Letter: The Balkan War (1999)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Balkan War

Dear Editors,

Surely you can do better than that in your comments on the Balkan war?

That war was and is an ethnic one pure and simple. For ten years now Serbs, Croats and Bosnians have indulged in a war of racial hatred. Kosova was Milosevic’s last straw and he played it out to the last.

It was time that the rest of Europe woke up, even though they took a dozy attitude to the events in Africa. Somebody had to say enough is enough, and it was right to turn on the Serbs and halt their genocidal attitude to the Kosovo Albanians.

The Belgrade Serbs cocked a deaf ear to Kosovo and indulged in “pop” concert patriotism, something the Brits missed out on in their hatred of the Irish.

If you wanted to relate political beliefs to anything out there, why not indulge yourselves in sussing out that bastard “Jackson”, the drunken badly-spoken military man of the infamous paratroopers, who are always brought out along with the Ghurkas when there is dirty work to be done.

Bill Connor, 

Heywood, Lancs

Reply:

You’re quite wrong. For there to be a race war there would have to be races. But races (and “ethnic group” is just another, equally unscientific, word for “race”) don’t exist. There is only one race—the human race. Even by the sloppy definition, based on superficial visible anatomical differences, used by those who perpetuate the myth of “race” it is clear that the people in former Yugoslavia would all be members of the same race. Or can you tell the difference between an “Albanian” and a “Serb” just by looking at them?

What’s at work in former Yugoslavia is nationalism, which is a political doctrine that preaches that people with a common history or language or religion form a separate “nation” from all other people and have the right to have their own political state to defend their common interest. Socialists have always rejected this doctrine, not just because it isn’t true (people who have a common history or speak the same language do not have a common interest; they are divided into classes, and a worker who speaks a particular language has a common interest with workers speaking other languages but not with a capitalist who speaks the same one) but also because of its practical consequences.

Without the ideology of nationalism, capitalist states would be unstable since, being based on minority class rule, they need a minimum allegiance from those they rule over. Nationalism serves to achieve this by teaching the ruled to be loyal to “their” so-called “nation-state”. In states where a sizeable minority of the population do not fit into the definition of that state’s “nation”—because, for instance, they speak a different language, especially if this is the language of another state—then there is at least a potential problem, to which the final solution is so-called ethnic cleansing. The establishment of independent states in eastern Europe following the break-up of the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires in the First World War led to massive transfers of populations between the new states, precisely because the borders of those states did not correspond to the distribution of the population by “nationality” as defined by language. The same thing is happening again today with the break-up of Yugoslavia since the collapse of state-capitalism in 1989-90.

So-called ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia is the consequence of the creation of new capitalist states in the area and the attempts of their new or would-be ruling classes to consolidate their rule. The Serbian ruling class under Milosevic wanted to clear Kosovo of Albanian-speakers to get rid of a “disloyal” minority within Serbia that was becoming ungovernable. Similarly, the KLA is now trying to clear Kosovo of Serbian-speakers because they know that they will never be able to get them to be loyal to the independent state they hope to set up.

Ordinary Serbian-speakers and ordinary Albanian-speakers have the same interest, in getting on with their lives while capitalism lasts and ultimately in establishing socialism. What interest can they have in burning down each other’s houses—and worse? Clearly, they are being manipulated by rival nationalist politicians seeking to consolidate new capitalist states.- Editors

Letters: Legal war? (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Legal war?

Dear Editors,

I am horrified to watch that NATO are waging war on Yugoslavia without declaring war, in fact, no UN Resolution was passed by the Security Council permitting NATO’s barbaric bombing of Serbia.

I do not condone ethnic cleansing anywhere on this planet, equally I cannot condone Anglo-American-led NATO International Gangsterism in the Third World, getting one country or religion against another and promoting proxy wars for hegemonistic goals.

The Western alliance which arrogantly describes itself as the “International Community” has now embarked on a multi-faceted aggressive campaign to bring Iraq, Yugoslavia and other Third World countries to their knees.

