It seems to me that the war by and in Serbia is an extraordinary
example of the failure of socialism. This in three ways. Socialism in
eastern Europe failed and this opened Yugoslavia up for the reassertion of
all of the nationalisms on the table today. Second, Serbian socialism
failed to provide the movement that would have stopped Milosevic's slither
from aparatchnik to fascist. Third, western socialism utterly failed to
create any kind of movement of the sort that could prevent NATO bombing.
This is why 1914-1919 is the appropriate historical comparison
(apart from the fact that the Yugoslav state was formed in this period).
In the face of these failures we could pronounce socialism in toto
a failure, as many have done. But that would be a grave mistake.
Let me quote Slavoj Zizek's just-published article in the May 24
Nation:
"The way to fight the capitalist New World Order is not by supporting
local protofascist resistances to it but focusing on the only serious
question today: how to build %transnational% political movements and
institutions strong enough to constrain seriously the unlimited rule of
capital and to render visible and politically relevant the fact that the
local fundamentalist resistances to the New World Order, from Milosevic to
Le Pen and the extreme right in Europe, are part of it.
Neil Smith
Department of Geography
and Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture
Rutgers University
Piscataway NJ 08854
phone: 732 445 4103 (Geography)
732 932 8679/8426 (CCACC)
fax: 732 445 0006 (Geography)
732 932 8683 (CCACC)
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