MIM Notes 187 June 1 1999

Euro labor aristocracy chimes in on Kosovo

Western European NATO members are justified in 
supporting the bombing of Yugoslavia, because 
otherwise they would be swamped by Albanian 
refugees from Kosovo - that was the reactionary, 
protectionist perspective of a German student at 
a recent RAIL forum on the war in Yugoslavia.

People living in the u.$. are certainly familiar 
with anti-immigrant chauvinism. Those people 
take our jobs, say the labor aristocrats, 
they're a burden on our social services, they 
spend all our tax money. None of this is true, 
as MIM pointed out after the passage of 
Proposition 187 in California, which denied 
undocumented immigrants access to social 
services like schools and hospitals.(1) But 
emotion and the chauvinist ideological 
perspective of the labor aristocracy often 
override the facts.

The labor aristocracies in Western Europe have 
similar attitudes towards immigration. The rise 
of fascist movements in England, France, and 
Germany is one indication of this. But the 
German student went beyond the usual "close the 
borders" rhetoric, to say that people should be 
bombed in order to stop refugees from coming to 
Western Europe (despite the fact that Western 
Europe has taken in only a handful of the 
refugees, while poor Balkan countries like 
Albania and Macedonia have taken the majority).

Other audience members argued that actually the 
number of refugees from Kosovo increased greatly 
as a result of the bombing. The German student 
responded that such high numbers of expulsions 
were inevitable and not a product per se of the 
bombing. There is no clear evidence that this 
would have been true. The conflict in Kosovo 
could have taken a number of different turns 
without the NATO bombing.

But it doesn't matter how many refugees would 
have come to Germany with or without the 
bombing. The borders of the imperialist 
countries should be open all. Most of the 
world's immigrants and refugees are created by 
the poverty and war endemic to capitalism and 
exacerbated by imperialism. It is the duty of 
the people living in imperialist countries to 
overthrow imperialism at home and help the 
peoples of the oppressed nations by paying 
reparations for centuries of exploitation and 
military devastation.

Note: MIM Notes, December 1994.

Article edited by MC206.