Curiously, Russia and China, permanent members of the Security Council of the UN, are not being consulted; on the contrary they are being rebuffed. China is more interested in her world-wide economic interest and as such China is not challenging the Anglo-American aggressive designs anywhere. The US has become the UN and Kofi Annan its General Secretary, is reduced to an American stooge.

I often ask myself: what have we done to deserve this. “New World Order” or more appropriately “New World Disorder”, especially after the ending of the Cold War.

Is this what is called the “Ethical Dimension” of foreign policy? The self-appointed “International Community” has become judge and jury and executioner.

In the political dictionary, the word “imperialism” is out of style but the barbaric bombing in Serbia, Yugoslavia tells us that “imperialism” is alive and kicking, bullying, intimidating, bombing and killing small nations of the third world.

Avtar Pabla, 

Coventry  

Reply:

It is true that, unless they conform to the UN Charter, wars are technically illegal under international law. Yet even since it was adopted in 1946, wars have gone on in some part of the world, the biggest of which, the Korean War, was waged under the UN flag. This merely illustrates what Socialists have always argued, that peace treaties are merely worthless scraps of paper. We have never placed any confidence in the UN as a means of stopping war. As wars are caused by the rivalry between capitalist states over markets, trade routes, investment outlets and raw materials that is built into capitalism, only the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by the world-wide system of common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit can do that- Editors.  

Mistaken identity

Dear Editors,

I can’t work out your rationale on Serbia—Stop the bombing!!—Stop the bombing!! And? Then what? Count how many hundreds and thousands of Albanian Kosovan refugees have been forced out of their homes?

Count how many unmarked, mass, civilian Albanian Kosovan graves are currently being filled over by Serb tractors?

Count how many Albanian Kosovan women, young and old, have mysteriously “disappeared” into “Serb safekeeping”?

Count how many Albanian Kosovan houses, shops, workplaces, villages and small towns have been left in smoking ruins by the Serb military?

Count how many mines the Serb authorities are placing around all the Kosovo borders so that Albanian Kosovans “who have nothing to fear” can feel safe and wanted in their own country?

Is this the same SPGB who claim to be on the side of the oppressed and powerless? Supporting the demands of one of the most brutal, right-wing, authoritarian, unreconstructed, military regimes in Western Europe? With the Serbs’ proven track record in Bosnia and Croatia over the last 10 years?

Shame on you?

“Uncle Vladimir”, 

London N16

Reply:

Although we are in favour of the immediate stopping of all wars, i.e. of the killing of innocent workers on both sides, the posters you have seen proclaiming “Stop the Bombing” have not been put up by us, but by some Trotskyist group which is no doubt supporting Serbia as the lesser evil in the current NATO-Serbia war. So your criticism is misdirected. Besides, of course, as V.I. Lenin you may be their uncle but you’re no relation of ours.

And just because we don’t support the NATO bombing campaign does not mean that we therefore support the Serbian army. We are against both sides, Serbian capitalism as well as NATO imperialism who are fighting over an issue—who should control the territories of the former Yugoslavia—which is not worth the sacrifice of a single worker’s life- Editors.  

“Socialism” or what?

Dear Editors,

Your pathetic reply to Paul Azzario’s letter (April Socialist Standard) illustrates quite convincingly the need to change the name of the party.

When the “S” word is propagated by Socialists, the bemused recipients will have mental pictures triggered of anything stretching from the Labour Party, the “Socialist” countries via Russia’s Soviet past. Surely, even you must admit that nearly 100 years of dedicated slog, has produced no discernible dent in the solid front of political ignorance.

Socialist propaganda goes in and out of the mind with the greatest of ease, because actual examples of Socialism in action are difficult to point to, thus the mind has nothing to work on.

Whatever Socialists do, life will be difficult, so I am suggesting that they try “Lateral Thinking” to assist in getting around part of the problem.

