Hi
As I have said before the Balkan war is an inter-capitalist
war, not an inter-imperialist war.
All sides in the war are seeking to maintain or enhance the
general conditions for profit maximisation. It is a war over the character of
capital accumulation in Serbia and, indirectly, globally. No sides in this war
represent the class interests of the working class --neither Serbia, the KLA nor
NATO. Thereby no side can be supported by revolutionaries. Revolutionaries must
struggle to expose the real nature of all sides in this conflict in the
interests of promoting a struggle against the bourgeoisie.
The significant and decisive question is how Western
imperialism hopes to serve its class interests by engaging in this military
campaign against Serbia. What is at the bottom of the invasion of Serbia?
Clearly it is Washington's intention to preserve Russia in a
condition whereby it does not pose a threat to the class interests of the
bourgeoisie. To achieve this it must ensure that Russia is stabilised and yet
contained. It hopes to keep Russia in a condition whereby it constitutes a
medium sized capitalist country that serves to maintain capitalist stability in
that region. To promote the creation of these conditions it must ensure that the
neighbouring countries, most of which were once under Soviet influence, are
under Washington's control. In this way Russia is effectively encircled
by American satellites and thereby its power accordingly
constrained. This encirclement can then be employed by Washington as leverage to
prevent Russia getting "to big for its boots". This potential threat
together with Russia's need for Western aid and capital can be deployed to
facilitate the evolution of Russia into a well behaved medium sized imperialist
dominated capitalist state under the general management of the West
--particularly US imperialism.
Serbia, then, is the bull in the China shop. Serbia is a
hindrance to these plans. It is refusing to co-operate sufficiently with
Western imperialism. It interferes with its plans for Eastern Europe and the
Balkans unlike other former members of the Soviet bloc. The West's
plans for Eastern Europe are the establishment of a new form of stability based
on imperialist social relations. These include the break up of Yugoslavia as a
means for further fragmenting and reconstituting Eastern Europe. It all
forms part of a grand strategy to completely wrench Eastern Europe from its
Stalinist past and accordingly switch it from a Stalinist to an imperialist
based stability. While Croatia and Slovenia were prepared to co-operate in this
regard Serbia was not so co-operative. The West feared that Belgrade's
intransigence would generate further instability spreading right across the
Balkans involving Albania, Turkey and even Greece. This would thereby threaten
both the West's current strategy and the present conditions of
relative capitalist stability in that region. Such a development would lead
to the greater destabilisation of this entire region and the unravelling of
Washington's regional network of control and influence both in the area and even
generally.
The West, then, is not as such anti-Milosevic. It is prepared
to support Milosevic, and has in the past supported him in moderation. What is
being sought is his co-operation with Washington in the restoration of stability
on a capitalist basis which necessarily entails imperialist domination. But the
contradictions of capitalism hinder such an arrangement. Milosevic may wish to
be a willing satellite of Washington. However the specific conjuncture of events
in Serbia, and the region as a whole, hinders such an easy accommodation. To
preserve his power base he is unable to co-operate because of the particular
domestic state of affairs that obtain together with the form by which he has
established his power base. In short capitalism in Serbia. under present
conditions, can only be preserved and developed by the kind of policies pursued
by Milosevic. To serve Serbian bourgeois interests Milosevic is essentially
obliged, given the character of his power base, to act as he has. In this way
there is a contradictory relation between capitalism in the form of imperialism
and, in a sense, indigenous capitalist interests.
Milosevic seeks to preserve his existence by purportedly
seeking to establish an independent capitalist Serbia. It is this purported
programme that is, in general, the basis for his support. Such a programme
requires a militant Serbian nationalism. However the contradiction is that it is
impossible for an independent capitalist nation state to be established and
consolidated in the epoch of imperialism except as a form of
exceptionalism.
In that sense, then, Belgrade is engaged in what purports to
be the realisation of an idealist Utopia --an unrealisable dream. Consequently
Milosevic appears to be taking the Serbian masses and bourgeois elements
down a cul-de-sac. However appearances contradict reality --Milosevic does
not promote the politics of idealism. The course and outcome of the Bosnian war
is evidence of this. At the end of the day he cannot win any genuine struggle
for substantive national independence entailing independent capitalist
development. Just as socialism in one country is not possible neither is
capitalism in one Serbia possible. Milosevic is merely fooling the masses in and
out of Serbia in the interests of sustaining his regime in power by
ultimately serving imperialist interests. Milosevic appears to be
anti-imperialist while being essentially pro-imperialist. In the end, if he is
not toppled, he will have to further compromise with imperialism and accept a
Serbian capitalism that is dominated by imperialism. Indeed, in many ways,
the attack by NATO on Serbia may precipitate domestic conditions which will
allow Milosevic to further compromise with imperialism and thereby establish a
framework for co-operation between Serbia and imperialism. The current Balkan
conflict may eliminate some of the conditions or elements within Serbia that
have been preventing the Milosevic regime from co-operating in the way that
Washington requires.
In the final analysis it is no problem for Milosevic to
collaborate with imperialism. He merely seeks a form
of imperialist stability that includes him. No better force than
Stalinism exists to settle with imperialism --its record proves this.
So all this talk about imperialism attacking a sovereign
state and the right to national self-determination is mere ideology disguising
what is basically a matter of advancing bourgeois interests in one specific form
or another. At the end of the day it is the working masses that suffer the
reactionaries --Milosevic, the KLA and NATO.
The conviction that, if the NATO bombing of Serbia goes
wrong, imperialism can be defeated under present circumstances is a gross
miscomprehension among the radical left community. Even if the NATO
invasion is not going according to plan it does not at all follow that
imperialism can , is being or has been necessarily defeated. Whatever way the
cookie crumbles imperialism in one form or another must come out on top. The
only scenario in which it cannot is when the working class topples capitalism to
replace it with communist relations. The latter case is not remotely possible
under present conditions. The silly glee experienced among much of the
conventional radical left each time something goes wrong for NATO in its air
attack on Serbia is an expression, if anything, of the weakness of the radical
left and its substitution of the spectator politics of the boxing ring for the
politics of revolution.
Revolutionaries must express their opposition to Milosevic,
the KLA and NATO exposing the common capitalist class interests that they serve.
What is required is a federation of Balkan communities based on communism.
Warm regards
George Pennefather