Editorial: The Pakistan-India conflict (1965)

Editorial from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war between Pakistan and India was another depressing reminder that men are still more ready to unite for nationalism and war rather than for world brotherhood. In a region blighted by acute poverty, hunger and disease was accompanied by fighting and violent death.

The reasons given for the conflict are especially cynical. Mr. Shastri’s Congress Party inherits the supposed ideals of Ghandi and Nehru. In the post-war years, Mr. Nehru in particular sermonised at length about peace. Today India is forced into that oldest and yet most modern of arbiters—war! Now that private property is in dispute, the pacifism of Ghandi has been forgotten.

Peace cannot exist in a violent society and Capitalism is violent. It is violent because it rests upon the exploitation of men by men. It is violent because it is geared to commercial struggles and is driven by the profit motive. Capitalism is violent because under it men act out the aggressive nature of private property. To want peace and yet preserve Capitalism is a contradiction which repeats the fatal errors of the past.

Indian and Pakistani workers rallied to the fighting with enthusiasm. Immigrants in this country lost no time in forming defence committees. Some workers readily donated a week’s wages. “My country right or wrong” prevailed.

Those workers involved in the conflict are victims of false religious loyalties, and their support for developing Capitalism in Asia. They mistakenly think that their interests are identical with the interests of the Indian and Pakistan ruling class.

The situation is one in which Capitalism asserts all its priorities. There is the fighting itself, the disruption and added misery this inevitably brings. There is the spectacle of men channelling their resources into destructive causes instead of into the creative task of ending poverty. There is the vicious fervour which can unify a nation on a war footing, stifling criticism, and temporarily diverting internal frustrations. The commitment to the senseless struggle can easily become self-perpetuating.

To Socialists the condemnation of the war between Pakistan and India is a condemnation of world Capitalism. It is not an isolated incident resulting from the aggressions of a single nation. International finger-pointing blinds men against the real cause. It is an event made possible by the support that Capitalism commands throughout the entire world. In this respect, workers in this and other countries far from the scene of fighting, are involved. It is futile to appeal to political leaders to act with more restraint or so-called wisdom. A world of harmony can only be possible when the working class of the world contract out of supporting Capitalism.

It is important to emphasise that although the conflict has been expressed in terms of Muslim versus Hindu, and although religious differences are a factor in the situation, the war was not over religion. The war was over the conflicting Capitalist interests of the Indian and Pakistan ruling classes and rapidly involved the great powers, particularly China.

Our message to Indian and Pakistan workers is that this conflict in which they have nothing to win, can only heap misery on abiding misery. Their interests in common with workers of all countries is to build Socialism.

Just as religion is a bastion of ignorance, so nationalism is a hate-filled lie. Both serve private property interests in which the worker has no stake.

World View: Zambia’s tribalist politics (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The results of the presidential and parliamentary elections that took place in Zambia on 27 December can only be analysed in terms of the prevailing ethnic and tribal prejudices that came to translate themselves in the voting pattern.

The heavily contested elections took place over four days instead of the stipulated one day. This was partly due to the large number of voters who had turned up to vote. The elections took place in the rain season and many roads and bridges were rendered inoperative and thus caused delays in the transportation of ballot boxes and personnel.

This time more than ever before the Zambian electorate was subjected to intense political propaganda coming from no less than twelve political parties, but the elections were held under a mood of cynicism consequent upon the nullification of the constitutional referendum that would have paved the way for a third term for outgoing President Frederick Chiluba.

Voting was heavily determined by ethnic and tribal loyalties rather than the intellectual and political integrity of the presidential aspirants. The strength of political parties has come to depend upon the degree of ethnic and tribal loyalties they can command. Tribalism in Zambia is politically motivated – a political contest among the Tonga, Lozi and Bemba for ethnic domination.

A brief resumé of Zambia’s political history may help to clarify this predominance and the pattern of ethnic and tribal loyalties. The beginning of political agitation that paved the way to the achievement of Zambia’s independence saw the emergence on the political scene of the most assertive tribes. Disenchanted with racial segregation, the nationalist movements manipulated the entrenched ethnic and tribal prejudices to win political loyalty.

Historically the Bemba tribe is regarded as being the most culturally and politically assertive in Zambia. The Bemba originated from the Lunda-Luba multi-ethnic empire that had once flourished in the 7th century in the Congo bassin. Demographically Zambia is heavily populated by the Lunda-Luba tribal offshoots, scattered across Luapula, Northern and Central Provinces. There still exist cultural and linguistic affinities among the diverse tribes found in these regions. In terms of lingua franca the Bemba vernacular has come to supplement English as Zambia’s second language, showing that language itself can be used as a vehicle of tribal domination

The first nationalist party in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) was formed by Godwin Mbikusita Lewanika, a Lozi tribesman, in 1948, the Northern Rhodesia African National Congress. Later, in 1951, the party was re-named the African National Congress under the charismatic leadership of Harry Nkumbula, a Tonga by tribe.

Historically the Lozi and Tonga are not related. The Lozi were an offshoot of the Makololo invaders who came from Basutoland (Botswana) and settled in Western Province around 1800. The Tonga have a long ancestral record compared to other Zambian tribes. Traditionally, they are politically non-militant, with political leadership being restricted within clans and village headmen. Tonga and Lozi politicians come into open alliances whenever there is a presidential election.

It can now be vindicated that Kenneth Kaunda’s resignation from the ANC in 1962 was mainly motivated by the entrenched ethnic and tribal loyalties, less so than on the alleged corrupt leadership of Harry Nkumbula. Kaunda himself is not a Zambian. His parents came from Malawi (Nyasaland) with a white missionary society. But it was his early upbringing under a Bemba traditional society that came to play a major role in his political career. The emergence of the UNIP in 1962 under his leadership witnessed the growth of militant political demonstrations in Luapula, Copperbelt and Northern Provinces where the Bemba are concentrated.

In 1963 Nalumino Mundia, a prominent Lozi politician, resigned from ANC and formed his own political party, the United Party. This was essentially Lozi in outlook and derived a mass following in Western Province. The United Party formed a coalition with Nkumbula’s ANC during the 1968 general elections and managed to win 34 percent of the votes.

This voting pattern that emerged from the 1968 general elections emphasised the presence of ethnic and tribal loyalties that have continued to this day.

The inauguration of a one-party (UNIP) state by Kaunda in 1972 was made in order to arrest the trends perceived towards ethnic and provincial parochialism. The UNIP government under Kaunda believed that it had succeeded in containing ethnic and tribal parochialism in Zambia by fabricating the philosophy of Humanism, duly implemented in 1974 as the official political ideology of the party and government. The philosophy of Humanism was spasmodically enunciated by Kaunda in order to enhance the false image of tribal homogeneity under a single party dictatorship.

Throughout his beleaguered political career Kaunda, took account of the prevalence of ethnic and tribal allegiances and allocated political portfolios according to the relative strengths of tribal and ethnic loyalties. The rank of Prime Minister was always reserved to a Lozi tribesman. Thus it can be inferred that the defeat of the UNIP government in 1991 by Chiluba’s MMD was a defeat for the Lozi who had come to comprise the majority in the civil service.

The election victory achieved in December by the ruling MMD presidential aspirant, Levy Mwanawasa, can only be attributed to the large number of votes received from the Bemba-speaking tribes in Copperbelt, Luapula and Northern Provinces. In terms of tribal and ethnic groupings, we can see that the Bemba-speaking areas voted for the ruling MMD whereas the Tonga and Lozi speaking areas voted for the UPND leader, Anderson Mazoka (a Tonga tribesman). Mazoka’s routing in the Copperbelt, Luapala and Northern provinces was compensated by the huge victories scored by the UPND in Lusaka, Southern and Western Provinces. The UPND lost to the ruling MMD by a margin of 30,000 votes but increased its seats in parliament to 44 compared to the MMD’s 68. The UPND’s dissatisfaction with the election results reflects the ingrained ethnic and tribal allegiances that underlies multi-party politics in Zambia.

