Anti-Imperialism

[The Machine]

I guess my question is pretty simple: why should workers support the underdogs in capitalist wars and give their so called critical support to tin pot despots?*

What happened to the old communist line about opposing war because the worker\\\'s struggle was internationalist and war only meant workers on both sides dying for the rich to get richer. What happened to No War but the Class War? Nowadays it seems like it No War but the Anti-Imperialist Struggle In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Cuba.

*Edit: I know the answer is the New Left and the Cold War, it\'s a rhetorical question.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

They shouldn't support despots anywhere. Where do you think this is happening?

[Sasha]

a.o. on this board, there are plenty of misguided souls here who sometimes even go as far as making "anti-imperialism" their stated ideoligy... most of them identify also as anti-revisionist marxists which is extra precious considering its about the most un-marxist position to have, propping up reactionary and fuedal dictatorships who opress the local workingclass...

[Rooster]

"anti- imperialism" usually takes the form of opposition to large capitalist countries, usually the US. This mostly entails support of national capitalists for whatever reason. It's not like there's a nation on earth that can compete with the US on military terms. Real anti-imperialism is socialism. Where did this come from? Probably from a superficial reading of Marxist literature I imagine. Or just a general anti-american sentiment.

[islandmilitia]

I guess my question is pretty simple: why should workers support the underdogs in capitalist wars and give their so called critical support to tin pot despots?*

What happened to the old communist line about opposing war because the worker\\\'s struggle was internationalist and war only meant workers on both sides dying for the rich to get richer. What happened to No War but the Class War? Nowadays it seems like it No War but the Anti-Imperialist Struggle In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Cuba.

*Edit: I know the answer is the New Left and the Cold War, it\'s a rhetorical question.

It is actually very problematic to say that the early Marxist (or communist) tradition opposed all war but "class war". Marx and Engels were unequivocal in their support for the North in the American Civil War even though they had no illusions about whether that war would be able to grow into a socialist revolution or the bourgeois character of its leadership. Their basis for supporting the North was that the abolition of slavery would provide a basis for accelerated capitalist development, and as a result would ultimately aid the cause of socialist revolution. So, we shouldn't try and characterize the early Marxist tradition as having anything in common with bourgeois pacifism.

That specific rationale, about encouraging capitalist development, is no longer directly applicable, given that the entire world has been integrated into a single capitalist economic unit, through the destruction of pre-capitalist social formations, and on the whole we can say that both Marx and Engels were not able to predict just how complex and uneven capitalist development would turn out to be. However, the experience of the American Civil War is still relevant to more recent conflicts where a clash of non-proletarian actors is at stake (say, wars in Iraq) because in these different contexts we are still dealing with basically the same theoretical issue, which is that class struggle is a complex process that does take place under reformist and bourgeois leaderships, and which also takes forms other than workers simply going on strike or occupying their factories. In other words, the basis for offering critical support to anti-imperialist struggles is that the victory of those struggles provides a basis for the further radicalization of class struggle within the oppressed nations and also imposes shocks and crises on the capitalist world-system that have the potential to intensify contradictions inside the imperialist countries, particularly in terms of undermining the mechanisms for the co-option of First World labour. That victory for national liberation struggles has this radicalizing potential is supported by history - for example, the defeat of Portuguese colonialism in African provided the basis for a revolutionary situation in Portugal itself in the mid-1970s.

The fact that these struggles are so often led by vacillating leaderships and even by existing state apparatuses is why it is so important for revolutionaries to support wars against imperialism at the same time as maintaining their political independence, which means not making ideological concessions to the leaderships, and instead exposing the ways in which leaderships do not carry wars against imperialism to their full conclusion. A comparison can be made between this experience and trade union struggles - revolutionaries still support strikes even when they are led by trade union bureaucrats because we recognize their fundamentally progressive character, but we do so at the same time as seeking to shape these struggles from within and push them in a more revolutionary direction.

