Workers' Liberty

These comments all relate to a posting on Kosova's declaration of independence

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The following motion, moved by Workers' Liberty member Sofie Buckland, was passed by the National Executive of the National Union of Students on Thursday 21/02/08. The same text could be used for motions to trade union branches.

On Sunday 17 February Kosova declared itself an independent state.

No better, more democratic, or more effective rules for organising relations between peoples and fragments of peoples exist than those of Lenin, Trotsky and their comrades. Nothing else is more conducive to working class unity across the divides and despite them. They are the principles of all who are Marxists and stand in that great tradition.

The consequences of the opposite approach — or of an approach of unprincipled eclecticism and zig-zags — are well illustrated by the politics of Socialist Worker and the SWP on Kosova.

The narrow victory of Boris Tadic in Serbia’s presidential election on 3 February slightly lessens the tensions over the independence of Kosova. But only slightly.

Kosova, formerly the Albanian-majority province of Yugoslavia, is likely to declare independence in February 2008. The European Union, the USA, and NATO will support independence, despite Russia (a longstanding ally of Serbia) blocking UN approval for independence and declaring that independence will be "outside international law".

The left and the Serb-Kosova-NATO War (1999)

By Sean Matgamna

By Colin Foster

According to Alexander Ivanko, a UN spokesperson in Sarajevo, “the Bosnian Serbs are calling most of the shots. I’m sure there are some shots they are not calling. I just can’t think of them at the moment”.

Click "read more" to see articles.

In the last few years there have been a number of instances where conflicts have caused confusion amongst the ranks of the left. Such times are important for the left in reassessing, and regrouping sifting out the healthier elements. Of course that is only true if the right lessons are learned, and the organisations which grow most quickly under such circumstances are in no way guaranteed to be the ones that have learned the correct lessons.

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Caliban: Then the “banker turned politician Milosevic stepped in to divert the anger away from the government by whipping up hatred against Albanians living in Serb-run Kosovo… Milosevic put forward a simple answer to the economic crisis brought about by the madness of the market — blame the Albanians.”

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WHAT the “self-conceit” of the Apparatus Marxists “accomplished” during the Balkan war was to put their “Marxism” to the task of apologising for and making propaganda on behalf of Serbian imperialism attempting genocide in its colony Kosova.

This is the text of a Workers' Liberty leaflet handed out at the SWP's 'Marxism' event in 1999:

The ethnic Albanians of Kosova were Milosevic's first victims. From the late 1980s the ethnic Albanians of Kosova lived under an ultra-chauvinist Serb regime, led by Milosevic, which imposed Apartheid-style rule on the region.