In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Norway for the fourth time since the beginning of the Russia-NATO proxy war in his country. The two governments signed a joint declaration on defense and security cooperation, which confirmed that Ukrainian drones will be produced in Norway. This did not raise any eyebrows despite the direct connection to the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran: Ukraine has signed defense agreements with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar for the provision of drones. Even CNN noted that “Zelensky demonstrated how the war in Iran and the war in Ukraine interconnect.” CNN advised Washington to not view “the two campaigns as separate.”
This puts—or should put—Rødt, Norway’s main radical left party, in an awkward position. Although the Red Party is against the war on Iran, it enthusiastically supports Norwegian weapon shipments to the Zelenskyy regime. This self-described anti-Imperialist party raised no objections to the joint declaration.
Rødt says that it supports Ukrainians’ right to self-determination. But has the party considered the Ukraine-U.S. Mineral Resources Agreement? This pact established the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund (URIF), jointly managed by the U.S. and Ukraine on a 50-50 basis. Article 6.5 states that future U.S. military support, “in any form (including the donation of weapons systems, ammunition, technology or training),” will be counted as “capital contribution” to the fund based on “assessed value of such military assistance”; which means “assessed” by the U.S. given its leverage. Thus the U.S. share of the fund increases even without money being spent. The joint management ensures tax-free preferential access to American companies, and the Kiev regime has thus potentially set the stage for the largest value transfer to American companies in modern times. The joint management also provides the U.S. with de facto control of investment choices and dividends. In other words, Ukraine is subject to predatory U.S. economic control. Not surprisingly, the URIF’s first investment supported a drone manufacturer, satisfying imperialist needs.
The agreement has been compared to the Treaty of Versailles. The difference, of course, is that the Versailles treaty was imposed on Germany by its “enemies,” while the Mineral Resources Agreement was gladly accepted by Kiev.
Not that long ago, Ukraine and its Western backers would not tolerate any talk of a peace agreement or negotiations, but today the situation is completely reversed, with Trump dictating a ceasefire. The issues that caused irritation yesterday are accepted now, and the proxy war has thus further strengthened Ukraine’s status as a vassal of imperialism. The decisive military and economic support from imperialism has not made Ukraine more independent, but, on the contrary, it is now more dependent than ever. Self-determination is a mere charade in this scenario. Rødt’s members should be aware that a NATO-led victory in Ukraine will strengthen the very powers which supported Israel during the genocide of Gaza.
A pro-imperialist Ukrainian victory, a Russian victory, or a peace deal brokered by the major powers will only perpetuate the division of the Ukrainian working class along pro-Western and pro-Russian lines. Real Ukrainian self-determination, both political and economic, can only be achieved by a unified working class which appeals to the Russian working class while ruthlessly opposing the Russian invasion and Western imperialism, including its Ukrainian agents, with a socialist perspective. But a socialist perspective is exactly what Rødt lacks when it supports a regime which promises to transform Ukraine into a “big Israel.”
As we wrote previously, Rødt has radical rhetoric but pro-NATO policies. The political decomposition of Rødt is a direct result of a lack of political education and discussion within the party. The leadership has shifted the focus away from building a grassroots movement for radical change — instead it aims to win concessions within the framework of the bourgeois state. The party has no socialist perspective or a soviet strategy due the predominance of Maoist and social democratic ideas. The goal of dismantling the bourgeois state and replacing it with a workers’ state based on proletarian institutions and self-organization is completely alien to Rødt. By giving support to the minority government of the Labour Party under Jonas Gahr Støre, Rødt has integrated itself into the bourgeois state. It is natural that this domestic integration also affects Rødt’s international politics as well.
The party’s rightward trajectory has caused tensions with the Red Youth. In an internal note, the latter point out,
A challenge as Rødt grows is that the party becomes dependent on paid party officials and full-time politicians. In these groups, distinct class interests emerge inside the party. Those who live off the movement develop an objective self-interest in maintaining party support through high voter numbers, which is naturally most easily secured by keeping the party’s policies palatable.
In other words, Rødt has developed a layer of bureaucrats whose livelihood is dependent on Rødt’s increasingly social democratic orientation. As Matías Maiello and Emilio Albamonte remark: “The labor bureaucracy has been (and is) the vanguard for ‘organizing’ bourgeois hegemony within proletarian organizations. This objective is pursued through both ideological and coercive means, in different combinations depending on the situation.”
Since Rødt’s leadership is unable to convince anyone, let alone the Red Youth, ideologically, it is increasingly deploying coercive means. Leading members of Rødt have publicly contemplated severing ties with the youth, and in March, the Red Youth published a sarcastic TikTok video, exposing the media’s double standards. An improvised device had exploded outside the U.S. embassy, with no one hurt. The Red Youth pointed out that this led to widespread condemnation, while the media response to the U.S.-Israeli bombing of a girls’ school in Minab in Iran, which killed 120 children, was muted.
This video led to outrage across the political spectrum, and Rødt leaders joined with far-right figures to denounce their own youth. Recently, before the Red Youth congress, a proposal to dismantle the Norwegian army and replace it with popular militias organized by the labor movement got major pushback by leading members of Rødt. Red Youth nonetheless adopted a similar resolution — a demand that strikes at the heart of the bourgeois state. For Rødt’s leadership, eager to be seen as a responsible mainstream party that respects bourgeois norms, this is unacceptable.
Rødt is following in the footsteps of other supposedly radical left parties in Europe, such as Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain. And this is happening at the time when the whole capitalist and imperialist world system is in a deadly crisis. But there are revolutionary socialist tendencies fighting for an anticapitalist alternative based on the principle of working-class independence.
A radical reorientation is needed. The goal is to fight for the self-organization of the working class, and create proletarian institutions totally independent of the state, rather than adapting to the bourgeoisie’s rule. A left-wing party is not an end in itself, and the metric of its usefulness under current circumstances is its ability to organize a pole of revolutionary opposition and to revive the proletariat as a hegemonic subject, both on the national and international level.
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