[Homo Songun]

While Karl Marx isn't the final word on anything, it is interesting to read what he did have to say on the matter of national liberation. In addition to the non-socialist struggle in the U.S., he supported the national movements in Poland and Hungary. Writing at the time that Poland was an oppressed nation, he said:


For the peoples to be able truly to unite, they must have common interests. And in order that their interests may become common, the existing property relations must be done away with, for these property relations involve the exploitation of some nations by others: the abolition of existing property relations is the concern only of the working class. It alone has also the means for doing this. The victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie is, at the same time, victory over the national and industrial conflicts which today range the peoples of the various countries against one another in hostility and enmity. And so the same time the he last to wish for its restoration. But it is not only the old Poland that is lost. The old Germany, the old France, the old England, the whole of the old society is lost. But the loss of the old society is no loss for those who have nothing to lose in the old society, and this is the case of the great majority in all countries at the present time. They have rather everything to gain by the downfall of the old society, which is the condition for the establishment of a new society, one no longer based on class antagonisms.

Of all countries, England is the one where the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The victory of the English proletarians over the English bourgeoisie is, therefore, decisive for the victory of all the oppressed over their oppressors. Hence Poland must be liberated not in Poland but in England. So you Chartists must not simply express pious wishes for the liberation of nations. Defeat your own internal enemies and you will then be able to pride yourselves on having defeated the entire old society.

Clearly, in the case of a conflict between the Polish and English bourgeoisies, Marx would say that the English working class movement should do more than simply abstain or express "pious wishes"; rather, they should work to undermine their own "internal enemies", in this case, the English bourgeoisie. Engels was even more succinct, as in when he famously said that "no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations." And if a colonial agenda of capital expansion and resource extraction in foreign lands isn't oppressive, then I don't know what is.

Of course the dialectical relationship between the advanced bourgeoisies and the toilers of the oppressed nations has continued to develop since Marx's day. By Lenin's time, it was apparent that the revolution would not happen wherever the proletariat was strongest, but wherever the (by this time, imperialist) bourgeoisie was weakest. The weak spot was due to the contradiction between labor and capital that Marx speaks of, but also due to the emerging contradictions between different blocs of capital, and moreover between the blocs of capital and the colonial and dependent nations that the imperialists are continually compelled to expand into in order to maintain their super-profits.

Obviously in 1917 this weak spot was manifested in the Russian empire. Nowadays it is in the global south in general. It is an important distinction that has much relevance to how the labor movement in the imperialist countries should orient itself for power in the face of their own ruling classes' compulsion to expand outwards. As Stalin said,


Formerly, the national question was regarded from a reformist point of view, as an independent question having no connection with the general question of the power of capital...Now we can say that this anti-revolutionary point of view has been exposed. ... the imperialist war and the revolution in Russia have confirmed, that the national question can be solved only in connection with and on the basis of the proletarian revolution, and that the road to victory of the revolution in the West lies through the revolutionary alliance with the liberation movement of the colonies and dependent countries against imperialism ... Hence the necessity for the proletariat of the "dominant" nations to support -- resolutely and actively to support -- the national liberation movement of the oppressed and dependent peoples.

The real take away from all this is that the working class in the imperialist countries has something to gain from seeing their own bosses fail. You don't even need to turn to "the classics" for proof this though. It is elementary logic that (1) if the richer your bosses are, the stronger they are, and (2) the stronger they are, the harder they will be to beat then (3) We should support outcomes that tend to weaken them, if we want to beat them.

[Sasha]

There is a distinct difference between protesting, even sabotaging your countries imperialists war efforts & standing in solidarity with the people under attack and declaring bourgeois capitalist despots like sadam and ghadaffi "proletarian hero's"...

[Homo Songun]

There is a distinct difference between protesting, even sabotaging your countries imperialists war efforts & standing in solidarity with the people under attack and declaring bourgeois capitalist despots like sadam and ghadaffi "proletarian hero's"...

The crimes of a Moammar Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein type figure would be tiny drops in the ocean of the Dutch ruling class' crimes. Don't even bring up the English. So they are indeed proletarian heroes in comparison, albeit heroes made entirely of straw, since nobody has actually alleged this. Quotation marks notwithstanding!

[bcbm]

The crimes of a Moammar Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein type figure would be tiny drops in the ocean of the Dutch ruling class' crimes. Don't even bring up the English. So they are indeed proletarian heroes in comparison

erm no i don't think this is how it works.

