Dave Holmes: Ukraine: US proxy war in crisis

Dave Holmes discusses Ukraine: US proxy war in crisis

Much of the Western left is blinded by the deeply mistaken idea that Ukraine is fighting for self-determination against an attempted Russian takeover. I have taken up this question in a previous article (see Key issues of the war in Ukraine).

Russia is not seeking to take over Ukraine; it wants to secure its neutrality and demilitarisation. After eight fruitless years trying to achieve the implementation of the Minsk accords giving autonomy to the Donbass, Russia intervened in the already existing civil war between Kyiv and the Russia-oriented provinces in the south.

Emphasis Mine

He argues that Ukraine is in a far worse negotiating position than they were in April 2022. Now, Russia is against a freeze or cease-fire given the Russian view that they were deceived over the Minsk accords.

The Russian negotiating position now appears to be capitulation or extinction of the Ukrainian state. Some Russian voices are advocating control of Odesa, Mykilaiv, Dnipro, and Kharkiv oblasts in addition to the five (5) already annexed.

The de-industrialization of the West has weaken its ability to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There is the incredible claim that Russia's military production is currently seven (7) times that of NATO.

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Eric Lee: Ukraine and the world’s unions — the view from Kyiv

Eric Lee discusses Ukraine and the world’s unions — the view from Kyiv

Ukrainian trade unionists cannot understand why some of their brothers and sisters — for example, those in COSATU — who helped bring down a fascist regime in their own country would today be supporting a fascist regime somewhere else. They cannot understand why people in former colonies are not supporting Ukraine in what is clearly an anti-colonial struggle against a brutal, imperialist enemy.

Ukrainian workers and their unions remain defiant. They want and expect their fellow workers and unions around the world to stand with them, in solidarity. It is the very least that we can do.

Emphasis Mine

Lee has forgotten the history leading up to World War 1 in which the international worker solidarity was smashed by nationalism. Megan Trudell writes in Prelude to Revolution: Class Consciousness and the First World War:

Such a cataclysm was bound to create social shock waves that would rock the world’s ruling classes. But it certainly did not appear at the start that revolutions would be a result of the conflict. The strength of nationalist feeling in the first year of the war is an aspect of the war that perplexes many – why was the patriotic frenzy so great and why did so many workers volunteer to fight so enthusiastically? The notion that nationalism is all powerful is often used to bolster the argument that all the ruling class has to do is wave the flag and workers will flock behind it. It is an argument not restricted to the First World War but one encountered during every subsequent war – right up to the modern examples of the Falklands, the Gulf and Bosnia. The question of whether or not nationalism is a more powerful impulse than class identification is therefore utterly bound up with any account of the war.

…

The same period also saw the growth of the national idea in the more established capitalist states, where, for example, a ‘new celebration of British nationalism, with the establishment, for the first time, of a state run educational system that indoctrinated children in the glories of “national” history, the writing of nationalist popular novels, plays, poetry and songs by literary admirers of the empire and the conscious invention of traditions aimed at encouraging popular identification with the monarchy’.

…

In part this enthusiasm was a response to ruling class propaganda about the nature of the war. Every ruling class involved argued the war was one of national defence. Germany was defending itself from Russian aggression, France from German militarism. Britain was defending ‘poor little Belgium’. Each ruling class pushed the idea that there was an outside threat to the democratic rights enjoyed by the nation’s citizens, and in part the response of each country’s working class was an identification with one’s nation and a desire to protect one’s way of life.

But it wasn’t a straightforward calculation on the part of the ruling classes involved. Such had been the scale of domestic crisis in most of the countries involved that it was not at all obvious that workers would respond to the call to arms. In Britain, against a background of social upheaval and a potentially explosive situation in Ireland where the pressure for Home Rule was mounting, the Liberal minister John Morley considered that ‘the atmosphere of war cannot be friendly to order in a democratic system that is verging on the humour of [18]48’. Ruling classes across the globe were in fact astonished by the scale of patriotic zeal. This should not be surprising: nationalism is not simply imposed from above, but has to in some way correspond to existing national sentiments among a section at least of the population – often the middle class – and grips the minds of the masses when other social change seems remote.

