They’re hand in glove, that’s for sure. Any attempt to paint Musk or any other haute bourgeois as separate from the capitalist state is intended to confuse readers and hide the material relations in capitalism.

The reason it seems like I’m dodging the question is because if I can challenge the assumptions in the question and show that it’s a faulty question, the answer becomes irrelevant. Still, if you keep reading, you’ll see that I have provided an answer below.

As for my opinion, it’s like anyone else’s. It isn’t worth much. My statements of fact, however… in a world where people try to paint the US in a positive light, endlessly making distinctions to deny any blame to the US state for all the horror that it unleashes on the world… probably also not worth much.

I either make a logical argument that stands up to scrutiny or I don’t. If my argument stands up, it doesn’t matter whether I look like a weak idiot. If my argument fails, it doesn’t matter if I pretend control or to appear smart or to act it.

For a bourgeois state, it is ahistorical to separate the government from it’s businesses. Companies and the government go hand in hand. It was, for example, the East India Company, rather than the British ‘state’, that colonised so much of Asia.

In relation to WWII and the US-Nazi connection, Michael Parenti wrote in Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (City Lights Books, CA, 1997, p17):

Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus Cologne was almost levelled by Allied bombing but it’s Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter. [Citing Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy (Dell, NY, 1983).]

Fn14: After the war, Herman Abs, head of the Deutsche Bank and in effect “Hitler’s paymaster,” was hailed by David Rockefeller as “the most important banker of our time.” … Rockefeller [failed to say] a word about Abs’ Nazi connections, his bank’s predatory incursions across Nazi occupied Europe, and his participation, as a board member of I.G. Farben, in the use of slave labor at Auschwitz: Robert Karl Miller, Portland Free Press, Sept/Oct 1994

All this, and we haven’t really touched on:

• the way that US state officials intervened to—
• • protect Nazi war criminals from prosecution at Nuremberg,
• • rehabilitate and promote Nazi officials to lead NATO,
• • doing the all this with Mussolini and others,
• how the US ruling class platformed Nazis in the US press and silenced critical domestic voices,
• the relationship between the US government and its ruling bourgeois, the familial relations.

The US is to be applauded for is role in defeating the Nazi war machine, including supplying the allies. The US soldiers who fought the Nazis were heroes. But it is problematic to claim the US (i.e. it’s ruling class) was on the right side of history through that period.

Likewise, in Ukraine, the US worsened the whole mess, possibly caused it all, by meddling in the region since before the 90’s. Since the recent invasion US media and spokespersons have been nonchalantly saying the US has reaped many benefits from the war with very little cost (except for Ukrainians—added in parentheses, as if the Ukrainians are of secondary concern).

I do think the invaders are bad, whichever war were talking about.

I think we agree in principle and I think I know what you mean but I must raise a challenge. There’s an example that shows an invasion is not necessarily bad, the one that you pointed out: the Allies invading Nazi Germany.

If invasion is not bad in one example situation, then logically it doesn’t hold as a blanket statement. It cannot of itself lead us to conclude that Russia is bad for invading Ukraine. To be clear, I am not saying Russia is good for invading Ukraine; I’m saying it is not self evidently bad by virtue of being the invader.

To further the clear statement, I wish Russia had not invaded. I wish the war would end today. Short of that I wish a ceasefire could be negotiated for today, so that peace and an end to the war can be negotiated for the near future.

No flippant comments about how dangerous war is for the workers who must fight in it. Only firm conviction that the only right choice is to stop the killing and maiming as soon as possible, not to send increasingly dangerous weapons with increasingly higher chances of causing collateral damage.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the US wanted the opposite at all stages and it’s representatives (officials and corporate agents) have machinated to ensure that war broke out and now that it cannot stop.

You brought up the example of the US in relation to WWII. If you make a comparison, you can’t get stroppy when people point out that it contradicts your main argument and in fact supports the argument that you’re trying to challenge.

