834707509

We cmphasized it because it was elear to us beforehand that there is no »so-called pure classness«, that it (the model) necessanly must include both national and invididual moments.¹

In the aforementioned plan we stressed that the Belgrade student demonstrations of June 1968 were distinct examples of diachrony, which is to say they were a component part of the world s youth move-ment which is ready to sacrifice for a better futurę for mankind.²

That was a parenthetical assertion which was not even explicated over there, nor was it proved, so therefore it can invite doubt and mis-understanding, the morę so sińce there exist many differing attempts of »interpreting« those events. It is usually stressed that the Prome-thian model is not convenient for understanding the youth movement in our country. It is asserted that this model must be kept in mind when speaking of the youth of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and of the Black youth of the USA because that youth has entered the phase of creating avante gardę battle orders which are consumed as the ele-ments of revolutionary action. The youth of the most developed capi-talist countries is joining them in their own way because they are convinced that humanism and human dignity are playing increasingly smaller roles in the societies in which they live. Meanwhile the youth of socialist countries are in an essentially different situation. These nations have entered a stage of stability after having undergone rev-

424

1

An important pre-condition in this sense is the contrast between yeaming for national identity and nationalism. That difference is elear in wartime, when many strata of one or morę peoples firfit for national liberation against a foreigri ex-ploiter. Being that at that time (wartime) the exp!oiter’s side regularly relies on groups of local exploiters the battle for national liberation is also turned against them and necessarily because of this receives a revolutionary class character. Nationalism is the ideology of local exploiters which is in league with the nationalism of foreign agressors. The above-mentioned difference separates two distinguishing phenomenon which are fundamentally different with regards to internal stimulation. In the first case it is the solidarity and self-sacrifice of an oppressed people, in the second, it is the materiał benefit of individuals and groups which strengthen their own positions by destroying other’s positions. This boundary linę is perfectly elear in Viet Nam and Cambodia, but with us it is not so easy to determine.

This is what I said of this important distinction in the already cited article. Meanwhile, the fact is that the main protagonists of our international conflicts do not take this difference into consideration at all. On the contrary, they knowingly cloud the issue. They act in the name of their nations as though they were homo-genous entities in spite of obvious experience which shows that in each of those nations, in the form of workers strikes, there exists different kinds of battles. In accordance with the abrogation of the above differences they negate the differing character of subseąuent conflicts and with this fali far below contemporary bour-geois science, for which Marx is, in this context, the undisputed authority. Due to this fact my assertion in the aforesaid article »that the thesis of linking the national question with that of class is not the result of objective observation, being that it is a function of political manipulation*, is not in the least fabricated, but is based on experience.

2

I must admit that I was not surprised that the above assertion was perfunctorily examined and a limine discarded in a political periodical. I was even morę surprised that Prof. Grgo Gamulin, who I thought preferred scientific argumentation, chose in this case a totally different approach. In the journa/ Kritika 15/70 Prof. Gamulin even in the title of his article directly associates me with »ideological reexporters«; demonstration that political labelling is not a sole privilege of those who do not hołd academic titles. Aside from this, using quotes that were out of context, he tried to show that I was self contradictory and that I do not differenti-