The bombing of the population
of ex-Yugoslavia by the major powers under the aegis of NATO
represents a serious escalation of capitalist barbarism. It is
accompanied by a cacophony of voices attempting to hide the imperialist
nature of the war. There are the voices of those who justify
the bombings and try to cover the sordid and bloody self the sordid and bloody self-interest
of the major powers under a veil of humanitarianism. There are
the voices of those who condemn the NATO attack in order to defend
the 'little' ethnic murderer, Milosevic, against the high tech
slaughter of the US and European powers. There are the voices
of the pacifists who appeal for a peaceful capitalism, as if
the spirit of competition weren't an intrinsic aspect of bourgeois
rule that leads inevitably to the use of armed force as one country
tries to impose its own imperialist interests at the expense
of the others.
But amid this barrage there is a clear and sane voice raised
against the war and all its bourgeois protagonists, that of proletarian
internationalism. This position in relation to imperialist war
is the foundation stone of the international working class movement
and the litmus test for revolutionary organisations. Its intransigent
defence marks out the currents of the communist left from those
of the radical bourgeoisie, who masquerade as friends of the
working class while inviting them to massacre their class brothers
in other countries in the name of siding with whichever imperialism
they identify as the 'lesser evil'. This song is as old as capitalism!
The essence of proletarian internationalism is expressed in the
words of the Communist Manifesto, drafted by Marx and Engels
in rx and Engels
in 1848: "The workers have no country ... Workers of all
countries unite!" It affirms the nature of the working class
as an international class, no part of which has interests which
are in conflict with any other sector in any other country. As
such the proletariat has no interest in the victory of either
side in wars between capitalist powers for the extension of their
spheres of influence and for world domination. On the contrary,
it is always expected to pay for the war by dying on the battlefield
and by increasing productivity for the war effort. It is always
the victim and never a victor while this system of death and
poverty has not been overthrown once and for all.
When the socialist parties of the Second International betrayed
the principle of internationalism by supporting participation
in the First World War and played a prominent role in mobilising
the workers for the carnage, the International was lost to the
working class. But the revolutionary minority regrouped around
the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Spartacists in Germany, defended
an internationalist position by opposing the war and calling
for the workers to defend their own class interests. In the same
way, with the onset of the second imperialist carnage, whereas
the Trotskyist current passed over to the bourgeois camp by supporting
the USSRporting
the USSR and the democratic front in the name of opposing fascism,
there remained fractions of the Communist Left who maintained
the principle of internationalism and have continued to denounce
it as an imperialist war.
It is the organisations that are descended from this political
current that have responded to the NATO bombings by taking up
the only consistent and communist position:
- condemning the carnage as an imperialist war;
- calling on the working class not to defend any of the bourgeois
factions involved;
- condemning, implicitly or explicitly, the demands of the leftists
for the workers to defend the 'lesser evil' or 'self-determination
in Kosovo' and,
- against the myth of pacifism, affirming that only the working
class can offer an alternative to capitalist barbarism through
its own struggle as a revolutionary class, whose historic destiny
is to destroy the exploitation of the bourgeoisie and create
a new society without classes and without exploitation.
The titles of the leaflets produced by the various groups of
the communist left, immediately after the start of the bombing
of Kosovo, testify to the unity, in action, of the internationalists
in the denunciation of the war (1):
"Capitalism means imperialism, imperialism means war"
(IBRP);
"The Kosovo war "The Kosovo war is a war of capital" (Programma Comunista);
"No to imperialist intervention in Yugoslavia! Down with
all nationalism and all bourgeois oppression!" (Le Proletaire);
"The real opposition to military intervention and war lies
in the class struggle of the proletariat, in its class and internationalist
reorganisation against all forms of bourgeois oppression and
nationalism" (Il Comunista);
"Down with the imperialist war" (Il Partito Comunista);
"Capitalism is war, war on capitalism!" (ICC).
The article published here is the first part of 