However, for as long as you think the US is the Good Guy^TM, you’re going to struggle to find examples that support your viewpoint, so you may want to be careful with any comparison. Otherwise, you’ll start to notice a pattern of them pointing out that the US was as monstrous as always in the cited example and then you’ll say they’re doing whataboutism ad infinitum.

The yanks were funding the WWII Nazis before they ‘sent supplies to the allies’.

Congratulations on your promotion.

I’m at a loss as to how you’re interpreting my words. You say you’re asking simple questions, then you put words in my mouth and ask me to defend them.

If the Ukrainian government can’t be trusted to decide on when to surrender, who do you suggest?

When did I say or imply this?

If you think saving Ukrainian lives isn’t a good reason to find an alternative to war, this is unlikely to become a fruitful discussion.

Zelensky is not forced by NATO in the sense of being a hostage. Although he does seem to be in over his head. Hence trying to come to a peace deal last year and then being told by NATO, apparently through Boris Johnson, that it wasn’t going to fly.

Since then, especially since the start of the counteroffensive, there have been several reports in US media explaining that the US military pushed Ukraine into the action knowing that it was under supplied and unlikely to achieve its goals. The US ‘hoped’ Ukrainian grit would see the day. Those soldiers are braver than I am for running headfirst through minefields into Russian artillery and defensive lines that Russia had months to prepare. But it’s a careless and tragic use of Ukrainian lives.

The US knows that it has not – likely cannot – supplied Ukraine with what it needs. Neither can the rest of NATO. If Ukraine is to keep fighting, it must look elsewhere. NATO doesn’t have the industry for it. Other US reports confirm this and hint if not confirm that the US interest is not in helping Ukraine to secure it’s independence but to fuel the US economy while trying to undermine the Russian economy. Ukraine is collateral damage for the US. This is the same US that had Ukraine dismantle it’s military through the 90s by insisting on economic reforms attached as conditions to IMF and World Bank loans.

NATO support is waning. Partly because Ukraine is losing. (Partly because the US plans to start a war with China, which will occupy all its attention. In fact, a new cold war may have started this week, according to China and the US.) Zelensky may be able to regain that support but only if things turn around on the battlefield soonish. Until the steps taken to do so clash with US/NATO goals, Zelensky can do what he likes.

It’s not that Zelensky can’t decide for himself. It’s that if he hadn’t already decided to align with the US, he wouldn’t be where he is. He is where he is because his class interests align with those of the US/Anglo-European bourgeoisie.

With this context and clarification of what I meant about the US running the show, I can now address your question.

Seeking weapons outside the NATO-sphere to better achieve NATO goals does not, to be trite, conflict with NATO goals. The US is not going to be upset if Zelensky can get support from elsewhere to keep fighting US enemy #2 (China being enemy #1).

Zelensky is also one man. Just like with Putin, Biden, or anyone else, individual men can’t make decisions of this nature alone.

Can he just fold? Without the support of whoever supports him, if he decides to fold, alone, he’ll be replaced or assassinated or otherwise incapacitated. Does he have the power to fold if he did just take a stand? I’m unsure what the Ukrainian constitution says or of how it will be effected by martial law.

I don’t know why or how you interpreted what I said as meaning that Ukrainians

can’t be trusted because ‘they were brainwashed by the CIA’[.]

I said it is difficult to parse what Ukrainians want i.e. from what I am told Ukrainians want. The means of information distribution are not owned and controlled by ordinary Ukrainians. Further, almost all the press to which I have access is western; it doesn’t even pretend to be Ukrainian although it frequently pretends to speak for them. They know what they want; I’m just not privy to that information.

On this topic, more broadly, I can recommend a book called Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti. It’s similar to Manufacturing Consent but in my view significantly better because it begins with concrete analysis and moves towards a theory of the political economy of news media whereas Herman and Chomsky begin with a model and set out to illustrate it’s truth.

