As forces loyal to the Libyan revolution and its leader Colonel Gadaffi continue to fight on against the NATO-led onslaught on Tripoli, the imperialist nations and their hangers-on have rushed forward to ‘recognise’ the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC) as the ‘legitimate’ government of Libya.
More than 40 governments around the world are hailing them as the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people.
Both the Stalinist leaderships of Russia and China have yet to declare that they officially recognise the NTC but it can only be a matter of hours or days before they come out openly as supporters of counter-revolution.
Their support for imperialist war against the Libyan people has been clear right from the outset.
This was demonstrated when both abstained on the crucial vote at the United Nations back in March to impose a ‘no-fly’ zone over Libya and enforce it with the full might of NATO aircraft and navy.
Both Russia and China wield a decisive veto, a vote against by either would have ensured the defeat of Resolution 1973 and made it impossible for the imperialists to attack Libya under the cloak of UN authority.
By abstaining, they guaranteed its passage and were complicit in the 20,000 murderous sorties carried out by NATO and still going on.
At the time, the Russian Stalinists attempted to justify their abstention calling it a ‘victory for diplomacy…which has averted a military invasion with ground forces – the original intention of the countries which proposed the measure’.
How cynical and hollow this claim sounds today when it is openly acknowledged that UK and French forces have been active on the ground all along and that without them the so-called ‘rebels’ would have collapsed months ago.
Adopting the lying rhetoric of the imperialists, the Stalinist leadership of the Russian Federation banged on about the need to protect civilian life – only making vague and ineffectual protests about the thousands of Libyan civilians killed and maimed by NATO airstrikes – and called for peace talks with the rebels.
This position hardened at the G8 summit at the end of May when president Dmitry Medvedev openly lined up with the imperialists and endorsed the call for Gadaffi to leave office saying that he ‘had no future in a free, democratic Libya. He must go’, while in August he signed a decree fully backing Resolution 1973.
Last Wednesday, Medvedev completed this betrayal when he announced that the Russian Federation would establish formal relations with the NTC if they were able to ‘unite the country for a new democratic start’.
The Chinese Stalinist leadership have played exactly the same counter-revolutionary role.
This week their Foreign Ministry issued a similar call, implicitly recognising the NTC.
They said: ‘China respects the choice of the Libyan people and hopes that the situation there will quickly return to stability’.
What the Ministry didn’t say was that on several occasions recently the bureaucracy has hosted meetings with leaders of the NTC in Beijing.
The role played by the Stalinist bureaucracy over Libya graphically demonstrates that Stalinism remains the main counter-revolutionary force internationally.
From building ‘socialism in one country’ the Stalinist bureaucracies are attempting to restore capitalism in Russia and China.
‘Peaceful co-existence’ with imperialism means, as it has always done, actively betraying the world revolution and full support for every imperialist adventure.
They are acutely aware that the world socialist revolution will bring with it the political revolution in the degenerated and deformed workers states and sweep the Stalinist bureaucracy into the dustbin of history.
The urgent task is to build revolutionary parties of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Russia and China to lead the coming political revolution.
