The Kyiv Independent: How has the perception of Ukraine in the eyes of British citizens changed after the start of the full-scale invasion?
Dame Melinda Simmons: I think the Brits know so much more now about Ukrainians, frankly how utterly cool the country is, and even down to what kind of food you eat. Because, of course, so many people have taken in Ukrainians, and they’re learning to make syrnyky and it’s all fantastic.
But they aren’t the only people who are waking up to this understanding of Ukraine’s history, this sense of what Russia really is, this colonial fascist-leaning country. There is a dawning realization not just for the West, but for other countries who tended to see that as a geographically different part of history. This sense of Ukraine having been colonized under Soviet occupation – that is a narrative that is being understood by many other countries who have not been conventional partners of Ukraine but are now very interested in the nature of this invasion.
Eh, I don’t buy it. To me it seems just an excuse. Both Russia and China at one point were full state run centrally planned economies. Communist countries made up half the world (leaving aside third world countries), half of Europe, lots of population and plenty of natural resources. There was no reason why they couldn’t succeed if they banded together with the superior economic theory.
But now you are telling me that they couldn’t help the global south, and therefore Russia and China had to abandon communism and switch to full blown capitalism? To beat the US at capitalism? And then go back to communism?
Hot take: they are both just as bad and imperialistic as the US, selfish to the core, only trying to become the top dog on the world stage, by any means possible. Not that hot actually, it’s been the same shit since forever
An excuse for what exactly?
There were PLENTY of reasons. That’s literally what scientific socialism is all about. Remember that the USSR was the first ever attempt at building a worker’s state in the history of humanity and it was immediately the target of the combined historical atrocities the West ever came up with all concentrated into the Third Reich, the most advanced military the world had ever seen up to that point. If the USSR had succeeded in building communism on the first try, that would have been literally incredible, as in, lacking credibility. No human endeavor ever went that way. Capitalism was clearly superior to feudalism but it took multiple centuries and many many bloody and violent revolutions before it finally got the upper hand on feudal monarchies.
Oh they helped the global South. China is part of the global South. Don’t forget that China was the poorest nation in the world in 1949. But no. I never said they couldn’t help the global South. I don’t know why you think I made that claim.
No. The USSR and China were never communist in form. No nation in history has ever been communist in form. No one even knows what it takes to get to communist in form. That’s what communist parties are for - to create a communist movement to determine how to move a nation to the communist form through empirical, iterative, experimental, and scientific engagement. Lenin/Stalin never “abandoned communism”, but they never made it to communism. Lenin implemented some capitalist modes of production through the NEP to solve logistical problems, but the NEP was a tactic under the communist movement. After Stalin, Kruschev, and the people he represented in leadership, wanted to end the communist movement and create capitalism again to create a new upper class and enrich them. They “succeeded” and from 59 through the end they incrementally dismantled the movement for communism and created the conditions for the reemergence of capitalism. This is actually why China split with the USSR eventually. The capitalist roaders in the USSR had no intention of beating the US at capitalism, but actually intended to “peacefully coexist” and then ultimately collaborate with the West as part of their imperial capitalist ambitions. When Gorbachev finally dismantled the USSR and invited the West in to redesign the economy and implement capitalism, the West implemented economic shock therapy, which was a rapid liberalization and marketization process. It killed millions of Russians. It killed so many Russians that the life expectancy plummeted as though it was during a massive war. The destitution, starvation, and homeless caused by bringing capitalism to Russia was a crime against humanity. Gorbachev worked with the West, and the USA had a major hand in picking Putin as his successor. Putin worked closed with the USA on security agreements and fully intended to join NATO, but the USA betrayed him. Despite picking him as leader and supporting his rise to power, they showed him and all of the world that NATO was not merely a defense against communist expansion, it was a system for maintaining US global hegemony in Europe. Putin and Russia realized at that point that the US still saw Russia as an enemy and have spent the last 20 years managing that dynamic, and currently that dynamic has led to this proxy war.
Is Russia’s long term goal to go back to communism? I doubt it. Are they trying to beat the US at capitalism? Absolutely not, because they can’t. Russia’s role to play right now is to ensure that the USA doesn’t encircle all of Asia with nukes and doesn’t balkanize and occupy Russia with puppet regimes and gain control of its vast natural resources. That’s America’s goal. Russia must stop that goal to ensure the world can survive and resist the American empire.
But China’s a whole different story. They never abandoned the movement for communism. They maintain the same communist party that started the country. They have changed theories of action, a lot of that based on the failures of the USSR. They implement capitalism within constraints imposed by the communist party. They are making the claim that they need to beat the US with capitalism (not at capitalism) in order to maintain the movement for communism, but they’ve never achieved communism so there’s been no switch away. It remains to be seen if they are right in their theory of action. So far, they’ve managed to achieve a ton of their goals, most importantly making it very difficult for the USA to do an imperialism on them. Between coupling their economies, convincing the international bourgeoisie to divest from production facilities, developing their material interests, improving quality of life for all of their citizens, developing a strong military, and becoming an alternative to Western vulture capitalists, China’s strategy of beating the US with capitalism seems to be more effective than the USSR’s strategy of building an insular socialist economy that is disconnected from the West.
I mean, provably false by orders of magnitude. You can only make this argument from a moral standpoint, which you do, but the reality is that Russia and China combined spend less on their military and have far fewer international military bases. China and Russia combined have engaged in fewer conflagrations than the USA, have killed fewer people than the USA, have done more to alleviate global poverty than the USA, have occupied fewer countries than the USA, and on and on and on. It is literally impossible for either country to be as bad or even nearly as bad as the USA when both of them combined are still nowhere near as bad as the USA. The USA nuked Japan, pulled out of nuclear treaties, violated peace treaties, trap the global South with predatory debt and then steal trillions from them. For every one dollar in aid the US sends to Africa, the US steals ten dollars or more in erroneous overbilling alone.
Every nation must, by definition, protect its interests. China’s theory of geopolitics, however, is that interdependence is in their best interest, while the West’s theory of geopolitics is that dominance is in their best interests. So yes, China is being selfish by protecting its interests, but it fundamentally sees the development of the global South as key to its selfish interests.
For the last 600 years, this is the European project. Europe established the first ever global top dog. No one ever achieved global top dog status before Europe did. After they did, they fought amongst themselves until the USA took over. For 600 years, white European settlers have been the top dog and fighting for the top dog status. It’s not been forever, and it’s not whatever everyone else is doing. You are projecting the sins of Europe onto “the rest of the world” to make yourself feel better. Marx and Engels produced an analysis in the 1800s and Lenin produced a derivative analysis in the early 1900s that show the logic of this top dog arrangement is fundamentally flawed. It is doomed to fail by its own logic. China’s entire theory of geopolitics is founded on Marxism, and they know that becoming top dog is literally a recipe for total collapse of their society, just like it is currently threatening total collapse of the USA. China has no interest in being top dog of the world stage because they selfishly want their society to be the best society in the world, and that requires not only that they are not the top dog but also that there is no top dog. That is what moving to a multi-polar world system is all about.