[Marxism] The break up of Yugoslavia: An off line response made public

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

Reply

Thanks. I had a difficult time discerning the critical elements in the debate
and expositions and reread every installment since December 15 - and then
some stuff from the Marxline archives and then bounced around the net for about
two hours. In all an investment of about seven hours.

I speak for no one in the discussion but myself and what emerged from a
rereading of the thread is a "subtle" difference that seems to be based in the
Albanians and the historic division and re division of this area since 1912 -
under the impact of imperial powers and the political results of WW2 and then 
the
1948 breach with Soviet Power. The Albanian issue is expressed in the reverse
as the demonizing of Milosevic, which is then tilted towards the "demonizing
of the Serbs."

The situation is complex if for no other reason that Yugoslavia was once a
population of 22 million people is an of ethnic groups, nations, and national
minorities, with every political tradition defining these three categories
different. Generally Yugoslavia was described as a country with two alphabets,
three religions, four languages, five nationalities, and six constituent
republics! In addition to the "national minorities," which include Albanians,
Hungarians, Turks, Slovaks, Bulgars, Romanians, Czechs, Italians, Germans, and 
Gypsies,
the five official "nations" are the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and
Montenegrins. These diverse peoples made up the "Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia," governmentally organized into the six loosely bound republics
of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and
Montenegro, and two autonomous provinces (within Serbia), Vojvodina and Kosovo.

Anyone that steps into the above without political clarity - not theory, is
in trouble. I tossed aside my old tradition - pre 1990's historic thinking
which measured world politics and currents on the basis of the political
antagonism between Soviet Power and Imperialism and the dangerous game Tito 
played as
the "Third Way" or "Third World." My inclination was to write from this
perspective in the new year . . . but why?

I am sure that it is incorrect to speak of the existence of the "national
question" in the terms of the past, as opposed to a colonial factor and the
social position of a peoples. In my tradition - unashamedly on the political 
side
of Stalin, we abandoned describing the African American National Colonial
Question as such in the late 1980s and began speaking of the social position of 
the
African American people and social revolution. In the late 1960 and early
1970s we called this the Negro National Colonial Question. The reason we
abandoned these formulations is because the world changes and changed.

I did not over turn Stalin's pre-1917 Marxism and the National Question but
regulated it to history because the further evolution of American society -
since 1928, reveals greater dimensions of economic and social evolution. 
However,
almost everyone I encounter uses the old framework, which prevents everyone
from making a fresh assessment. Looking backwards I reference Stalin, while
looking forward the reference is the standpoint of the dispossessed class and
this juncture of history. For instance I cannot frame Iraq and the imperialist
intrusion by my bourgeoisie as a National Question. Or speak of it as a
semi-colony because something different is taking place, with the most 
militaristic
section of the speculators shattering every barrier to imperial capital.

Posing the question on the basis of Milosevic being on trial as a war
criminal or demonized . . . tilts the politics - political approach (not the 
theory
of the national-colonial question), in the wrong direction. Milosevic is a war
criminal and imperial lackey - this refers to the war he waged against the
working class - especially its most poverty sector, on behalf of imperial
capital.

Posing the question as good nationalism - progressive, and bad nationalism -
reactionary or "when is the nationalism of a colonized people progressive" is
a blast from the past. There is something unsettling about revolutionaries in
the imperial centers debating who is progressive or not. Nationalism is
bourgeois ideology but this bourgeois ideology cannot blind us to the historic
resistance to imperial intrusion. This is especially true for revolutionaries in
America.

Resistance to American imperial storm troopers by the Iraqi is not
nationalism one way or another, but resistance to being invaded and dominated. 
How this
resistance is expressed in the ideological sphere cannot and should not blind
one to the fact of class as it plays itself out in this juncture of history.
Class is an abstraction that describes something - the over 70% unemployment in
Iraqi and the downsizing to take place in what was the state sector of the
economy. Perhaps a brief examination of the national factor in recent American
history will illustrate some critical points.

I remember the days of Malcolm X and when he would come to Detroit. Brother
Malcolm would give his most profound speeches in Detroit for a complex of
reasons, which included the structure of the Nation of Islam and his family 
members
being in charge of large Mosques representing millions of dollars. We loved
Malcolm but no one joined the Nation of Islam and we never forget that Malcolm
was a Minister opposing injustice. He also represented a very militant section
of the black bourgeoisie.

It was not a question of his nationalism being progressive in the early 1960s
but rather the political separation of the African American workers had not
yet taken place with the black bourgeoisie. When you are under the same gun
political separation is virtually impossible, especially if a very large segment
of your population is tied to the land as petty bourgeois producers. The class
factors amongst the African American people changed rapidly between the start
of WW2 and the early 1960s. This process of political separation showed its
first spark in Birmingham Alabama in 1963 (concentration of black steel
workers) and then in the Watts Rebellion of 1965 and then Detroit exploded in 
1967.

