MIM Notes 186 May 15 1999

Oppose U$/NATO attack on Yugoslavia
Build anti-imperialism & proletarian revolution
Kosovo lesson:  peace movement needed

Cambridge, MA -- On April 8th, MIM held a public emergency meeting 
on the situation in Kosovo. The masses will make or break the 
peace movement, but the communists must provide clarity and 
direction.

Not humanitarian

The Clinton administration says that it is going into Kosovo on a 
humanitarian mission. Yet there are so many humanitarian missions 
that need to be done in this world that are not done, that no 
principled persyn takes the Clinton administration seriously. If 
Clinton were serious, he would preface his remarks with self-
criticism for not taking up humanitarian concerns in the past 
consistently.

Not for self-determination 

NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) talks about how the 
Russians should not side with the Serbian president Milosevic. No 
doubt most of the world has a low regard for him; yet, when a 
white minority ruled the apartheid system in so-called South 
Africa, we did not see Uncle Sam send troops. In fact, the United 
States sent the white fascists weapons. Such situations of 
Milosevic or worse abound in the world, but most of them do not 
result in U.$. bombing. In fact, most of the worst criminal rulers 
receive U.$. backing.

As some have pointed out, Bush would not have stood for the New 
World Order in Kuwait if all Kuwait had was broccoli. The U.S. 
Government is not principled in a humanitarian way or in a way 
concerning self-determination of nations. It deserves no respect 
for bandying about these concepts whenever it needs to cover up 
its true compulsions. 

Not about majority rule

Even prior to the bombing of Serbia, U.$. officials were talking 
about being more "pragmatic" and not recognizing twice-elected 
Kosovo president Rugova. What the U.$. officials mean by 
"pragmatic" is unprincipled in any way that happens to aggrandize 
U.$. power at that moment. When it needs to criticize some 
country, it uses the excuse that it does not have "democracy," but 
when Kosovo elected someone Uncle Sam didn't like, Uncle Sam 
threatened to recognize other Albanians as the legitimate leaders. 
This is part of a pattern in imperialism's relations with 
oppressed countries.

What's at stake in the anti-militarist movement

The anti-militarist movement in the imperialist countries needs to 
connect with the masses on how the system is irrational for them. 
Even if capitalism were as efficient in making people work as the 
capitalists say, it is not worth the war that comes with it. The 
people with a self-interest in having wars are the people who do 
not fight the wars and the elderly rich who are willing to 
compromise with the devil to live a few years of luxurious life. 
We must think more of future generations.

Already the Balkans caused two world wars this century. Now the 
masses are giving the capitalist politicians a chance to do it 
again. The imperialist politicians gamble with everyone's lives. 
(See for example how they have angered the Russians, article page 
seven.)

Now another generation of Balkan peoples will continue the age-old 
wars. Perhaps it will be the youth bitterly involved in these wars 
who put together a nuclear weapon that starts global annihilation. 
The imperialists are willing to chance generating that kind of 
anger rather than looking at the root causes of violence that 
indict their system.

The proletariat and oppressed masses are being far too generous in 
withholding violence against this system that threatens humyn 
existence.

Many Euro-Amerikans spend thousands of dollars on suburban homes 
and burglar alarms and commute many miles to avoid just a small 
probability of street crime. George Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 
1988 elections just by mentioning a Black rapist. Yet when it 
comes to war risks, Euro-Amerikans hardly raise a peep that cost 
them nothing but maybe an hour of their time at a demonstration.

If there is a five percent chance of nuclear annihilation each 
year, there is only a 7.7% chance of surviving 50 years from now. 
(That is .95 raised to the 50th power.)

If it is only a two percent chance we face each year, then after 
50 years the probability of surviving is 36.4%. (That is .98 
raised to the 50th power.)

Socialism is outlawing production for profit. If socialism could 
reduce the causes of war just one percent each year, it could 
prove to buy us the time we need as a species to learn to 
cooperate.

If socialism got us from a two percent chance of annihilation to a 
one percent chance each year, our probability of survival after 50 
years would rise from 36.4% to 60.5%.

By the standards of the Iroquois people who do not do anything 
that would have negative implications for people seven generations 
from now, a one percent chance of nuclear war would mean only a 
17.2% chance of humyn survival 175 years from now.

