>In a message dated 10/8/00 4:52:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>furuhashi.1 at osu.edu writes:
>
><< I have never said that Milosevic is a
> proponent of socialism
>
>I am relieved; I thought you were losing it. One could have got that
>impression.
Why so? I don't think anyone who has read my posts on Yugoslavia carefully could imagine such a thing. Your impression probably is based on the fact that I have refused to denounce Milosevic as "the Butcher of the Balkans" or something like that every other line of my posts. In my opinion, most Western leftists failed to challenge the _caricature_ presented in the mass media. Leftists should offer _an accurate assessment based upon facts_, which I have tried to do. In many of my posts (not just on Yugoslavia but on any other topic), I have tried to present my argument based upon available facts, complete with documentation from books and articles on the subject of the moment. That's my style of e-list communication.
Another reason that I have avoided name-calling, besides the necessity of accurate assessment, is that undue focus on individuals leads to a view of history as a series of doings by heads of states, which is antithetical to historical materialism. What we need is a causal analysis that takes into account history of economic & political conditions, balance of social forces, imperial geopolitics, ideological conditions, etc. -- an analysis that cannot be confined to a look at Serbia, much less Milosevic alone.
Also, as you know, I do not think that the present disaster has its origin in the rise of Milosevic or 1989. If the cause of the disaster were Milosevic, it would be easy to find a solution: remove Milosevic, by any means necessary. However, that is not the case, as I am sure you understand. An incorrect analysis of causes of the dissolution of Yugoslavia widespread in the West, even among leftists, has led to incorrect political responses.
> >(he is thought of as such in the Western mass
> media & by the Serbian oppositions,
>
>Can't speak for the former opposition there. It's nit my impressuion that is
>the picture in the western media. Socialism is rather off the map. He's just
>portrayed a "dictator," as the Chicago Tribune called him this morning, which
>is actually a bit strong compared to some real dictators.
When the media say "socialism," they mean such things as state-owned enterprises, social programs, price controls, pensions, and stuff like that. When the media say "crony capitalism," they mean that the state in question is too dirigiste or some such thing. In other words, elements that have been under attack in the neoliberal offensive.
Besides this, labels like "socialist" & "communist" function in the capitalist media as terms of opprobrium. In the media parlance, it is interchangeable with "dictator."
Of course, in the media Milosevic is a "dictator" -- you can never go wrong with this label when it comes to the official enemy of the evil empire.
> > however, which explains their demonization of this figurehead),
>
>A figurehead he wasn't. He was the Boss.
Tito was more of the Boss than Milosevic has ever been. In my opinion, Milosevic never possessed enough (moral or political) power & authority to wield the kind of discipline that Tito had exercised -- hence his toleration of the oppositions to the extent that would have been unthinkable under Tito. Yugoslavia _has_ changed since the days of Tito.
Or perhaps by the Boss you mean the kind of executive powers possessed by the U.S. president, unlike European presidents & premiers in multi-party democracies?
> > Milosevic as an individual politician is not the
> point for the West in any case. Milosevic could have been a reliable
> Western asset if he had been allowed to sell out; >>
>
>Like Saddam Hussein, and like S.H., it's still something of a puzzle why the
>West decided to make a target of him. No ever said S.H. was a "socialist."
When Hussein was in Western favor, mainly during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), I recall he was often called a "moderate."
***** THE UNITED STATES AND THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR STEPHEN R. SHALOM
...When the war first broke out, the Soviet Union turned back its arms ships en route to Iraq, and for the next year and a half, while Iraq was on the offensive, Moscow did not provide weapons to Baghdad.<30> In March 1981, the Iraqi Communist Party, repressed by Saddam Hussein, beamed broadcasts from the Soviet Union calling for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Iraqi troops.<31> That same month U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he saw the possibility of improved ties with Baghdad and approvingly noted that Iraq was concerned by "the behavior of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern area." The U.S. then approved the sale to Iraq of five Boeing jetliners, and sent a deputy assistant secretary of state to Baghdad for talks.<32> The U.S. removed Iraq from its notoriously selective list of nations supporting international terrorism<33> (despite the fact that terrorist Abu Nidal was based in the country)<34> and Washington extended a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S. exports to Iraq.<35> In November 1984, the U.S. and Iraq restored diplomatic relations, which had been ruptured in 1967.<36>... <http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/ShalomIranIraq.html> *****
And in those days of American alliance with Hussein, caused by his break with the Soviets, few in America called attention to the fact that the Ba'th Party was socialist and that, prior to the rise of Hussein, it was something of a socialist modernizer with aspirations toward Arab unity:
***** ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
Iraq
Economic development to 1980
Perhaps the greatest assets of the Ba'th regime were the ambitious plans for reconstruction and development laid down by its leaders. The struggle for power during 1958-68 had left little time for constructive work, and the Ba'th Party sought not only to transform the economic system from free enterprise to collectivism but also to assert the country's economic independence. The immediate objectives were to increase production and to raise the standard of living, but the ultimate objective was to establish a socialist society in which all citizens would enjoy the benefits of progress and prosperity.
The five-year economic plans of 1965-70 and 1971-75 concentrated on raising the level of production in both agriculture and industry and aimed at reducing dependence on oil revenues as the primary source for development. But agriculture lagged far behind target, and industrial development was slow. In the third five-year plan (1976-80), greater emphasis on agricultural production was noticeable, and industrial production slowed.
The nationalization of the oil industry was considered by the Ba'th leaders to be their greatest achievement. Between 1969 and 1972 several agreements with foreign powers--the Soviet Union and others--were concluded to provide the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) with the capital and technical skills to exploit the oil fields. In 1972 the operation of the North Rumaylah field, rich in oil, started, and an Iraqi Oil Tankers Company was established to deliver oil to several foreign countries. Also in 1972 the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was nationalized (with compensation), and a national company, the Iraqi Company for Oil Operations, was established to operate the fields. In 1973, when the fourth Arab-Israeli War broke out, Iraq nationalized U.S. and Dutch companies, and in 1975 it nationalized the remaining foreign interests in the Basra Petroleum Company.
The initial step in agrarian reform had been taken with the Agrarian Reform Law of 1958, which provided for the distribution to peasants of lands in excess of a certain maximum ownership. A decade later, less than half of the land had been distributed. In 1969 a revised Agrarian Reform Law relieved the peasants from payments for their land by abolishing compensation to landowners, and a year later a new Agrarian Reform Law was designed to improve the conditions of the peasantry, increase agricultural production, and correlate development in rural and urban areas. The results were disappointing, however, because of the difficulty of persuading the peasants to stay on their farms and their inability to improve the quality of agricultural production.
The Ba'th regime also completed work on irrigation projects that had already been under way and began new projects in areas where water was likely to be scarce in the summer. In the five-year plan of 1976-80, funds were allocated to complete dams on the Euphrates, Tigris, Diyala, and Upper Zab rivers and the lake known as Bahr ath-Tharthar (in northern Iraq). Recognizing that a rapid transition to full socialism was neither possible nor in the country's best interest, the Ba'th provided for a private, though relatively small, sector for private investors, and a third, mixed sector was created in which private and public enterprises could cooperate.
<http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,109319+9,00.html> *****
Yoshie