In 1916 Lenin set the two errors side by side in a single sentence: “Capitalism has triumphed—therefore there is no need to bother with political problems, the old Economists reasoned in 1894-1901, falling into rejection of the political struggle in Russia. Imperialism has triumphed—therefore there is no need to bother with the problems of political democracy, reason the present-day imperialist Economists.”
The present-day imperialist economists were Nikolai Bukharin and P. Kievsky, who was Yury Pyatakov. Their position was that since imperialism was capitalism’s highest stage, democratic demands including national self-determination had become historically obsolete, so supporting national liberation movements was naive at best and reactionary at worst, because such movements inevitably served one imperialist power or another. The real work was organising the working class for socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries.
Lenin answered in three articles across 1916: “The Nascent Trend of Imperialist Economism”, “Reply to P. Kievsky”, and “A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism”. The argument he made there is the one that decides the Ukraine question now, and it decides it against the people who think they are being the most rigorous.
What was actually at stake in 1916
The years from 1914 to 1916 put European socialism through its worst crisis since the Paris Commune. The Second International had collapsed into competing national chauvinisms, and the war had exposed the inadequacy of pre-war socialist positions on both imperialism and national liberation. Rethinking was necessary. The question was in which direction.
The Bukharin and Pyatakov position had the appearance of rigour, which is what made it attractive then and makes its descendants attractive now. Lenin’s charge against it was that it repeated the error of the economistic tendency of 1894 to 1902: reducing political questions to narrow economic calculation, and losing sight of the concrete work of building revolutionary consciousness and organisation. He called it just as complete a misinterpretation of the relationship between socialism and democracy as the earlier version.
His positive statement is the load-bearing one: “All ‘democracy’ consists in the proclamation and realisation of ‘rights’ which under capitalism are realisable only to a very small degree and only relatively. But without the proclamation of these rights, without a struggle to introduce them now, immediately, without training the masses in the spirit of this struggle, socialism is impossible.”
Rights that cannot be fully delivered under capitalism are still worth fighting for, because the fight is what trains the people who will need to do something harder later.
Why self-determination, specifically
Lenin’s case for the right of nations to self-determination was not about producing more nation-states. It was about the conditions for international solidarity.
National oppression divides the international working class in a way that serves the ruling class on both sides. Workers in an oppressor nation who believe they gain from their own government’s colonial expansion are less likely to make common cause with workers from the oppressed nation. Workers in the oppressed nation, facing national persecution on top of economic exploitation, have every reason to distrust a socialist movement that treats their oppression as a side issue.
Supporting the right to self-determination is how socialists in an oppressor country demonstrate that they oppose every form of imperialism and not only the economic kind. That demonstration is what makes voluntary unity possible afterwards.
And the right is tactical rather than absolute. Lenin was explicit: “The national question is always subordinate to the class question.” The objective is not endless fragmentation, but unity has to be voluntary and based on real equality, which rules out continued domination by the formerly oppressive power.
Two worked examples, and they point opposite ways
Ireland, 1916. The Easter Rising was dismissed by some European socialists as a putsch and a petty-bourgeois movement without enough proletarian content to deserve support, and the case against it was strengthened, in their eyes, by the Irish nationalists having accepted German aid. Britain’s imperial rival was funding it, so it was German manipulation.
Lenin’s answer went to effect rather than composition. The rising “delivered a blow against the power of the English imperialist bourgeoisie”, whatever its class make-up and whoever had helped. Expecting a “pure” social revolution was “a fundamental mistake”, because real liberation movements arrive with “the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices” attached. He granted the premise about the aid, and said it changed nothing: imperialist powers will “utilize any national and revolutionary movement in the enemy camp”, and that tactical fact does not cancel the political significance of a genuine liberation struggle. The test is objective effect, not the motives of the donor or the ideological purity of the recipient. The American revolutionaries took French aid.
Serbia, the same war. Formally the case looks similar. Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia; Serbia had real grievances and a long history of struggle against Ottoman and Austrian domination; national defence appeared to be exactly what was happening.
Lenin said no, and the reason was structural rather than moral. The war was not isolated. It was the “prologue to a universal, European war” of “clearly pronounced imperialist character”, and the national phraseology was a “fable” used to mobilise popular support for an inter-imperialist fight over territory and plunder.
Put together, the two cases produce three questions, which are the practical content of the whole framework:
Is the struggle primarily about overthrowing an immediate oppression, or about serving great power competition?
Does the movement keep genuine political independence, or does it function as a proxy?
Can success reasonably be expected to advance democratic rights and working-class interests?