Our message to the people of Zambia remains the same. The real cause behind unemployment, inflation and poverty is capitalism, the social system based on class domination, competition and selfishness. We repeat: in countries subjected to foreign domination and wage-slavery capitalism feeds and grows by enabling ethnic and tribal prejudices. It encourages voter apathy in societies where political patronage is based on tribal identities. It bedevils political stability through encouraging expediency based upon strengthening tribal domination and ill-feeling.

Socialism can bring to an end all this rot. A classless, moneyless and stateless society will end the ethnic, racial and sectarian antagonisms. The struggle before you remains the same – a class struggle on an international scale.

Kephas Mulenga

The New Cyprus Republic - Part 2 (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

(2) The Rude Awakening

The rude awakening was to come before the new Republic was three weeks old, and Ledra Street, which once echoed with the revolver shots of those bent on replacing the colonial government with one of their choosing, was to echo with the shouts of demonstrating Trade Unionists, striking in support of their fellow workers sacked for “economy reasons”.

The attention of the new representatives had been drawn to the plea, uttered against the dismissal of Public Works Department employees in the Paphos district, four days before Independence. Promises “to see what he could do about it” were given by the Minister of Labour in the transitional government. Combined right wing (SEK) and left wing (PEO) unions then issued strike notices against wrongful dismissal. At the same time, Mr. Beeley, the British representative at UNO, was placing the application of Cyprus for membership before the Security Council, saying “A democratic system of government and the necessary machinery for safeguarding the human rights and the interests of all sections of the community” exists in Cyprus.

While the voice of organised labour was beginning to express itself, the body of employers had been reorganising. Even as the daily press, was relaying as front page news the visits of diplomats presenting credentials at the Presidential Palace, (the old Government House) there appeared notices on their back pages. These were to give notice that “application had been made to the Cyprus Government for a licence ‘to form’ . . . The Cyprus Employers Consultative Association … to safeguard and promote the interests of all employers in Cyprus, especially in securing their fullest co-operation in, dealing with matters affecting relations between employers and their workpeople.” Continued link-ups of employers’ associations throughout the island have resulted in the association covering leading employers and most individual employers’ associations.

Still the sackings continued, amid strong press reaction, with T.U. delegations making representations to the Minister of Labour. A letter was published from the Government Workers’ "freedom is of real value as long as the worker is deprived of the sacred right Union to the Government saying, “No” to work" (Cyprus Mail 26/8/60). On August 27th, while pickets were demonstrating on the streets of Famagusta against dismissals, President Makarios announced a scheme for the expenditure of £331,300 on new public works to reduce unemployment. Then with cruel irony he said “We are in sympathy with those dismissed from Public Works, and certainly we don’t want them in the streets jobless. But I want to make it clear that I am not going to give in to slogans of demagogues. A labour conscience must be developed for the good of the country. Demagoguism and laziness must stop. What our country needs is work and production. Workers will be protected in the new state, but they must also work “.

One can be quite safe in saying that the first pronouncement of a government after its election is to call on the workers to work harder. In this case it came rather later than expected, but rarely has such a call been so cruelly worded. The “unemployed worker” who out of sheer desperation is forced to send deputations to beg for work from his newly-elected government, is roundly berated by the leader of that government for not working. The dismissals continued amid protests. The grant was seen by the workers as a stop-gap measure which, apart from failing to secure the re-engagement of the dismissed workers, would do nothing to relieve unemployment in the future. Plans for abolishing unemployment by means of foreign loans were discussed continually. Finally, a meeting of SEK, PEG, and the Turkish Federation of Labour decided on an island-wide strike for 8th September if the dismissed workers were not reinstated.

We Want Bread

The workers’ representatives negotiated up to the last minute with Minister of Labour and the President, who assured them that it was government policy to help the workers and that they would do everything in their power. But governmental concern was not sufficient for them to reverse their previous dismissal decisions, and a twenty-four hour protest strike was called. Shouts of “We want work—we want bread” went up outside the House of Representatives, while a union delegation went inside to present a solution. In every town mass rally and picket demonstrations were held, with placards saying, “Our children are hungry”, and “Let the promises become deeds”.

This token strike, undertaken by workers half-fearful of bringing the government in disrepute, had the sympathy of the general public, was peaceful, and moreover was an extremely effective example of how the working people, in default of anyone else, were prepared to “safeguard their imprescribable rights”. The strikers returned to work the following day to await the next move by the government.

The naively unrealistic “friendship with all countries” policy was to bring immediate reaction from the United Arab Republic. The friction was caused by the declaration that Mr. Zev Levin would be installed as the first Israeli ambassador to Cyprus. This came in the face of warnings by the Arab League to Cypriot merchants against trading with Israel. The announcement of the appointment was like a slap in the face to Egypt. Since the Suez, invasion launched by the British in 1956, Egypt had given full support to the self-determination agitation wishing to remove the threat of an unfriendly Cyprus on its doorstep.

The first reaction from Egypt was to suggest that the reports were circulated by Israel to disturb the excellent relations with the new republic, but when it became evident that the report was factual, the question was given priority at the Arab League Foreign Ministers’ meeting which started in Beirut on August 22nd. At the closing session of its meeting, the League passed a resolution warning Cyprus that Zionism aims to succeed imperialism in every country and to continue exploiting it. The Cyprus Federation of Trade and Industry, in expressing great concern in the deterioration in diplomatic relations, revealed their real concern in a cable sent to the President. This stated that the economic interests of Cyprus demanded the strengthening of ties between the Republic and Arab countries. In reply to this a message was sent to the President by a committee of businessmen trading with Israel, who expressed support for the “bridge of friendship” policy, and requested a meeting with him to put forward their viewpoint. Although a trade pact was signed with the UAR at the end of September, the Arab-Israeli dispute continued to be one of the main newspaper topics, and no solution seems likely to satisfy all parties permanently.

Hence the two main policies upon which the new state was to have based its action had come to grief; and with it the idealistic policy of independence and industrial peace in a capitalist world of political and economic line-ups.

Opening the Seventh Cyprus International Trade Fair, President Makarios stressed the importance of the island as a trade link between East and West. In doing so he was merely following the path mapped out for him by numerous government leaders in as many countries, engaging in the monotonous and dangerous pastime of market-grabbing. The urgency of his appeal is underlined by the recently published Economic Review for 1959, which lays stress on the continued unfavourable trend in the terms of trade.

Storms Ahead

In spite of continued expressions of optimism in the future of the new state, from the point of view of economic and political stability, and trade and foreign relations everything points to more storms ahead. Cyprus has mainly an agricultural and mining economy, the latter accounting for more than half the value of exports. Agriculture can absorb no more of the labour force; already it accounts for over half. Although the most important single activity, it is uneconomic and heavily subsidised. A large number of farmers, unable to pay off loans, are threatened with the enforced sale of their land.

The question of capital investment to finance such projects has been the subject of much dispute. The Ambassador to Greece for the Soviet Union, Mr Sergeyev, with the appearance and behaviour of a miniature Khrushchev, visited the island and offered aid “without strings”. AKEL of course advocate taking up the offer, whilst others advise caution and consideration of other offers.

The question of future intercommunal disturbances has recently been given prominence by the statement of a Turkish political leader, Mr. Denktash, that attempts by Greek Cypriots to undermine the Zurich and London Agreements would lead to chaos and civil war. Scarcely a day passes without the Greek and Turkish dailies on the island throwing mud at each other. The prospects of even elementary political organisation involving both communities seem remote at the moment. The brightest hope, from the working, class point of view, is the admirable demonstration of unity during the recent strikes and demonstrations, which the workers have threatened to repeat. Both Turk and Greek spoke as one. The Trades Unions have recently opposed the principle, imposed by the Constitution, of a 70 per cent./30 per cent. division of Civil Service jobs between Greeks and Turks as being discriminatory and introducing political factors into a purely labour field.

