Fight for a socialist alternative to capitalism and war
Editorial of the Socialist – the newspaper of the Socialist Party England and Wales – issue 1310
Keir Starmer is reported to have overruled chancellor Rachel Reeves to demand more public spending. But not on the NHS, education or housing. Starmer wants to ensure that Britain’s military expenditure – already the fifth highest in the world – increases even further.
Starmer has also rushed to volunteer to put “British boots on the ground” in Ukraine as part of a possible future ‘peace’ deal. It could not be clearer, however, that Starmer’s motivation has nothing to do with the best interests of Ukraine’s population. This offer is the latest in the government’s shameless contortions as it attempts to cosy up to the new US president, Donald Trump.
Trump’s blunt announcement of his ninety-minute phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and the start of talks between Russia and the US without the participation of either Ukraine or any of the EU powers, has sent shockwaves through Europe. Simultaneously Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, told NATO that Ukraine would never be able to join the military alliance and ruled out US troops being involved in enforcing any ‘peace deal’. Then, Trump waded in again to suggest that Ukraine should hand over 50% ownership of its critical minerals in return for US aid.
A bridge too far?
Starmer argues that Britain can snuggle up to Trump and thereby act as a bridge between US imperialism and the EU. This is completely utopian. Far from being able to bring the sides together, Britain – an increasingly puny power, outside of all the major trading blocs – is going to face multiple insoluble problems as it tries to balance between the bigger players in this world of disorder and increasing national conflict.
Trump’s highly transactional, crude ‘America First’ approach is rapidly increasing the instability of global capitalism today. Of course, Joe Biden’s presidency also ruthlessly defended the interests of US capitalism, including by arming the Israeli government’s murderous assault on the Palestinians and Lebanese. However, whereas as Biden continued to work – in part at least – through US dominance of the existing crumbling international ‘rules-based order’, Trump has shown himself prepared to not only bypass existing institutions but to attack them. US Vice President JD Vance’s broadside against European governments was one indication of that. At the same time, Trump is willing to try and pull Putin’s Russia into the US orbit.
Ultimately, Trump’s approach reflects that US capitalism is no longer able to dictate the global framework it operates in and is now increasingly compelled to retreat to protect its national interests against its rivals, above all China. Trump’s ‘America First’ approach is both a reflection and an accelerator of the multipolar character of world relations.
Capitalist opponents of Trump are frightened by his preparedness to rip up the old international order through which the US capitalist class has ruled. But in opposing Trump we do not give one iota of support for that supposed ‘world order’ which has presided over increasing climate catastrophe and war, not least the horrors of the last three years in Ukraine.
In reality, US imperialism under Biden, having first offered to airlift Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky out of Kyiv when the war began, recognised that the determination of the Ukrainian population to fight for their own national rights offered an opportunity to undermine Putin’s Russia and to degrade its military capacity. Therefore, for its own cynical reasons, the US provided advanced weaponry to the Ukrainian forces as have, to a lesser degree, other Western powers. The US also provided around $60 billion to help prop up Ukraine’s stricken economy.
These were not gifts, however. While $4.7 billion was written off in November 2024, the vast majority of US support has taken the form of loans to be repaid at some future point. So, while under Biden there were not crude demands for ownership of rare minerals announced at press conferences, the reality was little different. Nor was NATO membership for Ukraine ever concretely on offer under Biden, but rather raised as an aspiration for a hazy future date. And while the Democrat administration was always careful to pay lip service to Ukraine’s right to decide about negotiations with Russia, it is clear that they too were preparing to try and reach a settlement had Kamala Harris won the presidency.
Putin’s confidence to invade Ukraine three years ago was one symptom of the increasingly multipolar character of the world. Back then, faced with a horrific military attack, it was inevitable that many workers in Ukraine looked towards US imperialism and the West for some protection. As the war began we warned, however, that “as the working class of Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and many other countries can attest, none of the major capitalist powers offer any real way forward, and all are prepared to trample over national democratic rights when it suits their interests to do so.” Three years of brutal trench war, with frontlines static for months at a time, have led to appalling levels of death and injury but have resolved nothing. The estimated casualty toll is at least 370,000 for Ukraine and 600,000 for Russia.
Lessons for the working class
It could not be clearer that capitalism means war. The response of Starmer, along with all other capitalist governments, to the increasingly unstable global situation is to ratchet up military spending, while trying to make the working class pay for that via further cuts to public services.
What lessons should the workers’ movement learn? Our starting point has to be no trust in any of the capitalist politicians – not in Trump or Starmer, Putin or Zelensky. Along with the nightmare being suffered by the Palestinians, the horror of the war in Ukraine throws into high relief the need – in the US, Britain, Russia, Ukraine and every country – for the working class to have its own parties, independent of all the rotten capitalist elites. Such parties need to fight for power to be taken out of the hands of the major corporations and banks that dominate the economy, so society can be run democratically in the interests of the majority, based on planning and cooperation, instead of capitalism’s ruthless pursuit of profit which leads to poverty, environmental destruction, and war.
In all countries, workers’ parties need to be built on the basis of defending the national rights of all peoples. In Ukraine, clearly the starting point has to be to call for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the right of the Ukrainian peoples to determine their own future. However, it would also include the rights of the peoples of Crimea, and the statelets of Donetsk and Luhansk, to democratically decide their future, including independence should they so wish it – with guaranteed rights for minorities.
Had mass workers’ organisations with this approach existed in Ukraine at the start of the war it could have had a real effect on how events developed. Such organisations would have been in opposition to the pro-capitalist Zelensky government which, prior to the Russian invasion, continued the bombing of Donetsk and Luhansk and banned the Russian language in schools. This was cynically used by Putin – who in reality cares nothing about the rights of minorities in Ukraine – to justify the invasion. In the first days of the war, a class appeal to Russian soldiers ‘to go home and throw out Putin who has sent you here under false pretences, and leave us to build a movement against our own oligarchs’, would have been very powerful.
However, that was not how events developed. Over the last three years the suffering of the Ukrainian masses, and the death toll of Russian soldiers, has been horrendous. At this stage, the killing continues. However, while it is not certain how events will develop, some kind of alleged ‘peace deal’, in reality more akin to a frozen conflict, is on the cards at a certain stage. That may give a certain breathing space for the Ukrainian working class, after all it has endured, to begin strengthening its independent organisations – armed with a socialist programme – as the only way out of the nightmare of capitalist war. The best solidarity the working class in Britain can provide is to urgently turn to the same task.