Starting an analysis of what Ukrainian people think by relying on outputs that are owned and controlled by particular interests (frequently US/western bourgeois interests, inside and outside Ukraine) will not explain what ordinary Ukrainians want. This does not mean that Ukrainians don’t have a view or can’t be trusted to decide their own fate.

I said that Ukraine deciding on it’s own isn’t an option because it’s materially not an option. The west and Russia are already involved. Zelensky cannot do what he wants or what he thinks the majority of Ukrainians want because and for as long as NATO is running the show. To paraphrase a famous quote, we make history but not in conditions that we choose. It seems idealistic to suggest that Ukrainians can just decide what they want to do and have it happen. It also seems idealistic to suggest that Ukrainians would all think the same.

You’ll also note that I said, to quote:

I do not think that Russia should decide what happens in Ukraine. That’s for Ukrainians to decide.

And I reiterated:

…in Donetsk and Luhansk; that should be for the people of Donetsk and Luhansk to decide[.]

I don’t know what you’re referring to in relation to ‘smaller Russian republics’, I’m afraid. You’ll have to be specific and I would have to do some research. If you’re trying to probe my view on self determination, I’m in favour of self determination but it’s problematic to suggest that the future of any region should be determined exclusively by and for a single ethnicity.

If I wasn’t clear, the concept of an ethnostate is or is dangerously close to being fascist; the idea of breaking up Russia into states along ethnic lines is fascist. In the inverse, this might also apply if Russia expelled all ethnicities other than ethnic Russian from the annexed regions of Ukraine, for example. We’ll have to see how that plays out in the short, medium, and long term.

Before asking me another question, I’m going to say that it feels like you’re asking loaded questions and misinterpreting me to try to catch me out. I’m not going to play along for much longer if it continues.

Those Ukrainians don’t just ‘feel’ Russian they are Russian. They are ethically Russian and Russia issued hundreds of thousands of passports in the region a while back. The idea that someone can only be one ‘nationality’, etc, is a rather US way of looking at things. Loads of countries accept dual citizenship. I also reject the framing that insists or implies that Ukrainians must be of one ethnicity. That concept of an ethno-state is aligned with fascism.

FWIW I do not think that Russia should decide what happens in Ukraine. That’s for Ukrainians to decide. Unfortunately, it’s hard to parse what Ukrainians would want because the US is and has been heavily involved in manipulating politics, the press, and popular opinion. In that case, I kinda reject the question of whether Russia should have a say: the only two current options are who should decide between Russia and NATO. Ukraine deciding on it’s own isn’t really an option.

It’s also tricky now because the separatist regions appear to have not only separated but also joined Russia. This could’ve been avoided if Ukraine had granted those regions more autonomy, as they agreed in Minsk II. As it is, the question now might be ‘Should Russia decide what happens in Russia?’ The lawyers will have fun working whether the law supports that. The answer isn’t clear.

My view would still be no, not in Donetsk and Luhansk; that should be for the people of Donetsk and Luhansk to decide—if they’re part of Russia and Russia was concerned with their autonomy, Russia can still grant it where Ukraine wouldn’t.

This is all rather idealist, though. Only in communist countries do the ‘people’ decide what happens.

It’s also still a warzone dominated by Russia; there will be an internal struggle between Russian factions. I’m not overly optimistic, considering Spain and Catalan, Britain and Wales, Scotland, and NI, and Kurdistan to Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, the US to Hawaii and Puerto Rico, to name a few similar situations.

Do you think the US should decide what Ukraine does because it’s decided that it’s okay to sacrifice Ukrainians to achieve its geopolitical goals?

This seems to be a poorly framed question. A big portion of the Ukrainian population is Russian. What does it mean for Russia to meddle in that context?

The lengths they’ll go to ensure that losing a password never has to mean losing data again.

Good points. I also wouldn’t be opposed to accepting that capitalists in Russia would/will try to become imperialistic in the monopoly of finance capital sense. In the one hand, the logic of capital might force their hand. On the other hand, capitalists are gonna capitalist, in part because they fetishise the hoarding of wealth like everyone else living under capitalism.

