Now that the passions surrounding the elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina have subsided, more and more attention is being focused on the upcoming elections in Serbia. What is the nature of the upcoming elections?
Serbia is a bureaucratic-capitalist state. It is the dictatorship of the large comprador-bureaucratic bourgeoisie and feudal landowners, under semi-colonial slavery, principally of American imperialism. Like any other state, it maintains, defends and develops itself through violence, which, in its case, is carried out for the maintenance, defense and development of the monopoly that the big bourgeoisie enjoys in the domestic market thanks to the grace of imperialism, which rewards it for its services.
Since the liquidation of people's democracy in Yugoslavia in 1948 and the restoration of bureaucratic capitalism as it existed in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, elections have been a means of legitimizing the rule of the ruling classes, and not a means of real transformation of society for the benefit of the broad masses of the people. The position of the Yugoslav Maoists is that with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the same comprador-bureaucratic capitalists and feudal landowners who ruled in Yugoslavia remained in power. Thus, although the mask of Titoist revisionism was discarded, the class character of the state remained qualitatively unchanged.
Bureaucratic capitalism in Serbia is going through a deep crisis. The ruling class, emboldened by its temporary successes, has been carelessly pursuing its anti-people policy in recent years, which has exacerbated contradictions and provoked widespread outrage.
By showing the whole people that they were ready to sell the whole country to imperialism, while plundering what little of it remained, the ruling class of Serbia underestimated the readiness of the masses to resist. The broad masses of the people expressed their readiness for rebellion, and at first they did indeed have the support of their oppressed brothers and sisters from other Balkan countries. Even the Serbian villages, the historical “stronghold” of the Serbian Progressive Party, always supported by the peasant parties, were affected by the additional concentration of land, which led to a drastic increase in poverty in the Banat villages.
Despite the favorable objective conditions, with petty-bourgeois students at the head, the unrest in Serbia could not bear fruit. The petty-bourgeois democrats – nationalist and cowardly – could not imagine any other role for themselves than to submit to one faction of the ruling classes. That is why it is absolutely indisputable for them that anyone who does not go with them into the realm of reactionary liberalism is a de facto accomplice of Serbian fascism. But who, let us be told, is to blame for the cowardly fear of any violence, the acceptance of nationalist elements and the establishment of the constitution as a holy scripture that must be defended against the heretical “mafia” at the top? Who is to blame for the fact that the unrest in Serbia did not merge with the neighboring peoples, principally the Albanians, that the struggle remained isolated? Who is to blame for the elements in the riots already sharpening their dagger in order to direct it at the Albanian people of Kosovo?
Of course, the petty-bourgeois democrats are to blame, because they wanted to take advantage of people‘s anger, not to free them from the yoke of imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and feudalism, but in the hopes that “their Serbia” would finally receive Slovenian treatment, that the petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy in Serbia would finally be worth something!
Nevertheless, to give agency to petty-bourgeois democrats is generous. In fact, it is only imperialism that needs to be convinced. The comprador factions in Serbia are already working this through, hoping to get the lion's share of the future spoils.
What does imperialism have to gain? The elections must be understood in their global context of the imperialist crisis and the decline of the hegemonic superpower of the United States of America. Serbia plays an important role for imperialism in the Balkans. Not only is the location strategically important, not only is it the most populous country in the former Yugoslavia, but it is also the most industrially capable. Any plans of imperialism for the countries of the former Yugoslavia have by necessity Serbia as their center. The Croatian compradors do not understand this, but the next step for imperialism is indeed a strong, European Serbia, armed with French planes and American missiles. How the Serbian and Croatian nationalists will rationalize this is an irrelevant, albeit comical question.
Resolving the “Balkan question” is important for European and American imperialists in preparation for an inter-imperialist war with Russia and China, because it is very clear to all of them that the Balkans are a powder keg in the center of Europe, where various imperialists can take advantage of various contradictions to cause long-term chaos.
All this means that it is necessary for imperialism to reinvigorate bureaucratic capitalism and restructure the old Serbian state, so that it can fulfill its role in imperialism's plans for future slaughter. We say again, because it has happened before. Comrade Vlado Dapčević correctly stated that the dismissal of Milošević was only a change of personality. This far-sighted and correct Maoist understanding of the question of power must be emphasized once again, in this time of revisionist hysteria in which even “anti-revisionist” organizations believe that the electoral defeat of the Serbian Progressive Party could mean a qualitative change in Serbian society.
How should Marxists-Leninists-Maoists approach elections?
Ultimately, to vote at all, to participate in the electoral farce at all, is in itself reactionary, because it is the opposition that plays the role of the reserve of imperialism, there to take the leading role in the bureaucratic state when it is proven to imperialism that a change of form is needed. Moreover, it is reactionary because the broad masses of the people themselves do not believe in elections and do not participate in them, while parliament itself has lost any progressive role it once had.
From this it follows that it is impossible for the Maoists to use the parliament to demonstrate its limitations and spread the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is impossible precisely because the deepest masses of the people are not there. The general elections that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrate this once again.
|
Valid votes |
1.199.264 |
|
Invalid/Blank Votes |
122.929 |
|
Total Votes |
1.322.193 |
|
Registered voters |
3.338.785 |
Such statistics, as useful as they are, do not reveal the full extent of the crisis, because they do not take into account the huge number of votes that were bought. However, it is clear that less than 40% of registered voters in Bosnia and Herzegovina went out to vote.
Accordingly, the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is establishing a tactic of boycotting reactionary elections. The Committee's call for a boycott is intended to disrupt and, wherever possible, obstruct their course. Of course, we are aware of our own weakness and of the fact that our call is of negligible significance at this point. Nevertheless, this is a subjective problem; the deepest masses of the people are already ready to reject the elections; what they really need is an alternative in the form of a people's democratic government.
The goal of a boycott, then, is not to stop elections. The goal is to develop the historical tendency to merge armed struggle with a large stream of millions of those who do not participate in the electoral farce, or who cast invalid ballots. Only from this merging will come an armed sea of broad masses of the people, which will wipe out once and for all the order of exploitation and oppression, regardless of the difficulties that befall it along the way.
Only then will the Serbian people, together with other oppressed peoples of the former Yugoslavia, establish the Federal Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia and through it win their democratic rights, peace, brotherhood and socialism!
For the communists in formation, the elections in Serbia and the entire Balkans must be used to show that they bring nothing to the working people. It is necessary to fight with equal ferocity against the right-wing opportunists who participate in the elections, support certain candidates, etc., as well as against the “left” opportunists who believe that there is no point in discussing the electoral farce, who respond to the elections with passivity, with the explanation that nothing can be changed anyway in the midst of the relations of class forces.
Thus, the revolutionary communists in the formation, organized in the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, must endeavour to awaken class consciousness in the minds of all those masses of the people of the South Slavic countries who do not participate in the elections in order to organize them for a common struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
Let us apply the boycott as a policy of obstructing the elections, as a tactic of using the electoral process to serve the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia!
DEATH TO THE ELECTORAL FARCE, THE TOOL OF THE RULING CLASSES!
ELECTIONS, NO! PEOPLE‘S WAR, YES!
TOWARDS A NEW DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION!
No comments:
Post a Comment