[PEN-L:8687] Re: Re: Serb dictatorship?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine:
>He seems (from what I've read) to favor free markets when they favor his
>own wealth. In this, he's a lot like Mobutu, Somoza, Marcos, Duvalier, etc.
>who ran miniature "state monopoly capitalist" systems with themselves
>dominating both the state and the monopolies, for their own profits. I'm
>told tht Milosevic has been working to undermine the remnants of workers'
>control (as would NATO, if it ruled Serbia, from what I've heard from
>Barkley about their attitude toward Slovenia).

Jim, Yugoslavia had a socialist revolution in the 1940s, the first since
1917. I am not sure how committed you are to the Draperite "state
capitalist" schema, but I sense it might be an exercise in futility for me
to try to explain the difference between the role of something like Yugo
automobile and Mobutu's state-owned enterprises. So I won't. Let's just say
that we have different understandings of the importance of state ownership
in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and leave it like that. To go
any further would involve abstruse discussions about the nature of class in
postcapitalist societies, etc.


>Though the drive for "free markets" by the US/NATO is crucial now, there
>are POLITICS involved too. When the USSR was around, the US/NATO were more
>than willing to compromise free market principles in order to gain allies
>like Mobutu, et al.

Jim, I find this completely absurd. Mobutu was an American ally because he
occupied the same relationship to anticapitalist revolution in Africa that
South Korea did in Asia. To not be able to distinguish between the role of
state ownership in Angola, where a successful revolution had just taken
place, and Zaire, a counterrevolutionary gendarme, is astonishing for a
self-proclaimed Marxist like yourself.

>(Some kleptocratic despots, like Batista or Somoza in their last days,
>became so useless to imperialism as allies that they were dumped from the
>pantheon of "our SOBs" even before the USSR bit the dust. So the USSR is
>only part of the story.)

It is about time that we substantiated some of these charges on
"kleptocracy" that are so loosely thrown around. I just did a search on
Yugoslavia and kleptocracy on Lexis-Nexis for all dates and came up with
only three articles. None of them contained anything but allegations that
there is nepotism. In other words, if a politician backed Milosevic, he
would get a cushy job. To compare this to Somoza whose family owned 40% of
Nicaragua's assets prior to the revolution, BASED ON DOCUMENTATION, is
simply slipshod.

>In summary, I see US/NATO vs. Milosevic as a matter of the competition of
>capitals (big capital vs. little) than some sort of capitalism vs.
>socialism conflict. That doesn't mean that the war against the Serbs was a
>good thing, of course.... The Mafia don should be resisted, even if his
>victim is a small restauranteur.

Yes, a plague on both their houses. Stalin and Hitler. Castro and Batista.
Somoza and Ortega.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)