1. Revolutionaries world-wide have to unconditionally support the right of the Albanian people to self-determination. The Kosovans have the right to secede from Yugoslavia, to create their own state and even to unite with the rest of Albania. At the same time we fight to transform the Kosovan popular discontent into a proletarian struggle that extends to the whole region and unites the workers from all the communities against imperialism and capitalist restoration.

2. We oppose the bourgeois nationalist government of the "Republic of Kosova" led by Rugova's Democratic League. Rugova is holding back workers struggle. He wants to put peaceful pressure on the Yugoslav regime. He has made deals with Belgrade and didn’t support the anti-Serbian separatists in former Yugoslavia.

He believed that if Serb republics in Krajina and Bosnia could be established, it would create a precedent to create new states ignoring the previous inter-republican borders. He is currently calling on NATO to establish a protectorate in Kosovo.

The Western powers are using the "ethnic" and "democratic" mask to accelerate their plan to re-capitalise and re-colonise the Balkans. We defend the Albanians armed actions against Serb repression. However, the working class should separate itself from the Kosovo Liberation Army, a movement that will not fight for a workers’ state against capitalist restoration.

3. The main strategy of the Albanian nationalists is national unity against the Serbs and with imperialist backing. Imperialism is the worst enemy of all the peoples. The best allies of the Albanian toilers are the workers and peasants from Serbia and the rest of the Balkans. The Serbian workers have very strong militant traditions and were at the forefront in the fight against privatisation and imperialism. They, and all the workers from the entire region, have to separate from their "own" capitalists and bureaucrats and create a formidable international multi-ethnic proletarian force.

4. Kosovo's unions are opposed to Yugoslavia allowing Greek and foreign capitalist companies to control telecommunications, mining and other resources in Kosovo. Nearly 200,000 Albanian workers have been sacked in these privatisation programs. Instead of asking to put those resources in the hands of the West or local Albanian capitalists (like the ones who made the Pyramid schemes piracy in Tirana) Kosovan workers should make joint actions with the other workers from Yugoslavia and the rest of the region in favour of breaking with imperialism, the IMF and the World Bank, and for the re-nationalisation under workers control of all the privatised companies.

5. We fight for the creation of councils and armed militias of the workers and the poor. They should became a parallel power and centralise the struggle for social and national liberation. In their fight for self-determination the workers need to overthrow the "Republic of Albania" and the KLA's elitist armed forces. These can be used later by imperialism to crush the Albanian workers. Such committees should link with the ones in southern Albania with the aim of transforming them all into real soviets.

6. At the same time that we unconditionally support the Albanian uprising, we are unconditionally in favour of the defence of Yugoslavia against imperialism. Yugoslavia is no longer a degenerate workers state. It is a new bourgeois state. Nevertheless, imperialism wants to take a tough line with it (like Iraq) in order to guarantee a system of client puppet states. We stand for the immediate end of the devastating economic blockade that has been killing tens of thousands. We would defend arms in hands Yugoslavia against any imperialist attack.

7. The best defence of Yugoslavia against imperialism is to concede full national self-determination to the Albanians. The best way to impose the Albanian workers demands is to fight against imperialism and to unite with all the workers of the region against imperialism and capitalist restoration.

8. The Albanian workers and all the oppressed people in the Balkans need a new revolutionary international party. The working class needs to stand up on its own two feet and to struggle against all its bureaucrats and new bourgeois bosses. The only way to reverse all the ethnic cleanings and to allow the Muslim, Croat and Serb villages to be multi-ethnically rebuilt is through a socialist federation of all the Balkans.

9. In the struggle for such a party it is important to break with centrism. Many of the groups that capitulated to Stalinism or nationalism during the last wars are incapable of defending the Kosovan people. The Spartacists, which like to have a position for every corner of the globe, are maintaining a revealing silence on what is Europe's flash-point. The groups which capitulated to imperialism (like the LIT or LRCI) don't want to call for the defence of Yugoslavia against any other attack. The LRCI still believe that Yugoslavia is the only degenerated Workers State in Europe, however they don't raise any demand against capitalist restoration and they call for the creation of a bourgeois republic in Kosova.

