councilor.org
| Source | Louis Proyect |
| Date | 99/06/17/14:33 |
| Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 11:34:51 -0400 To: marxism@lists.panix.com, pen-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu Last Sunday I was in Philadelphia, speaking to the Brandywine Peace Center - a peace and social justice group that has been doing good work there for many years. Several old friends and members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) came to hear me, fresh from a meeting of their own. Carl Dahlgren, at 75, looked younger than I do - good Quaker living. After the meeting, during the question period, Ann Davidon, an old friend from WRL, asked about the chance of DSA and the Socialist Party merging. I said there were problems - including the pro-war position DSA had taken. (I didn't go into the other areas, where I tend at times to agree with DSA - a less rigid position on electoral action than the SP takes, and its sound position on class as a determining force). I was told at once by the DSA folks present that "that is just Bogdan Denitch - he doesn't speak for DSA". When I got back I sent out a note to some of the comrades in the Socialist Party, saying the brief encounter helped remind me that, despite the differences with the DSA leadership, there were strong and decent forces in DSA with which we would be in wide agreement in local work. (I still think this, and this letter is meant to explore a problem, not provoke one). And then I brought home the DSA house organ - Democratic Left - which I still get, even though my nominal membership in DSA lapsed many months ago. It had, as always, some good material. Including a sharp review by Jason Schulman of a bio on Irving Howe, some useful notes on MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) by Chris Riddiough. However it also had on the cover three heads: Bombs / Books / Buds. This suggested perhaps something significant on the NATO bombing. (And maybe on literature and Budweiser beer). Inside the front page was the April 21st Statement of the DSA Steering Committee, and the shorter May 15th statement of the National Political Committee. Then in the back, Bogdan Denitch, DSA's Honorary Chair, had three pages for his own article. Sorting this all out was a little like reading Pravda. The short, most recent statement by what I assume is the more representative committee of DSA, began by strongly condemning the NATO bombing. But the statement also said it "reaffirmed" the April statement of the Steering Committee, which was much longer and only opposed the bombing of Belgrade and other urban centers - not the bombing itself, and not the civilian targets which were being hit. The NATO action was not condemned, even though the statement said that "we have never believed that NATO has the moral authority to carry out such missions". (No comment anywhere in either statement that the US, which calls the shots for NATO, was in violation of the UN Charter or that NATO was in violation of its own Charter, so that not only was there a lack of moral authority, there was also a clear problem of the NATO action being in violation of established international law). There was a call in the April statement for the War Crimes Tribunal to continue its work and specifically to prosecute all those responsible for directing ethnic cleansing campaigns - but this call for justice (which I support) did not suggest that perhaps the United States and NATO had taken actions which should fall under the jurisdiction of the War Crimes Tribunal. (Specifically the deliberate hitting of civilian targets, including media and communications, power, bridges, hospitals, factories, etc.). I don't want to parse the politics of the two statements, except to note it was obvious from reading them that they were a desperate effort to bridge major disagreements. (At the bottom of this first page there was a paragraph by the editors which noted there were serious problems, and many issues, including the dissolution of NATO, which ought to be up for discussion in the coming discussion bulletins). Now we turn to the three pages from Bogdan Denitch. Denitch is not only the honorary Chair, he is also the DSA rep to the Socialist International, and Chair of the DSA International Committee, and has sold himself for years to DSA and others (I gather from the two paragraphs introducing his article, the "others" include various "European foreign ministries") as an expert on Yugoslavia. Something I'd never guess from this botched article. He begins with a denunciation of ethnic cleansing (very good, who can disagree), but then, unless you read it carefully, it seems as if the ethnic cleansing was in full swing BEFORE the NATO attack, when in fact it was not. The horror of the ethnic cleansing came after the bombing. Nor does Dentich discuss the role of the KLA in the past year or so until late in the article, thus detaching it from any kind of "cause and effect", and he doesn't note its role in shooting Serb police and troops - and Albanian civilians. Here is Denitch, an expert on Yugoslavia, and all he can say of the KLA is that they have no "visible democratic credentials". Christ, I get more hard information from the N.Y.Times! Denitch suggests this NATO action raises "at least two issues" - it turns out neither issue has anything to do with whether NATO has the right to replace the United Nations, or what the implications are when the "big five" on the Security Council are split three to two in favor of the NATO action. (Russia and China, both serious nuclear powers, sharply opposed, while the two once powerful colonial states, now reduced to the level of interesting, civilized, but minor third rate powers - France and Great Britain - are all the US could count on). Nor, of course, does Denitch question the value of NATO itself which, now that it expanded under pressure from the US arms lobby, has managed to get into the first shooting war in fifty years. Instead, Denitch worries about what will happen if Clinton backs down "with all the consequent costs to both NATOs credibility and US prestige". This, from a one-time Trotskyist? Are we watching a "late in life transformation" of Denitch into the mold of his once-mentor, the late Max Shachtman? If I'm being harsh I offer no apoligies - for while the DSA committees struggled and came up at least for some questions about the bombing (in the first statement issued "no hitting Belgrade" and in the second statement a clear demand for an end of bombing), the article, with no rebuttal, no indication at all that Denitch was not speaking for DSA's leadership and rank and file, rejected any bombing halt. This when it had become clear that the bombing was destroying civil life in Serbia, as effectively as the Serb military had destroyed the civil life of the Albanians in Kosov@. I don't think you could separate the Denitch position on bombing Serbia from that of the mouth that roared - Tony Blair - if you had a sharp knife. If this was one of two or three positions, I'd say fine - DSA is like the rest of us. The Committees of Correspondence and the Socialist Party, both of which took clear positions condemning the NATO action (and, of course, the ethnic cleansing) and which both took active part in providing leadership to local anti-war actions, still had strong internal dissent to the official positions. Why on so complex an issue would one be surprised? On the contrary, a democratic organization should not find full agreement over night on this kind of thing. Or possibly never find it. Yet the impression given - for surely Denitch's three page article will carry more weight than two complex and unclear resolutions - is that DSA supported the bombing and the war and NATO. I think of DSA as a fraternal organization, and believe that on many issues (including, but not limited, to the trade union movement) we must work together. But to those of you in DSA, please don't be offended too much if I ask who speaks for the rank and file, for the membership? Denitch, who supported the bombing until the last (my information is that NATO bombed with great vigor on the verge of the settlement, long after it would have been helpful, in the final two or three days, to just stop - bombing that may have killed in one strike alone some 300 Serb troops and we know killed some civilians) certainly has the right to belong to DSA or COC or the SP or, for that matter, SDUSA (if he can find it - I think it now only has a web site). But the leader and spokesperson for a democratic socialist organization? Fraternally, David McReynolds |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho