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Owen Jones and Jared Israel discuss events in Kosovo:

Owen: Yugoslavia, in 1989. Albanian Trepca miners waved slogans such as "Brotherhood and Unity", demanding the reversal of the revoking of autonomy, and in defence of workers' democracy, etc.... They were brutally attacked by the Yugoslav police

Jared: A rehash of familiar nonsense. Much like the humantiaran demands of the certain 1939 Germans living in Czech territory - they wanted brother hood too. This is socialism all right, but even better cause of the NATIONAL part tacked on..

Owen: I think it is unfair to imply that these working class Albanians were fascists. There is a very real danger that by sufficiently misusing the word 'fascist', its proper meaning will be stripped and there will be no way to characterise real fascists; much like the "boy who cried wolf" if you like. It is not a swear word, an obscenity to be slung around, it is a political characterisation that should not be taken lightly.

You could argue that these Kosovar Albanians were demanding unification with Albania (they weren't, but I'll play ball); on this basis, you imply these miners to be fascist when compared to Germany 1938. Yet in 1989, Albania was a Stalinist state, more so than any of the other in the Eastern bloc. It was (and indeed is) an extremely small, backward country, with no imperial might. Germany in 1938 (you are referring to events in this year, and not 39 as you write above) was a fascist state, and an imperialist nation. If you are going to argue that Albania in 1989 was a fascist and imperialist state, then go right ahead, but I doubt there are many facts to justify such a claim. It was the Kosovar Albanians themselves who struggled for unification with Albania, though of course the Albanian Hoxhaite regime exploited these nationalist sentiments as part of its hostility to "revisionist" Yugoslavia dating from the Soviet split with Titoism; in your scenario you are talking about a fascist regime that used as a pretext the supposed oppression of the Sudetenland Germans to annex the main industrial zones of Czechoslovakia, mainly by stirring up petty-bourgeois fascists to demand unification. One could argue the Albanian regime infiltrated the movement with Hoxhaite-types, which especially if we keep your past in mind cannot be deemed anything to do with fascism.

But back to the Trepca demonstrations...they were not demanding unification with Albania, a Greater Albania, etc... At the time there were protests in Novi Sad by reactionaries wearing Chetnik war memorials demanding the ousting of Albanians, chants including a demand for weapons - reactionaries who there is perhaps better justification to label 'fascists' if we were to loosen this term; mainly petty-bourgeois elements that existed under the "market-socialism"-style Titoist system. In any case, on November 17, 1988, the main Albanian leaders in the Communist League were dismissed and removed from the federal Presidency. Autonomy was then crushed. Miners from Trepca in Kosovska Mitrovica (formally Titova Mitrovica, but as with the Russian counter-revolution these names were altered) marched 55km to Pristina and camped out in the winter cold with students outside the local party headquarters. They waved Albanian and Yugoslav flags together and demonstrated in support of the 1974 Constitution.

This demonstration was the last in history in support of Yugoslavia and Titoism. There has been none since. This is the heritage of the Trepca miners...the last ever progressive struggle in Yugoslavia in the midst of capitalist counter-revolution which former Stalinist bureaucrats in all Yugoslavia were carrying out, playing the card of nationalism to gain popular support.

Jared: "demanding the reversal of the revoking of autonomy" is the key phrase here, the giveaway, for in Yugoslavia in 1990 it had the same meaning as "states rights" had in the 1965 US South: the maintenance of a regime of racial oppression.

Owen: I entirely agree with you that Kosovar Serbs were an oppressed national minority under the Kosovar Albanian administration. But actually the tables have turned 5 times in sixty years, as I have previously summarised:

- 1939: Rule by the Serbian monarchy over Kosovo; systematic oppression of Albanian population, who are deprived of their basic rights; attempt at their "Serb-isation".

1939 - 45: Fascist occupation of Kosovo. Mussolini unites it with Albania. Massive oppression against the Serbs - Albanian collaborators commit pogroms, massacres, etc... Many are sent to concentration camps.

1945 - 66: Kosovo is liberated by the partisans. Tito orders a crackdown, thousands of suspected Fascist collaborators are killed. It is re-integrated into Kosovo, but settlement from Albania is allowed. The Deputy President/Interior Minister, Rankovic, rules with an iron fist.

