[lbo-talk] Chomsky v Marko

[Michael Pugliese]

Moving to a more general view, the American left has often played an
honorable role in advancing human rights: the right to organize in labor
unions, the end of segregation, legal and customary, the rights of women,
and, in more recent years, the rights of gays have all been championed and
fought for by socialists. So why should socialist support for human rights
stop short of the rights of the Albanian Kosovars to free themselves from
effective apartheid imposed by Slobodan Milosevic?
Even more chillingly, why should the Kosovars right to life itself be
implicitly or explicitly questioned by people who are prepared to agitate
continuously for example, against the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal? Indeed,
what would impel Abu Jamal himself to inveigh against NATO when it tried to
stop the massacres of Albanians? (See Mumia & The War, Workers World
Newspaper 29 April 1999)
If I rehearse the arguments of others, and try to demolish them, it is not
only to score points. I want to demonstrate that behind these contradictory
arguments, sometimes espoused simultaneously by the same people, there is a
common thread of metaphysical Marxism, in which facts are hewn to fit "the
line." In general, the line dictates responses to events. Of course, in this
sectarian universe, the lines actually vary a lot.
However, a common characteristic is a deep distrust, verging on hatred of
the United States Government.  Based on Vietnam, Panama, Central America and
so on, this distrust is entirely understandable. Unfortunately a principle
of US culpability, if extrapolated backwards, would lead to support for the
Nazis and the Confederacy. Looking at the behavior of some the theory's
present proponents, I am glad that this was not put to the test.
For example, the LA Teach In was held in a synagogue, and I could not help
wondering if at a similar meeting held in 1939 people would  have joined the
German American League in denouncing the war. In fact, they did. Communists
for the period of the Hitler-Stalin Pact did indeed denounce the imperialist
British Royal Navy for starving German workers with the blockade.
There was also an interesting contrast with European social democratic
movements. While many European socialists did indeed oppose NATO action, the
mainstream socialists generally supported the principle of NATO
intervention, even if there were reservations about the form - high altitude
bombing. In this, they also reflected popular majorities. The Democratic
Socialists of America attracted the obloquy of the sectarian left by
supporting the principle of intervention while deploring NATO's methods
which risked civilian casualties.
Indeed one reason for the much more robust response by NATO to Serb
atrocities in Kosovo than to the earlier much bloodier atrocities in Bosnia,
or to the shelling of Dubrovnik and Kosovar, was the change in Europe's
political complexion. When Slobodan Milosevic began his project for a
Greater Serbia in 1991, conservatives of various shades ruled most European
countries. In contrast, by the time of Rambouillet eleven of the fifteen EU
governments were ruled by social democratic parties in various forms.
Included among them were Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the most
powerful members both of NATO and the EU - apart from the United States.
While many of these parties had traveled a long way towards the center
ideologically, they did and do share some basic internationalist and
humanitarian core values. When they presented Kosovo as a humanitarian and
moral tragedy that had to be dealt with, they could call upon long memories
of failing to deal with Hitler's German or Mussolini's Italy in a timely way
to reinforce the idea that action must be taken. The consequences of
Chamberlain's dismissal of Czechoslovakia as a "far away country of which we
know little," had not made isolationism a popular trait in most European
countries.
Therefore, anti-war opposition in it was distinctly a minority in the
European Left with the exception of the Greek socialists and Italian
ex-communists, who both had reasons for mistrusting American motives.
Anti-war activists in the US made much of the protests at the German Green's
conference on the war, but missed the major point, that the majority of the
Greens and of the population supported Berlin's participation in the
coalition against Serbia.
It also has to be said that many of the social democratic parties had a long
tradition of opposition to the Leninist versions of Socialism that
emphasized class struggle at the expense of individual human rights. In many
East European countries, from the Bolshevik revolution onwards, social
democrats were among the first victims of the communist regimes. In
contrast, a disturbing number of the American Left saw the European parties
as somehow spuriously socialist in comparison with Milosevic's kleptocrat
Socialist Party.
In the US, of course, socialists are a much less significant force. Their
distance and detachment from real influence and power tends to make debate
and discussion more intensely ideological: the absence of real pragmatic
consequences from the positions it takes allows lines to be straight and
rigid.
The first and most extreme group looked at events not from a position of
humanitarian concerns, but through the prism of class struggle. Their
support for or opposition to any movement was based not on any moral
considerations but on their position in the anti-imperialist struggle. Hence
although many would offer total support to the IRA in Northern Ireland, to
the PKK in Turkey, or to the NLF in Vietnam, they rushed to condemn the KLA
as terrorists and bandits. There were indeed many disturbing aspects about
the behavior of the KLA, but no more so than with the other organizations
that were deemed deserving of solidarity. And few had as much support in
their claimed constituency as the KLA so obviously did.
With a straight face, these supporters of liberation movements across the
globe were prepared to deny Kosovars the right to self-determination, and
indeed condoned the form of apartheid that Belgrade had inflicted upon the
Albanian majority in Kosovo. It was a horrifying display of indifference to
human rights violations, perhaps unparalleled since the support of some
Leftist intellectuals of Stalin's purges. But at least, those people in the
thirties did not have the benefit of television to see and hear the
testimony of the survivors as they crossed the frontiers, or the evidence of
the mass graves as the tides of war turned. The message is clear, victim
status is determined by the identity of the victimizers, not the enormity of
the victimization.
To be fair, there was a second group, which deplored the Serb actions
against Kosovars, but could not countenance United States intervention under
any circumstances. They were quite prepared to join common ground with the
apologists for Serbia against the war, which they clearly saw as a "greater
evil" than the actual massacres.  At several meetings in the course of the
war, anti-war activists berated others for supporting the "aggressive" NATO
pact. (For example, there were debates in New York by the Anarchists and the
Marxist School at the Brecht Forum). In fact, when challenged,  they were
unable to cite a single incident of NATO military action of any  kind. There
are legitimate questions about the usefulness of NATO - but  before acting
against Belgrade, the Alliance itself had not hitherto fired a  shot in
anger.