AGAINST THE AGRESSION OF US-EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM TOWARDS YUGOSLAVIA
Hands
Off The Balkans!
For
the Defeat of the Aggressors!
Revolutionary
Marxist Association/Proposta of Italy
With
the aggravation of the aggression and the possible passage to a ground
invasion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it becomes more and more
evident that the true reasons for the war do not concern the legitimate
rights of the Kosovan people to self-determination. The American and
European governments are in competition to earn the role of protagonist in
the aggression and in the division of the spoils of war that they will
achieve.
The
objective truth of the imperialist bombs is that of opening the road to the
control of the process, already under way for years, of the break-up of
Yugoslavia and of the completion of the reintroduction of the capitalist
"free market" after the collapse of
Stalinism.
Far
from the being subordinates of the USA, the social democratic-led
European governments [scramble?--sgomitano] to occupy the
centre-stage in this new massacre. The lives of millions of people have been
sacrificed once more on the altar of the profits of the big bourgeoisie.
An
internationalist mobilization is necessary of the workers of the aggressor
countries (USA, Europe) to the side of the proletariat of the attacked
country, the Yugoslavia Republic. A mobilization to contribute to the defeat
of the aggressor armies and to a victory of Serbia.
It is necessary for the workers to take into their hands, arming
themselves, the organization of the defence against imperialist aggression,
not delegating it to the butcher Milosevic who has been for years allied to
imperialism and its agent in the process of the restoration of
capitalism, and of the cancellation of the--even
deformed--revolutionary conquests
The
defeat of the governments of USA, Italy, France, etc. would strengthen the
struggle of the working class of these countries against their own
bourgeoisies; it would allow the workers to overthrow
Milosevic; it would allow the Kosovan people and other people doubly
oppressed (by imperialism and
by its vassals) to achieve self-determination. A victory for the attacked
Yugoslavia could open the road to the only solution of the conflict in the
Balkans: a socialist federation in which a peaceful cohabitation of all the
people of the region would be possible, respecting of the law of
self-determination of each.
The
defeat of Western troops would be transformed into a victory for the working
class and could also give, in Italy, a new impulse to the construction of an
autonomous class pole, counterposed to the two alternative poles of the
bourgeoisie today united in support of the imperialist interests of the
Italian bourgeoisie; this victory of the international working class would
allow us to make a step forward in the construction of the communist project
of the overthrow of capitalism, which is the only true solution to put an
end once and for all to wars.
It
is necessary to continue the mobilization, building in each place of work
and of study united committees, organizing demonstrations and strikes in
each city, building a general strike against the war and against the
government of D'Alema. Because, as Karl Liebnecht wrote in 1914, in a famous
flier to the troops in war:
The
principal enemy of the workers is in their own country!
False
and True Reasons for The War
The
official version of imperialism, pronounced by Clinton and argued by the
social-traitors like D'Alema and Veltroni, would wish the NATO force to
engage in a bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (RFJ) to
"protect" the Kosovans of Albanian ethnicity from Serb purges.
After Iraq these bombs become intelligent and humanitarian. It is sufficient
to mention the news reported on CNN to sweep away these falsehoods: not only
have the bombs struck the outskirts and popular districts of Belgrade and of
the principal cities of the RFJ, but among the victims there are obviously
also the same Kosovan fugitives that are supposed to be the beneficiaries of
this intervention. In reality the barbaric aggression against the RFJ is
functional to the elimination or reorganisation of the last remaining
element that is not fully controllable by imperialism in the Balkan area.
The
refusal of Milosevic to accept the imperialist "peace" of
Rambouillet that foresaw in fact the installation of a NATO protectorate in
Kosovo, has constituted contemporaneously an unacceptable challenge and a
pretext for a strengthening of the imperialist presence in the zone. The
only purpose of the bombardments, and of what could follow from them, is
this: not the rights of the ethnic minorities but imperialist control of the
heart of the RFJ and therefore of the Balkans. Everything is inserted in a
scenario that sees the diverse imperialist powers in competition (peaceful
for the moment) for world supremacy: with the three imperialist poles - USA,
Europe, Japan- in competition for the sceptre after the disappearance of the
"Soviet" antagonist.
