Re: Re: Re: Re: Milosevic out?

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had written:
> > > > The protestors -- who seemed to have come from all major classes,
> > > > unlike previous anti-Milosevic waves, which were primarily based
> > > > in the urban middle classes -- were fighting the Yugoslav
> > > > government, led by a man who had committed the ultimate sin among
> > > > nationalists, i.e., losing a war.

Néstor wrote:
> > >A gross mistake and a gross underrating of the ability of the masses
> > >to understand when they lose a war because they cannot do otherwise.

I responded:
> > In this specific case, the people seem to have blamed Milosevic
> > (correctly or not, but they were admittedly encouraged to do so by the
> > US & NATO, etc.)

Néstor ripostes:
> Sorry to contradict you, dear Jim.

It's okay. I've been wrong once or twice during the last decade... Let's
see if that's true here. Actually, I don't think we disagree very much on
this issue.

> The same could be said of the mob who gathered at the Murillo Square of La
> Paz, in Bolivia, in 1943, and hang President Gualberto Villaroel, whose
> only crime had been to behave gallantly during the Chaco War, express his
> intention to put an end to Indian servitude, and explain that Bolivia
> needed to gain control of its own resources. Shame on them, the Bolivian
> "Left" was among the most rabid (in any sense you like) leaders of this
> "revolution". But the Bolivian people was forced to sit and silently watch
> the  events at the Capital City. Some observed from the pits of the tin
> mines, others from the vast fields of the large estates, still others from
> the patch of land that they did not own. They were not happy, not at all.

I don't know enough about Bolivian history to comment. I would guess (note
the verb) that Gualberto Villaroel was more complex than that. From what
I've read, even though Simón Bolívar was the lead liberator of South
America -- patronizingly called its "George Washington" -- he also tried to
concentrate as much political power in his own hands and rule in a top-down
way. So there was a tremendous amount of resentment toward him, indeed some
popular rebellions. (BTW, I'm not a fan of Washington, either.) Perhaps
Villaroel was similar, maybe even financially corrupt, engaging in
nepotism, etc.

Again, I don't know much about Bolivia (and at least I don't pretend I do
the way the US monetarists did when they smashed that country's inflation
and squashed its people, assuming that the same abstract "too much money
causes inflation" model applies everywhere equally, so you don't have to
study the country).

Maybe the Philippine analogy that shows up in a version of this thread
could help. Milosevic (who is the real subject of this dialogue) is a
little like Ferdinand Marcos, though clearly much less corrupt in the
financial dimension. Because Marcos was no longer needed, the US comes in
to back the leaders of the "liberal" bourgeoisie (Aquino, et al.) just the
way they supported a similar group against Somoza in Nicaragua, when that
US-sponsored SOB had become an embarrassment. We should remember that a few
years ago, the US worked with Milosevic in the process of the partition of
Yugoslavia, though obviously he never worked with the US as much as Papa
Doc Duvalier or Pinochet did. Now in Serbia, the alternative was another
Serbian nationalist, Kostunica. Again, we see a division in the ruling
elite of the country which the US is trying to rule. The US and its allies
of course exploit that division.

In this kind of situation, with the economy deteriorating (in the case of
Serbia, largely because of US/NATO hostility), people choose between the
known evil (here Milosevic) and the unknown one (Kostunica). Initially,
Serbs supported the known evil, but continued pressure from the economy and
the outside (the lasting results of terror-bombing, etc.) pushes people to
support Kostunica. The US leadership is pretty explicit that they set up
incentives to make people want to throw Milo out. (BTW, is it true that
Mexico is sending money north to ensure Gore's election? If "we" can do it,
so can they!) They voted for Milosevic's political party on the
parliamentary front (though not in municipal elections), which suggests
that they didn't reject Milosevic's system as much as him as a person. But
the US & NATO will use the weakness to try to institute the neoliberal model.

The rejection of Milosevic was done by a cross-class coalition, which could
have a lot of different meanings. Both European fascism and social
democracy had heavy cross-class components. But given the way that the US
and NATO have written the "rules of the game" and given the way the urban
"middle classes" tend to dominate such coalitions when the workers are
poorly organized, I'd guess that _even though people had some very good
reasons to reject Milosevic_, the results are going to be bad. Among other
things, the US isn't going to give much money to reconstruct Serbia, while
any reconstruction that's done will be in the neo-liberal "if it's the
market, it's good" mold, allowing the "Western" banks and corporations to
skim the cream (anything that's profitable). Again we'll see carpet-baggers
in the Harvard Institute for Development vein.

The problem, as I've said, is that Milosevic wasn't doing a very good job
of defending "socialism," either. My impression is that he didn't work to
deepen or widen democratic control of the state, but was instead following
the machine-politics model of Chicago's Mayor Daley (the father, not the
current one).

You'll note that I was _not_ saying that just because it's a popular
revolt, it's good. The "Western" elites have learned how to channel popular
revolts ("people power") to serve their foreign policy goals. Since
popular-democratic participation is a necessary component of the socialist
goal, we have to figure out how to liberate its socialist component, to
turn "people power" against the system as opposed to favoring the dissident
parts of the existing elite who favor the prolongation of class rule, both
domestically and internationally.

> Shall we see Milosevic dangling from a street lamp?

The "Western" elite wants that to happen (it's even better than a
war-crimes trial), though in normal circumstances they oppose vigilantism.

> We _saw_ Villarroel. And some still say that Villarroel was a Fascist...

The word "fascist" is over-used and should be avoided when not explained.
(Above, I was referring to Mussolini, Franco, and similar.) Again, I'd have
to know more about the content of the criticism of Villarroel to know the
extent of the validity of the Left critique of him.

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