1966 - 89: Rankovic is removed from his position, the Titoist bureaucracy apologises for oppression. Albanian political, cultural and economic rights are granted. In 1971, it becomes an autonomous republic. From then on, the Kosovan State machinery was used to conduct oppression against Serbs, and thousands fled.

1989 - 99: A counter-revolutionary bureaucrat, Milosevic, comes to power, gaining popular legitimacy by stirring up nationalism; his faction conducts capitalist restoration. Kosovar Albanian leaders, including Milosevic's former allies, are rounded up and imprisoned. Autonomy is crushed, direct rule imposed. Albanians are stripped of their rights and their occupations. Liberal-pacifist leader Rugova gains widespread support, Albanians boycott national elections making Kosovo Milosevic's electoral stronghold. The KLA emerge in 1995 - begin by beating up and killing so-called Albanian "collaborators" and Albanian socialists, then by killing Serbian refugees and bombing cafes frequented by Serbs. In 1998 the Yugoslav State responds with a crackdown. Civil war breaks out; from March 1998-99 1500 Albanians and 500 Serbs are killed. In March, NATO launches bombing; Yugoslav State proceeds to expel Albanians, whilst the KLA terrorises and murders its Left faction and other Albanian dissidents; some battles over a few villages, though KLA retreat to the border. Their ranks are swelled by recruits from Albania and foreign Albanians, as well as many ordinary Albanians who naively believe the KLA will defend Albanians.

1999- : Yugoslav Army flees, NATO invades. A colonial administration is set up, and the KLA are institutionalised. A systematic attempt to expel all non-Albanians and Albanian dissidents is initiated; hundreds of thousands flee. Most of the Serbian population is purged, with violent attacks, murders, kidnaps, intimidation, their houses burnt, health care and education denied, their jobs taken off them, their property seized mainly by gangsters from Northern Albania. Other non-Albanian populations to be devastated include Romas - most have fled, but a few remain in camps - and Montenegrins, Turks, Jews, Muslims, etc... In the case of Serbs, those few that remain live in ghettos and cantons. Kosovo is headed to becoming an ethnically pure state in a few months, exclusively Albanian.

Such periods are over; the repeated reversal of roles from oppressed to oppressor people both make can no longer continue because all non-Albanian Kosovars are to be driven away. This will not just be the fate of Kosovo; western Macedonia, and parts of Montenegro and Serbia will follow, to form a Greater Albanian state.

Jared: Unfortunately that movement had a considerable base among Kosovo Albanians precisely of a) the historical strength of fascism in Kosovo and b) Tito's policy of currying favor with these fascists and c) because of the Serbian government's practical policy of excessive tolerance.

Owen: Let's go through your points one by one.

Firstly, a). An historical strength of fascism in Kosovo? It is true that Albanian nationalism has a particularly reactionary character, and that during the war some Albanian reactionary nationalists collaborated with the Fascist occupiers who granted them unification with Albania; for the very same reasons as the occupied Soviet republics especially in the Baltic states and the Ukraine, but that does not mean fascism has a historical strength in any of these nations, or that their secession was pioneered by fascists. Fascism itself has never flourished in Kosovo, that's just plain wrong, and I think this is edging towards claiming widespread support amongst the Albanian working class - working class fascism? Or the small / landless peasantry? Perhaps you could give us a social context for this mystical fascism...like the elements of the Kosovar Albanian petty-bourgeoisie or something.

Hoxhaites have always been the strongest movement amongst Albanians - especially during the 1981 uprising, in which around 5 "Marxist-Leninist" groups were the leading members; and presently liberal-pacifists like Rugova.

Secondly, b). Again you make the mistake of saying Tito curried favour with "fascists" - this sounds very much a criticism from the viewpoint of a Serbian nationalist, which I am sure you are not aspiring to. The leaders of Kosovo were not fascists, they were bog-standard Titoist bureaucrats. There was no fascist movement in Kosovo - any nascent form during Italian occupation was crushed harshly after Kosovan liberation, and to think that not only would the bureaucracy of workers' state would not only tolerate fascism, but support it???