[black magick hustla]

national liberation is a fairytale. in the cold war, it usually meant that the bosses from the periphery chose either china or the soviets as their new capitalist masters. with the end of the cold war, however, most of the "armed national liberation movements" just turned into murder gangs without really any sort of cohesive ideology, or into backwards fundamentalism.

[Homo Songun]

erm no i don't think
Leaving out the latter parts of sentences, fun for the whole family. Nice try tho

[bcbm]

Leaving out the latter parts of sentences, fun for the whole family. Nice try tho

the rest of your sentences didn't matter for the point i was making but i guess that went over your heard nice try tho

[gorillafuck]

a.o. on this board, there are plenty of misguided souls here who sometimes even go as far as making "anti-imperialism" their stated ideoligy... most of them identify also as anti-revisionist marxists which is extra precious considering its about the most un-marxist position to have, propping up reactionary and fuedal dictatorships who opress the local workingclass...eh, anti-revisionists usually call the people who state their ideology as anti-imperialism "khrushchevites"

I think it's fairly obvious that in the long term national liberation did not work out, and Africa is still subservient. capitalism etc.

[tachosomoza]

Bourgeois is bourgeois, oppression is oppression, I don't care if it's in the United Kingdom or some dude in the Congo who wants to chase the Belgians out so he can exploit the resources for himself.

[#FF0000]

i basically just hope america loses every war

[The Intransigent Faction]

"In the epoch of imperialist wars there must be parties steeled to resist all jingoism and patriotism, to proclaim the slogan 'Turn the imperialist war into a civil war'."-V.I. Lenin

Not just a localized national civil war, either, but one that spread across boundaries.

Isn't it logical for workers at both ends in an imperialist war to take that advice---not just workers in the U.S., for instance? Is that not what we, as communists, aim for?!

"Workers of the world, unite!" NOT "Workers and national bourgeoisie unite!"

We are materialists, not opportunistic pragmatists who limit ourselves to what appears "realistic" within the confines of bourgeois society because "oh but a proletarian revolution in this other country just won't work yet. we need to support their bourgeoisie".

[Homo Songun]

"In the epoch of imperialist wars there must be parties steeled to resist all jingoism and patriotism, to proclaim the slogan 'Turn the imperialist war into a civil war'."-V.I. Lenin

Not just a localized national civil war, either, but one that spread across boundaries.

Isn't it logical for workers at both ends in an imperialist war to take that advice---not just workers in the U.S., for instance? Is that not what we, as communists, aim for?!

lol, you are quoting without understanding. If Lenin said that, it was in reference to the Central Powers versus the Allied Powers, not Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia.



"Workers of the world, unite!" NOT "Workers and national bourgeoisie unite!"


Prepare to be scandalized, because Lenin's actual formulation was "Workers and Oppressed Peoples and Nations of the World, Unite!"

But I think you knew that already, troll harder.

[Rafiq]

Stop with moral bullshit, please. Whatever undermines the interest and position of the class enemy, not "Durrrrr X are being oppressed come on guyz MORALS!". This tends to vary. There can not be a consistant position here.

[islandmilitia]

There is a distinct difference between protesting, even sabotaging your countries imperialists war efforts & standing in solidarity with the people under attack and declaring bourgeois capitalist despots like sadam and ghadaffi "proletarian hero's"...

Firstly, what meaningful currents on the left refer to people like Gaddafi as "proletarian heroes"? In fact, when appropriate, Leninist revolutionaries have identified and emphasized the complex class character and centrist activity of national liberation movements. In his summary on the debate around self-determination Lenin explicitly recognized that the Easter Rising in Ireland was led by the petty-bourgeoisie in combination with the working class, rather than having any illusions about it being a working-class revolution, and later on (in the Comintern theses on colonial questions) he explicitly warned against revolutionaries giving a "communist coloring" to national liberation movements - so at least when it comes to Lenin's own politics you can hardly say that he ascribed working-class politics to national liberation movements when that wasn't appropriate.

