For the Military victory of Yugoslavia! [June 1999]

Joint Statement

At this moment, a military alliance headed by the U.S.A., composed of nineteen countries and equipped with the most advanced warlike technology of the planet, triggers an aerial bombing on one of the poorest countries of Europe. A rain of North-American cruise missiles destroys several cities of the Yugoslav Federation (composed of Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodine and Kosovo).

One does not know yet how many hundreds of Serbs were assassinated by the imperialistic projectiles, but independently of the number of dead, the results of the attack left painful scars in the population, who have been living for more than one decade under the conditions of a semi-colony isolated by a criminal economic international blockade.

The imperialistic front counts on the active collaboration of all the European Social-democratic governments, i.e. the bombers left from bases located in Italy, a country led by premier Massimo D'Alema, formed leader of the Italian Communist Party. The attack, justified by its authors for "humanitarian reasons" also deepens enormously the misery that affects the Serbian masses, as well as the Albanians of Kosovo, destroying what still remains of the Yugoslav economy after one decade of wars.

The first step of the attack was the retirement of an army of 1,400 observers of the Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which since October of 1998 was in the Yugoslav Federation on the pretext of guaranteeing the cease-fire between Serbs and Kosovars.

But in fact it was dedicated to espionage, preparing for better conditions for a NATO attack and the instalment of a military base in the region. A manoeuvre that is already well known and which was applied recently in Iraq by the U.S.A. With this trick, pretending to be engaged in international control, the great powers infiltrate agents to gather information, which is used in a future attack on the inspected country.

Nevertheless, that is not the only similarity between the present conflict and the Yankee's wars against Iraq. As well as with Saddam Hussein, the bourgeois mass media tried to present the enemy, Milosevic, as the greatest Satan of the times, the new Hitler, etc., as they always do in these situations to justify the slaughter of the bombings of the oppressed countries led by dictators.

Moreover, like the Iraqi people, the Serbs live under a criminal economic imperialistic blockade applied by "the democrats" and Social-democrat governments of the U.S.A. and Europe. In addition, the criminal action was decided even though Milosevic had capitulated under the conditions demanded in the negotiations of Paris, accepting the self-determination of Kosovo under the plans imposed by the international capitalist organisations. Clinton and the Social- democrat governments of Europe initiated the bombing because Belgrade did not allow a foreign military intervention of 28 thousand soldiers in its territory.

This demonstrates that the occupation is not a way to guarantee the "peace agreements", but an aim in itself. An objective of NATO is to place a military base within Eastern Europe. For that reason, they granted to Kosovo's people an autonomy under the control of the bayonets of the imperialistic troops for a minimum term of three years. In this period, on top of disarming the Serbian forces of the region of Kosovo, they would also try to disarm the UCK/KLA.

To accept an autonomy controlled by imperialism means for Kosovo's people to be left under conditions of national oppression still worse than those they have today. The aerial bombings that they have undergone in these days in Pristina, the capital of the province of Kosovo, are demonstrations of the true methods that will be applied by imperialism in Kosovo.

In spite of the pro-imperialistic Kosovo leaders, who today call for foreign intervention, the Albanian guerrillas of Kosovo have been a permanent problem for the U.S.A. and the European powers, and have crossed the Yugoslav frontiers determined by the peace agreements.

The fight for Albanian national liberation in Kosovo has inflamed the Albanians of the neighbouring countries, particularly of Albania (which since the popular rising of 1997 lives under another military intervention of the NATO) and Macedonia (where there also exists a significant population of Albanian origin). The Albano-Macedonean press used to idolise the heroic fighters from across the border, and the land is more than ready for the appearance of political demands for Albanian independence more radical than the options represented by the main Albano-Macedonean parties that exist nowadays.(El País, 23/03/99).

Because of that, imperialism knows that military intervention will be neither a calm nor a quick walkover! In fact, they speak about a five-year occupation of NATO troops in the south of the Balkans!.(idem)

The intervention brings an increasing number of confrontations between Washington and Moscow. Although Russia has transformed itself into a semicolony, it still has one of the largest arsenals on the planet. It is also aware that the extension of the military control of the Atlantic Alliance into the Balkans is directed towards the European east with the aim to occupy the space of military and political influence left by the Warsaw Pact. The U.S.A. has been modifying the correlation of forces in its favour in the East, and it is not by chance that three former Degenerate Workers States have entered into the Atlantic Alliance of imperialism.

Worried by the imperialistic advance of the Yankees, the Russian leaders were alarmed by the intensity of the conflict. The first minister Primakov declared that the use of the force "would cause a deep destabilising effect in Yugoslavia, Kosovo, the whole Europe and the entire world".(El País, 23/03/99). Even the minister of Defence, Sergueiev, said that "the bombings, would cause a second Vietnam, but this time, within Europe." (Folha do Sao Paulo, 24/03/99).

