Introduction by Roger Annis, Aug. 30, 2014
Enclosed below is my reply to a published comment by Australian socialist Chris Slee concerning my article of June 18, The Russia as ‘imperialist thesis is wrong and a barrier to solidarity with the Ukrainian and Russia peoples.
Panicked threats by NATO countries have mounted in the past 48 hours due to significant reverses suffered by Kyiv’s military offensive against the people of eastern Ukraine. Those reverses are blamed on an alleged Russian “invasion” of Ukraine by troops and tanks.
This is the latest in a long string of claims that Russia has “invaded” or otherwise intervened in Ukraine. This time, Kyiv is using an invasion claim to appeal to NATO for deliveries of armaments. Some of Kyiv’s representatives, including in Canada, are asking for NATO soldiers to land in Ukraine and join Kyiv’s war in the east. This is another example of the surrender of Ukraine’s national sovereignty undertaken by this regime that came to power in Kyiv in February 2014. Already it has surrendered Ukraine’s economic sovereignty by virtue of the economic austerity and loan agreements it has signed with Europe.
NATO has already taken advantage of the war crisis in Ukraine to position more soldiers and equipment in neighbouring, eastern European countries. This is a further step in its historic goal of weakening and dismembering first the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation.
Alec Luhn reports in The Guardian today from Novoazovsk. That’s the town near the Russian border that set off NATO’s propaganda panic when self-defense fighters took control of it two days ago. Luhn writes:
As Ukraine’s president told an EU summit in Brussels that there were now “thousands” of Russian troops operating in his country, they had all but disappeared from view in the eastern town that has been the flashpoint for invasion claims.
Novoazovsk, not far from the border with Russia and miles away from other areas controlled by separatists, was captured by an armoured column on Wednesday evening that appeared to cross from Russia, and there were several reported sightings of similar “little green men” to those who appeared prior to the annexation of Crimea: well-equipped troops without insignia who appeared to be from elite Russian units immediately stood out from the ragtag fighters of the separatist militias.
On Saturday, however, there was no sign of these troops in or around the town, as rebel fighters settled in and the green men apparently retreated.
Here is an example of the kind of reporting which mainstream media is typically providing these days, consisting of rote repetition of whatever stories that Kyiv’s propaganda service concocts and then providing qualifiers that no photos or other evidence is available to corroborate Kyiv’s claims. From a Reuters article dutifully published today in the Globe and Mail, headlined, ‘Ukraine says Russian tanks flatten town’:
Ukraine said Russian tanks had flattened a small border town and pro-Russian rebels had made fresh gains in its east…
Russia has repeatedly dismissed accusations from Kiev and Western powers that it has sent soldiers into its neighbour, or supported pro-Russian rebels fighting a five-month-old separatist war in Ukraine’s east. But Ukraine military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists in Kiev that Russian tanks had entered the small Ukrainian town of Novosvitlivka on the border with Russia and fired on every house. “We have information that virtually every house has been destroyed,” Lysenko added, without giving details on when the reported attack took place.
All this should serve as a reminder to antiwar forces of the demobilization and disorientation that is caused by the mistaken thesis of Russia as an ‘imperialist’ power with imperial ambitions over Ukraine. NATO and the clique of billionaires that presently govern Ukraine are the source of the present war in eastern Ukraine. Russia, a middle capitalist power with its own interests and ambitions, neither wanted nor provoked the war in eastern Ukraine.
A week of anti-NATO protest has begun in Britain on the occasion of the summit meeting of NATO to take place in Wales on Sept 4 and 5. You can read all about this week of events on the website of Stop the War. Events include a street march on August 30 (photo above) three-day ‘Counter-Summit’ on Aug 31-Sept 2. You can watch the video of an Aug 27 public forum of Stop the War in London discussing the situations in Ukraine and in Palestine and the Middle East. One of the presenters at the forum is Russian socialist Boris Kagarlitsky:
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By Roger Annis, posted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Aug 29, 2014:
Chris Slee’s commentary posted to Green Left listserve ten days ago against my original article arguing why Russia should not be considered to be an imperialist power is welcome. The international left needs some vigorous debate and exposé of this and related issues.
That said, I am unconvinced by his argument. Here is a brief rejoinder.
Finance capital
Let me start this reply with a contextualization. Chris writes, “Roger Annis argues that Russia cannot be imperialist because of the alleged weakness of Russian banks”. The precise nature and role of Russia’s banks is only part of my argument, and I don’t say they are “weak” I said they’re not in the same league as those of the big imperialist countries.
