>Quite. Capitalism has outgrown the nation state. It requires large
>supra-national markets.
... for which it is finding nation states a handy mode of organisation and regulation ...
>It requires multi-ethnic tolerance.
The nation state has been working on that one for a while now. The multicultural state makes sense to an awful lot of people already, no?
>I have to conclude that like many on the left he is infected by bourgeois
>pacificism and thinks there is no alternative but to appease fascism. It is
>an inevitable consequence of the tactical alliances that the left has often
>made this century to try to weaken the ruling class.
For mine:
a) you'd have to back up that 'fascism' claim; b) you'd have to back up the claim there was 'no alternative'; c) you'd have to distinguish between ways this adventure has been opposed so we know exactly which anti-war argument you oppose on this criterion.
before I could benefit from your argument.
We're bombing innocent people to no end, Chris. Either because we hate them (as Callinocos says: "The point of all this should be obvious. If we can be led to hate the Serbs, then we won't care if NATO bombs them to bits. It's up to the opponents of the war to challenge this vile reasoning, and to keep up a real debate on the war.") or for some other reason no-one has yet put to us.
If that's pro-Fascist bourgeouis pacifism, you should tell me why.
And if you don't reckon there were alternatives, you'd have to engage with the question 'alternatives to what end?', wouldn't you? It certainly (and eminently predictably) ain't stopping the shit that was happening before 24 March, and it's already gone so far as to stain the lives of millions for decades to come (I'll leave the carnage itself out of this bit). It might have been prevented by a very slightly rewritten Rambouillet (which was on the cards as at 23/24 March) and it might have been stopped since with explicated outcomes as beneficial to Albanian Kosovars as post-bombing relations/structures would allow.
Of course, there might have been no alternative if the welfare of Albanian Kosovars was not the salient end at issue ...
Cheers, Rob.