Ukraine: A Left-wing Theory of Victory?
You can’t win a war without a war economy
During the past three months, miners in Volyn have protested against what their leaders allege is management corruption. Nurses in Ivanovo Frankovsk have protested against unpaid wages. At the Lviv academy of Typography students demonstrated against the institution’s closure, as what they say is part of a World Bank-funded asset grab.
Meanwhile in Kryivy Rih, miners at four mines carried on working underground despite the shutdown of electricity supplies, in order to go on extracting ore — and had to be rescued by the authorities.
In short, the class struggle is alive and well in wartime Ukraine; and so is the heroism and self-organisation of its working class.
Resistance to attacks on labour rights have not dimmed workers’ support for the war effort. But as Russia adopts a strategy of humanitarian catastrophe, degrading energy infrastructure to the point where Ukrainian cities become unliveable, we may be approaching a crunch point.
The more Ukraine achieves battlefield success using American military technology and money, the more diplomatic leverage it hands to the Biden administration to determine the conditions of victory.