In such states all the opinions of the masses are forced to be reflected within the bureaucracy itself, and therefore there was a "secessionist" faction. In actual fact (a) is a rather strange remark since the very reason Tito kept Kosovo was that his regime feared losing the support of the Serbian masses otherwise, because of the strong nationalist claim over Kosovo - he was currying favour with Serbian nationalism, not Albanian fascists. It would have been impossible to maintain the harsh rule that existed for the first twenty years until the dismissal of Rankovic, and therefore the bureaucracy made a concession to Albanian nationalism by granting them autonomy, but this satisfied Serbian nationalism because Kosovo was still in Yugoslavia.

It should also be noted that, at first, Milosevic allied himself with Kosovar Albanian bureaucrats like Vllasi. They were then all arrested. In the end he had to arrest quite a number of people and pack the Kosovo Assembly with dozens of supporters who weren't even elected representatives to get it to politically commit suicide.

And c), this is certainly not true. After the liberation of Kosovo by the partisans in 1945, there was a massive crackdown in which MANY more people died than this latest war. For twenty years Rankovic's faction ruled with an iron fist, but this was risking a nationalist explosion in Kosovo so autonomy was granted. Yet in the early 80s the vast majority of political prisoners were Kosovars. There were five illegal "Marxist-Leninist" groups. The uprising in 1981 was met with a brutal crackdown. I really don't see how the bureaucracy could have been more heavy handed within reasonable parameters.

Jared: Following the Yugo line of giving every nationality cultural autonomy (which was NEVER revoked, including in '89; what was revoked was excessive political independence because it was leading to secession;

Owen: That wasn't the excuse the Belgrade regime gave for it. Milosevic incited mass demonstrations to stage a putsch against the Titoists in the party using the pretext of Kosovo. The aim of him and his bureaucrats was the restoration of capitalism in Yugoslavia; to gain legitimacy, they stirred up nationalism over the question of the oppression of Kosovar Serbs and revoked autonomy, etc... The reasons for it were first outlined by the Serbian intelligentsia in their Memorandum which Milosevic adopted, which was mainly "genocide" against Kosovar Serbs.

Again, I have seen no evidence of the Kosovar Albanian bureaucracy heading for secession. The Albanian bureaucrats were at first allies of Milosevic' clique, mainly because they sympathised with his faction's aim of capitalist restoration.

Jared: rather, after '89 the Albanian leadership under Rugova organized a massive boycott of autonomous Albanian institutions - it sounds crazy, but it's true)

Owen: That isn't true, you know that. Autonomy was shut down and so the Kosovar Albanians held a political boycott, especially after they were sacked wholesale and had their rights stripped of them.

Jared: The schools were key for in them the widespread fascist movement

Owen: What is this phantom "widespread fascist movement". It doesn't exist. At this time, the KLA were a meaningless sect who bombed Serbian refugees and murdered and expelled Albanian dissidents/socialists occasionally. The only movement that could conceivably be labelled "fascist" as it is actually meant would be the Radical Party of Sesijl which is in coalition with Milosevic presently. This isn't widespread particularly, though very dangerous. In Kosovo the Kosovar Albanians overwhelmingly supported, and still do, the bourgeois liberal-pacifist, Rugova.

There was for a time a detente of sorts between Albania and Yugoslavia. Books from Albania were imported for schools. Then they had another fall out and the Yugoslav regime decided they were full of Hoxhaite propaganda. Apart from that, they were taught Titoist material. I can't see where the fascist propaganda comes in.

Jared: (which had run Kosovo with a large base of support in W.W.II) had free reign to spread its racist-nationalist ideology and was isolated from the cultural influence of Serbs, Roma, Gorani (Slavic Muslims) and so on - all of them with a much more secular, tolerant culture, alas, than that of the Ghegs, which is remarkably male dominated, clan organized (all power in the hands of the eldest male) feud-oriented (the key text is a book which goes into detail on how to conduct a blood feud.)

