IP
intro to "Promises and pitfalls of 'The Battle of Seattle'"
The text which follows was written by a comrade who intervened with a leaflet in the protests against the meeting of the World Trade Organization that shut down the city of Seattle last November. By and large, revolutionaries have reacted to the events in Seattle in one of two ways: for some, the Seattle protests, with their violent confrontations with the police, was a turning point in the class struggle against capital, in which the "social peace" that has largely prevailed since the 1980's was finally shattered; for others, the Seattle protests were under the control of leftists and unions, and unfolded on the political terrain of capital itself. For us, the events in Seattle cannot be reduced to either of the above scenarios. Whether Seattle represented a breach in the fortress of capital will only be determined post festum, through the subsequent unfolding of events. That is because, on the one hand, what brought thousands onto the streets of Seattle was a determination to resist the juggernaut of capitalist globalization, an incipient recognition that that globalization has rendered sectoral and even national frontiers superfluous, while on the other hand, the political organizations that dominated the protests sought to confront the disastrous effects of globalization with reactionary calls for protectionism, Third World nationalism, and even America First. It is quite possible that the forces of capital will recuperate the the incipient movement against globalization, but the outcome is not determined in advance. It is also possible that the anger and frustration that exploded on the streets of Seattle, and that was focused on the WTO, will overflow the protective dikes established by capital; that those who protested will recognize that there can be no alliance with factions of capital, and that class struggle must have its base at the point of production, even if that point of production is no longer the Fordist factory that dominated the capitalist landscape for most of the twentieth century. And here too, Seattle may represent a breakthrough for the working class: not just because it took the forces of order by surprise, but because it may represent a shift away from the struggles of the past, based on the Fordist factory, to a struggle based on circuits of production which are both decentralized and global in nature. Seattle was certainly a response to the effects of globalization, though a response that capital may well contain. But, it might also just become a harbinger of a class reaction within the new globalized point(s) of production, and both the material and immaterial labour upon which it is based.
Autumn
2000