The fact that even a mere 1% chance of nuclear annihilation each 
year spells doom is something known to engineers who design 
systems and to people who study processes involving entropy. It is 
actually very difficult to design a system that fails only 1% of 
the year.

The profit motive is an indiscriminate motivator. When Yugoslavia 
shot down a Stealth Fighter F117A, U.$. taxpayers footed the bill 
for $45 million -- and Third World superexploitation footed the 
bill of the taxpayers' pie. Lockheed made the profit. Social-
democratic critics of us communists targeting the system say that 
the capitalists can be reasoned with when war gets too expensive. 
The question is too expensive for whom? War is only expensive in 
the ruling class mind when its rule is threatened.

The fact that it is legal to sell arms for profit means that there 
are very rich people with an incentive to instigate war. They act 
through their lobbyists in legislatures and executive branches but 
also behind-the-scenes stoking up war hatreds. For this reason 
alone, we must be rid of capitalism. We must design an extremely 
stable system with no motive for war--communism.

Bourgeois internationalism

China and Russia would have vetoed a UN-backed war against Serbia. 
For this reason, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the war against 
Yugoslavia is illegal. The United States is not supposed to 
conduct such a war without going through the UN.

The bourgeois internationalists of the Bush and Clinton type would 
like to use the UN as the tool of the New World Order. For the 
most part they are succeeding. In this one case, the UN was 
unwilling to be the new kingpin, so Clinton went to NATO the way 
some people jilt a lover.

Since Poland, Czechoslavakia and Hungary just joined NATO two 
weeks prior to the bombing, it was a perfect test of the new 
alliance against Russia. The attempt to set up NATO as the new 
kingpin of Eastern Europe also addressed the recurring problem of 
Albanians trying to go to Italy and the nightmare of a Balkan war 
flooding Europe with refugees.

The European Union (EU) composed of Western and Central Europe 
believes it will some day incorporate Eastern Europe. The hard-
core bourgeois internationalists of the EU would like to have one 
currency and eventually open borders the way the United $tates has 
between its states. Yet, right now the Western and Central 
Europeans are afraid of an influx of immigrants. They would like 
to see order and economic progress that makes Eastern Europeans 
stay put. Hence the bourgeois internationalist rulers also ruling 
in Germany, England and France also want to use force to set up a 
new NATO kingpin of Eastern Europe.

MIM's Cambridge audience's questions and challenges

One of the people attending the talk was confused by MIM's stand 
on nationalism. MIM is for the nationalism of oppressed nations 
against imperialism. MIM is not for nationalism that ends up with 
oppressed and exploited nations fighting other oppressed and 
exploited nations. Neither Serbia nor Kosovo Albanians are 
imperialists. We favor self-determination for the Kosovo 
Albanians. Imperialism is the most advanced stage of capitalism 
characterized by the export of capital--multinational corporations 
and finance capital parasitism. Only a few European, European-
descended countries and Japan are imperialist.

Once a people attributes evil to another ethnic people, there is 
going to be war and instability. In the case of war against 
imperialism and instability against imperialism that is a good 
thing. When the oppressed peoples finally put imperialism in its 
grave, then we will have to be careful about new nationalisms that 
might arise. The ethnic situation in Kosovo is different than that 
of imperialism versus an oppressed nation.

Milosevic is the type of opportunist nationalist politician that 
breeds like rabbits under capitalism. When Kosovo police pushed 
around some Serbs in Kosovo, Milosevic earned his fame for saying 
"no one should dare to beat you." Capitalists loved him, because 
he did not blame the system that requires police to threaten lives 
for the benefit of property rights and the Serbian masses loved 
him for reasons of false consciousness. He appeared to be 
addressing their grievances.

Yet, the Kosovo police were not imperialist occupiers. Police 
everywhere have their flaws. It is not just Albanian police that 
push people around. Hence, the solution is to abolish states 
because they generate hatreds and the only way to abolish the 
state is to achieve a high degree of economic and political 
cooperation. Otherwise there will be that chance of all-out war, 
and an unstable system. The reason is simple: the existence of a 
police and army means that there is something worth using violence 
over. Yet as long as people have their lives threatened by 
starvation, homelessness, preventable disease, preventable 
environmental disaster or by police or armies, there is going to 
be violence in response and the possibility of all-out war. Only 
by removing all the various threats to people's lives can peace be 
brought about. It will be difficult but there is no other 
solution.