The
Break-Up of Yugoslavia as the Product of Capitalist Restoration
The
circumstances of these days cannot be understood if we do not note the
context in which the break-up of Yugoslavia has happened. For a deeper
analysis we refer you to the dossier published in Proposta 10, October '95:
"Ex-Yugoslavia: imperialist barbarity in the form of 'ethnic war'"
(which can be obtained from the editors). We confine ourselves here to
recall some elements.
The
break-up of Yugoslavia and the ten year conflict between the regions that
composed the Titoist state are the product of a combination of
interdependent causes: the collapse of Stalinism "to the right,"
that is in the absence of a re-conquest on the part of the proletariat,
through a political revolution, of the power usurped by the bureaucracy; the
absence of a revolutionary leadership that leads to this end: a product in
turn also of the physical liquidation, since the 1930s, of whole leading
groups and of all the cadres of the anti-Stalinist communist left
(continuing in the following years under the control of Tito); the
resurgence of inter-ethnic
tensions, used by Stalinism since the 1930 to oppose every anti-bureaucratic
struggle, fed then by the occupying nazi-fascists as a tool of division and
domination of the country and recovered finally by the ex-generals of Tito
employed after the collapse of the USSR,
as agents of capitalist
restoration, to divide Yugoslavia, each in alliance with a sector of
imperialism.
In
Yugoslavia, as in the other countries of so-called "actually existing
socialism", what has happened is what Trotsky and the Bolshevik
opposition to Stalinism had foreseen since the 1930s: "Either the
working class will crush the bureaucracy and will open a road toward
socialism, or the bureaucracy, becoming
ever more the organ of the bourgeoisie in the workers' state will destroy
the new forms of ownership and will propel the country towards capitalism."
The
state, born from the antifascist resistance, was born already deformed.
Titoism did not ever constitute in fact a communist alternative to Stalinism;
even when the regime of Tito broke with the USSR, it did it within a
nationalist framework, of acceptance of "socialism in one
country." Despite this, and with the evident limits of a bureaucratised
worker state, the regime endeavoured in that phase to calm the inter-ethnic
conflicts (which, however, it
had fomented previously) to guarantee its own stable domination. In this
framework the Yugoslav constitution of 1945 guaranteed the rights of
minorities, including therein those of Kosovo, which had recognized
the right to schools in the Albanian language and a relative cultural
autonomy; from 1974 Kosovo was finally recognized an autonomy even if
limited by the bureaucratic Titoist regime . This status had been definitely
revoked by Milosevic in the 1989.
Subsequently,
in the context of the war between the fragments of ex-Yugoslavia, the ethnic
conflict has been a fire in which many have burned (including therein the
ex-Albanian regime of Berisha: which has fed the idea of a "Greater
Albania" in counterposition to the "Greater Serbia" of
Milosevic).
Finally
the Dayton Accords of 1995 that have imposed the imperialist peace in the
area have simply removed the matter of Kosovo, that is of a territory 90% of
which is populated by inhabitants of ethnic Albanians and by 10% from a
Serbian minority, but by now subject to the institutions of the new
federative Republic (that is Serbia and Montenegro).
The
Betrayal on the Part of Leading Kosovan Groups
in
the Battle for Self-Determination
From
1997-98 the Democratic League of Ibrahim Rugova, which demanded a limited
autonomy for the region, has been "[eclipsed?--scavalcata]" by the
more radical and armed leaders of the KLA (army of liberation) which
advocated the conquest of independence. The KLA is a petit bourgeois
formation: the greater part of the leadership has been leaders of the
Democratic League and the majority of them are tied up to ex-Albanian
president Berisha (but there is also a neo-Stalinist fraction with nostalgia
for Enver Hoxha). The USA had at first preferred a relationship with Rugova,
defining the KLA as "terrorist" and allowing even for Milosevic to
instigate, last summer, a bloody offensive against of them. Subsequently it
has seen in the KLA (which by now had become a mass movement at the expense
of the League of Rugova) the privileged interlocutor: in the moment in which,
however, it accepted the substantial renunciation of
the programme of independence,
setting its signature on the American text of Rambouillet that foresees a
semi-autonomy for Kosovo under the control of the imperialist troops.
This
change of attitude of the USA toward the KLA explains the fact that
Washington has never wanted the separation of
Kosovo from Serbia since it would constitute an element of
instability, it would set in movement the Albanian minority in Macedonia, it
would open the road to a clash between Greece and Turkey. The objective is
rather that of preparing a stronghold from which to monitor in the whole
region the process of integration of the Balkans into the capitalist market,
avoiding the repetition of insurrections like the Albanian one of the 1997.