At the moment Socialists use “Direct Thinking”!, e.g. we are “Socialists”! and refuse to change our name no matter how great the confusion! It is the “Charge of the Light Brigade” mentality, the ruinous head-on clash! We count the few survivors and honour them but we are no nearer to Socialism.

Why not attack from the flank. Disarm the enemy by changing your name and use only meaningful words, where others cannot follow. E.g. “One World, Free Access to Everything Produced”. This is a bit of a mouthful, but it is pure Socialism, where no-one else can follow!

I am sure that a competent wordsmith can improve on such a heading, which cuts out all mistaken ideas associated with that “S” word. Supporters of Blair, Benn, Yeltsin, Castro, Trotsky and others will have the ground cut from beneath their feet and be forced to start thinking positively—for the first time.

Sam Levitt, 

London NW3

Editorial: The Balkan War (1999)

Editorial from the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again European cities are being bombed. Once again displaced persons are on the move. This has never ceased to be the lot of people in Africa and Asia but one of the claims of Western capitalism was that it had at least established peace and prosperity in Europe. Now full-scale war has returned to Europe. The illusion that permanent peace and prosperity is possible under capitalism has been shattered.

The NATO bombing raids on Yugoslavia are aimed not just at direct military targets but at the industrial infrastructure of power stations, fuel depots, factories, chemical plants, roads, railways and bridges which serve civilian purposes as well as supplying the Serbian military machine. All this represents the destruction of useful wealth. As Socialists have always said, war means social regression.

But is it sometimes necessary? Although we are not pacifists (we would countenance fighting should a pro-capitalist minority take up arms to try to prevent the democratic establishment of socialism) we say there is no such thing as a “just war”. Wars are fought over markets, investment outlets, raw material sources and trade routes and strategic points to control them.

The present Balkan War is no different. It is a continuation of the process that started in 1991 when Slovenia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, in which the stake has been: who shall control the territories of the former Yugoslavia—Serbia or the West, in particular Germany?

When “communism” (in reality state capitalism) collapsed, the NATO powers had a choice. Let the Serbian ruling class continue to maintain order and stability in the area so that trading and profit-making there could continue normally. Or apply the principle of “national self-determination” in the hope that a collection of smaller, more “ethnically pure” states would provide greater stability.

Reunited Germany, with its historic enemy Russia on its knees, was able to revive its ambitions in Eastern and Central Europe and it led the way in working for the break-up of Yugoslavia so that it, rather than Serbia, could dominate the area. First Slovenia, then Croatia, then Bosnia, then Macedonia broke away or rather were broken away. The result, however, has not been stability. Quite the reverse, with only a NATO army of occupation maintaining a fragile peace in Bosnia and eastern Croatia.

And now Kosovo. Serbia claims that it is fighting to retain Kosovo because this is the cradle of “Serbian civilisation”, but there is more at stake than the bones of Prince Lazar. As retired Canadian Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded UN troops in Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo, has pointed out: “Quite frankly, they want the northern half of Kosovo. That’s where the mines and natural resources are” (Times Colonist, Victoria, 26 March). There has been speculation in the media that this may be the compromise that will emerge once the killings and bombings have stopped: the partition of Kosovo with Serbian forces controlling an ethnically-cleansed north and a NATO army of occupation looking after the impoverished refugees in the south.

Faced with this latest manifestation of capitalist barbarity and cynicism we once again place on record our abhorrence of all war and call upon workers everywhere to unite to bring the war-prone capitalist system to a speedy end.

Watching the war go by (1999)

From the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalists have never gone to war to promote Justice and they never will.

Last year The Most Dangerous Man In The World was Saddam Hussain. Pronounced Sadaaam Hoosayn by the plastic propagandists employed to spin the latest line for CNN. There had never been a nastier dictator than the Evil Saddaaam and that was why forces of the American Empire—sorry, NATO—had to “go in there and kick ass”. Any resemblance to a gangland settling of scores should be ignored. After all, that upright defender of virtue, Slick Willy Clinton, had cast himself as Batman against the Iraqi Joker, with wee Tony doing his best to look like Robin.

