Paul Clarke wrote that Gauche Révolutionnaire, the sister organisation of Militant Labour in France, "prioritise campaigning against the crime of the embargo and organising an aid convoy to Serbia. "They prioritise links with the Serbian trade unions. These campaigns endorsed by Militant do not imply a 'neutral' position. The logic is support for Serbia". In this letter, MURRAY SMITH replies. WE HAVE always considered the embargo on Serbia as prefiguring possible direct aggression. The shooting down of four Serbian planes may be a first step towards such aggression: or the imperialists may keep on applying 'peaceful' pressure. Especially given the particularly bellicose attitude French imperialism and the press campaign here, we prios itised the campaign against the embargo, while explaining our overall analysis of the war. In a war between Serbs, Croats and Muslims, we don't support any of the belligerents. Unlike you and your international co-thinkers, never campaigned for arms for RS Bosnia, or Serbia or Croatia.
Yes, we certainly have established links with Serbian trade unions, specifically with the principal independent union, Nezavinost, against the war and against Milosevic. If we had the opportunity we would be delighted to establish similar contacts with Croatian unions. We and Militant Labour oppose all forms of blockade and embargo, economic or arms, imposed by imperialism on any of the belligerents in ex-Yugoslavia (or elsewhere). But we don't campaign around this question, whereas you do. You It used to be that supporters of socialist newspapers lent their rent money to help meet the printers bills. Now we'll pay you!
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support Bosnia, and favour the Bosnian regime having more arms. You invoke the right of nations to self-determination at the same time as you defend 'multi-ethnic' Bosnia which refuses the right to secede to the majority of Serbs and Croats who don't want to live within the Bosnian state. Same rights The Bosnian Muslims have the right to self-determination just as much as the Serbs or the Albanians or the Croats. But we don't think the soluwe have tion lies in establishing bourgeois states in ex-Yugoslavia, "multi-ethnic' or not. Socialist Outlook writes: *Yugoslavia is dead and can not be rebuilt'. The Yugoslavia of Tito is dead and cannot be which is rebuilt. But what can and must be rebuilt is a bigger and better socialist Yugoslavia. Bigger, because embracing the whole of the Balkans. Better because based on workers' democracy. That's why we defend the traditional communist slogan of a 'Socialist federation of the Balkans'. Not an immediate solution, but a class solution Our analysis starts from the process of restoration of capiSocialist Outlook 300 Club To:(Bank address)
Please pay Socialist Outlook Supporters Fund (A/c 701862897) at the Co-op Bank, 78/80 Cornhill, London EC3 (sort code) 08-02-28) the sum of (in words) (in figures) on the Of (month) 1994 and thereafter every month from my account, number Date. ... Signed Your full name: Your address Post code Tel UN troops: get them out of Bosnia talism in ex-Yugoslavia, of the use of nationalism by all the restorationist regimes, of the role of imperialism.
That leads us to 'prioritise' opposition to imperialist intervention and to give no support to Milosevic's Serbia, Tudjman's Croatia, or Izetbegovic's Bosnia.
Apart from a few token Serbs and Croats, the government of Sarajevo is largely Islamist. When Socialist Outlook talks about the 'multiethnic defense' in Tuzla and elsewhere you also explain unwittingly why we shouldn't support it.
You pinpoint the problem: 'those brigades are part of the overall defense of Bosnia'. They're part of the armed forces of the capitalist Muslimdominated government.
It would be different if the multi-ethnic workers' defence militias were against the government, the Muslim warlords and militias that also commit atrocities.
[International] Workers Aid would be different if it were just organising material aid for Bosnian workers' organisations, and not smuggling in your line of military support for the Bosnian regime.
You write: 'Socialist Outlook has no illusions in the UN or imperialism. We are against Western military intervention'. But how is it compatible with 'the necessity to open Tuzla airport, easily within the power of the UN'?
They've opened it.
The UN on its own couldn't open a tin of baked beans. Its only strength comes from the day fact that its backed by imperialist military force, or the threat of it. • Socialist Outlook welcomes readers' letters. Letters over 400 words will be edited. Facing mass unemployment, rampant employers equipped with savage anti-union laws, and a war on hard-won education, health and welfare services, the working class in Britain faces a real crisis -an avoidable crisis created by the historic failure of its official leadership.
Socialist Outlook exists to fight for a new type of working class leadership, based on the politics of class struggle and revolutionary socialism, to tackle this crisis.
The capitalist class, driven and politically united by its own crisis, its requirement to maximise protits at the expense of the workers, has been given determined, vanguard leadership by a brutal class-war Tory high command.
The Tory strategy has been to shackle the unions with legislation, and to fragment and weaken the resistance of the working class and oppressed, allowing them to pick off isolated sections one at a time, using the full powers of the state.
In response, most TUC and Labour leaders have embraced the defeatist politics of 'new realism, effectively proclaiming total surrender on every front, while ditching any pretence that they offer a socialist alternative. Every retreat and concession they have made to the employers and the government has simply fuelled and encouraged the offensive against jobs, wages, conditions and union rights.
New realism is the latest form taken by the politics of reformism, seeking no more than improved conditions within the tramework of capitalist rule.
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 class.
We are a marxist current. based not on the brutish totalitarian parodies of state marxism, nor on the tame, toothless version of 'marxism' beloved by armchair academics, but the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Name Address. Phone Age Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
Our socialist alternative is not based on parliamentary elections or illusions of peaceful legislative change. We fight to mobilise and unleash the power of the working class - the overwhelming majority of society -to topple the corrupt and reactionary rule of capital and establish its own class rule.
We struggle against fragmentation by building solidarity, working to link and unite the various struggles of workers, the unemployed, of women, of pensioners, of the black communities and ethnic minorities, of lesbians and gay men, of students, of youth - and of those fighting imperialism in Ireland and throughout the world. Socialist Outlook is above all an internationalist current, in solidarity with the Trotskyist Fourth International, which organises co-thinkers in 40 countries world-wide.
Unlike some other groupings on the British left, we do not believe a mass revolutionary party can be built simply by proclaiming ourselves to be one. Too often this degenerates into ; sectarian posturing and abstention from the actual struggle taking shape within the labour movement, playing into the hands of the right wing.
Nor do we believe that the demands of women, black people, lesbians and gays or the national demands of people in Scotland and Wales should be left to await 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 socialism. 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 frontcampaigns on key issues such as fighting racism and fascism - in which various left currents can work together for common obiectives 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! • Please tell me more about Socialist Outlook
and Millbank, central London Saturday 9 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 59, 26 March 1994, Page 15 Northampton St Islington N1 tube: Highbury & Islington LOBBY of British Aerospace AGM Marriot Hotel Grosvenor Square W1 ald's details London Greenpeace 5 Caledonian Road N1 9DX