Re: Re: Re: Re: Milosevic out?

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote:
> >Please don't equate Milosevic, a total opportunist and rapid nationalist
> >(though he and his wife mouth socialist rhetoric when it's convenient),
> >with Allende, a socialist leader. It dirties the latter's memory.

Louis responds:

> Milosevic presided over state-owned enterprises. By all accounts, he was
> determined to preserve these property relationships against the wishes of
> Nato. ...

(1) state ownership of enterprises only shows the _potential_ for
socialism, not the actuality of socialism. (It's necessary, but not
sufficient.) It's not just a matter of the state owning the means of
production. We must also ask: who owns the state? After all, the Egyptian
Pharaoh owned the land and other major means of production. Do you think
that the workers and peasants of Serbia had significant democratic control
over the Serbian state? (Louis, do you think that Algerian state-owned oil
wells are "socialist"? How about the Tennessee Valley Authority?)

BTW, Marx and Engels didn't equate state control with socialism. To Engels,
for example, "It is a purely self-serving falsification by the
Manchesterite [laissez-faire] bourgeoisie to label every intervention into
free competition as `socialism': protective tariffs, guilds, tobacco
monopoly, statification of branches of industry,..., the royal porcelain
factory. We should criticize this, not believe it. If we do the latter and
base a theoretical argument on it, then it will collapse along with its
premises" [quoted in Draper, _Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution_, volume 4,
1990: p. 96, emphasis suppressed].

It's true that the ascension of neoliberalism in (and "Western" dominance
of) Serbia will rule out the realization of the potential of state
ownership. But what did Milosevic due to further the realization of this
potential? how did he empower rank-and-file workers and peasants? how did
he deepen and widen the role democracy, to get away from the superficial
democracy that prevails in places like the US? To what extent did he use
the state property simply to deepen and widen his own control over the state?

BTW, I notice that you omit the role of worker-owned co-ops in Serbia. Why
is this?

(2) It's important not to fall for Mao's fallacy, i.e., that the enemy of
my enemy is my friend. Just because Milosevic opposes NATO doesn't mean
that the former is automatically to be supported (or the latter, for that
matter). The Ayatollah Khomeini was a died-in-the-wool, hard-core opponent
of not only US imperialism but the bloody-handed Shah. Was it a good idea
for leftists to support his rise (as some did)?

> >BTW, Louis what was your position on the popular overthrow of Ceaucescu
> >(sp??) of Romania? was his regime socialist, so that the overthrow was
> >reactionary? or what?

Louis responds:
> It was reactionary because it prepared the way for the immiseration of the
> Romanian people, just as the counter-revolution in Yugoslavia will do the
> same for the Serbs.

There's no doubt in my mind that the overthrow of Ceaucescu had this
effect. But the fact is that Ceaucescu himself -- like Milosevic -- helped
create the situation in which this kind of capitalist revolution could
happen. If there's a clique of assh*les that monopolizes the state -- and
state-owned property -- and uses that power to feather their own nests and
commit all sorts of crimes (so that they have to continue their
monopolization of state power so as to avoid prosecution or worse), that
simply encourages people to think of the alternative -- in this case,
capitalism -- as better.  To repeat, Ceaucescu, Milosevic, and their ilk
make the capitalist job easier. It's a socialist's job to prevent this from
happening, if possible. (It's an obvious point, but it should be stressed
that this does _not_ mean allying with the imperialists.)

It's like the worst possible labor union, one that combines (1) the narrow
craft-union mentality of raising wages by excluding workers (often women
and minorities) from jobs with (2) the corruption of a bureaucratic
leadership that makes deals with management, getting big salaries for
themselves by preventing strikes and holding down rank-and-file unrest (a
kind of extortion). (I'm told that the Laborer's International Union used
to fit this picture.) In this case, the union-busting of management and its
allies is in the end _made easier_. The excluded folks and the
disenfranchised rank and file eventually become susceptible to the
propaganda that no union or a company union would be better... The owners
of businesses often see strikes (and unionization) as a failure of their
own management techniques, and there's a lot of truth to that view. I think
we should also see the success of anti-union efforts as a symptom of the
failures of the union movement. It's part of a socialist's job to make the
labor movement immune to management's efforts. And that doesn't mean
cheer-leading for the corrupt bureaucrats.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine