> The war > against Serbia is a proxy war against every vestige of > anti-imperialist independence in Eastern Europe and the > former Soviet Union. It is a signal to the Communists in > Russia and allied states that Nato will blow them to > kingdom come if they threaten the "stability" of the new > world order. Poor Kosovo has been dragged into this > confrontation, but it is of secondary consequence. Despite > the retrograde character of the Serb leadership, its > defiance of Nato's war is as important as the defense of > Stalingrad in 1942. If Serbia loses, the forces of war and > barbarism will simply drive forward with their > expansionary agenda. And Russia surely will be the next > target. It will be no surprise to anybody if I say that I agree with this position. However, I think there are a couple of collateral issues that should be tackled at the same time. 1. The "final crisis" of capitalism. I feel it is clearer by the days that we have finally entered the "final crisis". As usual with history, things are never the way one anticipates them, but the current tendency to lower average global wages (substituting Indonesian or Mexican workers for West European or North American ones can have no other effect) while productivity boosts cannot but take us to a stalemate which will become harder and harder with time. If this is not a crisis, could anyone tell me how to label it? Under such conditions, former productive centers outside the First World must be brushed away, and though the Yugoslav industry may be in a bad condition, it is an industry anyway, and it has an industrial proletariat, engineers, managers, scientists and the whole host of institutions that might -le cas echeant- put it to work again. So it must be ruined for good. This seems to be the policy for any independent industrial complex outside the Great Powers. During the 30s, many semicolonial countries tried to keep the prices of the commodities high by burning them or throwing them to the gutter (e.g.: coffee in Brazil, wines in Mendoza -Argentina-). Now, it looks like the West understands that they have to return to the days when they had the monopoly of industry -either by owning all the plants abroad, thus owning the right to stop their development where they deem necessary, either by leaving only the "central" plants in good condition- and the destruction of the Yugoslav factories (BTW: a nice way to destroy the strength of the working class, already practiced by the Videla regime in Argentina, after 1976) may be a further step in this direction. 2. The exemplarity of the punishment is not aimed at Russian Leftists only. It aims at anyone who may dare intend to perhaps who knows maybe even think to think about a possibility that "we may attempt a mild confrontation course". The message is sent to people like Chavez in Venezuela also, who have not deployed their full programmes. The former US ambassador to Venezuela put it bluntly to the Argentinian paper _Clarin_: "We hope that Chavez will become another Menem" (that is, a traitor). But things may be very different in Venezuela. So that, why not sending a clear message? The Yugoslav OTAN war is the Paraguay War of our days. A worthy and brave people is stormed for the sake of the needs of the Empire, and of course they are stormed to save them of their dictator. The war is "against Milosevic", though it kills Yugoslavs. The same happened in Paraguay, during the late 1860s. Nestor. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
