A spectre is haunting Europe: it is the spectre of imperialism, triumphant and triumphalist, imposing Western order on recalcitrant European nations like Serbia and translating its erstwhile allies into conquered peoples. Kosova, which welcomed the intervention of NATO with the justification of a nation oppressed by a greater power, is now paying the price and is fully under the heel of American imperialism.

Yet against this unbridled imperialism, the left is now more divided than ever.

The majority of Communists opposed the NATO imperialist aggression against Yugoslavia. Some, however, supported Serbia against NATO, whilst denying the right of Kosova to self-determination in the belief that Kosova was no more than the stooge of the Western imperialist powers. Some held that to support the full independence of Kosova in an independent state (self-determination), which would after all be presumably under the leadership of the Kosovar bourgeoisie, could only undermine the struggle of workers and communists in Yugoslavia against the western imperialists.

Still others took the view that the NATO bombing was in defence of the Kosovar people against the ethnic cleansers of Milosovic, and supported the intervention as a rare anti-racist act by the liberal bourgeoisie.

The majority view of the National Committee, as published in our statements and on our websites, was to oppose the imperialist NATO bombing whilst upholding the right of Kosova to self-determination. The National Committee for Marxist-Leninist Unity took the view that the contradiction confronting Marxist-Leninists was that, whilst Serbia was fighting a just war against NATO, they were at the same time conducting an unjust war against the people of Kosova.

This type of contradiction is nothing new. For instance, in the early nineties, when imperialism started its aggression against Iraq, while defending Iraq's stand against imperialism, those who came together to form the present committee pointed out that, though Iraq was opposing imperialism, the regime was also waging an unjust war against the Kurdish people.

The duty of Marxist-Leninists was, in both cases, to oppose imperialist aggression and at the same time to expose the unjust wars against the Kurdish and Kosovar peoples respectively.

During and after this conflict, communists claiming to be Marxist-Leninists have refused to work with others who nonetheless maintained an anti-NATO position, on the grounds that they were pro-imperialist in supporting the right of the Kosovars to self-determination.

This is leftist posturing, not communism. Communists would certainly work with, and discourse with, workers who supported social democratic or other bourgeois parties who opposed imperialism, regardless of their other views.

This division is characteristic of what is happening in other European countries, where the left splits on this and many other questions whilst remaining in agreement on a great many questions, each splinter-group claiming to adhere to Marxism-Leninism.

We MUST learn to work together and talk together in order to achieve our aims and also to convince each other that our positions are correct. What frequently happens, however, is that further division occurs whenever there is disagreement.

The reality is that this tendency to division is not a legitimate means of maintaining revolutionary purity. This is a petit-bourgeois deviation within the communist movement. It is a luxury we cannot afford as we assemble our ranks in opposition to global imperialism.