Ukraine, run through the same questions
Russia’s stated aim is re-establishing imperial control over territory it regards as historically subordinate to it. Its ideological justification denies that Ukraine is a real nation at all, calling it a creation of Lenin and describing its people as fit only for prostitution and cleaning toilets in Europe. That is the Great Russian chauvinism Lenin spent his life attacking, restated almost without modification.
On independence, the Trump test answers it. If Ukraine were simply a US proxy, its resistance should have folded when Trump demanded territorial concessions and threatened to cut aid. It did not. Ukrainian determination held while American policy moved around, which is what political agency looks like from the outside.
On external aid, this is Ireland and not Serbia. Ukraine takes military assistance from NATO powers and keeps its own political goals: territorial integrity, democratic development, European integration. Those are Ukrainian objectives, not American ones. The aid enables resistance to an immediate oppression rather than advancing a wider conquest.
On class dynamics, the resistance includes substantial working-class participation and has strengthened democratic organisation inside Ukraine rather than weakening it. Its central demand is the end of a foreign occupation, which is a democratic task.
Three questions, three answers, and none of them requires any enthusiasm for NATO.
What contemporary imperialist economism looks like
It has a different vocabulary from Bukharin’s and the same logic: reduce a political question to economic determinism, evade a concrete solidarity task by restating it as an abstract theoretical one, and arrive at inaction that is presented as the more radical position.
The practical failure is visible whenever conditions move. Static frameworks collapse when an imperial power reverses itself, which leaves an organisation either defending an obsolete analysis or adjusting its positions in step with ruling-class politics rather than its own principles. The Trump reversal demonstrated both responses inside a fortnight.
The alternative method is dialectical and it is not comfortable: support democratic struggles while maintaining political independence from every imperial power. Support Ukrainian resistance and oppose NATO expansion. Back Palestinian liberation and criticise authoritarian allies. Defend Cuban sovereignty and support internal democratisation. Each pairing looks like a contradiction only if you have accepted that there are two camps and you must be in one.
Five commitments this implies
Principled solidarity. Support liberation struggles against immediate oppressors regardless of which powers happen to be supplying aid, or which theoretical tendency happens to agree with you. The criterion is the objective effect on democratic rights and working-class organisation.
Concrete analysis. Examine the specific conditions of each struggle instead of applying a formula. Distinguish genuine liberation movements that keep political independence from proxy forces, and accept that this distinction can change as conditions change. Lenin’s phrase is concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
Democratic struggle. Treat support for democratic demands as strengthening socialist organising, because it is what builds the international trust and the working-class confidence that revolutionary transformation requires.
Theoretical flexibility. Build frameworks robust enough to survive changing conditions without abandoning principles, avoiding both rigid formulism and opportunistic adjustment.
Historical consciousness. Read the old debates, so as not to re-run errors that were identified and answered a century ago. This one was answered in 1916.
What follows
An organisation that cannot take a position on a concrete liberation struggle will be absent from the movements that are actually reshaping world politics, and its absence will be experienced by the people in those movements as a judgement about them.
Supporting Ukrainian resistance against Russian colonialism is what makes an anti-imperialism credible, because it demonstrates that the opposition is to imperial domination as such rather than to Western imperialism specifically. That credibility is the asset. It is what liberal hawks who support imperialism when it suits them do not have, and what selective anti-imperialists do not have either.
The choice in front of the left now is the one Lenin’s generation faced in 1916, and the reversal of the last year has already shown which answer does not work.
Strategic takeaway: three questions decide whether to back a liberation struggle. Is it about overthrowing an immediate oppression or serving great power competition? Does it keep its own political independence? Would its success advance democratic rights and working-class organisation? Ukraine passes all three, and answering them does not require picking a camp.
Related Reading:
Deep Dive Podcast: “The Trump Test: Campism, Pseudo-Anti-Imperialism, and the Need for Revolutionary Internationalism”: Listen Now: How Trump’s Ukraine Flip-Flop Exposes the Left’s Analytical Crisis
Learning from Defeat: Celebrating 140 Years of Irish Socialism and the Method of Open Marxism : On the 140th Anniversary of the Dublin Socialist Club
Yes, Marxism Predicts. No, That’s Not What Makes It Valid.: Red Mole’s End of Year Editorial
Falsification Exposed: AWL Distorts Mandel’s Anti-Stalinist Record: Part 1: Responding to the AWL’s Distortions of Ernest Mandel
How Ted Grant Mistook Bureaucratic Capitalism for Socialist Transition, and Disoriented a Generation of Trotskyists: The Ghost Ship Fallacy