The 'Serbian Revolution': a victory for the bourgeoisie, not the working class

As we put this issue together, there have been major upheavals in ex-Yugoslavia and we want to take position on them immediately . It is our responsibility as a revolutionary organisation to do so . even if we can only be brief here. Our readers can be sure that we will quickly develop our analysis of these events, and our intervention in general, in particular through our various territorial publications.

Thus, if we are to believe the bourgeois media, and especially the images transmitted on the television networks of all the so-called great democracies, we have been seeing a major historical we have been seeing a major historical event in Belgrade over the last few days, a "democratic and peaceful revolution" accomplished by the Serbian people, and thus the fall of Milosevic i.e. of the "last communist dictatorship in Europe". Everything is for the best in the best of all possible capitalist worlds! And this "historic event" has been saluted and feted by all the heads of state and leaders of the great "democratic" powers, the very same people who, just one year ago, unleashed war, destruction and massacre on Kosovo and Serbia. Of course, this was all done in the name of the "humanitarian intervention" needed to stop Milosevic and his mad dogs carrying out their terrible atrocities in Kosovo.

Our organisation responded immediately to all these hypocrites and denounced them as "pyromaniac firemen", underlining the responsibility of all of them in the barbarism that swept this region:

"The politicians and media of NATO present the war as an action in defence of .human rights., against a particularly revolting regime which is responsible, amongst its other misdeeds, for the .ethnic cleansing. which has stained Yugoslavia in blood since 1991. In tained Yugoslavia in blood since 1991. In reality, the .democratic. powers care not a jot for the population of Kosovo, just as they are completely indifferent to the fate of the Kurd and Shiite populations of Iraq, which they left to be massacred by the troops of Saddam Hussein after the Gulf war. The sufferings inflicted by dictators on persecuted civilian populations have always been the pretext for the great .democracies. to unleash .just. war" (International Review 97)

A year later we asked:

"Who allowed the worst nationalist mafia cliques in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and now Kosovo, to unleash nationalist hysteria and bloody ethnic cleansing, if not the great imperialist powers? Who, if not Germany, pushed for the unilateral declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia, encouraging and precipitating the unleashing of nationalism in the Balkans which led to the massacres and exile of the Serbian, then the Bosnian population? Who, if not Britain and France, turned a blind eye to the repression and massacre of the Croat and Bosnian population, and the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Milosevic and the .Greater Serbia. nationalists? Who, if not the United States, supported and equipped the different rival gated and equipped the different rival gangs depending on how their rivals were positioned at any given moment? When they justify he bombing campaign on the grounds of .humanitarian interference., the .Allied. western democracies demonstrate an unlimited hypocrisy and duplicity" (International Review 98).

If today all these big imperialist gangsters haven.t got enough words to salute the "awakening" of the Serbian people who, we are told, have the "pride and the courage" to get rid of a bloody dictator, this is just a way of trying to get us to believe that the current events are a perfect justification for their bloody bombings a year ago. Le Monde, the eminent mouthpiece of the ruling class in France, says starightforwardly:

"by finally deciding to confront Serb power militarily, Europe and the USA undoubtedly weakened the master of Belgrade and isolated him further from his people"

Weren.t the so-called great democracies right, and won.t they be right in future, to intervene by force in the name of humanitarianism? In other words, they want to use the cover of "human rights" to free their hands and carights" to free their hands and carry out more massacre and destruction. From this point of view, what is happening in Belgrade (not ti mention the ideological use being made of it) is already a success for the bourgeoisie.

Another level on which the ruling class has tried to score some points is around the theme of "democracy" and its triumphant progress against all forms of dictatorship. According to the bourgeoisie, the days we are living through are striking proof of this. But this barrage is all the more effective in that, as the media have emphasised so strongly, among those who have played a leading role in the fall of Milosevic, in the "victory of democracy", is the Serbian working class which responded to the call for "civil disobedience" launched by the winner of the election, Kostunica . a big nationalist bourgeois who was for ages the accomplice of the murderous Karadic in Bosnia, and who is now presented as a great opponent of dictatorship. The columns of the bourgeois press have devoted a lot of space to those workers who, like the miners of Kolubra, went on strike in defence of the "democratic cause". If the international ruling class has one profound wish, it is that this example can be exported all over the world and above all to the big over the world and above all to the big working class centres at the heart of capitalism.

At this moment everyone is describing what.s happened in Belgrade as a "revolution" but this is a revolution of the duped. The victory of "democracy", i.e. of the bourgeois forces which represent it, can only be a victory for the capitalist class, in no way a victory for the working class.

Elfe 7.10.00

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