In this sense the USA has always chosen as its allies the Albanian leaders
that refrained from fighting for independence. Its ally of today is the KLA
which not only has renounced the independence of Kosovo but has made calls
for NATO bombardments on Serbia.
It
appears evident therefore that today, more that ever, the struggle of the
Kosovan people for self-determination passes to the construction of another
leadership.
European
and Italian Imperialism and the Role of Social Democracy
Contrary
to the attempt of the majority of the leading group of the PRC to give
credence to a version that would see the EU and the Italian government as
"subordinates" and "incapable of an autonomous role"
from the USA, all the governments of the "centre-left" and the
European "left" have taken sides decidedly in favour of aggression,
participating directly or indirectly. The partial distinctions from the USA
do not concern possible pacifist scruples of Europe, but are the visible
product of the underground conflict that contrasts the different imperialist
poles in struggle among and within themselves to gain a primary role in this
"war" and in the equilibrium that emerges from it. Thus also the
most advanced European government (according to Bertinotti), that of Jospin,
has declared its own "full adhesion" to the conflict under way.
And in Italy the calls on the part of polished bourgeois commentators (one
thinks of Lucio Caracciolo in "La Repubblica") for a "better
role for diplomacy" do not constitute objections to the indiscriminate
use of the bombardments, but solicitations to the D'Alema government to
occupy centre-stage in the massacre without delays, to guarantee the Italian
bourgeoisie a further strengthening on the international chessboard.
The
inter-imperialist competition occurs therefore between the USA which wants
to strengthen its presence in the Balkans, limiting the European one; Italy
which wants to strengthen its own role, that has seen a season of renewed
protagonism with the Prodi government already, and with the suffocation of
the Albanian revolution in the 1997 and the installation of an Italian
protectorate in Albania; Germany, which has assimilated Croatia already, and
wants now to definitely eliminate the Serbian obstacle to its own expansion
in the area; France, which has armed Milosevic for years, and now intends to
participate in his destruction in order to divide the spoils of war with the
others.
The
role of European Social Democracy in the construction of a European
imperialist pole in competition with USA and Japan is therefore confirmed:
and each demand of the PRC appears so much more grotesque because "Europe
makes its voice felt ." The so-called voice of Europe is in the choir
of the butchers and knows how to sing only the hiss of the bombs.
The
same "left" wings of the governments, from its ministerial patrol
of Cossutta, to the Manconi varieties (who speak about "knowing how to
do politics in time of war") confine themselves to turning their heads
from the other parts and to looking for any pretext which allows them to
contemporaneously save their souls and their ministerial easy-chairs. It
signifies the attitude of "duplicity" of the PCF of Hue that while
it participates in the demonstrations in the square against the war it finds
new motives "for a renewed support to the Jospin government."
The
Inconsistent Pacifism of the Majority Leaders of The PRC
If
it is recognized that the PRC as a whole has the capacity for an immediate
mobilization against the war, it is necessary to underline that once more
this happens with heavy limits which invalidate the whole position: limits
determined by the position of the majority of the leading group to the
continuous search for that European neo-Keynesian model (as with Jospin)
that should constitute the alternative to liberalism. Here, as in the
various interventions of comrade Bertinotti and in the position taken by the
national secretariat, is an attempt to make a distinction between good and
bad imperialism, charging all guilt to the "US policeman" while
Europe would be somehow involved "[obtorto?] neck" (even for the
guilt of the bad wing of social
democracy: that of Blair). It speaks about the "servility of Europe"
towards the "war of the Americans," of "Europe in the hands
of General Clark" etc.: trying to give credence to the analysis of an
unwanted war, suffered by the European governments, the victims (and
therefore amendable and as always liable to make a "turn" capable
of restoring "an autonomous role to Europe").