Owen: This is a bizarre theory of "conflict between nations". There is no trace of class analysis in any of this. You are claiming that the cultural heritage of a particular nationality makes them less or more predisposed to fascism. That is not what fascism is, it is a reactionary movement of the petty-bourgeoisie and all those classes above the proletariat who either fear its rising militancy and/or see it as a threat or fear tumbling into its ranks; as in Spain, Italy and Germany.

You seem to be saying that the Serbs and other Kosovars should have imposed their culture on the Albanians because the latter were culturally backward and needed to be influenced by Slavic culture. Perhaps then it was a good thing for the European settlers to impose their culture on the "backward, tribal" culture of the native Americans, etc...

Jared: Just as there have been instances in the US of white workers organizing AGAINSt blacks, the racist-nationalist movement in Kosovo had a working class component.

Owen: The bourgeoisie sets proletarians of different ethnic groups against each other via racism to blind them from their real enemy. In this case, you are stepping dangerously close to a very undesirable edge. The KLA represent this movement you describe, but they were [before the NATO bombing] made up of the petty-bourgeoisie, small property owners, Northern Albanian gangsters, etc...; though during the war some working class elements got involved naively because they thought it was an armed defence against severe national oppression, which it was not.

Jared: To stand for "workers control" in the abstract can be quite misleading - one must examine circumstance in this PR-conscious world. Of course, in Yugoslavia, everyone used socialist slogans - those were the terms employed - .

Owen: This analysis is so bizarre I'm not sure how to respond for it. When workers are deprived of work they are hardly fighting for the right to oppress their Kosovar brothers and sisters. There is nothing sinister about fighting for workers' control; and it is not simply a slogan because they have been arguing for its justification. They just don't want to be exploited by the Yugoslav or American bourgeoisie, they want a return to the "good old days" when they managed their own factories and mines.

Jared: The word "brotherhood" tied to "returning autonomy" is quite a combo. Given the real fact, that throughout the period from 1941 to 1989 the fascists among Albanians dominated social life in Kosovo in one form or another, it would be imperative for a REAL: movement for working class power, based as it would have to be on the slogan raised by the Mill Workers in England, during the US civil war, that "Labor cannot be free in the white skin when it is enslaved in the black" - given the link to autonomy (that is, to the code word for racism) this made of "brotherhood" the most cynical nonsense. A real "brotherhood" would have started by denouncing the racism of Kosovo Albanian fascism - far more fanatical and more broadly based, by the way, than it ever was in Poland.

Owen: Fascists dominating Albanian social life? These are mystical fascists for whom you provide no evidence of existence. I would be quite tempted to question whether these fascists are an invention of yours to demonise the Kosovar Albanians. Politically the biggest faction BY FAR with Kosovar Albanians were Hoxhaites and Titoists. However you are failing to acknowledge the existence of extremely reactionary Chetniks amongst elements of the Serbian petty-bourgeoisie - but your position almost implies if somebody is a Serb they cannot be anything other than progressive.

And really? The Milosevic regime - a regime that carried out capitalist counter-revolution - attempted the expulsion of the entire Kosovar Albanian population; plans pioneered by Draskovic and Sesijl, both arch-reactionaries and the latter a fascist. 800,000 Kosovar Albanians were expelled. Massive national oppression was committed against them for 10 years. I think this is something that needs to be denounced, no?

The "racism of Kosovo Albanian fascism"? Presently there is a despicable ethnic cleansing being carried out by the most reactionary sections of the KLA and Northern Albanian gangsters...but before the period when KLA purged its Hoxhaite faction, there was nothing that could properly be termed fascist.

Jared: As everyone in Yugoslavia knew, the dominant force among Kosovo Albanians was secessionism,

Owen: Which Kosovar Albanians and why? All Kosovar Albanians, whether they be landowners and shopkeepers or landless peasants and workers? If it were true for all classes, why?

Though the Kosovan administration oppressed Serbs for 15 years or so, Kosovo itself was an oppressed province of Yugoslavia. A mass of people don't just become "secessionist" for any old reason. The Irish aren't fighting for a united Ireland for the hell of it. The Kurdish are fighting for national self-determination, not because they hate the Turkish masses.

