don't I just
become a used cars salesmen?

 People like Jared will serve to do nothing more than make the working class
consider us even more contemptuous of humanity than 60 years of Stalinism
make us look. If you think the bullshit him and others propagate is going to
attract youth - who are vital for the existence of any movement - then you
are mistaken. Carry on in your sectarian and absurd ways and you are signing
a suicide note of our movement that has already been written.

 Perhaps Louis should expel everyone on the list under the age of 40. Though
thank god this is a non-sectarian list since all the non-sectarian elite
attack any dissenters who happen to be at odds with the politics of a Mr.
Louis Proyect.

 Owen