Yugoslavia again. The class struggle view-point

[Lorenzo Penya <Laurentius@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yugoslavia again. Reflections on Bryan's comments. # 2
THE CLASS-STRUGGLE VIEW-POINT
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      Bryan Alexander claims that my analysis of the Yugoslav crisis misses
the class-struggle dimension. He may be right. But let's carefully consider
what he has to say in this connection.

      Bryan seems to claim that Milosevich represents the old state-
capitalist elite which in the meanwhile had embraced the cause of full-
fledged capitalist restoration (he would have a power base among `the
leftover upper class, and the growing bourgeoisie'), which would explain his
crushing the labour unrest, whereas the anti-Milosevich secessionists, at
least in Bosnia, are, at least partly, prompted by a desire to keep some of
the working-class conquests which had ben implemented in former socialist
Yugoslavia. (He does not put it that way, but I guess that's what he means
through several not very explicit sentences, such as `But the BiH state is
very mixed, and not clearly at war against the working class' or `Bosnia is
more or less hankering for some sort of state capitalism' -- `state
capitalism' being Bryan's characterization of the social system under what he
calls `Stalinist masters').

      In several postings Bryan insists that a class-struggle analysis is
needed, one -- I suppose -- which discloses the class nature of each
contender in the present war, and through which we could reach the conclusion
he offers us, namely that `we find in Milosevic a bloodstained gothic
nightmare of Marxist proportions', which -- within the context -- seems to
imply that from a Marxist class-struggle view-point he appears as the main
culprit, the villain of the story.

      As Jim had guessed I agree with Bryan in condemning both the social
injustices of the Tito regime -- and the privileges enjoyed by the Communist-
League elite) and the nascent bourgeoisie. I deplore the capitalist
restoration and the establishment of a `free-market' economy.

      But what escapes my understanding is how we can envisage as a class-
struggle that which opposes the secessionists to the defenders of Yugoslav
unity. Admittedly the Serbian government (or the rump Federal Yugoslavia) is
not one which can be regarded as representing the interests of the
proletariat. They are either capitalists or pro-capitalists. But what about
the other contender, the Croato-Bosnian confederates? They are more obviously
pro-capitalist still.

      There are some people both in Serbia (and Montenegro) and in Bosnia
(and elsewhere) who `hanker for some sort of state capitalism', i.e. for a
return to some of the social advances of Tito's Yugoslavia. The same happens
everywhere in Eastern Europe. The crumbling of communism has given rise to
wild capitalism, when wild capitalism does not exist any longer in Western
Europe. They had been promised a welfare state plus political liberties. As
political freedom is concerned, they have more than they used to have, the
price being the almost complete lost of previous levels of state welfare and
relative social equality. (Relative, yes, but most things in this world are
relative.)

      That some people here and some people there hanker after some return to
some of the good (or less bad) things of the past does not show that as a
whole one of the contenders stands for such things -- let alone for better
things -- while the other alone is a nasty capitalist or pro-capitalist. They
are on a par.

      Or perhaps not exactly on a par, after all. The Serbian ruling party is
one of the ex-communist governing paries in Eastern Europe, and the Western
masters are bent on wiping them out. Admittedly their present policy is pro-
capitalist, and the prospects of them coming back to any form of socialism
are almost groundless. But who knows? While they have not been utterly
destroyed, those parties remain a symbol of what was once dreadful communism,
a banner for people to rally around and proclaim -- if and when they grow
more frustrated with unemployment -- their adherence to the ideas of the
former regime. The possibility of an alternative leadership wavering such a
banner is, although small, not an absurd nightmare to be dismissed out of
hand. (Milosevich's own wife is said to spurn his nationalism and preach an
anti-capitaist non-nationalist outlook.)

      IF there is a class-struggle related difference between the defenders
of Yugoslav unity, on the one hand, and the secessionists, on the other, I
think those who are more assuredly and obviously against the interests of the
world proletariat as a whole are the secessionist. No conflict takes place in
a vacuum. The context here is provided by the international alignments. The
Croato-Islamic secessionists constitute a puppet at the hands of the
international bourgeoisie, whereas -- by dint of being compelled to oppose
the NATO intervention and aggression -- the Serbs are constrained to oppose
the grand capitalist coalition and to become the unwilling allies of those
who, for quite different reasons, also oppose the capitalist established
disorder: revolutionary struggles in Latin America, anti-WB/IMF movements in
Africa, anti-Yeltsin forces in Russia, Arab non-islamist nationalism, pro-
Third-World organizations in NATO countries, etc.

      That seems to me the genuine class-struggle-related context within
which the Yugoslav civil war is to be considered. The current class-struggle
is world-wide.

      A last comment. Not every struggle carried out by workers is in the
interests of the working class. The CIA is known to have brought down
progressive governments by inciting working-people's unrest (Guyana, Chile,
Nicaragua, perhaps Zambia and other African states; up to a point, India,
too; and similarly CIA-supported strikes may have taken place against anti-
Western governments in many other countries, such as the April-revolution
Portugal, Nepal, Peru at the time of General Valesco Alvarado's lukewarm
reforms, etc). Thus we cannot jump from the mere fact that labour unrest has
been dealt with in a more or less repressive way by a government to the
conclusion that the struggle between that government and its enemies is that
which opposes the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, or anything like that. In
some cases the worst enemy of the proletariat's interests is the group
fomenting labour unrest.


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