Whether Russian imperialism becomes a realistic possibility, though… I’d be interested in seeing some stats on that, interpreted in light of the idea that the next type of multipolarity will be quite different to the one at the turn of the twentieth century. Ig if anyone’s done that leg work it’d be Michael Hudson but I’ve not come across it if he has.

I don’t know what you think I’ve been trying to say. And I don’t know what you’re trying to say.

No idea what you think I’ve been trying to say, here, I’m afraid.

The source says, to repeat:

… the refusal of Ukraine to implement the provisions of Minsk 2 ….

What Russia did in response would be in Russia’s statement. But here the writer is reporting that Ukraine refused to implement Minsk II.

If your link is only a translation of the agreement, it won’t say anything about who violated it, so I’m unsure what good it does to comb through it. I don’t see how the clauses are relevant without a factual chronology from after it’s signing, such as the one in my link. I’ll note that I’m happy to be presented with contrary evidence but also note that the source I provided is from Yale university—hardly a pro-Russian outlet.

Here’s a Reuters link for anyone who doesn’t want to open the PDF (I can’t confirm they’re both the same or if this one’s as faithful translation): https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-are-minsk-agreements-ukraine-conflict-2021-12-06/

There is now a reply. I don’t want to shock you, so make sure you’re sitting down: in no way does the source support the view that Russia sought:

The return of Ukraine in its entirety to the russian nation for one.

Here is the quote, to save you scrolling up:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220308032650/http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67903 Parts to note:

“I would like to emphasise once again that our men and officers are fighting in Ukraine for Russia, for a peaceful life for the citizens of Donbass, and for the denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, so that no anti-Russia, which the West has been creating for years right on our border, can threaten us, including with nuclear weapons, as has recently become the case.

The pictures I’m taking about have been taken and shared since the invasion. This is not ‘historical’ in the sense of pre-dating the invasion.

In any event, if the people you’re talking to are discussing reasons for the invasion, the salient facts are the ones that pre-date the invasion. Nobody had the benefit of being able to see facts or pictures taken after the invasion before it occurred; these newer details could not have factored into the equation beforehand. Which may explain (I have no idea because you’re talking in the abstract and not providing receipts) why people would bring up the (highly relevant) historical context.

Ukraine is under martial law. Eleven opposition parties have been suspended. The communist party was banned and it’s assets seized. This is not what democracy looks like. It is in no way pluralist. Maybe you have a different definition of pluralist democracy than I do.

Will things improve after the war? It’s hard to say now but considering that Ukraine went after the communist party eight or more years ago, it’s unlikely. The fate of ‘pro-Russian’ parties depends on who wins the war. They’ll either be demonised or praised for being ‘right all along’. You can guess how the narrative will be rewritten, either way.

Unfortunately, the aftermath of this war will be terrible for years. That outlook is even bleaker if Ukraine loses with any kind of quasi-military intact. They are now even more heavily armed than before, they will be pissed at losing, and they will be more battle hardened than ever. So even if Russia wins, the political landscape will look different throughout the region, but it’s unlikely to become a pluralist democracy. (Please notice the ‘ifs’ in this paragraph, I have made no prediction as to who will ‘win’.)

You can refer to whatever you like. You are imputing motive on people for saying things you don’t like. That does not mean that the imputed motive is the real motive. Some people have a more nuanced take on the war than you are willing to accept. Having a nuanced understanding of a complicated issue requires an understanding of as many factors as possible.

Looking at a process (e.g. war) in all its relations (internal, historical, political economic, to start with) is the basic Marxist approach and yet is alien to the liberal/bourgeois approach, so I understand if this is unfamiliar to you. If you want to see whether communists do this kind of thing with any other topic (it’s literally every topic) please pick up almost any Marxist text. Marx’s ‘Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ is a good example of this ‘historical materialism’.