Difference of Opinion

The difference of opinion between Makarios and the mayors mentioned earlier is developing into a full scale feud. A week after Independence Day it was announced that the mayors would publish a book stating their opinion of the Agreement. At the same time they served notice that they would revive the feud with Makarios, who went on record as saying “that some of them deserve to be tried by people’s courts”. Their next move, taken with a number of doctors, editors, lawyers, and party leaders, was to send a telegram to the Secretary General of UNO on the eve of the maiden speech made by the island’s representative, Mr. Zenon Rossides. As though to belie his references to newly independent Cyprus as “a bridge of unity for understanding and co-operation”. The telegram pointed out that the settlement was imposed on them, and infringed their fundamental right to self determination. Two more telegrams followed immediately, one from the Turkish Communal Chairman in support of the agreement and another of opposition from the Greeks. It is quite probable that an influential body, a kind of unofficial opposition outside Parliament, will develop.

In municipal matters a Greek and a Turkish Municipal Chamber administers the respective communities with moneys allocated by the government according to the 70 per cent./30 per cent. Ratio. This rigid partition in municipal matters is also found in education and in separate representation at parliamentary level.

Police Power

In this government as in so many others, the responsibility of power has had a very sobering effect on the erstwhile rebels. They have become respectable, cautious, and apprehensive. No doubt it is the current crime wave, including some murders of those who were informers during the emergency, that has prompted the President to announce an island-wide arms round up; after which very serious action is to be taken against those holding arms. The response to this was the negligible total of 30 guns; shocking the government into the threat of snap road checks and surprise house searches. Indeed, police power has already been strengthened by the government decision to retain the pass system, introduced by the British Government during the emergency, where by all adults over twelve years old must be in possession of civilian identity cards.

The possibility of an outbreak of violence between the Communists and the Eoka faction, which had spasmodically flared during the emergency, cannot be far from the President’s mind. Reports have come from Athens of renewed political activity by Grivas, and of his statement concerning the further clarification of certain points in the Constitution. We are reminded that it was in Athens that he first organised a private army, during the German occupation in 1943. During the civil war that followed liberation, the royalist Grivas had aligned his army against ELAS, the Communist army which he had known for a long time, intended to take over Greece, and which had put a price on his head. After Greece had been forced into the camp of Western Capitalism, he made an unsuccessful attempt to get into the Greek Parliament. The subsequent failure and disillusionment turned his interest to his native Cyprus, where the growth of Communist Party influence gave him cause for concern. Although AKEL had supported the earlier Enosis movement, the Greek Civil War and its outcome had resulted in a typical about face. As always the communist attitude was inconsistent and vacillating, but union with a member of the Western, as opposed to the Eastern Capitalist blocks was not to their liking. Whilst apprehensive that self-determination would result in Enosis, their present attitude appears to be in favour of independence. The present set-up suits them very well, giving them plenty of room of manoeuvre Cyprus into the communist camp. True to the principle of “catching them young”, both groups have already formed youth organisations.

Under colonial rule, there is often identification of the ruling class with the colonial power. The belief used to be current in the “left wing” that after the achievement of national independence the resulting disillusionment would provide the experience necessary for the working class to see the class issue more clearly. Of course, this is not believed by Russia who is just as anxious as any other country to woo the newly independent states, to capture their trade and to use them as counters in international diplomacy. In any case it is a fallacious argument and certainly not borne out by the facts.

The struggle in Cyprus resulted in many hundreds of working class dead and wounded. The voice of its Capitalist Class, as yet young and weak, but struggling to be heard, finds a ready mouthpiece in its government which has shown itself to be just as chauvinistic and trade conscious as any of the other governments set up as a result of national independence. It has taken its place with the other capitalist states in a world of actual and potential aggression, and will add its voice to the general discord which is called “trade and peace”, no doubt falling into line behind one or other of the major powers.

Socialist Knowledge

This is not a step forward for the working class of Cyprus or anywhere else, and far from there being any sign of them becoming socialist, independence has thrown the nationalistic aspirations of Greek and Turk into relief. The introduction to the Cyprus working class of socialist knowledge with its clear-cut class issues, uncomplicated by nationalistic arguments, is badly needed to dispel these bars to its emancipation.

Then it will realise that its struggle, whether resulting in Enosis or independence, effectively enables its capitalist class to capture more elbow room to develop, and secure a hold on labour, in order to exploit it more efficiently in the name of the new Cyprus Republic.

R. J.

Letter: Sri Lanka (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sri Lanka

Dear Editors,

I would like to draw your attention to a mistake in the article on Sri Lanka in the August issue of the Socialist Standard. The article states that the Tamils were brought to the island, then known as Ceylon, from India during British rule to work as cheap labour on the tea plantations. In fact, this group of "Indian" Tamils account for only about 1.2 million of the total Tamil population on the island. They lived until recently mainly on the plantations in central Sri Lanka.

The remaining 1.4 million Tamils live largely in the North and East of the island. They trace their history in Sri Lanka all the way back to the fifth or sixth century BC. when it is believed the Sinhalese began to settle on the island. By the time the Portuguese colonialists arrived in the 16th century AD. two separate kingdoms — Tamil in the North and Sinhalese in the South were well established. During the British colonial period these two kingdoms were brought under a single administration for the first time. At the time of Independence the idea of a separate Tamil state was regarded as rather extreme by most Tamils. Nevertheless the Tamils were concerned about their future status in an independent Sri Lanka, as they were considerably outnumbered by the Sinhalese.

The case of the Indian Tamils is quite different. They have had no share in the ancient history of either the Ceylon Tamils or the Sinhalese on the island. When they arrived in Sri Lanka they were scarcely better off than slaves. They were resented by the Sinhalese as they were settled on estates in the heart of the Sinhalese area. As the plantation economy boomed they found themselves marginally better off than the Sinhalese peasants in the area. The estates often provided them with some medical care, education and housing. They were disliked also by the Ceylon Tamils as they were mostly low caste Hindus living in abject poverty and dependent on the estates.

However, by the time of Independence they just outnumbered the Ceylon Tamils. They held considerable electoral sway in the central area of Sri Lanka, as they outnumbered the Sinhalese in these areas. Their vote ensured that eight Indian Tamil MPs went to parliament in 1947. In 1948 the Indian Tamils were disenfranchised and deprived of Sri Lankan citizenship. The Indian Tamil MPs were replaced by Sinhalese MPs This action gained the approval of the Ceylon Tamil leaders as well as the Sinhalese.

Since then there have been several agreements with India to repatriate several hundred thousand Indian Tamils and readmit the rest to Sri Lankan citizenship. These measures have been slow, largely unsuccessful, and have only added to the sufferings of the Indian Tamils. Conditions on the estates have deteriorated and the Indian Tamils live under conditions of considerable hardship.

However, it was not until 1977 that the two separate Tamil groups started to join forces. In that year violent anti-Tamil activity was directed at the Indian Tamil estate workers for the first time. This drove many of them out of the central area of Sri Lanka to the North, where they sought refuge with the Ceylon Tamils whose leaders by now were agitating for a separate state. Here they continue to be harassed by the state forces seeking out terrorist suspects.

KM

London

Sting in the Tail: Their Problems . . . (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their Problems . . .

David Mellor's little lapse certainly hogged the headlines, but another story concerning more serious lapses by political leaders was tucked away inside The Guardian (25 July).

Professor Hugh Freeman, a prominent psychiatrist, told a meeting of fellow shrinks In Dublin that world statesmen have often been:

Incapable of exercising normal decision-making powers through abnormalities of brain functioning.

According to the Prof., Prime Minister Anthony Eden was heavily into booze and drugs during the 1956 Suez crisis and "was not fit to be In charge of national affairs at that time”: US President Woodrow Wilson was "severely mentally handicapped" for the last year of his term: Stalin ended up "so irrational" that he could have started World War 3, while JFK was almost certainly taking steroids and amphetamines during the Cuban missile crisis. The Profs case is made and he didn’t even mention Hitler!

As the poet wisely put it:

Great men are great In our eyes -

While we kneel.

Let us rise!

