[Marxism] Socialist Policy in World War Two

[G K Milner]

Dear Luko,
                 I don't think we are really in disagreement.   I did state 
in my last message that I thought World War Two was 'at root' an 
inter-imperialist war.   But the existence of the USSR as a workers' state 
and the embroilment of that state in the war would inevitably affect the way 
socialists viewed the war as a whole.

I met a young member of the old pro-Moscow Socialist Party of Australia, 
while I was selling the newspaper of the socialist group I supported back in 
the 1980s (before the emergence of Gorbachev), and he offered the 
observation to me that he saw World War Two as 'mainly a German-Russian 
war'.   I essentially agreed with him, and said so.   When you look at the 
titanic forces involved in the struggle between the Nazi imperium and Soviet 
Russia, it is tempting to put into perspective the fighting everywhere else, 
including in North Africa and in the Pacific.   Trotsky once described 
Hitler as the equivalent of a 'super Wrangel of the world bourgeoisie' 
(Baron Wrangel being one of the most ruthless and unpleasant commanders of 
the White, counter-revolutionary armies that attempted to destroy the Soviet 
power during the Civil War).   There were of course contradictions between 
the imperialist powers, but they all agreed on the desirability of 
destroying the USSR.   In a certain sense Hitler was doing a job for the 
entire world bourgeoisie by invading and attempting to destroy the Soviet 
Union.   I think that this is what Trotsky meant.   Paradoxically, the 
beneficiary of the conflict between the Western imperialist and Axis powers 
for economic and military/political supremacy was, as Trotsky predicted, the 
world revolution (including the survival and entrenchment of the USSR).

As I have stated before, I consider that the defeat of fascism, the survival 
of the USSR, the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, and the boost to 
decolonisation around the world that these outcomes all contributed to,  are 
indices of a weakening of imperialism globally that was the result of World 
War Two.

In solidarity,

Graham Milner

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lüko Willms" <lueko.willms at t-online.de>
To: <gkmilner at eftel.net.au>
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 10:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Socialist Policy in World War Two