>Charlie wrote..
>
>
>>I agree with Rob that NATO and the U.S. are the fascist danger in this
>>war. The U.S. neo-colonial empire is built in part of many fascist
>>governments that are fully fascist because of their connection to the
>>reactionary sector or military industrial complex of transnational
>>finance capital. The U.S. military has established or fostered numerous
>>brutal regimes or terrorist gangs around the world for decades - in
>>Korea, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Chile, Panama, Iraq,, just to name
>>a few. One of its neo-colonial modus operandi is to work through
>>comprador fascisms. The U.S. in the Balkans is Big Daddy of fascisms
>>about to lay another one on them.
>
>
>Me too.. And to talk about a "national question" under present
>circumstances is just ridiculous. The national question in this case
>becomes subordinate to the whole war and agression by NATO imperialism..
>
>Another interesting thing is the recent German iniative to create and all
>European occupation force of Kosovo. So the united facade of imperialism
>is beginning to split at the seams..
>
>Warm regards
>Bob Malecki
Just pointing out the obvious fact that the terrorism of the imperialists
is more fundamental and more serious than the terrorism of Greater Serbian
chauvinism is about as useful as pointing out that the sun is bigger than
the earth. It's a shocking fact that the ignorance within capitalist
society about the way things are is so great that many people still don't
realize this -- just as many people in the middle ages still thought the
earth was bigger and more important than the sun. But it is also the case
that real understanding of what's going on only *starts* with this
realization. it doesn't stop there the way Bob, Rob and Charlie appear to
want it to (Dave is standing firmly on both sides of the fence on this one).
As a Trotskyist I give due weight to the power of unsolved democratic
questions (such as the national question and the question of the land) in
mobilizing the masses for a liberation struggle against their social
oppressors. This is what the theory of Permanent Revolution is all about.
It is also about the leadership of this massive social revolution by the
most conscious and advanced sectors of society -- the organized, Marxist
revolutionary workers. And the leadership can only be DESERVED and WON if
it speaks to the NEEDS OF THE MASSES IN STRUGGLE. That means it must have a
solution to the problems of the masses and be seen to be fighting and
winning on this basis. This is why the Bolshevik slogans in 1917 were,
narrowly, ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS, even though the Bolsheviks for ages
were in a minority there, and more broadly, BREAD, PEACE, LAND.
We're not going to win the workers and poor peasants/rural workers of
Kosova or Serbia to our side if we don't convince them that national and
ethnic (ie democratic) rights are fundamental to our programme, and that we
have the best prospects of any leadership for bringing home the bacon. That
is, that we can do it better than NATO, the rotten chauvinist Milosevic
regime or the KLA. This is what the leadership of the Yugoslav revolution
succeeded in doing (however inadequately for the longer term) during the
struggle for liberation, democratic rights and workers rights leading up to
and during the second world war. They turned the masses against the Ustasha
fascists, the Chetnik fascists, the Italian fascists and the German Nazis.
They also turned them against the treacherous overtures of the British
imperialists and the Stalinist Soviet chauvinists.
We can do better than them, because we have a better programme, but until
we start fighting with the people for the things the people want -- like
basic democratic rights -- we'll get nowhere. So Bob can lecture about the
need for a vanguard, democratic centralist party as much as he wants, until
he can actually show people that it's a useful weapon against their
oppressors, both foreign and local, he'll be crying in the wilderness.
The national question is becoming *more and more infected and significant*
throughout the world today as the process of imperialist recolonization
gathers pace with the collaboration of capitulationist bourgeois national
governments. As the Balkanization of the former workers states proceeds
apace, the national question is further complicated by explosive minority
issues.
To sweep the national question off the agenda as Bob does is crazy. It must
be tackled and solved, not ignored. To turn your back on the Kosova
question because Serbia is being bombed by NATO is totally inadequate as a
revolutionary response. NATO has no business in Serbia or any other part of
the Balkans where it's getting dug in -- like Macedonia, Albania, Dalmatia,
Bosnia or Kosova itself. Nor does Serbia have any business in Kosova, even
though the Serbian minority there should have every right to their own
culture and social identity and full protection against majority abuse.
(Even the whites in South Africa or the Jews in Palestine must have solid
minority rights!)
The Kosovar masses need more than anything else to feel that they are in
charge of their own destinies, and getting self-determination is the first
step in this. The fact that WE know that the leaderships they have (the
KLA, etc) will sell them down the river and in fact already started doing
so at Rambouillet and by peddling the reactionary illusions that the
ímperialist West will help them solve anything at all is beside the point.
The understanding that such leaderships are treacherous and useless for
solving their most burning problems (ie won't even be capable of gaining
them real self-determination) must be something they come to of their own
accord in their own time. And it's our job to help them by advancing the
revolution where we are and internationally, and by talking to them so they
can see what we're getting at and accept us as fighting on the same side
against injustice and oppression.
Cheers,
Hugh
PS S`´ta ches`´? Svi smo Albanci! Jebi ga. I radnik nema domovine. To je
dialektika.
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