However Russian opposition to the attack does not go beyond declarations to the worldwide press. In addition, it does not do it because of humanitarian reasons, but because it feels that the next step of the NATO towards the European east is going into its own border republics, where Russia itself exerts a national oppression.

At this moment, it is necessary to defend unconditionally the Serbian population who is on Yugoslavia's side. If it wins over Yugoslavia, imperialism will be in a better condition to exert its dominion on Europe, to recolonise the European east and to oppress the remaining peoples of the planet.

On the other hand, a defeat of the NATO would give a great impulse to the anti-imperialist fight and to the national liberation of the Balkans, in the heart of east Europe, weakening the Social-democratic governments, who attack the labour and social conquests of the workers. At the same time it would put in trouble the dictatorship of Milosevic.

The leftists that do not support the military victory of Yugoslavia because of the bloodthirsty character of Milosevic should use the same criterion to refuse support to Iraq under the bombings of the U.S.A. Is perhaps Saddam Hussein less bloodthirsty than Milosevic?

The only way to stop the chauvinism of Milosevic is to oppose this new form of oppression in Yugoslavia under the bayonets of imperialism, and to defeat the NATO forces by making an anti-imperialist united front with Yugoslavia.

Freeing the country of imperialism breaks the conditions of oppression that generate the Serbian chauvinism, creating in this way better conditions for getting rid of Milosevic.

Today, refusing to make a military united front with Yugoslavia against the NATO is supporting the imperialistic bombings. There can be no progressive solution in the policy of the Serbian or Kosovar nationalism. Milosevic tries to divert popular discontent with the economic crisis of the country towards chauvinism against the ethnic minorities. The leaders of the Albanians, Rugova and the UCK/KLA, hope to get rid of the Serbian yoke by agreeing to a new oppression and a false autonomy under the control of the NATO.

The Kosovo and Serb masses must not fall in this trap. The Serbian workers cannot win anything with the oppression exerted by the capitalist government of Belgrade on the Kosovo Albanians. They must fight for Albanian self-determination, for the right to separate themselves from Yugoslavia and to join Albania and Macedonia if they wish.

In this form, it is even possible to win the Albanians, who see with distrust the imperialistic manoeuvres, to fight for the expulsion of the NATO from the Balkans. It is necessary to construct the proletarian unity of the masses of the Balkans against mankind's main enemy, imperialism.

It is necessary to forge a revolutionary internationalist party in the region, which would break with the nationalist leaders and would take the way of the proletarian direction to defeat and expel to the NATO and the imperialism from the region; wonder to construct a Federation of Socialist Republic in the Balkans.

We call to all the organisations that fight for the defence of the oppressed peoples to take action with marches and demonstrations of protest in the embassies of the imperialistic powers against the attack of the NATO against Yugoslavia, calling for the immediate recall of all troops and stop to the bombings in the Balkans. It is necessary to unify the fight in defence of the Yugoslav people with the combat against all the NATO and pro-imperialistic governments which support this military attack.

Defeat and expel the Yankee imperialism and the NATO from the Balkans!

Serb, Albanian and all Balkan workers unite against capitalist restoration, ethnic

cleansing and imperialism.

For multi-ethnic workers councils

and militias.

Self-determination for Kosovo!

For a Socialist Federation of the Balkans!

24th March 1999 (translated from the Spanish)

Internationalist Bolshevik Liaison - LBI (Brazil)

Workers Revolutionary Party - POR (Argentine)

Committee Of Worker and Socialist Initiative - CIOS (Argentina)

Orthodox Trotskyist Group (Brazil)

Trotskyist Faction (Brazil)

Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International - CEMICOR/LCMRCI

From Class Struggle, No 27 May-June 1999

Yugoslavia: Whose side are you on? [June 1999]

We cannot understand the significance of NATO's war against Yugoslavia unless we trace the role of imperialism in the breakup of Yugoslavia as a political campaign to destroy "communism" and consolidate the post-cold war US hegemony. Without this analysis the left strays from a proletarian perspective.

The 'democratic imperialists'

On the issue of the war most of the left are moving right behind Social Democracy which has become the "new right" according to the Le Monde Diplomatique. It is no accident that Blair, Clinton, Schroeder etc are all rightwing Social Democrats. The Greens are also totally compromised by their support of the bombing. Talk of splits in Social Democracy and the Greens may become real if the war continues if the pacifist rank and file rejects their leaderships. This may restore some reformist credibility in the sense of providing a 'left cover' for the Blairite centre.

