This article was written by a supporter of Internationalist Notes (US)/Los Angeles Workers' Voice as a contribution to the efforts for revival of real anti- capitalist struggle and against the class collaborationist trends dominating the US workers struggles. We would be groping in the dark to find ways and means to combat the current two decades long offensive of capital against the working class if we do not critically understand the previous struggles and be able to draw lessons from the experience of sectors of the class in action, experiences at the same time political and economic. It is clear the our rich rulers, their political state, and their Trojan horse appendages have probably stolen more than one march on us over last decade or more. We must start to make up some ground in the arena of class unity, organization and struggle or continue to have our asses handed back to us on a platter.
I have been teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for nearly 15 years. My teaching experience has been mainly at Elementary Schools. But I have met many teachers and classified school workers from the Secondary Schools as well. LAUSD is the 2nd biggest school district in the USA. It presently has nearly 650 schools and over 700,000 students.
Currently the budget is nearly $7 Billion per year. Today it is supposed to spend over $5,000/yr per student, but it is still only 60% of what the state of New York spends.
We all know there are a number of crises today hemorrhaging the LAUSD.
Many of these are not new. Most of the problems have been festering for decades, but some are of a more recent variety and are tied to capitals current crisis. Most of these problems have become endemic to urban public schools and many rural ones as well. My view is that most of these problems are social, economic and political. They are rooted in the very nature of our dominant social relations, the profit system and wage slavery. The public schools are worse off for being geared into this system as a whole.
I think we teachers, nurses, librarians as well as classifieds and parents and students as well can clarify some of the problems and their roots and develop tactics, strategies, organization and goals to deal with the crises in the schools. But we need to take a look at the history of how we have "gotten from there to here" and I would like to make a modest contribution, some lessons learned and real experiences that I have encountered as an LAUSD teacher. In doing this, I also wish to encourage other LAUSD certified, and classified workers, parents, students, etcetera, to also contribute to help invigorate new human forces, building new groups and movements that will rise and fight for the best education for all working class children.
I also worked in private industry for approximately 10 years before coming to the LAUSD. I have lived in Los Angeles for most of my life. The more I have worked with the LA students, the more I have learned about their problems as well as aspirations, etc. When I was hired by LAUSD, Leonard Britton was the LAUSD schools superintendent, Wayne Johnson was president of UTLA (United Teachers-Los Angeles), George Deukmejian was California Governor and Tom Bradley was LA Mayor.
The first obvious fact is that in the Central and South Area LA schools, there are many thousands of our students who live in abject poverty, and in very blighted neighborhoods. Many of our students? parents live on jobs that pay a minimum wage or even less. This was true 14 years ago, and it is even more true today. Many of my students and their parents are immigrants, but not all of them. Many parents work two or even three jobs in a day, six or seven days a week! These kind of 'jobs' are just the type the government and the corporations hype in their statistics to pad their employment rates to make the capitalist economy smell a lot rosier than the ugly realities that exist for millions of workers.
13 years back, the teachers in LAUSD were coming off a series of rotten contracts and deteriorating site conditions, larger classes, etc. Then as now, teachers moods were changing and a more combative atmosphere was present. We even used to get picked off breaks to perform recess coverages! There were a number of militant job actions leading up to the May, 1989 LA teachers strike, a strike mainly over pay and benefits but also over who should control of how schools function.
I heard UTLA Union President, Wayne Johnson, speak at the old union hall on 3rd Street. He said in May 1989, a couple weeks before the walkout that "we would take no less than 11% a year for 3 years" and he was filled with much sound and fury against the general working conditions. Over 95% of the regular teachers and 75% of the substitutes staying out the first week carried out the strike. In the second week, maybe 90% of the teachers and 70% of the subs were still out. 33,000 walked off the job. The key thing though was that the support of the students and parents was overwhelming.
Thousands marched on the picket lines at hundreds of school sites. At the daily after picket strike rallies, the student-parent supporters also came to the huge strike rallies such as the huge throngs of strikers meeting at Exposition Park and Griffith Park and other sites.
The LAUSD bosses said they had no money for pay raises! But they found money to pay scabs $250+ a day. They even tried to import more scabs from other cities! But they still could not recruit enough scabs to get any kind of learning accomplished during the 2 weeks of strike actions! The students in secondary schools opposed their scabbery and they made the scabs lives miserable! Even some upper grade elementary students knew the class issues raised in the strike, and these too demanded their "real teachers back" and an end to worn out books and second rate education facilities! Schools became holding pens, secured by the Administration and the cops.
The strikers had the district and the political establishment on the run by the end of the first week of the strike. The strikers got more militant on the picket lines, scabs trying to get across picket lines were met with more than verbal denunciations and a number of their cars suffered damage.