I oppose independence, but I support national self-determination for Kosovo. If the democratic decision of the Kosovar Albanians is for independence - which imperialism is fundamentally opposed for - than I will support the right of the masses to exercise their demand for s-d. If NATO or the Yugoslav State in the future were to suppress the Kosovar right to self-determination, we would fight for their right. They are clearly a nation, being ethnically and culturally distinct from a state that is explicitly Slavic (i.e. Yugoslav, or Southern Slavs). You use "secessionism" like it is a despicable evil; your logic can be used against all peoples fighting for self-determination, whether they be Irish, Palestinian, or Kurdish.

Jared: and that was by then in the service of the US which had committed (through Dole and the US Ambassador and the CIA) to the secessionists starting in '86; all this is documented. So this call for "workers power" - IN THAT CONTEXT - is shallow and rather horrifying.

Owen: You fail to explain what struggles for self-determination have to do with calling for workers' control of Trepca mines. Imperialism is opposed to this as is their KLA proxy. US imperialism indeed did use the oppression of Kosovar Albanians as a pretext to bomb Yugoslavia, and the Albanians turned to them with the illusions imperialism would aid them (they would not do so if there were a Communist movement there that would have fought for them otherwise...and we all know who killed that off). Yet that does not mean that these Trepca miners are imperialist proxies or fascists simply because they are of Albanian background.

Jared: The reality is that as soon as the KLA reached northern Kosovo it laid siege to and then seized part of the mines and they, representing US capital, are now quarreling with the French for control - that is the dirty secret behind the massive secessionist attack on French troops in Mitrovica (gateway to the mines) and the reason the French are backing some multiethnic presence in northern Mitrovica - while the KLA, representing as always the US, is being used as a proxy to attack the French and provide the US with a pretext for smashing the Serbian resistance in northern Mitrovica.

Any armed resistance against NATO is supportable. Here you appear to be taking the side of the occupying French imperialist troops against the local populations. It seems very much to me you will take anybody's side as long as they are on the opposite side of the Albanians in a given question, and you various statements against imperialism now seem insincere.

If the KLA were to stage an insurrection against NATO, REGARDLESS of its political character, we would support that. Any struggle against imperialism, we support.

Jared: As for the KLA rebelling (possibly) against international capital, right. Sure they will. After we organize their workers' rebellion, let's organize the Mafia hitmen. Nest the KKK can take up the socialist banner. The KLA Nazi's are slated to be the enforcement agency of international capital in Kosovo and they are not capable of independent existence, though like any attack dog, they may sometimes nip their masters.

Owen: Just because the KLA are an imperialist proxy now, doesn't mean they always will be. Take the far more reactionary Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan; put into power because of American imperialism, yet circumstance has changed this. If the KLA did split from imperialism, and resisted occupying troops, then we would hardly be demanding NATO to crackdown down on them. On the contrary, we would support the forcible removal of occupying imperialist troops from Kosovar soil.

So you've ruled out the Kosovar Albanians as a race being involved in the socialist movement? Our job as communists is to struggle against reactionary ideas in the working class; we do not dismiss Albanians as reactionary by nature and predisposition, a ridiculous argument that itself is reactionary to the core.

Owen: The only allies of the struggling miners can be the international workers movement.

Jared: that is the hustle to fool well-intentioned but uninformed souls into the left's line for supporting the new fasicsm. Everyone gets a line, you see, and of course for th left, its gotta be "help these workers who without us have nothing." That's why in these situations, as a Russian one pointed out, we always have to look at the real, underlying POLITICS of the situation, and not be suckered by "pure class demands."

Owen: I need not remind people of those in history who peddled similar theories of 'proletarian nations' (though I don't politically associate you with fascism in the slightest). It is not the Serbian "nation" that will save the Balkans; it is all the working class of the Balkans breaking from their ruling classes, who are nothing more than former Stalinist bureaucrats who manipulated the masses with nationalism to enable their transformation into the new capitalist class, and fighting against THEM, their real enemy. If only people like Milosevic and Sesijl and Tudjman and the factions they represent/ed, had been riddled with bullets by the working class before they had the opportunity, in alliance with US imperialism, to cause the biggest catastrophe in the Balkans since Nazi occupation.