I am not surprised, but I am disappointed, to find Louis falling in with the defense
of the Milosovic regime, even to comparing it with the Sandinistas, whose mistakes
were at least part of a policy of promoting a government policy intendedto promote the
welfare of ordinary Nicaraguans, rather than, as with Milosovic and his cronies, a
nationalist and chauvinist Greater Serbia. Louis hangs his defense on the idea that M
has preserved state property, but this degenerated version of the Trotskyist
degenerated worker state argument won't wash, if it ever did.
Whatever was socialist in the Yugoslav economy is gone, except for some ideological
window dressing that no one even pretends to believe any more. Moreover, the M regime
that participated in the partition by force of Yugoslavia, supported the Bosnian serbs
in the Bosnian war, and engaged in ethnic cleansing on a grand scale (though not, it
now appears, systemaic mass murder) in Kosovo, cannot be characterized as other than
thuggish at best. It's true it hasn't been as awful to the domestic opposition as it
might have been, but that is hardly a reason to support it.
In slamming M, the undertaker of what some of us thought was socialism's best hope, I
do not of course support NATO or other foreign intervention in the former Yugoslavia.
M is for the Sebian and Montenegran people to deal with. --jks
In a message dated Mon, 25 Sep 2000 10:56:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
<< The hypocrisy of US foreign policy requires no comment, although no dount
it demands outrage. But no one outside his thuggish clique could mourn the
defeat of Milosovic. --jks
===
This accusation of "thuggish" reflects imperialist propaganda. Given the
pressures on it, the Milosevic government has been one of the mildest in
recent history. It is no more repressive than the FSLN in Nicaragua which
was always being stigmatized for its "thuggish" behavior toward the
Catholic Church and La Prensa. The stakes are identical, even though
pwogressive opinion in the USA and Great Britain tends to march in step
with the State Department in this more recent demonization campaign. The
crusade against Yugoslavia is motivated by a need to destroy one of the few
exceptions to "neoliberalism" in Eastern Europe. With the need to create
maquilas all through the zone, state owned industry was an incovenience as
was an army not under the control of NATO.
Louis Proyect
The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
>>