Chris’ argument elevating Russia’s Sberbank into the league of imperialist banking outfits is not sustained by the numbers. The Canadian Banking Association places Sberbank at #54 of the 150 top banks in the world by assets in 2012. SNL Financial gives it the same ranking in 2013. Contrary to Chris’ claim that Sberbank rivals the large European banks, it is a minor player, one quarter the size of the largest German, UK and French banks and only half or less the size of the largest banks of Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and even Sweden. It’s smaller than Denmark’s largest bank and smaller than the top four Australian banks.
The only other Russian bank in the top 150 is VTB at #92. By contrast to the Russian banks, Brazil’s Banco do Brasil comes in at #45. The next largest Brazilian bank comes in at #55, and the next two come in at #65 and #74. So would Chris’ criteria have us elevate Brazilian banks into the ‘imperialist’ ranking?
In that case, we would also need to elevate the Korean banks. There are seven in the top 111, according to the CBA.
Singapore comes in with three banks in the top 100. Hmm, this is getting out of hand. India comes in with two banks in the top 147. Obviously, banking assets alone do not provide the definitive criteria we seek.
Military alliances
Let’s move on to another important criteria that I listed in my article to characterize imperialist countries—the tight military and espionage alliances which characterize them. Most readers of this commentary will be familiar with the NATO and SATO military alliances. There are a host of additional, lesser-known military alliances through which the imperialist countries rule the world. NORAD and ANZA come to mind, and there are lots more.
To the directly military alliances we can add the decades-old ‘Five Eyes” spying alliance, of which most of us only became aware thanks to the valiant work of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and other members of their team. And there are the economic clubs, notably the G7, as well as the big financial institutions such as the IMF where decisions are made on how the world is to be run.
To the formidable array of powerful military alliances, Chris would have us consider a rival “imperialist” alliance of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This is not convincing. He says, “Obviously this alliance is much weaker than NATO”. That’s an understatement, but there is something else at play which likewise makes a comparison between the two inappropriate. The Russian-initiated alliance is dedicated to national defense, not to predatory expansion. It’s not in the same universe, leave alone league, as the NATOs of the world.
As an alliance for national defense, the member countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation present a formidable military obstacle to the imperialists. That narrow aspect of the alliance is a good thing for the workers of the world. Yes, any capitalist military alliance that can be wielded against working class rebellions bodes badly for workers and farmers, but such is the complexity of the dialectic that CSTO embodies contradictory dynamics. A rival to the real imperialist alliances CSTO is not.
Social consensus
Chris has omitted any rejoinder to my argument, inspired by the research of Sam Williams, that the relative social and economic status of the different social classes in a given country is an important measure of its imperialist status or not. The per capita personal wealth of Russian people is only a fraction of that of the people of imperialist countries, placing Russia in the league of countries such as Brazil and South Korea. This has not unimportant political consequences for the dynamic of the class struggle in imperialist versus non-imperialist countries. In their home countries, the imperialist ruling classes obtain a degree of middle class and working class consensus for capitalist rule by virtue of the material stake that those secondary tiers of social classes acquire through their pension plans, ownership of real estate, stock market investments and a host of other webs.
Export of capital
Chris has declined to comment on my comparison of the degree and proportion of the movement of capital in and out of Russia compared to imperialist countries. The relatively low level of capital export by Russia is another factor weighing against a definition of Russia as ‘imperialist’.
Industry and agriculture
I am hoping that researchers more qualified than I will examine and publish the characteristics and dynamics of the Russian economy. I believe these will confirm my argument and that of others that Russia is a middle capitalist power, not an imperialist one.
One of these characteristics is the very great dependence of Russia’s economy and state budget on the export of natural resources.
Another is the relative underdevelopment of Russian agriculture. A comparison of agricultural production between imperialist Canada and Russia is very striking. The two countries resemble each other a great deal geographically. But whereas Canada exported $46 billion in agricultural products in 2013 (Statistics Canada), the comparable figure for Russia in 2010 was $6 billion. That same year, Russia imported $31 billion in food products; for Canada in 2013 it was $35 billion. Even accounting for the different years and possibly different measures, the figures describe two very different realities. Russia’s population is four times that of Canada’s.
An examination of the technological levels of Russia’s industry and manufacturing will likely show similar, large gaps with its imperialist rivals.
I can’t help but conclude that Chris’ argument is based on a flawed methodology. He begins with an assertion that Russia is ‘imperialist’ and then proceeds to find proof, rather unsuccessfully as it turns out. A more rigorous Marxist approach would be to examine Russia free of pre-determined conclusion and then see what the facts tell us. I believe I have done that more successfully than Chris.