Already providing a cover for the 'new middle' is the pro-imperialist pacifist 'far left'. This sucks up to imperialism by opposing NATO bombing, yet defends imperialist intervention in some form or other in the name of Kosovo's human rights and bourgeois democracy. These include the Usec (International Viewpoint) and Rouge in Europe, and Green Left in Australia

Fundamentally these criticisms of the bombing are not unconditional opposition to imperialism, but criticism of war as a tactic in advancing human rights! Some say Serbian 'fascism' is equal to or worse than NATO imperialism (Australian Green Left Weekly, Michael Karadjis, "Chossudovsky's frame-up of the KLA").

Underlying this capitulation to 'democratic imperialism' is a Eurocentric racism which brands and demonises Slavs as backward, uncivilised etc needing to be taught a lesson by the West's moral campaign for human rights. It is no surprise that these groups tend to hate Stalinism as totally reactionary. That is, they have always backed anti-Stalinist bourgeois democratic social movements as being more progressive than the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Degenerated Workers States.

The Socialist Workers: some history

The most obvious case is the International Socialist current, often called the 'Cliffites' after their main historic leader Tony Cliff (SWO in NZ). Their hostility to Stalinism is legendary originating in a split between Shachtman and Trotsky in 1939 over the defence of the Soviet Union. Trotsky distinguished between a healthy workers' state and a degenerated workers state ruled by a Stalinist bureaucracy. This bureaucracy would have to be overthrown by a political revolution to create a healthy workers state.

Yet Trotsky subordinated the overthrow of the Stalinists to the defence of workers property against imperialism. He said that this might mean blocking with the Stalinists to defend the Soviet Union. But the Cliffites were hostile to Stalinism, and they rejected Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers state. They put forward instead their theory of 'state capitalism' which had no progressive features worth defending. They took the infamous double defeatist position -"neither Washington nor Moscow."

The first test of this position came in 1950 with the Korean war when the Cliffites refused to take sides in the UN/US attack on the Democratic Republic of Korea. Today in the case of Yugoslavia where capitalism has been restored the Cliffites hostility to Stalinism is still evident in the opposition to the former Stalinist Milosovic.

To call for the defeat of NATO and Milosovic in Kosovo at the same time is to take a dual defeatist position on the war, equating the two sides as equally bad.

The social base of this dual defeatist position is the petty bourgeois labour aristocracy in the imperialist states. Trotsky's original critique of Shachtman still holds. The "petty bourgeois opposition", as he called it, was adapting to the onset of the cold war which hyped-up US workers against the SU as a Stalinist dictatorship equal to Hitler's fascism. The opposition caved in to this media blitz and adopted the state capitalist position. This adaptation to anti-Stalinist public opinion is still evident today. It accounts for the Cliffites inability to withstand NATO's media campaign to demonise Serbia and Milosovic, and their call for Milosovic to get out of Kosovo when the effect of that call is to weaken Yugoslavia's defence against NATO!

Solving the National Question

On the other hand, the so-called 'ultraleft' says the national question is now wholly subordinated to the defence of Yugoslavia. For example, the ICL (Spartacists) and the Marxist Workers Group (MWG) "subordinates" the national question to the united front against imperialism as if they were separate questions. While it is correct to unconditionally oppose NATO (i.e not making the defeat of Milosovic and the defence of the KLA conditions of that stand) we cannot eliminate the national question from our programme by making it merely an effect of a future working class revolution. We have to do more than proclaim the end of the Kosovo question; we have to actively turn the national question into the class question (as we explain below).

Former Stalinists, and Trotskyist currents like the Spartacists and the MWG, take a view of the national question, which reduces it to its leadership. This misses the point of the Leninist fight to champion the national rights oppressed workers in order to win them away from their reactionary chauvinist leaderships to the struggle for socialism.

Therefore, for these tendencies, the fact that Kosovo liberation is led by the KLA which is covertly armed and trained by the US, and which now acts as the "ground troops" for NATO, disqualifies the Kosovo struggle as reactionary.

But why should the reactionary leadership disqualify the national rights of the majority? All national struggles against oppression are led by reactionary, or potentially reactionary, leaders whose interests are much closer to imperialism than those of workers and peasants. InYugoslavia, the anti-imperialist UF against NATO is led by Milosovic, who is no democrat. Yet he is no fascist. But even if he were a fascist that would still be no reason to abandon the defence of Yugoslavia.

Trotskyists defend oppressed countries from imperialism despite their reactionary leaderships. This is because imperialism is the main enemy. It creates the conditions for reactionary leaders. A victory for imperialism is always an outright defeat for workers because it allows imperialism a free hand to impose worse economic and political conditions on workers. This is why the defence of on an oppressed country in a war with imperialism is unconditional.