But let us not distract ourselves with nostalgia. That was yesterday’s war. Now, in the world of CNN-speak, an even more demonic evil has come to threaten the stability of the globe. Plucky little Kosovo must be defended. Think not of the fact that nine out of ten Americans had never heard of Serbia, let alone Kosovo, until CNN told them about it fifty times a day. The threat to the New World Order has been identified. Milosevic must be banged to rights. The propagandists, using a script uncannily similar to Wag The Dog (a fictional account of a sleazy US President saving his reputation by a bogus war against Albania), invite us to shout and curse against the crimes of the Belgrade regime.

And, blinded by the light of the TV screen, large numbers of decent people are weeping for the oppressed Kosovars and cheering NATO as it drops its bombs on Serb towns and villages. Because most people are decent and they hate to see injustice against a defenceless minority, so they are sucked in to the drama of war.

But there are some other defenceless minorities whose plight is not shown on CNN. There are some defenceless minorities for whom NATO would not so much as fire a shot from an air gun. In fact, the NATO states are the very ones which have sold the weapons by which these defenceless minorities are oppressed. For example . . .

There are the Kurds in Turkey. Between 1990 and 1994 about one million Turkish Kurds were driven from their homes. Over 40,000 Kurds have been killed. And in 1994 Turkey became the biggest single importer of US military equipment and the world’s largest arms purchaser. Turkey is a member of NATO. Its troops are currently part of the NATO forces in Yugoslavia. Why is NATO attacking Serbia and not Turkey? The US administration justifies Turkish state atrocities on the grounds that they are defending “law and order” against Kurdish terrorists. The Serbian regime uses precisely the same logic: that it has only slaughtered people and burnt villages to the ground in a war against Kosovar terrorism.

Within the past month 10,000 people were killed in a war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. There are countless refugees. When did we hear about this on the TV News? Where are the calls from those incorrigible humanitarians, Albright and Cook, to send aid to these refugees and to stop the fighting? Since 1994 820,000 have died in Rwanda. Since 1986 a million and a half have died in Sudan. Where was CNN?  

What about East Timor? Conduct a simple experiment. Go on to the streets of Kansas City or, for that matter, White City in London and ask people what they think about the slaughter of the Timorese people. Most will never have heard about East Timor. The propagandists have forgotten to tell them about that atrocity because that one is a NATO-armed assault on a defenceless minority. East Timor was taken over by Indonesia in 1975, since when one third of its population has been killed—that’s 200,000 people. Since 1975 the USA has sold over $1 billion of weapons to the Indonesian dictatorship. The other main arms suppliers are Australia and Britain. Just as the NATO troops were whizzing off to knock the shit out of Belgrade, Indonesian militia entered a church full of people in East Timor and slaughtered them. Reports have not made it on to the CNN News, perhaps because the reporters are too busy congratulating the West upon its humanitarian campaign to help oppressed minorities.

There is something deeply disgusting about the pretence that bombing is a civilising mission. The people who drop bombs from the sky upon towns and villages are bullying cowards and deserve no respect from anyone. The people who give them the orders to drop their bombs are self-serving hypocrites whose concern for the safety of Kosovar refugees is about as genuine as their domestic concern for single mothers, the unemployed and the disabled. The minority who own and control the world—the Directors of USA Inc and UK Plc—are ruthless, exploitative thieves whose primary interest is in the fast buck and protecting what they imagine their interests to be. The capitalists have never gone to war to promote justice and they never will. Indeed, the notion that justice can be furthered by violence can only make sense when you have a social system that is rooted in violence and plunder.