. . . Our Solution

Is it any wonder that 'World Statesmen" go barmy? Consider the hassle George Bush faces over the proposed sale of 5 billion dollars worth of US fighter aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

If the deal goes through he risks outraging the Israelis and, in this election year, the Jewish American vote, if it doesn’t go through then 30,000 defence industry jobs will be lost along with who knows how many votes.

Of course, he could buy-off the Israelis and their supporters by granting Israel the 10 billion dollar loan guarantees he has been holding out on, but this will not pacify the American arms control groups: how, they ask, can Bush claim to be promoting Middle East peace and sell arms there at the same time?

All heads of government constantly face such mind-bending problems: let's save the poor souls from their mental anquish by relieving them of all that decision-making and simply re-organise society for the benefit of humanity.

Footloose Faldo

Most days that Scorpion gets up he is quite pleased to find a pair of boots to wear. Sometimes he feels lucky just finding his feet.

That is not the case with Nick Faldo, recent winner of the British Open Golf Championship. Mr. Faldo has been paid £100,000 a year since 1989 to wear Stylo Matchmaker shoes during televised tournaments. Turns out that the naughty Faldo wore Footjoys shoes In his recent triumph. Stylo are not best pleased.

There is talk of-some action being taken which is understandable considering Stylo's holding company lost £9 million last year.

It says a lot about capitalism when even an enjoyable pursuit like an afternoon on a golf course has been turned into just another business opportunity for the money grubbers. Everything capitalism touches It spoils.

That's History

Are you baffled by the complexity of the ethnic mix of Eastern Europe and how it got that way? Then Malcolm Bradbury's description of an imaginary Eastern European country in his satirical novel "Rates of Exchange" could give you a clue:

It is a land that has . . . been pummelled, fought over, raped, pillaged, conquered and oppressed by the endless invaders who, from every direction, have swept and jostled through this all too accessible landscape. Swedes and Medes, Prussians and Russians, Asians and Thracians, Tartars and Cassocks, Mortars and Turds, Indeed almost every tribe or race specialist In pillage and rape, have been here . . . and left behind their imprint, their customs, their faiths, their architecture, their genes . . . And so its culture Is a melting pot, Its language a pot-pourri, Its people a salad.

So how do those "ethnic-cleansers" square all that with their racial nonsense?

All In The Game

Labour and Conservatives are fond of pretending that they are radically different from each other. Really, of course, it is all a bit of a game.

John Biffen, Tory MP writing in The Guardian (21 July) and discussing John Smith's future prospects had this to say:

He will have to provide a convincing policy alternative . . . He will be under great constraint to do this particularly as Labour's public spending and interest rates policies broadly reflect those of the Conservatives.

It Never Fails

Recently we saw a poster for an SWP meeting entitled "Will The Economy Ever Recover?" We saw it too late to hear what the speaker had to say, but our answer to that question is, yes, the economy will recover.

This will happen for several reasons: One is that the present slump will eventually bring down interest rates to the point where companies find it attractive enough to borrow in order to invest: another is that growing unemployment exerts downward pressure on wages and this will also attract employers.

Then the property crash means that factory, warehouse and office space can be had cheaply, and because of production cut-backs stocks will become depleted and need replacing, while companies will be able to buy the plant and machinery of bankrupt competitors at knock-down prices.

Factors like these will encourage capital to invest again in production because of the prospects for bigger profits and the economy will have recovered. Every slump contains the seed of the next boom and vice-versa.

Butchery in the Balkans (1992)

From the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended, many in the West breathed a sigh of relief. Western democracy and the free market were seen to have triumphed and the Red Spectre that hunted Europe had been finally exorcised. Politicians and bureaucrats began speaking of a “New World Order" and of a “peace dividend" whereby money saved on military expenditure could be put to social use and channelled into health and education programmes.

Few anticipated that the end of the Cold War would open a new can of worms. From Prague to Vladivostok, republics and tiny enclaves became caught up in a tidal-wave of nationalist fervour. Overnight, even the most recently published atlases became out of date as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia disintegrated.

Nowhere has nationalist upheaval been as intense as in the former "Socialist Federal Republic” of Yugoslavia. So enmeshed have become the politics here that a brief look at Yugoslavia’s history is in order.

Artificial creation

After the capitalist-instigated madness known as the first world war the Austro-Hungarian territories of Croatia. Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were joined with Serbia and Montenegro under the Serbian king Alexander, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was founded. Although a new constitution was proclaimed. rivalry between Serbs and Croats for political supremacy led Alexander to impose his own dictatorship in 1929, the year the republics were re-named Yugoslavia. This accentuated Croatian enmity to centralization and Serbian predominance.

Under the new Regent, Paul, Yugoslavia came increasingly under threat from the Axis powers, Germany and Italy, after 1933, and the hostility of the Soviet Union, which urged the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (formed in 1937) to work towards the fragmentation of the country. Germany took advantage of a popular uprising and invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, creating a puppet fascist state out of Croatia and territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the rest being parcelled between Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary.

Resistance groups soon emerged to confront the Nazis—the Serbian Chetniks under the leadership of Draza Mihailovic and Tito’s Communist Partisans. However, not only did many Croats support the Nazis, but many Chetniks collaborated against Tito’s partisans. By 1943, Tito had emerged as victor against Mihailovic and formed the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council, which assumed power when the Nazis were finally driven out.

In November 1945, the provisional government abolished the monarchy and set up the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Six months later the country adopted a constitution based upon that of the Soviet Union in 1936, and later nationalized transport, industry and banking, and brought agriculture under collectivization.

In 1971, after stating his intention of liberalizing the government. Tito established a 22-man collective presidency which he hoped would manage affairs after his death. This "liberalization" had the effect of sparking Croatian nationalism, culminating in mass demonstrations and widespread rioting. In 1981, Albanians in the autonomous province of Kosovo protested against ill-treatment by the Serbian administration. This was followed by further unrest in 1988 when Serbia moved to end provincial autonomy there.

Yugoslavia thrived during the Cold War, chiefly because both blocs paid handsomely to maintain Yugoslav non-alignment. The Serbian political leadership advocated a centralized state and tough authoritarian rule. This brought it into direct conflict with Slovenia and Croatia, both of whom favoured greater autonomy, more so in the wake of the break-up of the Yugoslav League of Communists in spring 1990.

The Yugoslav federal machinery wasn’t made to take the strain of political pluralism. The federal government, led by free-marketeer Ante Markovic, was paralysed by wrangling among the republics. No procedure could be agreed for federal elections.

In April 1990 both Croatia and Slovenia held free elections in which the centre-right Slovenian Democratic Community Party and the Croatian Democratic Union swept to power on nationalistic, pro-independence cards. When these two republics declared independence they were invaded by the Yugoslav Army. The same thing happened when on 1 March this year Bosnia-Herzegovina too declared its independence. All three republics have since been granted recognition by the EEC and the USA.

The history and politics of Yugoslavia are indeed complicated, and while it is true that the end of the Cold War hastened the break-up of the republics, this alone does not explain the conflict that has raged there for over a year. Indeed, few commentators can agree on the cause of the crisis, or why some republics want autonomy while others wish to stay within the federation.

The Croatian president Franjo Tudjman echoed Thatcher's views when he asserted that Serbs and Croats “were not just different people but different civilisations’’, and that the conflict was one of "democracy against communism” (European, 18 August 1991). Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, claimed that the trouble was caused by the secessionist demands of other republics, adding that "all processes in the contemporary world tend toward integration” (Time International, 8 June).

Richard West, writing in the Guardian, sees the “difference between the Yugoslav people” as “one of religion” (17 September 1991), while Branka Magas (Marxism Today, November 1991) declared that “the war being waged against Croatia is . . . in reality little more than a war of territorial conquest”.

Few, if any, are putting forward a socialist analysis of the causes of the conflict and blaming the capitalist system for the crisis. It is true that nationalism is a factor, but it is only a banner used as a means to an end—profit.

Uneven development

The influence of the world market in recent years has accentuated economic disparity in the Yugoslav republics. Both Tudjman and Milan Kukan (respective leaders of Croatia and Slovenia) saw the economic advantages in independence, manipulating nationalist sentiments for financial ends.

