RE: [MLL] National movements

[Alan Dover]

Comrade Sanjay,   in regard to your reference to FIJI and the "national character" of the conflict, equating it to various national liberation struggles.   The conflict in FIJI is both racial and national, since there is an interdependence between bourgeoise nationalism and racialism. In Fiji the conflict is for racial dominance between the ethnic-Fijian bourgeoisie and the indo-Fijian bourgeoisie, each desires to subject the other to its dictatorship. The economic basis has some unique features in land ownership and distribution that underlies the frailties of the Indo-Fijian political position; the struggle between the two bourgeois factions will not go away but will produce a more repressive dictatorship with pressure to change the fundamental distribution of land which will exarcerbate  deeper conflicts to come in this political power struggle for dominance.   The bottom line for us of course, concerns the position of the working classes, both Indian and Fijian who are and will; remain under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie whichever ethnic bourgeois group achieves dominance.  The Imperial influence is always in place to protect its interests and was revealed in the threats and sanctions emanating from both NZ and Australian governments to secure the elected Indian dominant parliament.   fraternally Alan.   -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Sanjay Singhvi Sent: Thursday, 3 August 2000 22:01 To: Marxist Leninist List Subject: [MLL] National movements Comrades,     As the Fijian episode winds down, one though that comes to mind is the amount of episodes of a national character that have reached flash-point in the past year. Timor, Angola, Chechnya, Kosovo, (not to mention Kashmir and Sri Lanka, which though ongoing, have escalated to extremely high levels over the past year) etc. Earlier, it used to be very easy to support the nationalistic forces because they were usually fighting for national independence from an imperialist yoke. Today, the position is not that simple any more and I cannot see any of the sides in the struggles mentioned above qualifying for the title "anti-imperialist" (even though many of the sides mentioned above like to introduce themselves thus) In fact, it seems to me that nationality movements are losing whatever remaining vestiges that they had of revolutionary character and are swinging hard to the right. In most of the above examples, the national struggles are being supported by imperialism or at least by a faction of the imperialists.     I would be most grateful if comrades on this list could throw some light on this phenomenon. Comradely, Sanjay