We will no doubt be told that by opposing the military escapades of Clinton and Blair we are siding with those who are committing unspeakable acts against defenceless Kosovars. Socialists side with no state, for all states are merely organised forces of national coercion. We are opposed to the lot of them and support the interest of the oppressed, not selectively, but wherever they are. In time of war we refuse steadfastly to be deluded by the crass propaganda of any section of the ruling class or to become entrapped in the rhetoric of militarist terror.

Instead of taking sides between this nation or that, we oppose all nationalism. Workers have no country. None to live for. None to die for. Workers should refuse to fight, for every drop of working-class blood shed in battles within capitalism is wasted.  

CNN’s viewing figures have gone up since the war in Yugoslavia started. What exciting pictures the explosions make. What a terrific diversion from thinking about the poverty of life under the profit system it is for wage slaves to be presented with 24-hour live coverage of Clinton’s Heroes. CLOBBER SLOBBA, says the Sun, ever eager to find new depths of banality, illiteracy and tastelessness by which to woo its prey. So, we sit at home and we watch the war and just occasionally we might wonder how much it cost to build the US bomber planes (more than the total GDP of Albania, as it happens) and what kind of world we might live in if those resources were not used to produce ever more sophisticated weapons of death, but libraries, homes and hospitals for all.

Steve Coleman

Letters: Not my war (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not my war

Dear Editors,

Like you I am opposed to dropping bombs on my fellow human beings. My “side” is opposed to the “sides” of Milosovic, the KLF and the NATO powers, including “our” government. My “side” is for peace and live and let live against power politics, territorial urges and militaristic posturing.

Having no shares or property to defend, I give all Tommies permission to take it easy and stay at home with their wives and bairns. The airmen and soldiers are victims too of a cynical, greedy two-faced hypocritical bunch of warmongers.

If war is ever “necessary” this should proceed by the politicians heading the column into battle.

Robert J. Taylor,  

South Shields 

We have a dream

Dear Editors,

We have a dream, it’s a big one too. Our dream embraces the whole of humanity and they don’t come much bigger than that. In our dream we see every person on the face of the Earth having the same value, priceless! In our dream gone will be the days where one person’s life will be considered more valuable or less valuable than any other. Gone will be the days when someone will be paid as much for reading the News for a day as a nurse will receive for a whole year of looking after the sick. Gone also will be the days when some have a life of untold luxury, wealth and privilege just because they happen to be born in a certain bed.

We have a dream . . . in a socialist world buildings will be built to the highest possible specification (just like banks are now) to be inhabited by people and not to house lumps of gold, bits of coloured glass and pretty pieces of paper. We don’t know how long it might be before our dream becomes a reality, it might take quite a while. We realise that there are plenty of people who have a vested interest in retaining the demeaning values upon which society is based . . . for the time being they are doing alright thank you, Jack.

Capitalism is a reality, but the dream that once was, for too many, has now become a soul-destroying nightmare. One million people in this country alone take a daily dose of Prozac (anti-depressant) to help them get through each day. This is a legal drug, just imagine how many more are getting away from it all by “fixing” on anything that they can lay their shaking hands on.

The fact is of course that capitalism has and continues to fail people in their millions, they see no hope, they have no hope, worse still they don’t even have a dream.

John Phazey, 

Sutton Coldfield

 

Labour no good

Dear Editors,

Re your article “What’s New about New Labour?” (March, Socialist Standard), it is of course, perfectly true that (so-called) “New” Labour is no different from Old Labour. The Labour Party never was a socialist party. Over the years it has had many far left hot-heads in it; one of the most notable being Aneurin Bevan (although, towards the end of his life, he mellowed considerably). The Labour Party in its policies was only really a left-wing conservative party. That is why, in my opinion, it has spent most of the years of its existence in opposition.

When in government, it has introduced means testing for the for the very poor, cut dole money, introduced a compulsory two years’ national service for all young men on attaining the age of 18, banned strikes making them illegal, operated wage freezes, limited wage increases. True, they introduced child benefit after the war; but, in old money, Hugh Dalton, then Chancellor, put a shilling on 20 fags and sixpence on 10 fags to pay for it. The aforementioned policies seem more like the policies of a far right Thatcherite party than a so-called Labour Party.

