File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-11-30.000, message 87


Date: Fri, 04 Nov 1994 03:14:35 EST
From: Pete Bratsis <aki-AT-cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: RE: the degenerated workers state and yugoslavia




Tom,

It seems silly to continue this discussion over the net when we are not
exactly living halfway around the world from each other and no one else in
the list seems interested in participating.  But, I will post this last 
message.

This debate has nothing to do with Althusser and my views on the current
situation in Serbia in no way is a product of any notion such as the 
'nationalist moment', 'conjucturalism', or any other term you want to 
make up and attribute to me. 

It is perplexing that you feel the only plausable reason I would not
agree with you is that I must have some personal 'stake' in the situation.
No one I know lives in Yugoslavia, I am not being paid by the CIA to 
patrol syberspace and refute the enemies of imperialism, or anything
of the sort.

I accept and very much beleive that you are opposed to nationalism and 
in no way want to support, defend, deny, or obscure it.  My argument was
that despite your intentions, reproducing the catagories and some of the
historigraphic folklore common to the antagonistic positions/identies 
that underpin the current situation functions to reproduce some of these 
very conditions that make nationalist conflict possible.  Moreover, the 
implication is that, on this issue, I am not contesting your claims on 
the basis that they are 'wrong'/ unjustifiable truth claims.  It does not
matter to me if they are 'provable' or not nor does it matter to me 
what Trotsky had to say about some methodological point 50 years ago.
Rather, I am suggesting that what you have to say is 'bad'/'undesirable'
on moral grounds.

Finally, I see no connection between saying that consent/support among
peoples now living in Yugoslavia for the nationalist movements responsible
for so much human suffering is somthing these peoples are accountalbe 
for and your claim that I am being racist in making this claim.  I am 
granting these peoples the capacity to make conscious decisions.  The
decisions people make in activly or passivly supporting a political 
movement of this nature are serious and have dramatic consequences.  I 
never said that all 'Serbs' are bad or are all nationalists.  Those 
peoples who choose to support nationalist racism (whether they are 
political elites or not) are guilty for the consequences of their 
decisions.

Ciao,
Peter.



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