The
reality of the fact is very different. It is anything but European
subordination: it would be enough to read the newspapers to know that last
December in St Malo in a meeting between Blair and the leaders of the "advanced"
wing (according to Bertinotti) of social democracy, Jospin, the need to make
rapid steps toward the construction of European military structures has been
posed, independent of the USA, and the need to try to build "a greater
European military state" to
contest the supremacy the USA, even on the military ground, has also been
mentioned. It is not a case in fact of whether the first to speak about
intervention with ground troops has been the advisers of Jospin. Why then
does the party not extend to
the PCF the invitation that it has addressed to Cossutta of removing support
to the governments which make the war? Perhaps because the Jospin government
remains however a model of reference? And it has not been able to find a way
out as Paul Ferrero has done of the national secretariat. (in
"Liberazione") speaking about a "victory of the Blair line
against that of Jospin": the strategic alternative of Blair and Jospin
has never existed (except in the heads of some comrades of the leading group
of the party). The war is "the continuation of politics by other means":
the governments of the centre-left or of
the "left" which carry forward in the respective countries
anti-working class programmes, are today the administrators of the interests
of their bourgeoisies abroad. The plans to remodel the Italian armed forces,
started with the Prodi government and continued with D'Alema, have exactly
the finality of endowing Italian imperialism with flexible tools of
intervention to protect their own affairs outside national confinements.
To
a wrong analysis a vague perspective is accompanied. The solution pointed
out for the Balkan circumstance consists of the call to the UN. As always
the absence of a class analysis of phenomena and of institutions leads to
ignoring the role of that "lair of imperialist brigands" (Lenin)
that it is the UN. Heir of that League of Nations born in the 1919, it did
not prevent any conflict ever (including during the Second world War) and it
shielded instead the imperialist invasions of Mussolini in North Africa. An
organization to which the Russia of Lenin never adhered (it was the USSR, by
now in the hands of Stalin, that adhered with a view to a dialogue with
"democratic" imperialism). The U.N. that according to Bertinotti
would remain today "in silence":
(when instead the secretary general Kofi Annan has spoken with
clarity of a "legitimate attack, for the peace") it is the
organization that carries the primary responsibility for the embargo of Iraq
that has provoked a million and half already dead or that has
perpetrated--with its blue helmets--the rape of Bosnia and Somalia. An
organization from which moreover today, the USSR has vanished, imperialism
does not have any more need, it is able to permit itself to show its face
directly without making recourse to cover
of acronyms or to calls to a
non-existent "international legality."
But
the majority of the leading group of the party seems to ignore these evident
elements and prefers to put every hope more in bourgeois diplomacy than in
the international class mobilization. Until it indicates as a solution an
"international conference for the integration (sic) of the Balkan area
into a common and democratic Europe."
For
a Revolutionary Position on Self-Determination of Nations
and
on Perspectives for the Balkans
Paradoxically
today almost nobody (neither the false imperialist friends, nor those who
from left oppose the war) recognizes the rights of the Kosovan people to
self-determination (and therefore also to independence): often rather it is
preferred to speak only of "autonomy" because " otherwise it
would be chaos." Yet the classical position, the ABC of
communism, departs exactly from the opposite reasoning. It is enough
to quote this passage of Lenin (from "Results of the Discussion on
Self-Determination," 1916): "The
dialectic of history is such that the function of
nationality and of oppressed people, impotent as factors of
independence in the struggle against imperialism,
is that of ferment, of a
bacillus that, together with other ferments and bacilli will contribute to
making an entry on to the scene of the true strength which could fight
against imperialism, namely the socialist proletariat." And again (in
the "Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to
Self-Determination", 1916):
"Obviously not only the right of nations to self-determination,
but all the essential claims of political democracy are 'realisable'"
in the imperialist epoch only in an incomplete way, deformed (...). But from
this it cannot be derived at all that social democracy should renounce the
immediate and definite struggle for all these claims (...) attracting the
masses to active struggle,
widening and rekindling the struggle for each fundamental democratic demand
until the direct activation of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, that
is until the socialist revolution that dispossesses the bourgeoisie."
These
positions remain, we believe, those from which begins the task today of
refounding a communist praxis. And this today implies recognising for the
Kosovans, as with the other Yugoslav peoples, the right to
self-determination: not contrasting in a sterile fashion national claims to
those of class, but developing dialectically the one in the other. That
means saying clearly that the national or ethnic rights will only be able to
find satisfaction without any interference from imperialism, in finding
again the unity of the proletariat of the different Balkan states beyond the
different ethnic groups, against their own dominant classes and against
imperialism, in the struggle for the only possible solution to the conflicts
in the whole area: a Socialist Federation of the Balkans