>In response to Rob, my expaination would be that with the collapse of
>the socialist bloc, and the catastophic effects of capitalism on
>Russia, Imperialism (in the dual guise NATO & the EU) is attempting
>to pick off all of Russia's neighbours before it has chance to
>recover. Yugoslavia was the only bulwalk to this advance eastwards
>(completing the West's 1939-45 war aims). Like in the old Austro-
>Hungary, they aim to cut it up & redistribute it to border states and
>so isolate and weaken Russia. A Marxist response is far than obvious
>to me. Other than all out support for Y.C.P., as some argue (we can't
>support the KLA), there is no real group to support (like Kashmir)
>and we are left merely hurling abuse at NATO.
All fair comment, John. Of course, the west is paying a big price for all
this. You can destroy economies, oppose neighbours to each other,
manipulate leaderships, discipline labour, and control economic policies,
but you can't make people like you. I still think buying them off would
have been a better idea (and a lot cheaper) for the imperialists than
blowing them away. Another few decades of the sort of shit that
characterised 20th century Europe has been irrevocably installed, I'm
afraid.
As for a rhetorical response, I'd hesitate before articulating all-out
support for anybody in this mess - separating the internecine issue from
the NATO issue is something worth doing. We have to avoid being seen to
side with infamy at any price (unless we have just cause to believe the
infamy is tendentiously constructed - but Srebrenica cured me of that
illusion in this particular regard, regardless of what has actually
transpired in Kosovo itself) - we've enough unhelpful associations (whether
with the actual or the discursively framed) going against us already.
Support the oppressed everywhere, but never at the price of buying into
arguments which presume social cleavages we reject. If white kills black,
man kills woman, or Slav kills Albanian, the idea is not to pick sides in
fights fought on untenable premises (eg all blacks/women/Albanians against
all whites/men/Slavs). 'Tis the fight itself, and the pre-modern idealist
prejudices that inform or legitimate it, that must be fought.
As racism/sexism/ethnicism/nationalism are the enemy of us all, so is it
the generalised exchange relation that oppresses us all. Mebbe the
bringing together of theory and praxis (the raison d'etre of this list) is
muchly to do with critiquing the former categories in light of the latter.
Meanwhile, I'm happy to hurl abuse at the hypocritical murdering bastards
at NATO. They are the provisional wing of the exchange relation, for mine.
Cheers,
Rob.
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