The conflict was sparked by greed for profit. The north-west republics of Croatia and Slovenia, tired of subsidizing their southern neighbours chanelled economic indignation into a raw form of nationalism—the Croatian leadership digging up wartime fascist insignia—fearing that a more centralized Yugoslav federation would mean a greater redistribution of their wealth.

Croatia and Slovenia are by far the wealthiest of the republics. Heavy industry is concentrated in Croatia and production centred on iron ore is thriving in Slovenia. Croatia is Yugoslavia’s biggest producer of oil and in 1987 attracted 7.2 million tourists, boosting the economy by USS3 billion. Although Slovenia has only 7.8 percent of the population, it accounts for an estimated 25 percent of Yugoslavia’s GNP and 30 percent of exports.

Slovenia has for some time been the most wealthy and economically efficient of the Yugoslav republics. Average earnings are more than double those in Croatia and reputedly six times those of the southern province of Kosovo, where unemployment stands at 40 percent.

It is little wonder, then, that a centralized Yugoslav federation which pumped 55 percent of the federal budget into maintaining the armed forces, looked so unattractive to capitalists in the northern republics. And little wonder that Croatian and Slovenian capitalists object to shouldering the burden of subsidies—development aid, federal projects, natural disaster relief, etc—to the poorer south.

So the basic, economic cause of the conflict boils down to a clash of interests between those capitalists who wanted and those who opposed a redistribution of profits.

Just as Franjo Tudjman and Milan Kukan have sought to secure their republic’s economic futures, appealing to nationalistic sentiments, so too has Milosevic reawakened Serbian nationalism by rallying his people against the richer north-west with rash promises of raised standards of living and long-term economic security.

War in Bosnia

War is now raging in Bosnia-Herzegovina where 44 percent of the population are Muslims. The UN has imposed sanctions and a naval blockade on Serbia and there is talk of military intervention. Serbia, however, is nearly self-sufficient in food production and has stockpiled goods and fuel—although the latter could run short as Serbia produces only 20 percent of what she uses. So it is likely that Serbia will not be too badly affected by sanctions.

The recalcitrant Milosevic sees sanctions as “the price Serbians have to pay for supporting Serbs outside Serbia” (Independent, 1 June), but neglects to tell the workers who do his fighting that war is the price they must pay for the right to be exploited by Serbian capitalists. And Tudjman never tells Croats fighting for Croatian enclaves that they are really fighting to make bigger profits for their masters under German economic rule.

It is a great sadness that so many have died in what was Yugoslavia from the virus of nationalism, injected into them by leaders suffering from the disease of capitalism.

Enlightened workers will be aware that the only remedy for the present world malaise is socialism. Workers in reality have no nation, but hoodwinked by their leaders they seek sanctuary inside artificially-constructed borders. Workers bind themselves with the chains of regional and national identity, giving their masters the keys. They forget that there is only one country—planet Earth—on which all wealth and the means of living in comfort and security is produced by themselves. Workers must unite and break these chains. The world is theirs for the taking.

John Bissett

Letter: Doom and gloom (1998)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doom and gloom

Dear Editors,

You have high ideals and good ideas and if these stood a chance of success I would willingly carry on supporting you. However I have come to the conclusion that the human race is a self-destructive organism and incapable of redemption.

It is all right talking about a moneyless, classless society, but try preaching your ideas to the Taliban eroding the freedoms of the people of Afghanistan; tell it to the Jews and Palestinians battling in the Holy-lands; tell it to the Muslim and Christian extremists and government forces butchering the peasants of Africa; tell it to the Christian bigots in Ireland murdering their neighbours; tell it to the ruling juntas in Burma and Nigeria slaughtering and jailing their political opponents; tell it to the thugs in Britain who murdered Stephen Lawrence and tell it to the racist police who could not be bothered to investigate the murder of a young black . . . is there any need to go on?

I’m afraid, my friends, the writing is on the walls of the war-torn villages of Yugoslavia and the Middle East; in the polluted fields and forests of our decaying planet, in the infertile deserts of once productive areas; in the over-fished and unsanitary oceans of the world. Sell your socialist ideas to the corporations and governments plundering the riches of the world, to the logging companies devastating our forests; to the oil and chemical companies spilling irreversible contamination into the atmosphere, soil, and oceans of a fragile ecosystem.

What other species over-breeds, fouIs its nest and slaughters its own and every other species around it? What other species is on an out of control spiral of self-destructive violence and wanton destruction? I see no way of halting this suicidal self-flagellation of our doomed species.

To my mind, your preaching of socialism to the world is in the same category as a doctor dabbing tea tree oil on a casualty who has just had a one-to-one with a combine harvester.

Call me a doom-dealer if you like, but if I were you I would substitute ego for idealism and call upon everyone to enjoy what they had today and forget about the future. Establish a definite scepticism – savour life today, for tomorrow is a dubious dimension.

Philip McCormac,

Hinckley, Leics

 

Reply: 

No, if that’s what you really believe, you tell women in Afghanistan yourself that they should enjoy what they have today and forget the future. You tell that as well to the Palestinians being shot at by Jewish settlers, innocent Israelis being bombed by Palestinian terrorists, those oppressed by the governments of Burma and Nigeria, the victims of racist violence in Britain, etc.

Having said this, we would agree that capitalism does appear to be descending into barbarism, at least outside those areas where your philosophy of “eat and be merry for tomorrow we die” has a superficial plausibility. But this is an argument for socialism not against it, making it even more urgent.

We should point out that, although concern for what capitalism is doing to our fellow human beings is partly what motivates us to want socialism, so does “ego”. We want socialism because it will improve our lives. We are not idealist do-gooders but have made the hard-nosed assessment that only through co-operation with other fellow humans can a better world be built.

We reject your suggestion because it wouldn’t improve our lives nor, we suspect, yours.

Editors.

World View: Teetering on the brink (1995)

General Sani Abacha

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Nigeria is on the threshold. Chaos and the demons of war, of anarchy and hell are gathering imperceptibly . . . the best minds have fled. Hunger wanders the highway. Corruption has become a god. Distrust lurks everywhere and cynicism pollutes the air.”

Thus wrote Ben Okri in the Guardian last 6 September. The image is immediately one of impending doom, a nightmare scenario. Okri’s words, though, were not overly pessimistic, for in the January 1995 issue of New African, they were echoed by Pini Jason who described the situation in Nigeria as a "chillingly frightening regression into absolute despotism".

Okri and Jason were both referring to the terror now felt by tens of millions of Nigerians, a terror made all the worse by a world that watches from die sidelines, as witnessed most recently in Rwanda.

In August 1994, General Sani Abacha, Nigeria's “leader", overturned what legal rights Nigerians had enjoyed by forcing through some of the most repressive decrees ever known in Nigeria. He earned himself the title of dictator (in every sense of the word) by firstly passing a decree that places himself and his regime above the law. He went on to make anti-Abacha opinions illegal, curbed the right to free assembly and abolished several human rights associations. Were that not enough, Abacha banned three opposition newspapers. dissolved the executive bodies of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the oil-workers unions, and lengthened the period a prisoner can be detained without charge to three months.

The decrees were, of course, pathetically justified by Abacha last November. In a broadcast a year after he came to power in November 1993. he declared his intentions were "to halt the drift towards anarchy . . . to strengthen our security system, revitalise respect for law and order and to restore faith among the citizens whose confidence has been stressed by political crisis in the country" (Quoted in West Africa, 28 November/ 4 December 1994.)

Annulled election

Since independence from Britain in October 1960. Nigerians have known nothing but "political crisis". The country has witnessed coups, counter-coups and internal military coups on six occasions: January 1966. July 1966.1975. 1976. 1983 and 1985.

The June 1993 elections, supposedly the fairest ever witnessed in Nigeria, were initiated by General Ibrahim Babanginda who had ruled the country since 1985. However, when only half of the result had been declared, Babanginda had the count stopped and the election annulled. The reason? Opposition leader Chief Moshood Abiola was storming ahead, capitalising on his promises to build more schools and health centres, to provide cleaner drinking water, cheaper food and improved roads. He was detained shortly after the elections. A leaked military statement later declared that Abiola had secured 58 percent of votes cast.

