[PEN-L:8711] Re: Re: Re: Serb dictatorship?

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote: >>He [Milosevic] 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). <<

Louis writes: >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. <

Draper didn't use the term "state capitalism" to describe the USSR and
similar countries; rather, he used the term "bureaucratic collectivism,"
suggesting that they were a new class mode of production. As you know, I
use the term "bureaucratic socialism" instead (though the meaning is pretty
much the same as Draper's BC) because I like the abbreviation it produces
and because discussions about whether or not the USSR was "socialist" are
allmost always futile and distract from the real issues, especially since
they usually mix positive and normative definitions of socialism in an
indiscriminate way. (Marx and Engels don't use the word "socialism" as
being something they're necessarily in favor of in the MANIFESTO, BTW.)

I don't know if (or how) Draper used the term "state capitalism." I use
that term (following reading from MERIP and other places) to describe the
systems of countries like Algeria at the time I studied them, where the
state owned important means of production (oil) but ran them basically as
capitalist enterprises while leaving the rest of the economy capitalist.
The US Tennessee Valley Authority also strikes me as "state capitalist."

The difference between bureaucratic collectivism (bureaucratic socialism)
and state capitalism is that with the former, the state monopolizes _all_
(or almost all) of the means of production outside the petty production
sector, so that the state is the only or main employer of labor-power.
(This doesn't make the workers "state slaves" as the late unlamented Max
Schactman called them, since the USSR's ruling class didn't control
production very much at all. So workers pretended to work while the rulers
pretended to pay them.)

I deliberately put the phrase "state monopoly capitalism" in quotations to
separate it from the theory that the French CP (from the 1950s to the 1970s
or so) used to describe advanced-country capitalism. However, Duvalier and
other kleptocrats did mobilize their states and their monopolies to benefit
themselves, while hardly contradicting capitalism. (BTW, I believe that the
term kleptocrat comes from a Kissinger-led commission that used it to
describe Somoza, I believe. That just shows that Kissinger can be a war
criminal and say one or two good things at the same time.) By the way, I
used the phrase "a lot like" before "Mobutu" advisedly. Though there are
some similarities (see below) between Milosevic and Mobutu, which is what I
was emphasizing, there are also major differences.

As for (the old, Tito-ruled) Yugoslavia, I don't know how to describe it
(not that fancy terminology always helps). Having worker-controlled
factories and a growing role for markets, it clearly differed from the
USSR, while worker-controlled factories have both democratic-socialist
elements and elements of particularism which militate against the further
development of democratic socialism (the way craft unions do), which were
encouraged by the growing role of markets and Tito's tendency toward
excessive decentralization in his last years.

(I don't blame Tito for not instituting a full-scale democratic-socialist
economy, by the way, since the conditions were hardly ripe, what with the
US and USSR fighting over his head. He could have emphasized democracy much
much more, however; in fact, a more developed centralized democracy might
have slowed the centrifugal forces that tore Yugoslavia to shreds. If there
had been more horizontal political links instead of vertical links between
the decentralized units and the center, ...)

I do know that Milosevic has not favored the socialist dimension during the
last 10 years or so and has instead emphasized Serb nationalism. I wouldn't
call him a socialist. Like the US/NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank, he
doesn't like workers' control. (A welfare state, however admirable it might
be, is not socialism, in my book. Bismarck instituted a welfare state.)

>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.<

Okay, since I just shot my mouth off on the topic. That'll teach me to
reply to a message sentence-by-sentence instead of reading the whole thing
through!

>>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.<

Not only do I not see any profound difference between our two
interpretations of Mobutu, but this suggests a reasonable and friendly
amendment to what I said. Mobutu (like S. Korea) was allowed to have a
certain amount of independence from imperialism because they were (1)
bastions against the rival super-power and "ideological enemy" and (2)
opposed grassroots rebellion within their own countries which might
undermine the stability of capitalism and imperialism.

Are you equating Angola with Milosevic's Serbia? As for Angola, I don't
know enough about their economy to say anything. (I would _guess_ that they
had a state capitalist economy, as defined above.) But the US attitude
toward Angola was typical toward any popular anticolonial or
antikleptocratic revolution. They unleashed a shit-storm against Angola in
order to make sure that the revolution didn't get out of line, disrupting
the imperial system, while pushing for a "pro-US" foreign policy there and
pro-capitalist economics (roll-back). The US officially doesn't favor state
capitalism, even if its objections were muted by the competition with the
USSR in many cases.

What this suggests is that state ownership of the means of production means
something different in different contexts.

>>(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.<

I'll bow to the opinion of the experts. (Paul Phillips, are you there?) My
impression, however, is that Milosevic used his control of the Serbian
welfare state to promote his career (his re-election) and his program of
ethnic nationalism, while using the black market to fill his pockets. The
analogy with Mayor Dailey   also is suggestive: "Hizzoner" was supposedly
very honest in his own personal dealings, while allowing his subordinates
to engage in the worst kinds of graft, which encouraged loyalty to the
Machine.

>>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.<

I didn't say a "plague on both their houses." Re-read what I said. One
doesn't have to defend the underdog against the bully by asserting that the
underdog is somehow morally superior. It's as if Max had decided that the
KLA was wonderful (and socialist) simply because the Serbians were horrible.

BTW, the main content of "Draperite" third camp politics is NOT "a plague
on both their houses," but instead the view that "good things" don't come
from above, from condescending saviors like capitalist politicians or
socialist bureaucrats (or religious leaders or ...). They come from the
grass roots struggle of workers and other oppressed groups fighting _from
below_ against their oppression. It's this struggle (which involves the
development of organization and consciousness) that can push leaders to
accept progressive policies and reforms, and can set the stage for
socialist revolution. Progressive reforms can also come from external
pressure, as when competition with the USSR encouraged welfare statism in
the US, but this can and often does also encourage repression, as with
COINTELPRO.

In a related post, Michael Yates writes: >I would be willing to bet my
pension that NATO et. al. will try to root out any form of workers' control
in Yugoslavia and will not support any enemies of Milosevic, no matter how
democratic, if these enemies are not in favor of "free-market" capitalism.<

Yes, Milosevic and US/NATO share an antipathy toward workers' control. But
I think that the politics of the moment (i.e., Clinton not wanting to leave
the Hitler du jour in power the way Bush did with Saddam Hussein) might
push the US to accept someone to replace Milosevic who's not wholeheartedly
in favor of "free-market" capitalism (and even more virulent in his or her
Serbian nationalism). But then the US, NATO, the EU, the IMF, the World
Bank _et al_ would do everything in their power to force Milosevic's
replacement to toe the neoliberal party line.

>Should Milosevic be overthrown today, the new gov't. still would not get
aid from the West unless it agreed to neoliberalist policy.<

We'll see.

>BTW, the U.S. switched from supporting Samoza to supporting the contras.
What is the difference?<

In the middle between Somoza and the contras, there was an effort to
cultivate the liberal alternative to the Sandinistas, i.e., the
non-Sandinista Chamorro faction (sp?). (This was also the strategy when
Marcos fell.) It's this middle phase I was referring to, though it's quite
possible that the US had a two-track strategy, simultaneously building up
an armed anti-Sandinista force via the CIA, the way they did vis-a-vis
Allende. If there was this second track, you're right.

That's enough for today. No more missives today, period.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html