[PEN-L:6817] Re: Re: Re: Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Michael,
     I do not think that "evil emanates from a single
person," certainly not always.  But when one person
seems to be generating a lot of it, I do not see any
reason not to point a finger and hold responsibility.
     In this case, let's think about it carefully.  This is
repetition of stuff I have said before, but, oh well.
Why did the Croatian-Bosnian war happen (in which
over 200,000 people died)?  I can see three theories:
1)  imperialist plotting (Gervasi-Proyect)
2)  inevitable contradictions of misguided Yugoslav
economic system
3)  rampant and unavoidable nationalism
4)  rampant nationalism exacerbated by power-hungry
Milosevic.
      I take seriously the work of Sean Gervasi and I do
think that German and to a lesser extent US plotting
contributed to the breakup of Yugoslavia.  But I also
think that once democracy of some sort was allowed that
probably Slovenia and Croatia at a minimum would have
seceded.  They had long resented having funds redistributed
to Kosovo-Metohija and Macedonia.  Maybe they could
have been kept in a federation within a democratic
structure, just as North Italy stays in Italy despite unhappiness
over similar redistributions to the Mezzogiorno.  But that
would have required that there be no threat of a takeover
and imposition of authority by one group led by a noisy
leader, which was definitely going on after 1989.
     Much as I have been a fan of the old Yugoslav system
and defended elements of it on this list, nevertheless, it
did experience extreme difficulties in the 1980s.  Growth
stopped, unemployment soared, and inflation seriously took
off.  Some of this was exacerbated by IMF requirements
(imperialist plotting!), but it must also be faced that the IMF
was able to get its mitts in because of the high foreign
indebtedness that Yugoslavia had acquired.  That seems to
be something that soft budget constraint market socialist
countries as a group experienced.  Thus, Hungary and Poland
also had high foreign indebtedness in contrast with
Czechoslovakia, a hardline command socialist economy.
      Furthermore, for whatever reason, we know that regional
inequality had sharply increased.  Paul Phillips has suggested
that some of that may have been reversed or at least slowed
during periods after workers' management became more
influential.  But we know that Slovenia in particular did quite
well, with an unemployment rate averaging only 1.7% in the
1976-87 period while Kosovo-Metohija's averaged 29.6%
during the same period, and with the ratio of their per capita
incomes being about nine to one by the time of the breakup,
this despite all the redistribution of revenues from Slovenia
to Kosmet.
      Of course one can argue that the imperialism aspect
showed up in the foreign indebtedness, that this was the
inevitable outcome of market socialism and the integration
of Yugoslavia into the world economy on a market basis.
That may be, but then somehow Hungary has avoided getting
into wars with Romania, Slovakia, or Serbia over the Hungarian
populations located in those countries in territories that used
to be part of Hungary.  Why is that?
     Certainly there are deeply rooted ethnic and religious
conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.  But they were not always
leading to wars, and in the nineteenth century there was a
genuine "Yugoslav nationalist" movement based on the idea
that the south Slav peoples had more in common than separated
them.  I would argue that the tragic economic differences that
have emerged for whatever reasons have certainly exacerbated
all of this.  But they still do not explain war, slaughter, "cleansing."
      Well, we get down to the hard fact that 600 years after the
Battle of Kosovo Polje, a power hungry League of Communist
party leader for Serbia gave a firebreathing speech at Kosovo
Polje (June 28, 1989) demanding an end to autonomy for
Kosovo-Metohija and a reimposition of Serbian rule, despite
the Serb population being a very small minority.  There is no
question that this speech was reported widely throughout
the former Yugoslavia and that this actively stimulated the
separatist movements in Slovenia and Croatia and also in
other republics as well that had not had strong separatist
movements before then (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia).
Ethnic Serbs did attack first in Vukovar, in Krajina, and in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, all with the strong support of Milosevic,
thus fully justifying the paranoia of those who wanted out.
      Of course the rampant nationalism argument would say
that even if Milosevic had died in 1986, then some other
chauvinist schmuck would have taken over, like Arkan or
Vojislav Seselj.  Maybe.  But it may well also be that without
Milosevic's 1989 speech and subsequent actions following up
on it that such political figures would never had an opening,
that Serbian politics would have resembled Hungarian and
that there would 200,000+ people alive today who are not
alive.  Unfortunately, all though the other factors are certainly
in there, it is very hard to avoid this one.
      Social forces are obviously important, but would
World War II in Europe happened if Adolf Hitler had died
in World War I?
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, May 14, 1999 12:34 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:6814] Re: Re: Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic


>Barkley raises an important question.  If we buy into the fact that all
evil
>emanates from a single person, then the strategy of demonization works
well.  I
>suspect we should look at larger social forces.
>
>
>J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
>
>> would the 200,000+ of the
>> Croatian-Bosnian war be alive if he had died of a
>> heart attack in 1986?)--
>
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Chico, CA 95929
>530-898-5321
>fax 530-898-5901
>
>