>>By denouncing the "faking" of democracy in Bosnia, Jim Heartfield here, and
>>Mick Hume in the pages of the "anti-imperialist"(?) Times, are covertly
>>promoting illusions in bourgeois democracy instead of analysing the state
>>as a means for managing conflict.
>
>So, let's get this right. Me and Mick Hume are sowing illusions in
>bourgeois democracy because we both pointed out that the officials in
>Bosnia are appointed, not elected.
>
>And by pointing out that the explicit claims of the OSCE and the UN to
>have democratised Bosnia are a sham, it is us who are spinning a yarn
>about democracy.
Jim Heartfield nimbly side steps my quotation from Lenin about the sham nature of bourgeois elections, but at least now avoids repeating the 'Stalinist' tag.
His central point seems a mind set that the imperialists are making a great deal boasting that what they have brought to Bosnia is democracy. No doubt some agencies claim this, but in geopolitical terms it is an irrelevant Aunt Sally. There were 200,000 deaths in Bosnia through communal violence and they have now stopped. If imperialism suspended all representative assemblies it would still be sitting pretty pointing out the change in Bosnia.
In Kosovo now who is pretending it is a democracy? Just that fewer people are being terrorised into leaving than before. But that significantly for Jim, is less important than them having the right to vote. What illusions.
LM can make clever mordant criticisms of capitalism, of a sort that make interesting copy in the "anti-imperialist" Times but they are glossing over the fact that all states are structures for managing conflict in the interest of one class or another.
Jim can thrash around saying that logically therefore I cannot support the defence of democratic rights but he really won't get very far because his criticisms do not hit the target. It is he who denied the relevance of the majority of people of Kosovo being able to vote for secession.
It was his precessor party, the RCP, that produced intellectually clever arguments for opposing sanctions against apartheid South Africa. And this year he was prepared to cast a blind eye on imposition of apartheid in the former Yugoslavia.
And if I was really so silly as to be arguing "imperial rule is for the best" why spent time refuting such a proposition? Jim H is protesting too much.
His trendy and heartless leftism is showing.
Chris Burford
London