One of the first assertions in the Labour Constitution was: “The Labour Party is a Socialist Party”. It wasn’t and never has been. But the one that always amuses me sadly is the old Clause 4: “To secure for the workers by hand and by brain, the full fruits of their labour and the most equitable distribution thereof.” Jolly decent of them eh! Who was anyone to deny the workers by hand or brain the full fruits of their labour?

I always remember in the long ago, November 1956 to be exact, as a young engineering apprentice in the Ford Motor company, I was invited to join the AEU. I had to fill in a form and attend the branch I had chosen with my seconder who had joined me. The new recruits stood out at the front of the meeting and the Branch Chairman read a text out to them (I suppose they still have it). The first part of the text had in it: “Our ancestors and predecessors were vilified and persecuted and, what prosperity we have now, is the fruits of their labour.”

Most of the text, however, has faded from my memory. The part I do remember is the end part: “May you live to see the day when we have ended the system that causes unemployment, that causes poverty in the midst of plenty, and replace it with a just and equitable one.” In the intervening years, particularly during the Thatcher years, my thoughts have often gone back to that far-off night. Would I ever live to see that day?

Stuart P. King, 

Romford, Essex 

Become a socialist

Dear Editors,

I think that most folks have heard of Socialism but I doubt very much that their definition coincides with mine—a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community—a world-wide community of 5½ billion of us humans.

We Socialists are quite satisfied that the only way to achieve this goal is by political action. Use your vote to bring about an end to the present system, capitalism, which deprives the worker of the wealth they alone produce.

The solution to most of the ills of the world is a simple one, establish Socialism. However it cannot be done without a majority of Socialists. Our socialist candidates will flat-out tell you that they don’t want your vote unless you want socialism. Reforming capitalism is not on the agenda. Our political opponents have been doing that for over 200 years.

The socialist can point the way but they will not adopt the role of “leader”. Have you heard this before? “Where there are leaders there are led, where there are led there are bled.”

We must first cast off the role of being a follower. You may think you cannot be hoodwinked. That you are extremely intelligent. That you are too wise in the ways of the world. The facts prove otherwise. You have voted for the Whigs and Tories, the Democrats and Republicans, the Liberals and Conservatives for the past 200 years. These are facts. Let us face it: you have been misled year after year. Your “leaders”, with their smooth talk and promises, have proven that followers are made to be bled. Become a Socialist and learn how this capitalist system operates and why it cannot function in the workers’ interests.

Bill Hewitson,  

Santa Monica, California

Bombing for peace—the real crisis in NATO (1999)

From the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Western liberals are in a flap about NATO’s bombardment of Serbia. Whichever position they take appears to condone violence against somebody, and the shallowness of liberal thinking has never been more cruelly exposed than now. Yet the cynics are having trouble too, because they can’t see an economic motive behind NATO’s actions, and nobody can believe that the West would spend £2 billion on a purely humanitarian exercise when it didn’t show the slightest concern over East Timor, Rwanda or any other killing ground of recent years.

It’s easy to see the economic value of Kosovo to Milosevic, but what’s in it for NATO? The West don’t seem to be after land or resources in the area, and is facing a huge bill for its pains. So is NATO really a cuddly philanthropic defender of the weak?

Wars, though generic to capitalism, do in fact interrupt the process of wealth accumulation and are frequently against the interests of large sections of the capitalist class, who will therefore try to prevent them. You can’t make money when some gangsters are shooting up your casino. Hence capitalism’s need for an international police force. But as with a domestic police force, the willingness of populations to accept law enforcers whose main concern is private property and money-making depends on those enforcers also preventing other types of crime, like mugging, rape, murder and street violence, which don’t directly concern the owning class but which worry the hell out of the rest of us. If the police couldn’t prevent a gang war on your doorstep you’d start wondering why you bothered respecting the law yourself. And when the law breaks down, the looting starts.