10. Kosovo could accelerate the conflicts between imperialism and the regional powers. We condemn the governments of Montenegro and Albania that are calling for dialogue and EU support. We condemn them and the Greek and Macedonian regimes which are treating their own national minorities very badly. During the first Two Balkan Wars Trotsky visited all the Balkan countries as a press correspondent. He was against supporting any reactionary state against another. He was for the unity of the Balkan proletariat as the only way to stop pogroms and chauvinist bigotry. Today, his supporters have to have a similar perspective. We should oppose all these statelets and imperialist rivalries, while at the same time being preparied to support any uprising against oppression and for social and national liberation. We are not only against imperialism’s presence but also for a combined struggle of all the workers to expel arms in hands all the great powers from the region. We would defend any country attacked by imperialism.

For a Socialist Federation of the Balkans!

In the Albanian and Kosovan uprising, the LCMRCI, the LRCI and most of the international left took the side of the Albanian masses.

However, we departed from different methods and arrived at different tactics. The LRCI which currently could not differentiate between a bourgeois and a workers state is adopting a democratist strategy capitulating to the imperialist puppets in the region.

Confusion

The LRCI long statement on Kosovo has considerable information in it. However, in all its 3,000 words there is not one word on how they characterise the class nature of Yugoslavia, the Kosova Republic, which they are supporting, Albania, Macedonia or any of the countries which are involved in that conflict. This is precisely the point of departure of every Marxist. The LRCI until July characterised all the ex-"socialist" countries east of Germany as types of workers states. Since August they are claiming that the eight most prosperous of them are already capitalist ones. None of the Balkan countries are included in that category; so we have to conclude that the LRCI is still describing them as a degenerated form of a proletarian dictatorship. In every conflict arousing any type of workers state, Trotskyists are obliged to call for their defence and the nationalised planned economy against internal and external counterrevolution. However, not even these slogans are present in the LRCI’s large declaration. It pronounced in favour of calling for NATO out of the region but did not demand that the workers should arm themselves to expel them, arms in hand. At no time did it raise the demand for defending Yugoslavia against the terrible blockade (which already is destroying the economy and causing hundreds of thousands of cases of sickness and deaths) or against any possible new imperialist attack.

The LRCI characterised the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Party of Albanian National Unity as "revolutionary petite bourgeois" which needed to be critically supported. In a capitalist state the revolutionary petite bourgeois movements are set up to fight against imperialism and the ruling oligarchy. In a workers state, only a movement that is committed to the defence of the post-capitalist relations could be considered as "revolutionary", and usually the independent petite bourgeois parties (even the radical ones), when they are not subordinated to the idea of preserving or regenerating the class nature of that state, could become counterrevolutionary agents of its capitalist destruction.

The LRCI wrote that "the bourgeois traitor Rugova demands that Kosova should become a UN-protectorate with NATO troops." If a pro-colonial bourgeois regime is presiding over a republic inside a so-called workers state, the only Marxist conclusion is to use a class line and stand for the defence of that bureaucratised workers state against a NATO separatist and neo-colonialist puppet. However, the LRCI is asking the same super-powers to establish "immediate diplomatic recognition of the ‘Republic of Kosova’"

What is the class character of that republic? If it is led by a pro-NATO bourgeoisie (as the LRCI claims) why does it limit its strategy to the goal of achieving that bourgeois state? In no part of the long document does it is raise the demand for a worker republic or a new state based in workers councils and militias. The LRCI did not call for a workers’ and peasants’ government. Instead, "Given the lack of any soviet-like organs (the peoples’ committees in the South of Albania no longer exist) in the region and the democratic illusions of the masses we call for a revolutionary constituent assembly in Kosovo of the Albanian workers and peasants."

Constituent Assembly

When Trotskyists raise the demand for a constituent assembly they are calling for the most democratic body of the bourgeois state-dictatorship with the idea of mobilising the masses in order to build soviets. The LRCI put forward this demand trying to mix soviets with parliament (like the Two and a Half International) in one single body: a revolutionary bourgeois parliament led by workers and peasants. This is another form of parliamentary road to socialism. To confuse the panorama even more, the LRCI is calling for a parliament in what they call a workers state. Precisely a body like this could be progressive in a capitalist society but it could also be (like in Russia after October 1917) the forefront of the social counter-revolution. All of the LRCI politics in that region shows that it is every day a more confused organisation and increasingly becoming an organisation of petite bourgeois democrats.