Arguably, the main reason why Abiola is not president is that he is a southerner, for in Nigeria the same north/south hostilities abound that were in existence at the time of the Biafra war.

Babanginda, however, was soon chased out of office. He was replaced by a civilian, Ernest Shonekar, who went a similar way when the state court ruled his office illegal. It was then that Abacha stepped forward and took power and. with it, brought Nigeria to the brink of ruin.

Abacha is guilty of untold human rights violations. But this does not seem to bother the governments of other countries much. The EU and the US might have imposed the token sanctions, but this did not stop Britain selling tanks and other military hardware to Abacha. The fact is that Britain has always sided with such northern tyrants in times of duress. More, the British High Commission have given their blessing to the judiciary set up to try Abiola.

Oil revenues

Between May and June last year Abacha ordered his army into southeastern Nigeria to destroy the villages of and murder, the Ogoni people. The Ogoni people number some 500,000 but it is to their great misfortune that the land they occupy is also the site of 112 of Nigeria’s 138 oilfields.

For years the Ogoni have protested against the environmental pollution caused by oil production, at the smoggy atmosphere they live in. at the contaminated soil they till — they are an agricultural people — and at their rivers choked with oil run-offs. They have every reason to protest. Nigeria is the largest gas-flaring country in the world. Some 16.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared annually. The acid rain this produces is only matched by the region’s oil spills — 573 spills between January 1986 and May 1992.

The protests reached a high point in late 1992 and in reaction Shell Nigeria put a hold on oil production in Ogoniland and pulled out most of its staff.

In retaliation for this sudden loss of vital revenue, a certain Major P. Okunomo called for a “ruthless military operation” against the Ogoni. sending in 400 troops to stifle protests and opposition to oil production. Not only did the soldiers destroy dozens of villages and kill hundreds of the Ogoni people, they carried out military sabotage against various oil installations in the hope that the Ogoni would get the blame.

Oil provides Nigeria with 95 percent of its foreign exchange and has been the stake in Nigeria’s conflicts since 1966. The country makes some $6 billion a year from oil sales. During the Gulf War. the Babanginda regime made a staggering $12 billion from oil sales — money yet to be accounted for. None of it, however, seems to have benefited the people, least of all the Ogoni. At present 85 percent of the Ogoni are unemployed. They have seven doctors between them (remember they number 500000), a literacy rate of 10 percent and infant mortality stands at 40 per 1.000 births.

In the past twelve months there have been strikes by oil workers and medical workers, aimed directly at the Abacha regime, in a country already teetering on the brink of an economic calamity.

Western capitalists can only look on shrug their shoulders and tut; Nigeria, after all is still Africa — "the white man’s burden”. As one New African writer commented last October: “The international community showed with its reluctant response to Rwanda that it is tired of Africa’s problems."

Socialists, on the other hand, can only imagine how “tired" Africa is of capitalism. and how so utterly tired Nigerians must be of the cabal that rules that country in the interests of capitalism. 

John Bissett

Zionism: myth and reality (2006)

Book Review from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zionism misled many Jewish workers with its promise of a “homeland for Jews”. A recent book examines the fate of the million or so non-Jews in the state Zionism established.

In 1999 when Susan Nathan went to live in Israel under the Law of Return her head was “full of romantic notions of Zionism and the Jewish state.” Some three years later she moved from Tel Aviv to live, as the only Jew, in the Arab town of Tamra in the Galilee. Her book, The Other Side of Israel (published by Harper Collins last year), tells the story of her “journey across the Jewish-Arab divide”, and gives a rare insight into the Jewish state from the perspective of the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.

The journey began when she was a patient in the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, where she was surprised to find Israelis and Palestinians sharing the same ward, and Palestinians who were Israeli citizens: Israeli Arabs. The real shock came when an Orthodox woman was visited by her husband who had “a pistol on one hip and a rifle slung casually over his shoulder” – no one else seemed surprised by the presence of an armed civilian. He told Susan Nathan in a strong American accent that he had requisitioned an Arab home in East Jerusalem and never left home without a weapon. The reply to her suggestion that he would be better off in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City was “All of East Jerusalem belongs to the Jews.”

More questioning came a few months later when she was invited to help with a student organisation – Mahapach, in connection with their work for disadvantaged communities in Israel, “particularly the indigenous Arab population and the community of Jews of Middle Eastern descent . . . the Mizrahim.” She knew of the latter but where did the Arabs live? Why had they been invisible to her during her first two years in Israel?

She was to learn that one million Arabs share the state, and that about a quarter of them are internal refugees. She was “profoundly shaken” by her first visit to an Arab area – the town of Tamra, made as part of the research for Mahapach. It was strikingly different from any Jewish area she had seen, with obvious, chronic overcrowding.

At the home of Dr Asad Ghanem (head of politics at Haifa University) she heard about the discrimination exercised against the Arab population “in all spheres of Israeli life.” In Arab communities there are thousands of homes judged illegal by the state and under the threat of demolition: in Tamra there are 150 such homes. The authorities’ version is that the widespread illegal building is the act of law breakers, people squatting on land or not wanting to pay for a licence. So the police bring bulldozers “at crack of dawn” to destroy illegal homes. 500 hundred Arab homes were destroyed in 2003.

Arab families are forced to build illegally because the state refuses to issue them with a building permit. Even when, as in Dr Ghanem’s case, the home is built on land owned by his family for generations the permit is still refused: he pays regular heavy fines to ward off demolition. He asked Susan Nathan if she had made Aliyah, and it was difficult to answer. Her privileges as a Jewish immigrant were at the expense of his people, “sitting in his home the reality finally hit me. The intoxicating power trip had come to an abrupt halt.” And the task of becoming informed had begun: the unlearning of her “lifelong Zionist training.”

The Zionist myth is that the “Jews had reclaimed an empty, barren land – ‘a land without people for a people without land’- we had made the desert bloom, we had filled an uninhabited piece of the Middle East with Kibbutzim, the collective farms that were the pioneering backbone of the state in its early years.” Prior to 1948 there had been aggressive colonising of the land by Jewish immigrants, and a campaign of land purchases funded by the Jewish National Fund, but only 7 percent of Palestine had been purchased.

The other side of Israeli Independence in 1948 is for the Palestinians the Nakba (the catastrophe) the loss of their homeland to the Jewish state. 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and country. A map in the book marks the position of the 400 villages which were emptied and then destroyed by the army. The Kibbutzim were built on the land of destroyed villages. Around a hundred villages survived, as did Tamra because it was not on the main route of the Israeli army and was a small community providing “a useful pool of cheap labour in the area.” The original village had a population of 2,000 the number was swelled by refugees cleared from other villages. Photographs exist from 1948 which show “a sea of Red Cross tents” in which the refugees were housed for some years. One third of the present inhabitants of Tamra are internal refugees. A sizeable number of the 150,000 Palestinians who remained in the country and became Israeli citizens (“by accident rather than design”), were classified as “present absentees”, and had their homes, land and bank accounts appropriated by the Custodian of  Absentee Property. There is no instance of any property being restored to former Arab owners or compensation paid.

Apartheid

Dispossession still continues in various ways. Planning laws restrict Arab communities both in number – to the 123 listed in 1965 – and in area, even though the population has increased. Israel is an apartheid state which enforces policies of ethnic segregation. Dr Uri Davies a Jew who, like Susan Nathan, lives in an Arab town is quoted as applying the term apartheid in a specific sense to mean “the regulation and enforcement of racism and xenophobia in law.” He defines the core element of an apartheid state as “the structure of laws that allows the colonising population to exploit the resources of the state – mainly land – to the disadvantage of the native population.”

Though it is not publicly admitted “racist employment practices and the exclusion of Arabs from wealth generating sectors of the economy are the bedrock of state planning policies.” Most computer systems do not list Arab communities. Arabic is the second official language, yet people are not allowed to use it at work – a woman was sacked from McDonalds for doing so.