I don’t want to impute motive to you, so I’ll just say that I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to erase or apologise for the fact that Ukraine had and has a Nazi problem. Nobody that I know of is claiming that the Nazis are in control of every state civil or military organ. Usually, the claim is that the yanks funded anti-Russian, pro-west separatists and the Nazi militias to provoke Russia. Read that how you will.

I have no idea what timeline you’re working with. The US was meddling in Ukraine since at least 1994. This ramped up in 2005. It supported a coup in 2014. Then the civil war started. The US was involved from before and throughout.

The Minsk II thing is in the link:

More than anything else, it was the refusal of Ukraine to implement the provisions of Minsk 2 – especially the provision that would give the predominantly Russian-speaking regions a special constitutional status – that caused Russia to threaten military action against Ukraine. Time after time in recent weeks, Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov made it clear in meetings and press conferences that the key to resolving the situation in and around Ukraine was the full implementation of Minsk 2, and many hoped the Normandy format meeting of representatives of the leaders of the four countries in Berlin on Feb. 10, two weeks after they had met in Paris for eight hours, would produce enough progress toward the full implementation of Minsk 2 to ward off the threat of a Russian invasion.

I’m glad you’ve brought that up. Because it, too, suggests that Russia invaded Georgia for the same reason: yank meddling and provocation:

Though Georgia is located in a region well within Russia’s historic sphere of influence and is more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, Bush nevertheless launched an ambitious campaign to bring Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Russians, who had already seen previous U.S. assurances to Gorbachev that NATO would not extend eastward ignored, found the prospects of NATO expansion to the strategically important and volatile Caucasus region particularly provocative. This inflamed Russian nationalists and Russian military leaders and no doubt strengthened their resolve to maintain their military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. …

Amid accusations of widespread corruption and not adequately addressing the country’s growing poverty, Saakashvili himself faced widespread protests in November 2007, to which he responded with severe repression, shutting down independent media, detaining opposition leaders, and sending his security forces to assault largely nonviolent demonstrators with tear gas, truncheons, rubber bullets, water cannons, and sonic equipment. Human Rights Watch criticized the government for using “excessive” force against protesters and the International Crisis Group warned of growing authoritarianism in the country. Despite this, Saakashvili continued to receive strong support from Washington and still appeared to have majority support within Georgia, winning a snap election in January by a solid majority which – despite some irregularities – was generally thought to be free and fair.

Now where have we seen that kind of thing before—I mean since?

Bush was also involved in provoking Russia in Ukraine, btw, before his eventual successor went ahead and pulled the same stunt again, knowing what the result was in Georgia:

In remarks likely to infuriate the Kremlin, Bush said Ukraine should be invited during this week’s Nato summit in Bucharest to join Nato’s membership action programme, a prelude to full membership.

He also said that there could be no deal with Moscow over the US administration’s contentious plans to locate elements of its controversial missile defence system in eastern Europe.…

Bush said after talks … in Kiev[:] “I strongly believe that Ukraine and Georgia should be given MAP [Membership Action Plans], and there are no tradeoffs - period.”…

Germany and France are leading opposition from within the EU to such a move, arguing that it would needlessly antagonise Russia and provoke a new crisis between Russia and the west. …

In central Kiev, several hundred protesters defied a court ban and shouted anti-Nato slogans in Independence Square, the focal point of the 2004 pro-western “orange revolution” protests, which swept Yushchenko to power. A few thousand protesters were massed in the square today ahead of Bush’s arrival. For many Ukrainians, joining Nato is not a priority. Only 30% of respondents in the former Soviet state support the move.

Who knows why Germany and France changed their tune by the time it came to Ukraine a few years later? We know why Ukrainians wanted the yanks to gtfo; they saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want to be sacrificed for US goals. Unfortunately, corrupt officials sold the people out.

Turns out it’s hard to point to a war that doesn’t have grubby US fingerprints all over it.