HANDS OFF SERBIA!
Aggression against the proletariat there and here!
Another war – but this time the danger is on our doorstep! The bombs and missiles of NATO (led by America, but with Italy at its side) are spewing their stream of fire over Serbia. Against the background of a chorus of deliberate disinformation on both sides, let us make one thing clear: although the bombardment is formally directed against the Serbs, it is also directed against the Albanians of Kosovo (precisely the people it claims to "protect") and the entire Balkan proletariat. At the same time, it will not be without consequences for Italian workers, who the government and mass-media would like to see favourable towards – or at least silent about – this nth "humanitarian intervention". It is for this reason that Italian workers and the young must not remain indifferent in the face of the aggression launched against the Serbian people, but adopt an autonomous class position and understand that it is in the interests of the proletariat here to come together and fight the aggression. The first step in this direction is not to be taken in by all of the propaganda concerning the causes and the aims of NATO’s military operation and the policy of Western governments.
"We are going for humanitarian reasons to defend the unarmed Albanian population of Kossovo."
This is the consensus-grabbing argument. But can you really believe
that the West is intervening to "defend women and children from massacre" when
it has been using its arms and embargo to massacre them for the last eight years in Iraq
(for the highly "humanitarian" reason of maintaining the zero cost of oil)? Can
you really believe in an Italy that defends the rights of Albanians in Kosovo, when it is
the first to have set up a naval blockade of the Albanian coast (and even gone to the
lengths of ramming a ship full of refugees), and super-exploits those that manage to
arrive by forcing them into underpaid work or throwing the women onto the streets?
Wasn’t it the Italian government that intervened with its military "mission
Alba" in order to put down the people’s revolt following the colossal
expropriation of the wealth of the Albanian population represented by the
"pyramids" guided by Italian financiers and mafiosi? And haven’t we
seen over the last few months how dear Europe and the USA hold the concept of the
self-determination of peoples … in Kurdistan or in Palestine?
All of this "humanitarian" talk is nothing other than an enormous lie designed
to hide the real reason for the intervention: the USA, Europe and Italy are acting on
behalf of their own economic and political interests of imperialist domination not
only over Serbia, but also over Kosovo, Albania, all of the Balkans and beyond …
towards Russia!
This is the real reason behind the support given by the West to various "independence
movements" (yesterday in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, today in Kosovo, and tomorrow
…): it is a means of recolonising the area and an attack against all of
the working masses with the aim of breaking their resistance against the drastic worsening
in their living conditions – implemented by local nationalist micro-bourgeoisies, but
directly driven by the "steam-masters" over here. Imperialism couldn’t care
less about the people of Kosovo. What it does care about is to rekindle a war whose
dividends (called "peace") will enable it to profit by reaching its
objective of breaking up ex-Yugoslavia. The real and decisive pyromaniac of the Balkans
is the class of Western imperialist exploiters!
"Serbia is responsible for the war and, in any case, is a danger to peace"
The truth is very different. What is Serbia and the government of
Milosevic "guilty" of according to the West? It is certainly not guilty of
having opposed the break-up of ex-Yugoslavia (something it did not do) nor of failing to
apply market rules against Serbian workers (something it has done all too well); the guilt
lies in the fact that it wanted to negotiate or even worse oppose – from the point of
view of its own bourgeois interests – the further penetration of Western capital.
The Serbian regime’s oppression of the Albanians is a matter of fact. On the other
hand, as is by now universally recognised, the UCK is an army under the pay of the USA and
its accomplices, whose aim is to destabilise the area of the Balkans even further for
their own ends in order to be able to impose first the war and then an imperialist
peace. If the local Albanian population ends up by "spontaneously"
submitting itself to such a design, this will simply be the result of the dead-end
reactionary policy of a Milosevic who has pushed and continues to push Serbians against
Albanians (workers against workers), and the sell-out to the West of Alabanian political
forces. But the Kosovians will never be able to recover their national and social dignity
by means of a "self-determination" acquired under the aegis of an imperialism
that is exclusively interested in submitting the Balkans to fire and flame; they can only
do it by uniting themselves with the workers of all nationalities in the area in a unified
class battle against this interference and its local supporters.
