FIVE YEARS OF NOVI BORAC

FIVE YEARS OF THE NOVI BORAC

(A Letter to the Workers in the Region and the World)

Dear comrades,

       Let us greet you as editors of the only workers' magazine on the territory of former Yugoslavia. The magazine Novi Borac – Yugoslav Workers' Tribune has been published for five years. The conditions of our work are extremely difficult: lack of jobs, lack of money, national disunity and historical regression, regarding the working class, are for 80 to 100 years. Our mission is to connect the working class in the region and beyond thus opening up the horizon of the workers' struggle. As you know, the territory of former Yugoslavia is now divided by the national and ethnic borders into 7 (seven) independent states with two of them (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo) as international protectorates of the EU and USA while the third one, Macedonia, is under an unacknowledged international name facing, at the same time, the perspective of inner ethnic division following the model of BIH. As for the four remaining states, two of them are EU members, Slovenia and Croatia – with Slovenia being within while Croatia outside Schengen zone - while two remaining states are candidates to join EU, Serbia and Montenegro. Moreover, Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro are members of NATO while at the door are Macedonia and probably Kosovo. Serbia has proclaimed a kind of neutrality which practically means that, on the top of the USA, EU and NATO, it has one more master, namely, Russia.

       In the devastated region boasting a new name of the Western Balkans, the official unemployment rate is between 15% and 40% while the average wages differing from one country to another are within the range of 350 to 450 euro.

        The workers' movement in Yugoslavia is disunited, weakened and disempowered, worn out by the years of wars and crises, pressed, on the one hand, by mafia employers and state while, on the other, by the opportunistic left which is, through various forms of financing, imposed by international masters of the divided Balkans. In the whole region there is no party whatsoever that is defending workers’ interests. The organized workers’ movement is decimated; hardly anything socialist can be found in it. Yet, the workers left in the lurch by Stalinism were capable of different forms of resistance thanks to their self-organization. Long will be remembered many years of trench battle of the workers of Jugoremedia from Zrenjanin; their struggle has passed through different phases and forms – practically all the forms of fighting except for a direct attack upon the government in Belgrade. Worth remembering is a revolutionary flame fueled by the workers of five factories from Tuzla in their struggle against privatization; it spread all over BIH engulfing also the then-government of the Tuzla Canton.

       The Novi borac came into being thanks to the workers’ networking with their comrades in Europe and the USA who still cherish the Marxist traditions of labor. This cooperation, though it promised a lot, now stumbles upon the newly-founded fractional divisions which are always manifestations of the lack of democracy. Unfortunately, even those fractions of the Marxist-oriented working class that proclaim themselves as democratic nourish bureaucratic relations dominated by a tendency towards negative selection of associates (upholding servility), haughtiness and self-centeredness as well as rejection of any kind of dialogue; it is in this kind of relationships that a cold working style of the Comintern is still felt. This is our reality that will not prevent us from serving the interests of workers. Of recent date is our Facebook page supporting our attempts to engage more actually in the events of relevance for the workers’ struggle. Looking forward to successes of the second five-year plan!

Editorial Board

SLOVENIAN LEFT OR FOREIGN POWERS AGENCY? (Putin's challenge to Soros's "left" in Slovenia)

SLOVENIAN LEFT OR FOREIGN POWERS AGENCY?
(Putin's challenge to Soros's "left" in Slovenia)
 

      Slovenia is approaching the early elections, which will be held on June 3, 2018. In these elections, a lack of the Marxist left will be evident again, ie, there is no left that builds its politics on the class struggle of workers, rather they are servicing and advocating different power centers. However, a certain democratic shift was nevertheless made. If the former situation on the left was led by one center of power - those liberal (Soros and Die Linke, or Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and the Open Society Foundation), who is in direct coupling (like some kind of placebo therapy) with those forces that broke not only Yugoslavia, the Balkans and Eastern Europe but also the whole world - now a left-wing aligned with Putin emerges: the Socialist Party of Slovenia, headed by a certain young "socialist" who responds to the name Tadej Trček (the quotation in the "socialists" is because it is supposed that Tadej, who has appeared from thin air, is as much a "socialist" as Soros's colleague, Luka Mesec, is "leftist"). Of course, both parties are populist and we do not need to seriously grasp their names, which are here only used to serve as a mask and do not have a large democratic, let alone a workers' credibility. 

        The so-called Socialist Party of Slovenia (SPS) was founded on the Day of Youth (Tito's birthday) on May 25, 2016 in Tito's villa in Bled (not in the factory, and not among workers) in the presence of 45 party members (in Slovenia, 200 signatures of adult persons are needed to register a political party). Comparisons with a more serious world: with the establishment of a small non-parliamentary Independent Workers Party in France, more than 10,000 signatures of workers represented by the party were collected). The so-called "socialist" activities of the SPS members (presented on the blog) until now were occasionally wearing red flags, nursing flowers in front of the monuments, taking photos together with Russian uniformed veterans and visiting Kumrovec (Tito's birthplace). All of this would not be a reason to write a comment but in their so-called "program" is a clear and accentuated demand that Slovenia leave the EU and NATO. To our knowledge, so far, no relevant political party has had this request as a primary goal and that is why it is worth of special attention. 
        However, on the example of Greece and Britain, we have seen that it is not the same whether the country's exodus from the EU – an institution of dominating Europe by American financial franchises – as the result of a workers' struggle or a result of an agreement of the elite. Grexsit, as an expression of a workers' struggle, would break the EU (and therefore they should not have allowed it at any price), while Brexit, on which the elites agree, is an insignificant thing. If, therefore, the exit of Slovenia from the EU and NATO is only the advocacy of Putin's interests, and not the subject of a workers 'struggle, then it is an insignificant thing from the point of view of the workers' movement. There are also more insidious things that follow Putin's struggle against liberalism: xenophobia and homophobia in the rhetoric of the Socialist Party of Slovenia. However, the German National Socialists also considered themselves socialists, but it is certain that hatred towards different kinds of human being (that is, racism) can not be regarded as the course of a workers 'struggle - and this shows the alienation of Trček's "socialism" from the workers' movement. 
         However, Putin's friendship can be a great thing as well. For example, it can be freely said, under his umbrella, that Janša (right-wing leader) is a German agent who, for the interests of the West, along with agents Pučnik and Širca, broke Yugoslavia (at this point one should remember another, a little bigger foreign agent: Milošević). Not only that Janša did not sue Trček's in the court for such statements, but he is totally silent; he pretends he has not ever heard of it. A strong backbone is needed to consolidate and expose political truths. In this sense it seems that the free flow of important political data in the Slovenian political space, the demolition of the monopoly over the truth, and therefore the democratization of political space, and the discrediting of Slovenian body political lies, and, in particular, the lies of the Liberal (Soros's) Left, is the most important mission of the Socialist Party of Slovenia. This mission is not at all small because it brings the necessary oxygen needed for breathing in a small, stifling and well-controlled political space. So far, no one has succeeded in it, although many have merited recognitions for their contribution for democracy, so even Soros was decorated by the Slovenian state order, and the name of the mentioned German agent Pučnik is branded on the airport of Brnik. Therefore, in the upcoming elections, some serious Marxists may support these Putin "socialists", even without the illusions of their role in the workers' struggle. 

NOVI BORAC INTERNATIONAL