However, while our military bloc against imperialism is unconditional workers must maintain a political and military independence from the bourgeois leadership. This is because in the national struggle an independent working class leadership can emerge capable of replacing the bourgeois leadership and winning against imperialism by turning imperialist war into class war.

So just as we bloc militarily with Milosovic while he is fighting against NATO, the fact that the Kosovo struggle is currently misled by the KLA in league with NATO is no reason for abandoning the national rights of the majority of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Inside the UF against imperialism we fight to build workers multi-ethnic militia which can prevent ethnic violence from dividing and destroying workers unity.

It is because this 'ultraleft' current is pro-Stalinist, and tends to put its faith in Stalinist (or ex-Stalinist) bureaucrats, that it rejects national struggles led by non-Stalinist elements, and turns the struggle to build an independent revolutionary leadership into a lifeless abstraction. It fails to see that the while the Kosovo national question has to be subordinated to the Yugoslav national defence against NATO, nevertheless inside the anti-imperialist UF, Kosovo has to be raised in order to create the conditions for workers internationalism. Without that internationalism there can be no socialist revolution capable of resolving all national questions by a free choice of peoples to form Socialist Republics within wider Federations.

Revolutionary dialectics

Our position is neither of these flipflops. The clearest way to understand revolutionary politics is to follow the class line of dialectics. It is no accident that Trotsky saw dialectics as the key to socialist revolution and the abandonment of dialectics as the sure evidence of capitulation to bourgeois ideology and abstaining from the leadership of the proletariat. Once again, imperialist war becomes the crucial test of the ability of Trotskyists to understand the class line.

As Trotsky taught us, imperialism represents the main capitalist enemy with the power to set-up and destroy whole nations by economic, political and military means. Therefore we must subordinate our struggle against any given national bourgeoisie to a united front against imperialism. But since the national bourgeoisie are ultimately serving the interests of imperialism, only a working class opposition to imperialism can ensure the defeat of both.

Thus, in the case of the current war, while we subordinate the Kosovo question to the defence of Yugoslavia, we subordinate both to the building of an international working class opposition that can win a victory over imperialism and allow the free development of national rights within the framework of a Federation of Socialist Republics.

We can see that imperialism has successfully divided and ruled the former Yugoslav Federation of degenerated workers states. It has restored capitalism and imposed -IMF austerity programmes. And it has promoted former Stalinists or fascists as ultranationalist bourgeois leaders all bent on grabbing territory and ethnically cleansing any opposition. Any imperialist intervention, military or 'humanitarian', as we have seen in many places as well as Yugoslavia, cannot defend national or human rights, and only strengthens the hand of reaction. It is designed to set up compliant client mini-states of imperialism as "Mafia republics", or military bases as part of the strategy to partition and exploit the resources of Central , South and East Asia.

Because of imperialism's divide and rule tactic we are on the side of oppressed nations. We are for the unconditional right to self-determination of any oppressed people which democratically expresses this right. However, we do not support the reactionary leaderships of independence movements, or its imperialist backers, since this the opposite of self-determination.

So while we unconditionally defend Yugoslavia against NATO and the KLA, we also call for the right of Kosovars to self-defence against Yugoslav repression. This right has to be raised along with the demand for multi-ethnic militias capable of uniting workers against repression on all sides.

We do not call for Independence for Kosovo now because that would mean a victory for the KLA. Not because it has got its arms and supplies from imperialism, but because it has accepted the imperialist strings attached to these- that is, support of NATO bombing Yugoslavia to make Kosovo free!

Against US domination of the whole Balkan region, Serbian, Kosovar Albanian, Albanian, Croatian etc., self-determination can only result from the united Yugoslav workers overcoming the imperialist divide and rule strategy of fomenting ethnic chauvinism and removing their ultranationalist leaders to create a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Balkans.

But this will only happen during the unconditional defence of Yugoslavia where the bourgeois misleaders will be shown to be on the side of imperialism not the workers of Yugoslavia. Milosovic cannot defend Yugoslavia and will do a deal, probably brokered by Russia, another US semi-colonial dependency desperate for IMF funds, for the partition of Kosovo under UN "peacekeeping troops". The KLA and the Albanian bourgeoisie in the pay of the US have already done their deal - and the price for ordinary ethnic Albanians is bombing, displacement and chaos.

Such deals are a major defeat for Yugoslav, Kosovar, and all Balkan workers, as well as workers everywhere, as they legitimise a NATO/UN "hardcop-softcop" routine to intervene at will in any oppressed country on the pretext of defending 'human rights'.

Therefore, it is necessary to actively call for workers to unite across ethnic lines as the only way that Yugoslavia can be truly defended. This internationalism must be taken up by workers in the NATO countries following the example of Italian and Greek workers.

The main enemies are at home!

Turn Imperialist war into civil war!

From Class Struggle No 27 May-June 1999