"If we do not intervene, we will be submerged by further massive waves of refugees"
But it is precisely the (economic, political and military) intervention of the West that drive enormous masses from the South and the East towards the "rich countries" – where they certainly do not find themselves on a pleasure tour. We are "invaded" because we are invaders, because we allow "our" masters, "our" governments to pillage, devastate and tamper in such a way as to pour the impoverished masses into what has become a world labour market. The example of ex-Yugoslavia is highly instructive: ever since the enormous penetration of Western countries reached the point of breaking up the country, the misery of the masses there has increased to such an extent that they are driven to emigrate – and this is drive that no closure of the frontiers can ever stop and no type of "programming" can ever contain. A growing mass of Yugoslavian workers is becoming increasingly and more directly dependent on the international circulation of capital, and super-exploited at home and in Italy; this means that Italian workers are also becoming more dependent on the "competition" of this cheap and borderless labour. Insofar as every Western military aggression is an armed expression of the continuation of this "peace" policy of robbery, it cannot do anything other than feed the spiral of greater misery, more immigration, more degradation of workers here and there, and finally a war in which proletarians will provide the cannon fodder.
Consequently, do not give any credit to this new pro-aggression campaign in the Balkans: the "human rights" that imperialist governments talk about are nothing more than the rights to protect their interests in pillaging the Blakans and the rest of the world. Their intervention "in protection of the Albanians in Kosovo" has the sole purpose of putting more chains around the necks of the Kosovians themselves, all of the peoples in the Balkans, and the Western proletariat.
The aggression must be stopped, but this can only be done by the proletariat and only provided that, first and here, we strip the talons from "our" masters, "our" country and "our" imperialism in such a way as to obstruct the aggression against our class brothers in the Balkans, Iraq and elsewhere, and build a common front with them and their immigrant cousins in order to fight together against a mechanism that, in different ways, enslaves both them and us.
Secondly, it is necessary to construct there a united front
between the Serbian and still scarce Kosovian proletariats which, although now set against
each other as enemies, are both interested in putting an end to the spiral of misery,
division and war.
It is the task and in the interests of the working class here to ensure that
this comes about! Fighting against our imperialism in order to establish a bridgehead with
the Balkan masses, and supporting the recovery and reorganisation of the Yugoslavian
working class against its local bourgeoisies and their Western masters, is not a
question of aiding "others" but of helping ourselves and our class. This war
– and the imperialist peace of which it is a forerunner – is also being fought
against our own workers who, already suffering the continuous erosion of their living
conditions and bowed down by a "left" that is increasingly responsible for the
dictates of the market, will not only have to pay for the material costs of the
aggression (including the lives that they will have to sacrifice – it is only a
matter of time), but also the political costs: unless it is stopped, the
Balkanisation of a part of our international class will give the bourgeoisie the strength
to take advantage of divisions and contrapositions among Western workers (currently in
economic, but tomorrow also in military terms).
It is for this reason that it is necessary to reject the "solutions" offered by Rifondazione
Comunista, some elements of the "left" and Lega Nord, who present the
(armed and political) intervention of the West as inevitable and in any case necessary,
provided it is made under the more democratic and "less American" aegis of the
UN (as in the case of the Gulf War and subsequent embargo!), or who believe in the
"humanitarian" face and potential "alternative" role of Europe and
Italy once they are "freed" from their submission to the USA.
Although there is no doubt that, as in the case of Iraq, the situation in Kosovo is
leading to a divarication in the interests and and behaviours of the various Western
powers, this has nothing to do with humanitarian reasons or the defence of oppressed
peoples, but is only an expression of the insufferance with which some European
bourgeoisies see the excessive power held by the USA. The "distinctions" made by
European countries in the face of the "excesses" committed by their ally (and
the call for a more autonomous European and Italian policy) serve only to hide the desire
to extend the imperialist dominion of Europe and Italy at the expense of America.
Any support for such a line would be suicidal for both the metropolitan proletariat and
the super-exploited masses of the periphery, because it does nothing else but to defend
the interests of capital, which will continue to dictate the rules against both.
On the contrary, it is now more necessary than ever that the proletariat separates its
fate from that of all types of national or European imperialism, and that it begins to
defend its Balkan class brothers not only from the bombs of NATO, but also from the
poisoned pills of the "humanitarian" and "pacificatory" interventions
of its "own" imperialism.
The proletariat of ex-Yugoslavia One subject never appears in the "information" given by parties and the media concerning the situation in the Balkans: the proletariat. But we, as internationalist communists, follow with great interest every concrete step that the proletariat takes on the way towards the resumption of its struggle on an international scale. One very concrete case: Last June, the Italian
engineering trade union Fiom-Cgil organised in Venice a meeting with the engineering trade
unions of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo. |
PUBLIC MEETING
Friday 9 April: 5.30 p.m.
Che Fare Headquarters – Via del Reti 19/A (San Lorenzo) Roma