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Some events become iconic when they are subsequently seen as a representative summation of a new turning point in social, economic or political developments. The fall of the Berlin Wall is one example. It symbolises the collapse of Stalinism in Russia and Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War framing of world power relations as that between competing social systems: capitalism in the West, and the non-capitalist Stalinist states of the East.

The rotting of the Stalinist regimes under the internal contradictions of totalitarian rule – the mirror opposite of workers’ democracy – had been an extended process as the bureaucracy moved from being a relative to an absolute fetter on the economy and society. But that did not diminish the significance of the November 1989 drama. And while it too is the product of underlying and ongoing processes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 will also come to be seen as another pivotal moment in history.

Already the war, however it finishes, has upset the global architecture of treaty organisations, diplomatic conventions and so on built up over the past 30 years. This international machinery was either remoulded from institutions of the Cold War era (GATT became the World Trade Organisation, for example) or superseded them (the G7 and G20, the International Criminal Court, the COP climate summits). Together they constituted the means by which the conflicting interests of the world’s most powerful capitalist nation states (and the formally ‘non-market economy’ Chinese regime) were mediated in the post-Stalinist world.

HANNAH SELL assesses what impact the war in Ukraine will have for the already tenuous position of British capitalism internationally and domestically, faced with the prospect of economic recession and political representatives viewed with historic levels of distrust.

While the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s regime has been watched in horror by working-class people in Britain as in other countries, the UK prime minister Boris Johnson has led the global charge by capitalist politicians to cynically use these events to try and consolidate his position. Before the invasion Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative Party was hanging by a thread as the Partygate revelations piled up. He has successfully used Ukraine to gain a little breathing space, but none of the problems facing Johnson, his party, or British capitalism have been solved. 

Nor, other than the short term distraction they have so far provided, will events in Ukraine assist Johnson. His crass comparison between the Ukrainian resistance and the vote for Brexit is just one more example of his populist approach, where he is often prepared to disregard the interests of British capitalism, prioritising instead shoring up his own short-term base. In an increasingly fractious world, with a war taking place less than two thousand miles from Britain, the majority of the UK’s capitalist class would clearly rather have a more reliable representative than Johnson.  Many would prefer the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who has used the war to once again demonstrate what an eminently safe pair of hands he is for British capitalism.

Putin’s brutal regime emerged in conditions of economic anarchy as a new capitalist class was forming amidst the collapse of the previously planned economy. PETER TAAFFE reviews a recent book that graphically describes what happened.

Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West

By Catherine Belton

Published by William Collins, 2021, £9-99

Catherine Belton, a former Financial Times journalist, has written a most devastating critique about the rise and consolidation of the state-capitalist Putin regime, following the collapse of Stalinism in the early nineties. This book is essential reading for all those who wish to understand exactly how Vladimir Putin, a very minor KGB official originally, with his roots in Stalinism, was able to construct what is now in effect a ‘mafia state’ – but on a gargantuan scale compared to the Italian mafia – and which has led to the terrible devastation in the Ukraine.

She correctly describes in the most lurid detail how the “original KGB” was able to transform itself from part of the rotten Stalinist bureaucracy into a capitalist state machine. In effect, the old KGB has been able, through Putin and his branch of the Stalinist secret police based in Leningrad-St Petersburg, to carry through the biggest robbery of productive forces in history after the collapse of Stalinism. This KGB state, grouped around the Leningrad siloviki (strong men), managed over a period to concentrate power and a considerable amount of the productive forces into their own hands.

The radical journalist Paul Mason has attempted to produce a left-wing defence of the NATO alliance of Western capitalist powers. TONY SAUNOIS, secretary of the Committee for a Workers’ International, responds.

The brutal war in Ukraine, like all wars, has posed crucial issues for the working class in the sharpest way. 

Wars and revolutions are the greatest tests for Marxists and the working class. Unfortunately, many socialists, when confronted with either of these two historic processes, have failed the test. Many abandoned an independent programme for the working class and echo the ideas of the ruling class. The response by many on the left to the current bloody war being fought in Ukraine is no different.

In the first instalment in the new Introduction to Marxism series in Socialism Today, ROBIN CLAPP looks at the underlying fundamental philosophy of Marxism, the ideas of dialectical materialism.

The 21st century has not brought prosperity and security to the vast majority of people on planet earth. Capitalism, fuelled by the profit motive has led to an ever-spiralling wealth gap between mega-rich multi-billionaires and the rest of us, unsurpassed in modern human history. In an Oxfam report published in 2019, just 26 people owned as much as the poorest 50% of the world’s population.

Many millions know that capitalism isn’t working for them, but the question of whether there is an alternative and if so, how it can be built, is the burning issue. The pitiful response to capitalism’s failures from political parties that in the past claimed to support the working class and stand for socialism, means that the starting point for all those entering struggle today – to defend jobs and services, fight for genuinely affordable homes, oppose privatisation of health services, education and public utilities, and combat climate change, racism, sexism and all forms of oppression – is what ideas do we need to build the fightback and construct mass workers’ parties that can overthrow this system?

The purpose of this article is to examine and explain the philosophy of Marxism – dialectical materialism. It will demonstrate that being angry at all the injustices of capitalism is not enough. Having a philosophy that can correctly interpret world events and the stages of the class struggle is indispensable for channelling anger into effective action.