Secondly, it's all very well talking in general terms about solidarity with "the people", but politics is about being concrete, and general slogans are not enough - solidarity has to mean recognizing that defeat for the imperialist power is in the interests of all working people around the world in any situation of national oppression, regardless of whether that defeat comes in the form of a victorious socialist revolution, the victory of a broad national liberation movement in a situation of classical colonial oppression, or the military victory of an existing bourgeois state in an oppressed nation against the military apparatus of an imperialist power. If you limit solidarity to general declarations, or limit solidarity to forms of resistance that accord with a strict vision of communist politics, you are not recognizing the unconditional legitimacy of all forms of struggle against imperialism, you are ignoring the progressive character of defeats for imperialism.

[Geiseric]

This shit hasn't worked for the past hundred years, when will people get the clue?

Popular Frontism with the bourgeoisie DOES NOT WORK for Socialism. Fucking drop it, there's no point even discussing this anymore.

[The Machine]

They shouldn\'t support despots anywhere. Where do you think this is happening?

The PSL and pretty much every other ML party talk about the \"resistance\" to US Occupation in Afghanistan as though they are workers movements and the \"right of national determination\" of Ghadafi, North Korea, Iran, like the workers of the world actually do have a country or something.

[ckaihatsu]

"In the epoch of imperialist wars there must be parties steeled to resist all jingoism and patriotism, to proclaim the slogan 'Turn the imperialist war into a civil war'."-V.I. Lenin


'Revolutionary defeatism'.

[The Intransigent Faction]

lol, you are quoting without understanding. If Lenin said that, it was in reference to the Central Powers versus the Allied Powers, not Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia.

I don't remember saying Lenin would not advocate national liberation. What I did say is that the logic shown in his quote, about turning imperialist wars into civil wars, should be applied more generally by those truly committed to overthrowing capitalism. An alliance with national bourgeoisie is not a solution. Instead however, MLs insist on throwing their support behind nationalistic dictators just because they happen to be targets of NATO.


Prepare to be scandalized, because Lenin's actual formulation was "Workers and Oppressed Peoples and Nations of the World, Unite!"

Good for Lenin. And? If you read it's clear I was speaking of the aim of modern communists (and Marx, by the way), not what Lenin advocated.


But I think you knew that already, troll harder.

Oh, I'm trolling? Lol, whatever.

[Positivist]

Well for starters even if Lenin literally said, "Gadhafi is a boss, " should we just accept it without examining the situation for ourselves? The class struggle is not as simple as bourgiose of our nation vs everybody else, we can't just promote whoever isn't our immediate exploiter. Even if you refuse to examine this in a moral light, the conclusion remains the same. For socialism to work it needs to be established globally, and it can only be established globally if all exploitive regimes are crushed, not just the ones in our backyard.

[Threetune]

Well for starters even if Lenin literally said, "Gadhafi is a boss, " should we just accept it without examining the situation for ourselves? The class struggle is not as simple as bourgiose of our nation vs everybody else, we can't just promote whoever isn't our immediate exploiter. Even if you refuse to examine this in a moral light, the conclusion remains the same. For socialism to work it needs to be established globally, and it can only be established globally if all exploitive regimes are crushed, not just the ones in our backyard.

Neat. However, the imperialists in “our back yard” are the ones in everyone else’s “back yard”, front garden, kitchen and every other aspect of life, or should that be death. The same can’t be said of national bourgeois resistance to that same imperialism can it?

So, being as US and European imperialism is the greatest danger to most workers on the planet, it makes perfect sense to agitate for the DEFEAT of that gigantic international monstrosity first and foremost. Trying to argue some “moral” equivalence between the two only serves to whitewash over the ‘amoral’ imbalance of power.

EDIT: BTW Just for the record, Lenin never did say anything about any national bourgeois being “boss” ever.

[Ocean Seal]

There is a distinct difference between protesting, even sabotaging your countries imperialists war efforts & standing in solidarity with the people under attack and declaring bourgeois capitalist despots like sadam and ghadaffi "proletarian hero's"...
This is what I never get. Why does it matter what we think of Qaddafi? Its not like thinking that he's a supercool guy is somehow going to slow down class struggle in Libya. What is going to slow down class struggle is when people like you suggest that intervention could potentially be useful. Remember "I won't shed any tears if the US takes out its mad dog (Kony)".

Anti-militarism= anti-imperialism in practice.
Just stand against the war effort and you'll be fine.
There are reasons for anti-imperialism in theory, but I won't get into them now, as it seems quite useless.