Two methods

The LCMRCI, in contrast, has a different approach. We think that Yugoslavia like all the Eastern European countries became incipient bourgeois states when the state apparatus ceased to protect (even in an ultra-degenerated and conciliatory way) the nationalised planned economy and the state monopoly over finances, foreign trade and industry. When a new anti-Communist ideological, juridical and repressive super-structure (that is what the state is) is imposed with the aim of transforming money (which in the workers state was mainly a means of accounting and cash was used to buy living expenses) into real money (capable of creating and reproducing capital and buying, for private accumulation, lands, companies and labour) and allowing the conditions for the creation of a new property-owning ruling class, we can no longer in any way call this state a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

When there was a workers state we called for its defence against external and internal reaction. The new LRCI, on the other hand, could not distinguish the difference between a workers state and a bourgeois one and, in all circumstances, was in favour of a united front with capitalist parties against Stalinism. Today we are in favour of the unconditional right of Kosova to secede from bourgeois Yugoslavia and to unite with Albania and even of free democratic elections and constituent assemblies in many Balkan countries to broaden the political debate. At the same time that we defend the Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia against state repression, we also are willing to defend Serbia in any conflict with imperialism. This is the same method we applied in Iraq when we defended the Kurds against Hussein’s massacres while we sided with that dictator against the US bombs. The LRCI opposes defending Yugoslavia against imperialism. It does not want to expose the devastating consequences of imperialist blockade and ethnic cleansing which more than one million Serbs suffered. When NATO launched its worst attack ever, the LRCI refused to defend the Serbs. It demanded that imperialism "send heavy artillery, tanks and planes to the Bosnian army", "tanks and heavy artillery, and yes if possible planes and Scud missiles" and even "international volunteers" to support their Bosnian proxies. It said: "Far from condemning B-H because they are carrying US weapons revolutionaries should demand … maximum necessary arms to the B-H forces. Unfortunately those with the arms are generally imperialist countries or third world dictatorships."

When the imperialist puppets (Croatia and Bosnia) were wiping- out the population of Krajina and western Bosnia, Workers Power (October 95) demanded more resolution in that task: "if they can now surround and annihilate Arkan’s fascist volunteers in Western Bosnia that will be a service to the workers of the whole world". These troops not only annihilated the Serb military resistance but expelled one million native inhabitants. We always defended the Croat and Muslim communities against Great Serb ethnic cleansing (like we defended the Serb civilians against the Croat and Muslim pogroms). We said that the only way to achieve that, as Trotsky recommended in the 1912-13 Balkan wars, was to unite the multi-ethnic proletariat against all its rulers. The LRCI, as we showed in other documents, shifted its position many times during the war. Today for us, a vital question in the Kosovo question is the unity of the region’s proletariat. For many Albanian nationalists, the only way to stop Serbia is to bring NATO troops into Kosova. Precisely the best way to destroy this reactionary argument is to say that the only way to liberate Kosovo from Milosevic and the even worse, the imperialists, is to forge a class unity between the Albanian toilers and their class brothers and sisters in the rest of Yugoslavia and the Balkans. Nevertheless, this crucial objective is absent in the long LRCI resolution.

Separate from Petite Bourgeoisie

For Marxists, the key in that conflict is not only to achieve the unity of all the workers against their restorationist rulers but also to separate the workers from any petite bourgeois or bourgeois democrats and nationalists and to build an international party. However, the LRCI document did not put forward such ideas. They do not consider it necessary to call for working class independence and organisation into a party. They do not even bother to analyse what is happening in the Albanian or Serbian workers movement, and even less how to build bridges between them. There is not even the call for a general strike and a worker party to overthrow Milosevic.

Albania

The LRCI’s confusion on Kosovo is also linked with its position during the Albanian uprising. During those events they produced an article in which they said: "Before 1989 Albania was a Stalinist state, so it had a state-owned and planned economy, not a capitalist economy." (Revolution 20. No Date)