There are two separate school systems, with much less money spent on Arab children. There is intensive surveillance of the Arab education system, teachers are effectively “banned from teaching about the Nakba  . . . or about their people’s connection to Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza” and the refugee camps in other countries. In Haifa the Arab Parents’ Forum failed in an attempt to register their children at Jewish schools for 2004: Arab pupils are in a separate registration area.

Susan Nathan believes that what happened in the 1948 war is at the root of conflict in the Middle East. The price of creating a homeland was to inflict the “Jewish story of dispossession and wandering on another people – the Palestinians.” She makes a distinction between making a comparison, quantitative judgements about the degree of suffering, and drawing a parallel which suggests “one set of events can echo another.” Zionist organisations, she says, like the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency should be disbanded and the apartheid system ended; there should be equality between all citizens.

An old man told her of the time when it was possible to travel by train from the Galilee to all of the region’s biggest cities “when the borders existed as no more than the lines on maps produced by the area’s British and French rulers.” Socialists never supported Zionism but opposed it as yet another nationalist delusion as what we aspire to is a world without national frontiers in which free movement is possible and where all people live together as equals.

Pat Deutz

The Yugoslav Wars: Myths & Realities (1995)

From the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of the working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war in the former Yugoslavia. Despite claim and counter-claim of atrocities committed by one side or the other the simple fact is that worker is butchering worker — for the privilege of rearranging capitalist state borders!

Early August brought what could be a turning point in the Yugoslav wars with a major offensive by the Croatian army which recaptured almost the whole of the Krajina region including Knin, the capital of the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina, and an offensive by the Bosnian Army’s 5th Corps who successfully broke out of the besieged Bihac enclave and linked up with the Croatian Army in Krajina. This has thrown into disarray not just the whole of the Serbian nationalist political apparatus but also the foreign policies of the great powers.

Not inevitable

Contrary to the ramblings of the “ancient hatreds” school of thought, war in Yugoslavia was not inevitable. Major constitutional changes were very much on the agenda and even though there was a tendency towards fragmentation, and with it a potential for violence. But full-scale war and genocidal carnage were not preordained.

Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics and two autonomous provinces each having its own regional government within the federal structure. The two richer republics of Slovenia and Croatia wanted free-market-type reforms akin to those being implemented in live former state-capitalist bloc, together with a looser confederal political structure and moves towards EC membership. For a time it looked as if this was the direction in which Yugoslavia would move, with Prime Minister Ante Markovic presenting a reform package that allowed for foreign ownership of Yugoslav industry and tied the Dinar to the Deutschmark. Such proposals met with the approval of the EC, who also made it clear that they were only interested in Yugoslavia as a single market and not as a number of smaller states. Similarly George Bush stated that the US would not recognise any breakaway republics from Yugoslavia (partly because Bush did not want to encourage secessionist tendencies in the Soviet Union).

In purely economic terms total breakup of the federation was in no-one’s interests. Even for Slovenia and Croatia, the Yugoslav federation though a drain on their economies was also the biggest market for their goods. To secede would have meant not only losing that market but losing also the possibility of EC membership, while for the poorer republics secession would mean losing a source of funding for economic development. In terms of international politics the West (and Moscow) feared that the break-up of Yugoslavia would not only destabilise the Balkans but provide a model and source of legitimacy for the break-up of the Soviet Union into a number of smaller and less stable states, some with a nuclear capability. The continued existence of the Yugoslav Federation appeared to be agreed upon by all concerned.

Ancient hatreds?

According to John Major the Yugoslav wars are primarily the results of "the collapse of the Soviet Union and of the discipline that that exerted over the ancient hatreds in the old Yugoslavia. Once that discipline had disappeared, those ancient hatreds reappeared and we began to see their consequences when the fighting occurred” (Hansard, 23 June, col. 324). This view is repeated by many western politicians, partly to excuse their failure to have guided Yugoslavia peacefully into post-Cold War Europe (a not impossible task given the consensus noted above), and partly because it mirrors the racist propaganda of the nationalist regimes in Serbia and Croatia, the two regional imperia to emerge from the disintegration of Titoist Yugoslavia and behind whom the great powers are lining up against one another. It is, however, a view which bears no resemblance to historical reality.

The idea of ancient hatreds and longstanding ethnic feuds is wholly mythical. For centuries Serbs and Croats were barely aware of each other’s existence, being separated by the border dividing the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires—the military frontier or Volna Krajina to use its Slavonic name. The Serbs who inhabited this region were descended from semi-nomadic Vlachs who were encouraged to settle along the frontier by the Austro-Hungarian authorities to function as a buffer against incursions by raiders from Bosnia. In return they were awarded certain privileges such as semi-autonomy and freedom of worship (the Vlachs were Orthodox Christians unlike the Catholic Hapsburgs). The idea that these Genzers, as they came to be known, were Serbs running from religious persecution by Muslims is a myth fabricated by Serbian nationalist intellectuals.

It was only in the latter half of the nineteenth century that Bosnia’s Orthodox Christians and Catholics began to regard themselves as Serbs and Croats, and again this was due to propaganda by nationalist intellectuals. The often bloody conflicts for which the Balkans are known, and which at times took on an ethno-religious dimension, were in essence economic and political conflicts—manifestations of the class struggle between the predominantly (but not exclusively) Christian peasantry and their predominantly (but not exclusively) Muslim overlords.

Only in World War II did Serbs and Croats finally confront each other directly, but even this is shrouded in mythology. The Ustase regime of Ante Pavelic which Serbian Nationalists claim illustrates the inherent fascism of all Croats was deeply unpopular and would not have lasted a day without the blessing of the Vatican and the support of the Nazis. Its victims were not just Serbs but Croats too. Many Croats, including the young Franjo Tudjman, fought with the Partisans led by Tito, another Croat. Serbs also fought Serbs in a three-way slaughter involving the pan-Yugoslav Partisans, the Nazi puppet regime in Belgrade and the Monarchist forces of Draza Mikailovic. Bosnian Muslims fought on both Partisan and Axis sides, and proportionally suffered more than either Serbs or Croats. The Yugoslav war of 1941-45, then, was not an ethnic conflict but ideological and political.

Similarly the Yugoslav wars of today have their origins in political struggles. Not in the political struggles of secessionist republics against the Federation as a whole, but in the political struggles occurring inside the Federation’s most powerful republic, Serbia.

The bones of Prince Lazar

Slobodan Milosevic was at one time hailed in the West as a Balkan Gorbachev, tire first Yugoslav to realise Tito was dead, as the phrase went. Inside Yugoslavia he was known as something else, as the Saviour and Protector of the Serbs who, the nationalists claimed, were oppressed in Tito-the-Croat’s Yugoslavia—despite the fact that Serbia dominated the political system, the army and was creaming off the profits from Slovenian industry and Croatian tourism.

In 1989 when tire rest of Europe was celebrating the fall of the state capitalist empire and extolling the virtues of civic nationalism, Milosevic was staging rallies commemorating the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Polje and parading the bones of Prince Lazar around towns and villages across Serbia in a campaign calculated to whip up ethnic nationalist sentiment.

Milosevic began his rise to power in 1987 when he opportunistically latched on to the issue of the Serb minority in the province of Kosovo. The situation of these Serbs, though poor, was no worse and probably better than Kosovo’s Albanian majority; but in taking on the issue Milosevic was able to establish a power base among the nationalist intellectuals of the Serbian Academy of Sciences from which to launch an assault on the ailing Titoist political system. The Kosovo issue, which eventually led to the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina being swallowed up by Serbia, showed that the post-Cold War Yugoslavia was to be a Serbian-dominated centralised unitary state; thus further provoking confederalist tendencies in tire other republics.

