Tim on Bosnian peace plan

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tim, IMO has sent a brave post challenging us to analyse
the Pax Americana being imposed on Yugoslavia. He does it
with the tone of someone, who feels that any flame war, to
which he might in consequence be subjected, will leave him at
worst only lightly toasted.

Quite a strong position from which to write. Is he bluffing?

>>>>>>>>>
From: TimW333521@xxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 09:00:45 -0500
Subject: The Case for Supporting Bosnia Peace Plan

While I assume many, perhaps most, on the left oppose sending U.S. troops to
Bosnia, little is being said about this, and no action that I know of is
being taken.  The main opposition to troops comes from the Republicans and
becomes the more virulent the farther to the right one goes.  I would suggest
that this right wing, essentially isolationist, attack on the Bosnian peace
plan is caused by the fact that, with all its huge flaws, the plan is overall
a positive good and in the interests of the Bosnian people and its working
class.  As internationalists we Marxists should support it.

<<<<<<<<


The hardest ball that IMO can be thrown at Tim, is this. If we accept
his premise that short of a class revolution, a reform is preferable if
it brings peace to Yugoslavia, from what political and class basis would he
suggest we should make any criticisms at all of the US imperialist-led plan?

The question is about whether we accept or even sometimes work for
reforms, in a "reformist" way, or a "revolutionary" way.

Objectionable though the name of the author is to almost everyone on this
list, including myself, Stalin cut through a lot of the confusion about
reforms and revolution in a passage in "Foundations of Leninism", which
as I have argued as a whole, written so soon after Lenin's death is likely
to represent 80% of the group of ideas common to Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky (!)
early in 1924:

"To a reformist, reforms are everything, while revolutionary work is
something incidental, something just to talk about, mere eyewash. That is
why, with reformist tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule,
reforms are inevitably transformed into an instrument for strengthening
that rule, an instrument for disintegrating the revolution.

"To a revolutionary, on the contrary, the main thing is revolutionary work and
not reforms; to him reforms are a by-product of the revolution. That is why,
with revolutionary tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule, reforms are
naturally transformed into an instrument for disintegrating that rule, into
an instrument for strengthening the revolution, into a strongpoint for the
further development of the revolutionary movement.

"The revolutionary will accept a reform in order to use it as an aid in
combining legal work with illegal work and to intensify, under its cover, the
illegal work for the revolutionary preparation of the masses for the overthrow
of the bourgeoisie.

"*That* is the essence of making revolutionary use of reforms and agreements
under the conditions of imperialism.

"The reformist, on the contrary, will accept reforms in order to renounce
all illegal work, to thwart the preparation of the masses for the revolution
and to rest in the shade of 'bestowed' reforms"


So how would Tim defend himself against a charge that in accepting the
reform of the Bosnian peace plan, he is suggesting we should uncritically
tail behind the leadership of US imperialism? Does he have any criticism at all
to make of this plan.

I am merely trying to be provocative.

Chris, London.


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