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers arose in the wake of 1967 Detroit
and not as an abstraction but as the political expression of the opening split
between the black bourgeoisie and black workers. This was a spontaneous
occurrence but contained conscious thinking revolutionaries schooling the 
younger
militants. For instance James and Grace Boggs had split from the CLR James Group
"Facing Reality" with James book "Pages From A Negro Workers Notebook"
becoming popular. They were part of the initial cadre that would evolve into the
League. I am of course familiar with CLR James writings on the "Negro Question."
Some details of this is at the BrotherMalcom site on the League of
Revolutionary Black Workers.  http://www.brothermalcolm.net/ and click on 
Conference call
April 2004 Study Guide Black Detroit.

Once the political separation of the workers began taking place we found
ourselves in combat with the Black Elite or rather a large section of the elite
and the urban petty bourgeoisie with valid and critical social issues. The
League wrote on its paper mask that it was "the highest form of organization of
conscious black workers" and began decay because our economic history in America
does not allow black workers to march to far in advance of the Anglo-American
worker or the guy you work next to just because of the national factor -
second class citizenship.

The question of unity of a section of the class becomes complex because
unequals cannot be united except on the basis of maintaining the inequality. The
current basis of unity of the lowest section of the working class without regard
to color is based on the impoverishment of the Anglo American workers or what
we call "the race to the bottom."  The relative social position of the
African American people, in relationship to the Anglo-American people has not
changes since 1865. Nor can it change under the bourgeois property relations.

The point is that today there is not any demands that the so-called black
leaders can raise that is not a demand of the dispossessed without regard to
national factor. The new  juncture in American history and the first initial
impulse towards consolidation of the communist class was the California 
Rebellion
1992. Then there was Cincinnati 2001 and Battle Creek Michigan 2003. The
national factor in this instance means that these outbreaks were basically on 
the
basis of resistance to police violence because police violence is always most
intense against the most poverty stricken section of the proletariat.

Once we factor in the "race to the bottom" and examine the economic data on
the growth of poverty in America, it becomes clear that no one can simply talk
about "black poverty." Here the line of march as politics becomes
crystallized.

It is based on a concrete political assessment - not the theory of the
national question, that communists, revolutionaries and Marxists must ask "what 
is
the Line of March being outlined or spoken of in relations to the break up of
Yugoslavia at the hands of imperialism and its bourgeois agents in the various
nations and nationality group?"

There is a tendency on the part of revolutionaries in America to pick their
national liberation movement to support based on individual assessments of what
one view as progressive. In the hay day of this "thinking" my second wife and
I split on the question of Ethiopia, with her supporting the petty bourgeois
forces created at the hands of Italian imperialism called the Eritrean
Liberation Movement. This period of history is dead and over.

Theory will never provide one with an answer to a practical political
question. What is the line of march? In my estimate this is the biggest mistake 
those
claiming Marxism make in their assessment of the social movement. One cannot
unravel the politics and social movement in the Balkans on the basis of
theory. Theory provides the answer to what stage or juncture we are at in the
evolution of the value system or commodity form. At best theory will provide one
with a general framework that is directional logic. Trotsky in 1922 will help no
one and this is not stated simply because I am from a different political
tradition. Stalin in 1913 is no help in the realm of practical politics.

One has to illustrate their understanding of social movements on the basis of
a clear estimate of their own working class. How can one take anyone serious
who cannot discern what is taking place in their own home?

The logic of bourgeois nationalism has played itself out for everyone to see
with eyes. Yes, I loved Malcolm X and thought he was brilliant, but I did not
join the Nation of Islam and deeply respected the Nation during that period of
history. The political separation with the bourgeoisie has been effected on a
world basis and comrades continue to think the process out in dead political
tradition and much of this dead political tradition was erroneous in my
opinion anyway. What the Ukraine in the 1920s - under Soviet Power, has to do 
with
the break up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s is baffling. If Stalin had never lived
the historic assertion of the petty bourgeois producer and bourgeois
nationalist would take place as the logic of the evolution of commodity 
production.

I do not dismiss the personal qualities of individual leaders - their merits
and demerits, but we are talking about a social process and not simply
political will - fiat.

It is not like we have to have a "position" on this group versus that group
anyway. Lenin himself cannot help us today. We are on our own and have only
ourselves to blame for our victories and defeats. Let me guess . . . 
Yugoslavia's
break up is the result of Stalinism, when in fact Tito sided with imperialism
and became frontman for the Third Way in its political effort to detach the
colonial toilers from Soviet Power. This does not excuse the bourgeois
nationalists in the Soviet Union. Not simply a metaphysical degeneration 
expressed in
the excretion of the state - bureaucracy, but bourgeois nationalists. More
accurately a caricature of the bourgeoisie, that could only further evolve with
the destruction of the socialist property relations that took place after the
dismantling of the Soviet State by bourgeois nationalist.

The same question is in effect: what is the line of March in the former
Soviet Union?

What is taking place is reactionary bourgeois nationalist movements. These
movements run counter to history and the fact of the dispersal of nations and
the amalgamation of peoples at this late stage of imperialism and the post
industrial era.

Melvin P.

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