The Chetniks

The Yugoslav wars began in June 1991 when the Yugoslav Army entered the breakaway republic of Slovenia under the pretext of securing Yugoslavia’s borders. The Slovenian war lasted ten days, left less than seventy dead and ended with the army’s withdrawal. This allowing of Slovenia—which had no sizeable Serb population—to secede indicated that the Serbian Nationalists in the Yugoslav Army had won their power struggle with the “Yugoslavists” who wanted to retain Yugoslavia within its previously existing frontiers, and that Greater Serbia would be exactly that: a single state that incorporated all areas of the former Yugoslavia populated by Serbs.

Croatia and Bosnia did have sizeable Serb populations. As securing of borders could no longer be used as a front for Yugoslav Army intervention, the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia were induced to turn on their neighbours through a combination of propaganda and terror. When the army was deployed it was usually under the pretext of “peace-keeping” or protecting the Serb minority from attacks they themselves had provoked by actions instigated by Belgrade.

For the most part Serbian intervention came in the form of the Chetniks, volunteer units recruited from the underworld and far-right groups often commanded by gangsters and neo-fascist politicians. The Arkanovci, for example, were responsible for many of the atrocities committed at Vukovar and around Banja Luka in Bosnia. This unit take their name from Arkan, nom de guerre of Željko Ražnatović, a Belgrade mafia boss, wanted by Interpol for murder who became an MP in Milosevic’s Serbia.

Arkan was last sighted around Srebrenica in the company of General Mladić prior to the town’s fall. Another unit, the Dusan Silni, forced elderly Croats to walk through a minefield in Slavonia, while the Seseljovci were responsible for the first documented incidence of mass rape in the Bosnian war after rampaging through Zvomik, a defenceless town on the banks of the Drina. This latter group are the paramilitary' wing of the Serbian Radical Party headed by the rabid nationalist Vojislav Seselj.

Workers are always the victims

Needless to say, in this as in all wars it is the working class who suffer most. They do the fighting and the dying, they are raped and “ethnically cleansed", and it is their lives and homes that count for most of the “collateral damage”—whether or not they swallow the nationalist filth of their leaders. The people of Tuzla, for instance, an industrial town where Serbs, Croats, Muslims and others have lived and worked together for generations, didn’t even vote for Bosnian secession. Yet now they find themselves fighting and dying together for what will be, if Bosnia survives, a capitalist state that exploits them as surely as any other, for to lay down their arms will mean certain extermination at the hands of the Chetniks. The story is much the same throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Yugoslav experience shows us what can happen when structural changes in the capitalist economy result in power struggles that spiral out of control. These wars are not the results of ancient hatreds or a peculiar Balkan mentality, they are the result of capitalism and can therefore happen anywhere in the world, even here. The choice, as ever, is simple: Socialism or Barbarism.

Ian Simpson

Sting in the Tail: None So Blind (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

None So Blind

Whenever outbreaks of racial, ethnic or religious intolerance occurred in America or Western Europe, supporters of the "communist" dictatorships would claim that none of these evils could happen in "the socialist countries" because their governments, through education, had eradicated them.

These governments had, after all, exclusive use of the education system and the media for decades, so surely this, together with their avowed opposition to such evils, should have succeeded in at least reducing them.

Every day we can see the awful reality: anti-semitism, national, ethnic and religious hatreds are rife in all the so-called "socialist countries" and have even produced minor wars in some of them.

Of course the dictatorships had never even tried to remove the old divisions but had merely kept the lid on them. These divisions persist because the conditions which spawned them — ignorance, poverty and insecurity — remain, and this was something those supporters of the state capitalist dictatorships couldn't or wouldn't see.

Noble Toady

Lord Woodrow Wyatt has complained in the House of Lords about political bias by "left-wing" TV programme makers.

But what about Tory Was in the press? As was pointed out in the same debate, Rupert Murdoch owns 35% of the national press and no one can say his papers aren't biased.

Wyatt didn't complain about THAT because, you see, he is a columnist (The Voice of the People) in the News of the World which is owned by — Rupert Murdoch!

Ridiculous Ridley

The political demise of Nicholas Ridley, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, will leave all socialists dry eyed. He was the usual brand of arrogant Tory so beloved of the Prime Minister. His political departure, seen from the perspective of a socialist, is of no importance whatsoever to the working class.

What is of interest to socialists in the Ridley resignation is the background which led to it. Mr. Ridley, after what would appear to have been too good a lunch, spouted his ridiculous nonsense Into the tape recorder of the editor of The Spectator.

Even by arrogant Tory standards these were far from diplomatic musings:

This is all a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe. It has to be thwarted. This risked takeover by the Germans on the worst possible basis, with the French behaving like poodles to the Germans, Is absolutely intolerable . . . I'm not against giving up sovereignty on principle, but not to this lot. You might as well give in to Adolf Hitler.

To the suggestion of The Spectator that if these were his views would he consider resignation he replied:

I've been in office for 14 years. I've been elected to parliament six times. I’m still at the top of the political tree, and I'm not done yet.

It was once said by another political trickster that "A week is a long time In politics." And it has been proved to be the case for Mr. Ridley. His political tree has been chopped down, and politically he is most definitely done.

Society in Conflict

Good news for some in capitalism is usually bad news for others and we are reminded of this by ICI's decision to close its loss-making fertiliser business.

For example, as fertilisers have lost £39 million in the last four years, then ICI's shareholders can hope for bigger dividends in future.

Against that are the 640 workers who will lose their jobs. The "greens" will be happy as ICI's inorganic fertilisers are a major source of water pollution. But if any "greens" are among the sacked workers then they will hardly know whether to laugh or cry.

Incidentally, one of ICI's reasons for the closure, that farmers are simply using less fertiliser, greatly pleased one newspaper:

There can be few things more nonsensical than one farmer ladling fertiliser onto a field while the farmer next door is being paid a set-aside grant by the EEC to grow nothing.

(The Guardian 26 July)

We can thank The Guardian for unwittingly revealing another feature of capitalism — its anarchy of production.

Roads to Ruin

Socialists are always showing that capitalism is a wasteful, inefficient social system. A recent report in The Independent 16 August Illustrates our point very well.

A committee of MPs reporting to the Department of Transport on the state of Britain's roads was scathing on the constant need for these roads to be repaired.

Robert Sheldon, Labour MP for Ashton-under-Lyne and chairman of the committee, said: "The Romans built roads that lasted thousands of years. We build our roads and eight years later we have to start repairing them."

The construction of these roads goes out to tender and the cheapest quote gets the job. The construction companies all have shareholders who are only interested in one thing — profit. So it does not take a financial wizard to appreciate that like all profit-making businesses every effort will be made to cut costs.

The cheapest materials possible will be used. In order to cut labour costs all sorts of schemes will be devised to speed up the work, inevitably producing a sub-standard job.

The extent of this shoddy production is reflected in the staggering costs of repairs:

More than £1 billion a year is spent building new motorways, trunk roads and bridges. The report said the National Audit Office had identified 210 cases of premature defects, with total repair costs of £262 million.

In defending this waste of human effort Christopher Chope, Road and Transport Minister, inadvertently revealed the cause of the whole sorry mess.

You could build all the roads so that they would not need repairs for 60 years, but the cost would be so great it probably would not represent good value.

This type of reasoning is typical of the capitalist system. Motor cars are built that only last a few years, car ferries operate that turn turtle in the English Channel, aircraft are flying with fire hazardous fittings that could be replaced by safer materials. The catalogue is a long, depressing and often tragic one.

The Lively Corpse

Someone once wrote a blood-curling story about a murderer who couldn't get rid of the body. He burned it in a furnace, submerged it in acid, dumped it in a lake, cut it into pieces, but the corpse always returned. The murderer finally gave up and turned himself in after waking up one morning to find the thing in bed with him.

This tale reminds us of the exasperating resilience of something else that will not lie down — the class struggle.

Academics and politicians are forever assuring us that it is dead and yet it constantly turns up all over the world in the form of, for example, strikes and lock-outs.

Despite repressive laws and awesome state power ranged against them, workers have created trade unions in South Africa, Eastern Europe, South Korea, etc.

As long as capital and wage-labour exist then so must the class struggle and this is something which all those who would bury it cannot change.