Democratic socialism or barbarism: A reply to Hans-Herbert Kögler

Abstract

I want to start by thanking the author for this nuanced and thought-provoking text. I have found it useful in organizing my own thinking on the subject of morality and immorality of various positions pertaining to the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine. In what follows I want to offer less of a review of the piece itself but rather reflect and build upon some of the core propositions laid out in the article. Being a political economist, activist, feminist, ecosocialist and a Ukrainian who was in the country when the war started informs my following comments. Ko ¨gler's position and argumentation is highly compelling. In his attempt to strip back the narratives situated within the domain of international law, self-determination or human rights, he eloquently argues for a purely moral case to support Ukraine; a comprehension 'of a moral feeling and reactions regarding war, especially one left by selfdefence . . . [making] possible a normative response to war as a means of politics as the continuation and realization of morality by other means'. Through such a dissection what was of specific interest to me in the article was what gets revealed by understanding the segments of immorality and 'pseudo-objectivism' that the seemingly neutral, 'moralabstinent' position means and how it is equally hypocritical, sinister, counterproductive, uninformed and narcissistic. Instrumentalizations for one's excuse from providing help are rather pathetic: self-imposed ignorance of the reasoning of the belligerents via inability to identify 'rationality' resembling that of the observer of this war. Ko ¨gler correctly observes that 'nothing makes more sense for both parties directly involved than this war' as Ukrainians fight to survive and exercise national self-determination while Russia carries out its imperialist nationalism project where the space it deems itself entitled to is absorbed and people are either assimilated or annihilated thus denoting