It is not simply the case that workers who had fought so hard for social change in the pre-war years suddenly turned their backs on their own struggles and were brainwashed by their respective governments. Much of their motivation can be traced precisely to the holding back, or even defeat, of such social struggles. The vision of war came to seem as if it were an alternative way of dramatically transforming society. Magnus Hirschfeld described the response to the declaration of war as ‘a discharge of tensions that had built up for years’. Ferro argues that the ‘worker of 1914, going off to war, had found a substitute for revolutionary hopes.’ Many workers went to fight with ‘an image of war as the antithesis of the boredom, materiality and mechanisation of every day life’. …

Emphasis Mine

We are seeing the same patterns now. There has been fifty years of retreat of workers' solidarity within countries with the advance of neo-liberalism. And the retreat of international solidarity with the advance of offshoring through globalism, and the refugee crises. Workers are being pitted against each other within countries and between countries.

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Setri and Setiawan: Matriarchal Society in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I discuss a paper by Setri & Setiawan (Matriarchal Society in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd)

Summary

This paper is the first result returned by Google Scholar when I searched by matriarchal society. The lead author has only published one (1) article which is cited mainly by other articles in the same journal. The definition of matriarchal society is based on power distribution.

Abstract

The abstract of the paper says, in part:

…At political level, August character shows as the matriarch or the leader in community with important role for overcoming conflict and decision making process. At economical level, it shows that matriarchal society common practice has right and same position in economic affair and giving gift each other to make the economic condition balance. Last, at spiritual and cultural level, it is described that women characters in The Secret Life of Bees believe in feminine divine which is the Black Mary and doing worship for her. In conclusion, The Secret Life of Bees novel clearly depicts matriarchal society based on the theory of Matriarchy by Heide Göettner-Abendrot.

p. 28
Emphasis Mine

Definition of Matriarchy

The authors use the following definition of matriarchy:

At some points, values in a cultural context define the right and the wrong (Lina & Setiawan, 2017). Further, modern matriarchy is not merely social structure based on maternal lineage; however, it is rather a maternal value as Göettner-Abendroth (2009) stated:

“Matriarchy is mother centered society as the most important function to insure its future. This social system is based on maternal values includes care-taking, nurturing, motherliness, peace-building, in which these hold for everybody for mothers and those who are not mothers, for women and men alike.”

p. 28

In Marxist terms, the authors see a matriarchy centred on the elevation of reproductive labour. From that centering, political power flows to women. The authors (p. 29) see this political power as facilitating consensus-building. The authors (pp. 29-30) see the matriarchical economic system as communism. They clarify this as follows:

Matriarchy social system emphasizes the role of mothers within society who take over all responsible for others include economic needs, social needs, or cultural and politics. It is not just a reversal form of patriarchy in which women ruling over men, however, it is more likely complementary equality between the genders and generations and it is not necessarily need mothers’ biological relation.

p. 30

The authors used behavioural analysis to determine the structure of the society, rather than the flow of surplus value:

In conclusion, in order to know that certain society is categorized as matriarchal society, it is important to observe their behaviors and activity within their community, and then use precise theory as a guidance to find the result.

p. 32

Teta Irama Setri

Google Scholar has Setri at Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia. This author has only published one (1) article of note (the first two (2) entries in the following table from Google Scholar are duplicates):

Title	Cited by	Year
Matriarchal Society in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd TI Setri, DB Setiawan Linguistics and Literature Journal 1 (1), 28-33	494	2020
Matriarchal Society in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Linguistics and Literature Journal, 1 (1), 28–33 TI Setri, DB Setiawan	323	2020
SYSTEMATIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS: TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS ON ONLINE NEWSPAPER TI Setri, DT Erlangga		2023
Presupposition in The Jakarta Post News Article TI Setri, DT Erlangga		2022

Linguistics and Literature Journal

The Linguistics and Literature Journal is not among the top 100 journals according to Google Scholar, nor among the top twenty (20) when searched by the journal name. This journal is published by the same university where the lead author is employed.

Citations

The top thirteen (13) citations are all from the same journal. This paper seems to be a niche article.

References

• Göettner-Abendroth, H. (2009). International Academy HAGIA [Online]. Retrieved from https://www.hagia.de/en/matriarchy/
• Lina, Desma & Setiawan, Dwi Budi. (2017). An analysis of culture shock from west to east as seen in Rielly’s The Tournament. Teknosastik: Jurnal Bahasa dan Sastra, 15(1), 14-20.
• Setri, T. I., & Setiawan, D. B. (2020). Matriarchal Society in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Linguistics and Literature Journal, 1(1), 28-33.

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