SOCIALIST OUTLOOK has been in the forefront of the Workers Aid to Bosnia campaign, and supporters of the paper are on both legs of the Convoy But the campaign raises the question why back Bosnia?. A prominent letter in the Morning Star on 10 September attacked the campaign and argued for neutrality in the war.
We say socialists should defend Bosnia against the plans Serbia and a "Greater Croatia' which would eat up 70 percent of Bosnian tetritory we are always for the underdog; it is because we are always for the oppressed against the Yugoslavia broke up because the economic crisis of the Stalinist system created competition between the different republics. This opened the door to reactionary nationalism.
But the immediate cause of the war was the decision of the Slobodan Milosevic leadership to stay in power by using the weapon of Serbian chauvinism, and then their launching of a military attack on Croatia and Slovenia when they exercised their right to independence.
Kosovo
The first people to be attacked by the Milosevic leadership were the ethnically Albanian population of Kosovo, which has been harshly repressed. Popular protest was 1989. Then came the attacks on Croatia, Slovenia and finally Bosnia. Milosevic started the war.
Socialists should defend the right of national self-determination. Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia have the right to be independent and sovereign states if they so wish. By national self-determination does not mean ethnically "pure' That is a reactionary idea.
Most states in the world have national minorities and socialists oppose all oppres sion of these minorities.
We are opposed to the oppression of Serbs in Croatia, and Croatians in Serbia. We also defend the right to existence of multi-ethnic and multinational states, if that is the will of their people.
Before the war there was little demand from Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats fora break up of Bosnia. People who have lived side-by-side for who inter-married and worked together, have been forced into conflict by first reactionary great Serbian chauvinism and then by Croatian nationalism.
We say defending Bosnia ano oringue materal and 00litical aid is an elementary defence of democratic rights, and thus an elementary duty for socialists. All socialist organisations, particularly the SWP and Militant who have kept silent, should be challenged to back Workers Aid. fuelled and encouraged the of. fensive against jobs. wages, New realism is the latest form taken by the politics of reformism, seeking no more than improved conditions within the Socialist Outlook rejects reformism, not because we are against fighting for reforms, but because we know that the needs of the working class - for full decent living standards, a clean environment, peace and democracy - can never be achieved under capitalism.
Nor, as we argued long before the collapse of Stalinism, could these demands ever be achieved under the bureaucratically deformed workers states and degenerated USSR, whose regimes survived only by repressing their own working We are a marxist current. based not on the brutish totalitarian parodies of state marxism, nor on the tame, toothless verbeloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Name Address. Phone Age Send to Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU the outcome of a socialist revolution. The oppressed must organise themselves and fight now around their own demands. which are a part of the struggle for socialism.
But propaganda alone, however good, will not bring social. ism. The fight for policies which can mobilise and politically educate workers in struggle, must be taken into the unions, the Labour Party and every campaign and struggle in which workers and the oppressed fight for their To strengthen this fight we press for united front campaigns on key issues such as fighting racism and fascism - in which various left currents can work together for common objectives while remaining free to debate their differences. If you agree with what you see in Socialist Outlook, and want to join with us in the struggle for socialism, readers' groups meet in towns across the country. Contact us now, get organised, and get active!
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 49. 18 September 1993, Page 3