Should I quote Lenin in Socialism and the War and Imperialism: the Latest Stage of Capitalism, on that? Do I need to remind comrades that Lenin saw Tsarist Russia as a nascent imperialist state with a mix of feudal colonial elements and modern imperialist elements all that tied to it being dominated by British and especially French capital? The excuses then that today’s Russia, an advanced capitalist state with sizeable capital export and control in its immediate region (larger than under Tsarist Russia to be noted), is therefore not imperialist is lazy. We must remain consistent. We must remain scientific, but very importantly we must remain clear eyed: The fact that the current war is an inter-imperialist one does not mean that we must ignore that the primary aggressor is undeniably western imperialism and its war dog the NATO “alliance”.

We indeed must remain scientific. That requires us to consider things that happened post-1924. This idea of labelling Russia imperialist, a shaky argument to being with, and then asserting that this makes the sides similar enough to not proclaim support is little more than idealism.

If we’re throwing out quotes, let’s also being in Stalin, Litvinov, Molotov. Why are we even pretending war between capitalists is happening for the first time since 1918, why are we ignoring the monumental though largely fruitless efforts of the USSR to rally the imperialists against Nazi Germany? Why pretend we’ve never allied ourselves with the US and UK when so many people’s movements received assistance from them, even if for the purpose of fighting their enemies?