>Why is it that the left feels the need to reduce itself to some kind of
>right-wing caricature of narrow economic determinism when talking about
>war? Politics operates at a level that is at many mediations from
>economics, and war even more so.
There most certainly is an underlying economic logic to this war. It is a war between the mode of organisation of late finance capital, based on large transnational markets, and offering perfect equality to its educated wage slave citizens, independently of religion, ethnicity, gender, or gender orientation. That is essential for large conurbations. The enlargement of this market has been by a process of peaceful assimilation, and is progressive.
Against that there is a rearguard action carved out of a former socialist federal multinational state, of a Serbian national, semi-socialist state, requiring fascist repression of civil society internally, and chauvinist repression of national minorities wanting self-determination. The idea of an autonomous market of 10 million in the heart of Europe is ridiculously reactionary. It has no chance at all, with or without a war.
That does not stop Mark Jones, so soon after proclaiming the final crisis of capitalism, from hailing Milosevic's regime as the Cuba of the Balkans, and saying good riddance to the Albanians expelled from Kosovo.
Chris Burford
London