File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1998/marxism-general.9803, message 12


Date: Sat, 07 Mar 1998 17:56:11 +0000
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: M-G: Kosovo


On the assumption that m-general still has the biggest potential
readership, unrestricted by moderation of account of political line, I am
posting this item here.

Whilst recent US and British threats of war against Iraq were unjust, I
submit it is hard to see the strong warning by the US government to
Milosevic today in the same light.

The main motivation of the US regarding Iraq is an imperialist one
concerning control of oil and armed forces. The civil rights argument for
intervention in Iraq looks weak when compared to the neglect of civil
rights in pro-Western Algeria and Turkey.

The US remains of course an imperialist power, and its motivation for
intervening in the former Yugoslavia is also imperialist, but the
contradictions take a different concrete form. The oil reserves in the
Balkans are not of the same strategic size, and the political power balance
will not be shifted by major armed movements. The agenda is one of the
imposition of neo-liberal free market economics and the justification, for
being a world policeman, is the defence of (bourgeois) democratic rights.


I want to see whether this post elicits any criticism and from which
standpoint. 

During the worst of the Bosnian conflict, the British government failed to
intervene also for imperialist motives. Certain left wing groups organised
direct links with trade unionists within Bosnia quite independent as far as
I could see from any imperialist moves, but were essentially upholding the
right of the people of Bosnia to a peaceful life free from attacks because
of their culture and religion. That was progressive.

Some left wing groups denounced all imperialist action as imperialist on
principle. Some argued that the Greater Serbian nationalists who had taken
over the Yugoslav socialist federal agenda were a more progressive bulwark
of socialism against neo-liberal economics, even at the expense of some
impairment of democratic rights of non-Serbs. And some pointed to the
enthusiasm of the European Community led by Germany to break conventions
about the integrity of existing national boundaries, by encouraging
Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia to secede.

But massive terror against the Albanian muslim population of Kosovo will
not only be a great injustice but will damage the potential unity of
working people not only there, but with a chain reaction spreading wider
over the Balkans. Although supporting US pressure on Milosovic makes the
short term neo-liberal agenda more likely, any solution that claims to be
socialist but is based on repression of ordinary working people especially
on ethnic or religious lines, will set back the cause of socialism greater
in the long term.

The Albanian upheavals last year showed that the population had major
problems with unbridled capitalism and a more consensual political
framework may be able to keep important areas of socialism or cooperation
alive. War will damage this.

Within Kosovo the decisions must be extremely difficult, but although the
local Albanians morally have a right to fight back against what are brutal
acts of repression, the balance of forces and the success of ethnic
cleansing would suggest that war would be used by the Greater Serb
nationalists to allow and encourage ethnic cleansing to take place on a
mammoth scale. As they believe that historically Kosovo is their
birthright, they would need little inducement to encourage things on this
course.



I suggest that a left wing consensus needs to gather around respect for
basic democratic rights, conflict resolution, support to communities, as
many alternatives as possible to changes of state boundaries, not to oppose
imperialist powers when they are putting pressure for democratic rights,
opposition to imperialist powers when they are trying to impose neo-liberal
economics, and pressure on them to make concessions to capital transfers to
facilitate more collectivist local economics. The hardest point in this
sort of approach to accept is that the leading imperialist powers are not
necessarily reactionary in everything they do. But I am not aware that Marx
or Engels argued that they always were.

What are the figures for Bosnia? something like 200,000 dead or was it a
million? It is that order of magnitude that looms now a little to the south
east. If marxism has any comment to make rather than just mumbling, because
it will not fit easily into propagandist or agitational left wing papers,
then I suggest these are some of the strategic and tactical questions that
need to be grasped. 

I expect and hope for criticisms of the arguments here. (Under 10,000 words
unless in instalments). It is the quality and the seriousness of the
criticisms that will be of interest to me and other readers.


Chris Burford

London






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