[Thirsty Crow]

Stop with moral bullshit, please. Whatever undermines the interest and position of the class enemy, not "Durrrrr X are being oppressed come on guyz MORALS!". This tends to vary. There can not be a consistant position here.
Again with your moral phantoms. How you don't get tired of this chorus is beyond me.
The class enemy is international. Though, we should also remember that this class enemy is riven with its own conflicts - it's not a homogenous political or economic body. Therefore, what is really at stake is not some moral position, but rather the basic class line - no support for the bourgeoise. For instance, throughout history you can observe the shifts in imperialsit power relations. What interest could the global working class take in the remaking of this balance of power in favor of one bloc or nation-state different from the current hegemonic power?
And there can be a consistent position, that is, if you don't view imperialism as a characteristic of only certain bourgeois states or blocs. It's the class position and the position of revolutionary defeatism (implying class solidarity, class fraternization and internationalism). That's how a line can also be drawn between consistent revolutionaries and opportunists.



So, being as US and European imperialism is the greatest danger to most workers on the planet, it makes perfect sense to agitate for the DEFEAT of that gigantic international monstrosity first and foremost. Trying to argue some “moral” equivalence between the two only serves to whitewash over the ‘amoral’ imbalance of power.

And lend support for a bourgeois political reshuffling. Lend support for the formation of different impeialist blocs. Since it's out of the question that these same national bourgeoisies who're not currently in other people's back yards would crush any proletarian political autonomy and class struggle.

You people are just amazing. And curiously naive, at best, and reactionaries at worst.

[Threetune]

And lend support for a bourgeois political reshuffling. Lend support for the formation of different impeialist blocs. Since it's out of the question that these same national bourgeoisies who're not currently in other people's back yards would crush any proletarian political autonomy and class struggle.

You people are just amazing. And curiously naive, at best, and reactionaries at worst.

Now look how Marx dealt with the hideous bloody Indian mutiny, in the New York Daily Tribune. He puts the boot into the Brits of course. Anti-imperialism!
“… As Delhi has not, like the walls of Jericho, fallen before mere puffs of wind, John Bull is to be steeped in cries for revenge up to his very ears, to make him forget that his Government is responsible for the mischief hatched and the colossal dimensions it has been allowed to assume.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/16.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/16.htm)

[Positivist]

Neat. However, the imperialists in “our back yard” are the ones in everyone else’s “back yard”, front garden, kitchen and every other aspect of life, or should that be death. The same can’t be said of national bourgeois resistance to that same imperialism can it?

So, being as US and European imperialism is the greatest danger to most workers on the planet, it makes perfect sense to agitate for the DEFEAT of that gigantic international monstrosity first and foremost. Trying to argue some “moral” equivalence between the two only serves to whitewash over the ‘amoral’ imbalance of power.

EDIT: BTW Just for the record, Lenin never did say anything about any national bourgeois being “boss” ever.

Yes I realize that Lenin did not advocate any nationalist bourgiose. I was simply satirizing the course of this argument which has been more dependent on what Lenin or Marx may or may not have said rather than what is rational or ethical from our own perspective. And of course I long for the defeat of western imperialism but not by third world despotism! I believe in a socialist revolution coordinated across national boundaries, and when there are anti-imperial struggles waged not in socialist interests but rather in the interest of another bourgiose, then they are a waste of human life that I cannot possibly endorse.

[Threetune]

There is a distinct difference between protesting, even sabotaging your countries imperialists war efforts & standing in solidarity with the people under attack and declaring bourgeois capitalist despots like sadam and ghadaffi "proletarian hero's"...

Oh, protesting and sabotaging the imperialist war efforts now? Is that what you (psycho) are now recomending at last for the DEFEAT of imperialism?

[Geiseric]

There is an intense misunderstanding of what Lenin said on this thread, his actions say the opposite of what people on here said he believed.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

Capitalism can't sustain itself without imperialism, therefore, yes, socialists should be avid anti-imperialists.

