Morning Comrades.
I woke up Thursday morning with two notifications on my phone. One said that Russia had invaded Ukraine and the two countries are officially at war. The other notification was from a client saying that the copy I had provided for an advertising campaign was lacking wit.
I think I disassociated for a minute and thought I was going insane.
The banality of existence literally had me floored, and at the time of writing this it still occupies my mind. With all the drastic changes of reality, just in the last 2 years, I still have to get up and work. This dichotomy really is unraveling seemingly solid pieces of reality, as well as my ability to shake it all off and go, “it is what it is, still gotta pay rent my dude”.
With that and despite whatever else I had on my list of topics to go through today - that due to the reality that we, yet again, are at war in Europe, a few words. Whatever else I had planned can wait.
To reiterate Wednesday’s email, fuck war, this one, and all wars except class war. It is beyond comprehension that we are yet again at the point in history where the egos of rich individuals, criminals to be clear, are causing mass scale human suffering, generational pain beyond words and instability when there should be peace. To be even clearer, this is a capitalists war that is being paid for in the blood of our comrades. You and I have absolutely more in common with the Ukrainians now having to flee their country, the soldiers on all sides dying for nothing other than the enrichment and egos of the modern day kings and queens sitting in their thrones. They’re all guilty, every government, no matter the side - as they are all being paid by their bosses. Just look at the profits made on Wall Street today by the biggest arms manufacturers.
I keep coming back to a text written by Alexandra Kollontai in 1915 in response to WW1, that puts all of this and what we can do about it in absolutely brilliant context. I have linked it in the above picture, but here is the part that I specifically mean:
How can we stop the present fratricidal war? What is to be done? There is an answer, and, more importantly, it is one and the same answer for the workers of every country. That answer is as follows: governments may set brother upon brother, a worker from one country against a fellow worker from another country, but the enemy remains one and the same for all workers throughout the world, the interests of the Russian and the German, the English and the Austrian workers are one and the same. In order to achieve peace, the first thing to be done is to bring culprits to book. And who are the culprits if not the tsars and kaisers, together with their diplomats and ministers, all the obedient servants of capital; who else but they are responsible for this bloody catastrophe? Let them answer for their deeds! Away with this worthless government, the patrons of the wealthy moneybags! Away with tsars, kings, emperors, kaisers! Away with their ministers, policemen and corrupt officials! State power should belong to the people! Let he who desires peace, let he who is weary of this criminal war, join the ranks of those fighting not against an external, but against the internal enemy of the people. Let him say to himself: instead of dying for the greater profit of the Krestovnikovs, the Guchkovs, the Morozovs, the Purishkeviches and all their honourable fraternity, I will give my life for the freedom of my people, for the rights of the working class, for the victory of the workers” cause!
My enemy is in my own country, and this enemy is the same for all the workers of the world. The enemy is capitalism, this enemy is the rapacious, corrupt class government. This enemy is the lack of rights suffered by the working class. Comrade worker, a private in the enemy army, I know now that it is not you who are my enemy. Give me your hand, comrade! We are both of us the victims of deception and violence. Our main and common enemy is at our rear. Let us turn our rifles and guns against our real, our common enemies… And then all our brave commanders, field marshals and generals will take to their heels!... Let us each go to war in our own country against our oppressors, let us cleanse our homelands from the real oppressors, let us cleanse our homelands from the real enemies of the people, from the tsars, kings and emperors! And when power is in our hands, we will conclude our own peace over the heads of the defeated capitalists…
As to sides, fuck all sides other than that of your working class comrades. Period. Putin is a crook and murderer, as are all other politicians in play here. They’re all in each others pockets, especially our freedom tooting democrats here in the West. The sheer amount of money so many of them have taken from Putin and his gang is all that needs to be said. Remember how the war criminal Tony Blair tried to rehabilitate Putin while he was mass-murdering everything that moved in Chechnya, how NATO has doubled in size and fought wars, destroyed entire countries to protect their master’s imperialistic greed and so on, the hypocrisy of it all enrages me beyond words. To make matters worse, the humanitarian crisis guaranteed to result from this insanity will be meet by the banality of evil that is the European Union’s borders as well as all of our holier-than-thou Christian Socialist politicians whipping up resentments against ordinary people fleeing war. You know it will happen. With that, take to the streets comrades, let these soulless greedy bloodsucking Capitalists know that we will not fight their wars and that we will stand in unwavering solidarity with all people fleeing their reign of destruction.
I know it can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that *they’re all connected.* So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth. Always remember that, I know I am currently beating that into my head.
And that’s it for now to be honest.
No War But Class War.
Fight Wars Not War.
Yours,
V.