Milosevic is opportunist because he offers the false shortcut of 
hating Albanians. Such nationalism is always opportunism that can 
be translated into political power and access to wealth under 
capitalism.

A student newspaper reporter asked if it were true that Milosevic 
is bad so therefore the intervention might be good. We replied 
that the situation in the Balkans is analogous to what happens 
when the kingpin of a drug-dealing operation dies. The medium-
level dealers sometimes fight it out to see who will be the new 
kingpin, who will control the whole turf. The fights result in 
bloodshed, as inevitably as the profit system motivates people to 
make profit any way they can.

The kingpin has a true defense: if he is imprisoned or killed, 
there will be a war over his turf. The kingpin is not lying when 
s/he says that. Hence, the only real way to get rid of all the 
drug-related violence is to get rid of the profit system motive to 
sell drugs and the profit-system alienation to take drugs.

The Balkans is another kingpin situation and the Yankee government 
is obviously not lying about instability there. Yet, we have to 
look at the Yankee as the kingpin of the whole warmongering 
profit-system. Yes, there are wrongs in Kosovo, but no, three or 
four wrongs do not make a right and capitalism has already proved 
unable to eradicate war.

Another question we faced from our audience was if we would favor 
consistent humanitarian intervention. We answered yes, but it 
cannot happen in the current system.

It would be far better for the U.$. imperialists to stop arming 
anti-people dictatorships and conducting police operations than to 
attempt to carry out humanitarian interventions. The workers of 
the Third World want to make more than the 50 cents an hour they 
average now and the peasants want not to starve. They will take 
care of business very quickly if their governments are not backed 
with U.$. weapons and military training. Instead of arming the 
people who believe their property comes ahead of the right to life 
itself, the system of profit and property above people must be 
outlawed by organized force, any such system being something we 
call dictatorship.

As we replied to another participant, there was an enemy during 
the U.$. Civil War too. The system had to be destroyed by force. 
It had to be made illegal to own and trade slaves through a 
transitional dictatorship in which planters were not allowed to be 
citizens, run for office or have their states rejoin the Union if 
they did not respect Black rights to a very minimal level. Today 
after several generations of children growing up without Blacks 
being bought and sold, the desire for slavery is radically 
weakened and the majority agrees with giving the Blacks the right 
to vote, contrary to the situation in the mid-1800s before 
decisive organized force altered the situation.

Likewise, the situation in the Balkans will not go away overnight. 
There will have to be a transitional dictatorship. Stalin imposed 
just such a harsh transitional dictatorship in Eastern Europe and 
the Soviet Union till he died in 1953. Tito attempted to do the 
same but failed in Yugoslavia.

The choice in Yugoslavia is internationalist dictatorship of the 
Stalin type or pogroms and civil war as we see in Yugoslavia now. 
It will be difficult to get to a communist cooperative future. 
Unlike the U.$. government which says it is "pragmatic," we 
communists have goals--difficult but worthwhile goals. At one 
time, outlawing slavery was just a distant vision. It took some 
harsh actions to accomplish.

The kingpin or stability in the Balkans disappeared in the 1980s. 
Dying in 1980, Tito had earned respect during World War II for 
leading the fight against Hitler who occupied Yugoslavia. Almost 
immediately after Tito's death, the first pogroms started. 

The Soviet Union was Yugoslavia's leading trade partner in the 
1980s and obviously Soviet bloc neighbors also traded with 
Yugoslavia. However, by 1985, Gorbachev admitted that excluding 
oil exports and alcohol production, the Soviet Union was in 
recession. This recession only got worse over time. Thus the 
collapse of the Soviet bloc economy impacted Yugoslavia, as did 
the end of the Cold War and the opening of all Eastern European 
borders which stirred up peoples throughout the region.

The masses of Eastern Europe became less generous with each other 
as economic times were less generous. With all pretense to 
communism gone and remnants of centralized dictatorship gone, the 
various nations returned to their pre-World War I feuds. It is the 
duty of the communists to channel their hatreds against the 
system, and not against other nations that are not imperialist.

Note: On the Stealth Fighter, 
http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/F_117A_Nighthawk.html