Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine, carried out to export gas into Western Europe, caught the WSWS completely off guard. They argued such an invasion was politically impossible only 10 days before the invasion began. They then argued that it would lead to a European and American invasion of Russia itself, supposedly to divide up Russia. That invasion never came.

They base their theories on the false assumption that capitalism does not lead to imperialism. They defend both capitalist governments and imperialism in the Kautskyist or opportunist manner, instead of following the Marxist argument spelled out by Lenin in Imperialism.

Further proof of the collapse of their arguments emerged recently in the rising Ruble. According to the charlatans and frauds at the WSWS, Russia should be nothing but a colony and world imperialism has now erased all internal contradictions. This is just bravado on the part of US imperialist agents. In fact, support for Russia has strengthened the Ruble against the dollar to the strongest point in seven years, even as the dollar rises against other world currencies. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/russian-ruble-now-strongest-against-the-dollar-in-seven-years-despite-sanctions/ar-AAYFyKa)

The WSWS will no doubt come back to the defense of US imperialism and argue Russia merely manipulated the price of the Ruble by backhanded methods. This defense will not hold up. Russia has carried out the destruction of a country on a large scale. This had been the purview of the US and NATO, in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Yemen among others. The defeat of US imperialism in Iraq by Iran and in Afghanistan by the Taliban has forced the US to retreat. So has China in the Pacific. Imperialism has no use for a retreating army, no matter the size or the potential force. They much prefer an active, invading army like Russia’s.

Russia’s destruction of the Ukraine also brought to a halt important exports that contributed to supply chain backlogs throughout world markets. From the point of view of imperialism, these outcomes appear positive. Since, as Marx argued, capital extracts profit at the moment of exchange and not through the production process, all interruption based on war will increase the price of commodities and thereby profit from their sale as well as the value of productive assets, the means of production. From the point of view of imperialism, i.e. the large banks and monopoly corporations, those countries using their military to destroy others should benefit financially, precisely the reward Russia has received in the form of a strong Ruble. Despite talk of sanctions, financial markets have come to Russia’s rescue.

That the economic forces of imperialism run contrary to international law has no effect on those forces since the legal governing bodies themselves serve imperialism. Only a world revolution to replace the old system of nation states with an international network of Peace Communes established by working class revolution can remove the underlying economic incentives for environmental destruction, widespread poverty, and endless war.

As long as the WSWS continues on its trajectory of reinforcing chauvinism, defending capitalism in theory, and rejecting Marxist theory as part of a descent into professional neglect, then they do not set themselves up as future leaders above and at the top of the working class but as a police wall designed to obstruct the workers’ path to power. This leaves Democratic Power with no other choice but to declare the Nanobureaucracy unfit and unprepared for leadership. The construction of a new, replacement leadership can only occur through ceaseless theoretical struggle against the corrupt, bourgeois ideology of the old party Nanobureaucracy.