At the heart of this crisis is the problem of credibility, not only for NATO in its efforts to keep the peace, but for the Western Liberal Democracy model of capitalism. This is more serious than it sounds. Capitalism, as everyone knows, requires majority support and participation. Now you can enforce this support the hard way, by having a police state with heavy duty surveillance, martial law, “disappearances”, 24-hour border patrols and a huge state propaganda machine. This is the 1984 approach of George Orwell, but there are severe practical problems, because such a system is incredibly expensive to maintain and, being so crude, unable to get the best out of its workers. The collapse of state capitalism in Eastern Europe had long been predicted by the Socialist Party for these very reasons (although it lasted much longer than we expected).

The other way to ensure support is much cheaper, more efficient, more stable, and more user-friendly. It is called Liberal Democracy. Nobody is going to rebel if they believe that they are already free, and this belief is central to the West’s perception of itself. Consequently the capitalist class is obliged to tolerate a (semi-) free press, the vote, and open criticism of itself, because there has to be evidence of this “freedom” for all to see. And there are other costs. We will not co-operate unless capitalism supplies us with a reasonable safe and secure environment. The police rule by popular consent, and could not rule otherwise. Employment has to be supplied, or else a dole, otherwise food riots will ensue. 

 

The credibility of “Western democratic capitalism” is in bad shape, even for Westerners. We are better informed than we’ve ever been, and we are not impressed by what we see. Nobody believes in leaders like they used to. Nobody doffs their cap to their local MP as they once did. We are accustomed to think of them as generally useless and usually corrupt. Governments, we realise, don’t really care a damn about us except for that little X once every five years or so. Thirty percent of the population doesn’t even bother to give them that.

After the pyramid-selling fiascos in Albania a couple of years ago, capitalism in the region has a poor public image. Millions in Eastern Europe were hoping it was going to be better than Leninist state-capitalism but the bread queues are still there and instead of the secret police they now have the Mafia, that ultimate expression of the free market. If it now appears that NATO, the international Police Department, can’t even stop some tinpot dictator from murdering his way to power, the capitalist hold over workers’ minds will be weakened. We will begin to see through their cosy propaganda and their self-serving laws that nobody else obeys anyway. We might turn back to fascism. But what is worse, we might go forward to socialism. There are no bars on our windows, thanks to the money-saving logic of capitalism. There is only our belief in the system that prevents us acting, and that is increasingly under strain.

Paddy Shannon

There’s no such thing as an ethical foreign policy (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ethical foreign policy? What a joke! How, in a capitalist world where each state is competing against every other state for a share of profits, can a government base its foreign policy on anything except economic self-interest—the economic self-interest, that is, of its capitalists?

“Obtain profits or die”, that is the economic law governing the conduct of states under global capitalism. And it cannot be otherwise for as long as global capitalism lasts.

Everybody knows that the reason for the Gulf War nearly ten years ago can be summed up in three letters O-I-L. Iraq, a virtually land-locked country wanted secure access to the sea for its exports and imports, so it invaded Kuwait. This represented a threat to the oil supplies of the capitalist West, so they went to war—and are still bombing and killing and starving ordinary people in Iraq to remove this threat. This has nothing to do with the fact that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who couldn’t care a damn about human rights. There are plenty of other dictators in the area—beginning with the King of Saudi Arabia and the other hereditary Gulf despots—who are left alone because they are on the side of the capitalist West.

It was the same earlier this year in Kosovo. Serbia wasn’t attacked because it was a dictatorship under Slobodan Milosevic but because it was a state with a powerful army that had been causing problems for Western capitalist interests in the area and had overstepped the mark. Neighbouring dictator and fellow ethnic-cleanser, Tunjman of Croatia, was left alone because he was “our bastard”.

