Problems of the US peace movement Stop the US/NATO war! The following leaflet was distributed by the US group Socialist Action With characteristic ruthlessness and with extraordinary cynicism and hypocrisy, the United States and its capitalist allies have launched a murderous bombing campaign against the Yugoslav Federation.
This assault is designed to demonstrate the power of the imperialist war machine and its readiness to punish any state or people that does not accept its domination.
The United States and its allies are supremely indifferent not only to the fate of the masses of the Serbian people, who are not responsible for the policies of their rulers, but to the fate of the Kosovar Albanian people in whose name this campaign of blind destruction has been launched.
It is the duty of all Americans who respect democratic and humanitarian values to oppose the actions of the government that claims to speak in their name.
The military action launched by the United States and its allies against Yugoslavia represents a grave escalation of intervention by the Western capitalist powers into the conflicts created by the decay of 12 International Viewpoint #311 May 1999 desperate populations of the SE underdeveloped world and the CC workers of the advanced countries W themselves, threatened by the lengthening shadow of world P depression. CE Stalinism and the process of However, the kind of mass e capitalist restoration in the former movement necessary to stop in Soviet bloc. It poses a real threat of capitalist intervention cannot be st a chain reaction of major wars. built in association with decaying th
It is clear that the capitalist Stalinist forces and their various CO powers are going to try to intervene chauvinist, fascist-like allies, such as in the growing chaos of the former the Serbian tribalists and cheerSoviet bloc, given their historic stake leaders for genocide that have put SE in assuring that the process of their poisonous imprint on the first capitalist restoration continues. This demonstrations in the United States process itself is fuelling greater and against the bombing of Yugoslavia greater conflicts, as it leads to the In San Francisco, some organisers impoverishment of these countries of the first demonstration against th and destroys their economic the bombing led a chant from the pc autonomy. platform, apparently in deference SI
There is thus no way that Western to their Serbian allies, of "Kosovo is intervention can mitigate these Serbia." The banner at the front of Ev conflicts. By its attempts to impose the crowd was the flag of the the capitalist system, with its Yugoslav monarchy and the inequalities and competition, the counterrevolutionary Chetnik forces West can only exacerbate the of the World War Il period WI problems. lt cannot promote This is scandalous. The movement th democracy by fostering a system against imperialist intervention is re that defends exploitation and sets too important to let it be discredi- W people to fighting each other for ted and destroyed by sectarian ar increasingly scarce goods. hangovers of Stalinism. in
The fight against the intervention We must build a mass, of the capitalist powers in Eastern independent movement unconditio- an Europe is important for defending nally opposed to the U.S. and NATO the coming workers' struggles war effort and in solidarity with the St against capitalist restoration that right of self-determination of are the only hope for peace, oppressed peoples-including the democracy, and economic progress people of Kosovo. * in that part of the world
The revival of socialist perspec- Source: Socialist Action (USA) newspaper, April 1999. tives in the non-capitalist countries www.socialistaction.org