By Chris Slee, posted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Aug. 21, 2014:
I have argued in an earlier article that Russia is an imperialist power. My reasons included the growth of Russian monopoly capitalist corporations, their increasing investments in other countries, Russia’s domination of the now formally independent countries that were previously part of the Soviet Union, the presence of Russian military bases in many of these countries and in Syria, etc.
Roger Annis argues that Russia cannot be imperialist because of the alleged weakness of Russian banks. He quotes Sam Williams, who says: “The countries that are richest in finance capital – not necessarily richest in industrial capital – are the imperialist countries that economically exploit all other capitalist countries in the world…
“What is the relative position of Russian banks today? If Russia today is not only capitalist, which it indeed is, but also imperialist, we would expect Russian banks to be increasingly prominent in the world, since the ‘great’ universal banks are the most important organizations of finance capital. The publication Global Finance lists the world’s 50 biggest banks as of 2012 in terms of assets. Despite the size and natural wealth of Russia, not a single Russian bank appears on the list…
“According to the Jan. 31, 2014, Wall Street Journal, based on assets of the world’s 100 biggest banks, only two Russian banks, OAO Sberbank and OAO VTB, appear. The come in at number 54 and 94, respectively. Sberbank evolved from the old Soviet savings bank system – in Russian, Sberbank means savings bank. Even today, 51 percent of its stock is owned by the Russian central bank, which itself is state owned. According to Wikipedia,, the Russian Federation state owns 60.9 percent of OAO VTB. While both banks today are universal banks, they are still quasi-state enterprises”.
Russian finance capital started from a low base, due to the collapse of the Russian economy in the 1990s (a collapse brought on by “shock therapy” – the economic policies adopted in order to intimidate and atomise the working class so that it would be unable to successfully resist the restoration of capitalism).
However, the Russian economy has been recovering in recent years, and finance capital has been developing very rapidly. Michael Probsting has documented this in detail (see www.thecommunists.net/theory/imperialist-russia). I will merely discuss the specific case of Sberbank.
Today Sberbank is the 33rd largest bank in the world, according to “The Banker” magazine. (The figures cited by Williams put Sberbank a bit further down the list. I am not qualified to judge whose figures are the most accurate, or the most relevant.)
According to The Banker, Sberbank is the third largest bank in Europe, and the biggest in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Sberbank is extending its influence beyond Russia. In 2011 Sberbank acquired an Austrian bank (Volksbank International AG) which owned banks in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Ukraine, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. (source: Wikipedia) In 2013, Sberbank bought a Turkish bank.
Wiliams seems to think that partial state ownership of the Russian banking system is somehow incompatible with Russia being an imperialist power. This is not the case.
In Australia, the Commonwealth Bank, which used to be wholly owned by the federal government, was the biggest bank in the country, and there were also several banks owned by state governments. This did not prevent Australia from being an imperialist country. (The government owned banks were privatised with the onset of the neoliberal era)
Russia is a relatively weak imperialist power, but one which is seen as a potential challenger by the longer established imperialist powers (especial the United States and Western Europe).
The US and the European Union have been trying to draw the countries of Eastern Europe (including Ukraine) into their orbit. Russia has been trying to counter this. Russia tried to draw Ukraine into the “Eurasian Economic Community”, a grouping of former Soviet states led by Russia. The overthrow of the Yanukovich government by Western backed forces prevented this from happening.
Williams argues that because Russia does not have a system of military alliances comparable to Western alliances such as NATO, it cannot be an imperialist power. In fact, Russia has initiated the Collecitve Security Treaty Organisation, which includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. ( See www.thecommunists.net/theory/imperialist-russia)
Obviously this alliance is much weaker than NATO. But this just reflects the fact that Russia is a relatively weak imperialist power.
What are the implications of this analysis for the struggle in Eastern Ukraine?
Recognizing Russia as an imperialist power does not mean dismissing the “anti-Maidan” forces in Eastern Ukraine as agents of Russian imperialism. Boris Kagarlitsky’s most recent article ( http://links.org.au/node/ 4008 ) makes it clear that while the Russian state is trying to control the movement, it has not up to now been totally successful. The movement includes diverse forces, and there has been a “growing political radicalisation within the movement”, with calls for the nationalisation of the property of oligarchs, and for reforms in the interests of workers. The Russian government has been using the threat of withholding aid as a lever to impose a more rightwing leadership.
This is exactly the sort of thing you would expect an imperialist power to do.