East Timor? Who had heard of East Timor before last month? When Indonesian troops marched into this former Portuguese colony in 1975 the UN passed a resolution saying Indonesia had broken international law and left it at that. In the following years the Western capitalist powers competed amongst themselves for lucrative contracts from the Indonesian military. The ruling generals were invited to arms shows to buy guns, tanks, warplanes, ships, any military hardware they needed to maintain their grip on the country they were exploiting for their own ends.

“Please don’t use these weapons against your own people,” requested an ethically-minded diplomat. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” replied the generals. “That’s all right then,” replied the diplomat. When confronted with evidence that the generals were using British weapons for internal repression, a British Minister replied, “if we didn’t sell them arms, then the French would.” Questioned in the Assemblée Nationale on the same point, a French Minister replied, “if we didn’t sell them arms then the British would.”

When oil was discovered in the sea between East Timor and Australia, the Australian government decided that the Indonesian invasion of East Timor was not so contrary to international law after all. In order to get a share of the oil they signed an agreement recognising East Timor as part of Indonesia. Now they are leading the forces sent in to take East Timor from Indonesia. No wonder their erstwhile friends, the Indonesian rulers, regard them as two-faced double-dealers.

And of course a place like East Timor can never survive on its own. It’s obviously going to end up as an Australian dependency, no doubt giving Australia an even better oil deal.

That’s the way of the world—the capitalist world. And it’s no good just protesting about this and appealing to governments to base their foreign policy on ethical considerations. They can’t (except in words) even if they wanted to, since this would hamper them in the struggle for profits—and the trade routes, and investment outlets, and raw material sources, and strategic areas, to secure them.

The only way out is to get rid of global capitalism and replace it by a world socialist system in which all that is in and on the Earth becomes the common heritage of all humanity so that it can be used for the benefit of every man, woman and child on the planet irrespective of where they live, a small island or the industrialised heartlands.

Adam Buick

The Balkan war (continued) (1999)

Editorial from the June 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

NATO’s war to complete the final break-up of the former Yugoslavia continues with increasing civilian casualties.

NATO claims to be waging war to save the Albanian-speaking population of Kosovo. If this really were their aim then their war would have to be pronounced a failure. The Albanian-speakers of Kosovo are manifestly worse off than they would be had there been no war. Burned out by the one side and bombed by the other, in the biggest displacement of population since the end of the last world war, the majority of them are now languishing in miserable refugee camps in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro.

But NATO’s aim never was humanitarian. It has been, in the words of their Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark last March when it started, to “degrade and diminish” the old Yugoslav army, the one military machine in the area capable of standing up to them, and which had been thwarting their plans to turn the former Yugoslavia into a collection of weak, ethnically pure states in which the economic laws of the market could operate unimpeded, for the benefit, as they always do, of the strongest—in this case Western capitalist enterprises.

Wars are inevitable under capitalism because of the economic competition between states that is built-in to it, but is normally only a last resort when a state’s “vital interest” is involved. In this war that Serbia’s vital interest is at stake is clear, but it is difficult to see that this is so for the NATO states. Serbia under Milosevic was not that much of a threat to their interests and they have learned to live with dictators before—indeed they have learned to live with General Tudjman’s regime in Croatia whose record of ethnic cleansing is just as bad as Milosevic’s.

Probably NATO expected that the threat of war, or at most a short bombing campaign, would suffice. If so, they miscalculated and are now in a real mess from which they can only extricate themselves, unless they are prepared to admit defeat, by a further sacrifice of working-class lives and a further destruction of the civilian infrastructure in both Serbia and Kosovo.

What is going on is a turf war with the Serbian ruling class fighting to defend their already considerably reduced territory and NATO trying to grab Kosovo from them. It is for these sordid aims that the Albanian-speakers of Kosovo have been driven from their homes and that the workers of Serbia are being bombed and deprived of basic amenities such as water and electricity.

Capitalism is an abomination and a crime against humanity. It ought to have been done away with ages ago.