History, as that well-known not-Marxist T. S. Eliot had it, is full of cunning passages. Life is not without its contradictions. As Lenin had it, we can have one step forward and two back - or the reverse. It was a step forward for gender equality that a woman, Margaret Thatcher, became prime Minister. It was several steps back that it was a woman with a highly reactionary agenda who established this precedent. In like manner it was a victory for ant-imperialism that the US and Britain were kicked out of Afghanistan. It was also a defeat for progressive cultural and social politics in that country. Life according to the SPGB sage is either black or white, but sometimes it is neither, sometimes it is both. Read Marx on British imperialism in India, which he claims had its positive side in the elimination of superstition and ignorance (quoting from memory here).