[Sasha]

This is what I never get. Why does it matter what we think of Qaddafi? Its not like thinking that he's a supercool guy is somehow going to slow down class struggle in Libya. What is going to slow down class struggle is when people like you suggest that intervention could potentially be useful. Remember "I won't shed any tears if the US takes out its mad dog (Kony)".

Anti-militarism= anti-imperialism in practice.
Just stand against the war effort and you'll be fine.
There are reasons for anti-imperialism in theory, but I won't get into them now, as it seems quite useless.


Oh, protesting and sabotaging the imperialist war efforts now? Is that what you (psycho) are now recomending at last for the DEFEAT of imperialism?

Yawn, you are all really fond of taking shit out of context huh...

[Threetune]

Yawn, you are all really fond of taking shit out of context huh...

Now that is rich coming from one of the most practised dissemblers on the site, claiming that Lenin personally ordered the assassination of the Tsar and his family and laughably being unable to stand up the story.

So, popping up again when a principled anti-imperialist arguments starts gaining ground, insinuating that Leninism ‘supports’ national bourgeois leaders when anyone who has bothered to study would know that the main focus is always on the DEFEAT of imperialism as Lenin argued against Rosa Luxemburg, here:

“A difficulty is to some extent created by the fact that in Russia the proletariat of both the oppressed and oppressor nations are fighting, and must fight, side by side. The task is to preserve the unity of the proletariat’s class struggle for socialism, and to resist all bourgeois and Black-Hundred nationalist influences. Where the oppressed nations are concerned, the separate organisation of the proletariat as an independent party sometimes leads to such a bitter struggle against local nationalism that the perspective becomes distorted and the nationalism of the oppressor nation is lost sight of.”Lenin (Conclusion, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination.)https://epress.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ch10.htm (https://epress.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/ch10.htm)
Just substitute Russia of 1914 with USA anytime after WWII for example.

There is no “declaring bourgeois capitalist despots like sadam and ghadaffi "proletarian hero's"...” in the Leninist world outlook. The whole story is just made up to poison the water and confuse the ignorant about Lenin and Leninism. It is the essence of anti-communism.

[Thirsty Crow]

Now look how Marx dealt with the hideous bloody Indian mutiny, in the New York Daily Tribune. He puts the boot into the Brits of course. Anti-imperialism!
“… As Delhi has not, like the walls of Jericho, fallen before mere puffs of wind, John Bull is to be steeped in cries for revenge up to his very ears, to make him forget that his Government is responsible for the mischief hatched and the colossal dimensions it has been allowed to assume.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/16.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/16.htm)
And the purpose of bringing this up, other than blatantly evading my points, is...?
I mean, it goes without question that I think communists should oppose the dominant imperialism. But to reiterate, to believe that somehow certain bourgeois states' rise in the imperialist network, at the epense of others, will allow for better conditions for the working class - global in nature - and for class struggle, this is just absurd.

[ckaihatsu]

I mean, it goes without question that I think communists should oppose the dominant imperialism. But to reiterate, to believe that somehow certain bourgeois states' rise in the imperialist network, at the epense of others, will allow for better conditions for the working class - global in nature - and for class struggle, this is just absurd.


I support the line that you're being dismissive of, the 'anti-imperialist' line.

The best way I can think of putting it is that there are certain "realpolitik" situations *forced on us* by capitalist geopolitics, and if we don't have a strong-enough solidarity and upsurge to challenge the world's bourgeoisie (in their various nation-states) at once then we are having to deal with them on the *defensive*, on a back-foot.

It helps the proletariat if there is *in-fighting* among their ranks, so we would rather see national self-determination, as for Syria, than to be ultra-left and call for immediate world revolution, given the prevailing conditions.


Political Spectrum, Simplified

http://postimage.org/image/35tmoycro/

[black magick hustla]

3 M vietnamese died so that white ppl can buy ho chi minh keychains from street vendors. poor lumumba, killed to soon to see what happened

[Threetune]

And the purpose of bringing this up, other than blatantly evading my points, is...?
I mean, it goes without question that I think communists should oppose the dominant imperialism. But to reiterate, to believe that somehow certain bourgeois states' rise in the imperialist network, at the epense of others, will allow for better conditions for the working class - global in nature - and for class struggle, this is just absurd.

You are right, it is absurd, but who apart from you is saying it?