Capitalism and Socialism.  12 17 2025

There is a brewing conflict about whether or not to have capitalist assistance, in tandem with taking part in their governments.  We have seen Boris Yeltsin basically completely  removed worker owned property, leaving only Belarus with a socialist government.  His handpicked successor Vladimir Putin, who came to power in 2000, has been a little better, but it was a form of capitalist assistance when he helped Alexander Lukashenko stay in power when capitalists were running in the streets trying to stop socialism.

Which directly goes to the issue of capitalist assistance.  I guess it may have been a concession to keep Lukashenko in power? Putin would come to attack Ukraine, first from Belarus. 

It was not as successful as Russian efforts in the Donbas have been, where Putin is winning against the American and western European bourgeoisie.  The first invasion targeted the capital Kyiv, where Vladimir Zelensky fought and slowed the progress of Putin. 

NATO and the Americans are capitalists, and they  are already carving up Ukraine’s mineral wealth,  claiming the spoils before the end is reached.  Trump has claimed large mineral deposits in Ukraine.  

It might be there?  Apparently there are rare earth metals underground, and Trump wants the profits to pay for the war effort against Russia.  Believe it or not,  after 20 years of war in Afghanistan, in what was a loss for NATO and the Americans, Ukraine is becoming too costly, 

Well when missiles valued at $10,000 a pop are being shot to stop missiles from entering the Ukraine by NATO, it’s not hard to see how even with American deep pockets, the war is not sustainable forever. 

Trump has said Europe needs to spend more, shouldering most of the burden of fighting Russia.  The long range ballistic missiles at Moscow are coming from Ukraine, who get them from NATO.  Not only did NATO not reduce missile numbers after the Cold War ended,  they are now shooting these drones and missiles at Moscow, albeit with limited success.

Have we really come full circle?  There were pacifists who wanted to end the Iron Curtain, who supported rapprochement to stop nuclear weapons.

Well the long range missiles Ukraine is using are coming from America, Britain, Germany and France.  Many of them were designed to use nuclear warheads.. Russia shoots most of them down; they have defenses for this. But how did we get to this point? 

Trump has stopped short of  calling it ”Biden’s war”, or the “Democrat war “.  But it looks like Trump is ready to lose another war, like Afghanistan.  Biden inherited that one; Kabul was failing badly under Trump, Biden saw the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.  Ukraine may be forced to give  up about a quarter of their territory, or risk losing all of it to Putin’s Russia.  It is difficult to see how one could call this some sort of victory for NATO.

But unfortunately one has to see that Putin represents Russian capitalists; he may not own much property, or the means of production in the form of stocks, bonds,. etc., but is insured wealth if he leaves power by the same bourgeoisie he spent his time supporting under Yeltsin.  

He could help out socialism, but it probably  requires a concession.  For Lukashenko it was allowing for Russia’s army to use their territory to attack Ukraine.  Zelensky has already asked for nuclear weapons from NATO, the latter seems to be saying no.  A little too close to World War Three?

Cuba has been under embargo again under Biden and Trump.  Obama has loosened the embargo,  but Trump put up the curtain again.  The Cubans do not cooperate with the bourgeoisie, short of allowing tourism from the Canadians.  They are a heroic example of a small country pitted geographically against a capitalist  empire.

Cooperating with capitalists seems to sort of work for China, where there is a Politburo.  Xi Jinping is not a capitalist, but they are present in modern China.  This may be a useful example of cooperation, but the issue of Taiwan, where the Chinese bourgeoisie fled to when Mao Tse Tung completed his Long March, says something else.  Even Putin has joint exercises with planes and ships, under China in the Pacific near Taiwan. Reunification has yet to occur between Taiwan and China. 

In the case of China it looks close to impossible not to cooperate with capitalists, who use China as a production center for massive industry.  Capitalists feel this too, the inability to compromise with socialists. Trump has tariffs on Chinese goods 45%, after threats of 145%.  Who is not getting along with socialists?  Combine this with the embargo, you see both sides agree to disagree.

The difference is the proletariat is represented by socialists, and the workers under capitalism  are often only differentiated by national boundaries, created for the purpose of keeping the working class divided.  The capitalists are fighting to hold down the worker, to maintain wage  labour.

When capitalists fight other capitalists,  it is for control of markets.  Lenin called this imperialism, this is the case. World War one was a conflict of this type, even though Russia had a successful workers revolution, the war was not about this.  That comes later, in the  second world war, with Hitler fighting Joseph Stalin.  

In the last world war the Allied Powers got over their differences for a short time, resulting in cooperation with Russian socialism.  It was short lived; within 6 years Harry Truman, who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt, was fighting in the now free Japanese colony Korea in 1951.  The same man who dropped the bomb on Japanese capitalists cost the Chinese communists  millions of men, in a conflict we are still reminded of 83 years later, the Korea’s are divided. He no longer seemed so cooperative.

Russia is winning the war, and it looks like NATO is retreating.  How much cooperation there will be between Russia’s workers and capitalists when this is done with remains to be seen.  Russia could return to a more worker friendly society, keeping Lenin’s vision of a proletarian society without capitalism possible.  Or something like China, a revolution holding on even with capitalists again present. Or it could crush the last pockets of resistance of the workers, and betray Belarus and China. History will soon determine this.  

Ukraine could be just a foretaste of  what could come if NATO keeps trying to corner Russia.  Expansion through ignorance of workers is the rule, rather than the exception.  Condoning bourgeois rule by a worker shows he is probably ignorant, or selfish trying to make  himself a fortune on the backs of his fellow workers, rather than cooperation and a vision of emancipation of wage labor..  

Nicholas Jay Boyes 

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

12 17 2025