On picket lines, teachers and others became more angered and firmer in their resolve. People became more open minded and politicized too. There was some good openings for radical and socialist/communist politics to get a good hearing. Some community meetings were also being held, some were fairly well attended, people began to raise workers? political issues that went even beyond strikers? unionist demands. I think this not only led the LAUSD bosses but the Demopublican politicians in Sacramento to meet some of the teachers? demands. During the second week of the strike, LAUSD announced that tens of millions of dollars had miraculously 'been found in auxiliary accounts". In Sacramento, suddenly new monies also were found available to deal with finding a way to end the strike.
The UTLA union honchos were also in a mood to end the strike after 2 weeks as things could soon have soon slipped out of their tight controls. They accepted a District offer of 8% per year raise for 3 years, retroactive back to July 1998. They also made a big pitch that the District offer of real School Based Management headed by joint teacher-administration councils that allegedly would put a spike into bureaucratic inertia and waste. Helen Bernstein and Wayne Johnson said we had won a great victory by May 26. But the settlement was a gain only relative to the drubbings of concessions contracts that other AFL/CIO unions had been signing onto in other industries. From the day tenured teachers came back and the subs and new teachers amnestied. The district bosses and the Demopublicans were laying plans to take back every gain of the strike.
From 1990 to 1992, there was a big economic recession. It hit California workers pretty hard. Immediately the Sacramento politicians in 'bi-partisan' legislation, cut the state tax rates significantly for the Corporations and the rich down from 11.5 % down to 9.3%. This meant there would be a huge shortfall in funding for schools. In the capitalist order, the workers get the shaft, and when the crises deepen, the rich demand that their political state step up austerity, make more social service cuts and make the workers sacrifice more so the bosses can lift their profit rates and gain hold of more markets from their competitors.
Drastic cuts hit the California Public schools from 1991-1993. The District and School board bosses got a 3% pay cut concessions contract from the craft unions in 1991. This was followed by more concessions a whopping 10% pay cut in 1992, which carried on until 1994. The late Helen Bernstein was then the chief of UTLA, she and her minions tried to put a brave face on rotten contract deals. Her regime used every trick in the book to get the cuts passed for her mainly Democratic -and Republican Party pals. In 1992, in the face of the 10% cut, members had voted to strike 2 times by whopping margins, but Bernstein and company kept procrastinating. Every lie and excuse was promoted. This struggle came in wake of the Rodney King beating by the LAPD and the ensuing mayhem of the LA Riots after the acquittal of four of the cops that gave Mr. King that thug like beating with batons and jackboots, after they had cuffed him.
Bernstein and company put the kabosh on these political openings for organizing of new struggles. The unions and the bosses press/TV both engaged in scare tactics about more riots breaking out if there was big city-wide schools strike.
The militants in the UTLA rank and file did build small organizations and caucuses. Most of these reform led outfits end up succumbing to the pressures of trade union careerism and drive rank and filers to passivity.
One group, SCAN, School Community Action Network was formed during the demonstrations opposing the Gulf War of 1991. SCAN drew support from not only teachers, but parents & LAUSD school bus drivers as well. Its high water mark was the protest planned prior to the LA Riot for May 9, 1992, against the cuts in LAUSD school services which though having a legal permit for a rally in downtown LA, was suppressed by the occupying California National Guard and LAPD. About 30 SCAN supporters were arrested. Guardsman dispersed many others, officers with pistols drawn and enlisted troops menacingly pointing their loaded M-16s.
But SCAN soon was taking contributions/grants from liberal foundations like Liberty Hill and this of course was the death knell of any more class struggle militancy. Some members began to directly enter the official trade union apparatus themselves. SCAN organized a number of good forces from the ranks but it suffered the fate of all militant reformist union caucuses who don't draw a balance sheet on just how the unions have degenerated into tools for capitalism to control the workers that they are today. Just because workers are in the AFL/CIO unions does not make the unions bonafide workers? organizations! The latest period, from 1995-2000 sees the LA schools deteriorating more, especially the working conditions for teachers and the classroom environment for students. There was and is still a chronic shortage of modern texts/lab materials for science, social studies and math, especially in secondary schools. True, there has been class size reductions down to 20 in grades 1-3 but overcrowding is a huge problem for all the other grades, Kindergarten, and also from grades 4-12. It is not uncommon for an LAUSD inner city high school to have classes with near 40 students in a class! The bosses and their ?kept? press and TV news shows say this is a "new economy" or a "boom economy". This is true, but only for the upper petty bourgeois, certain professions, and of course the 1 or 2 % of owners, the bloated rich exploiters on top of society. Actually in the inner cities, we can see that economic (and political!) inequality is growing. We can easily see how in our society that 1% of the population, the super rich bosses control nearly 50% of all the wealth that workers produce! Social inequality is endemic under capitalism and the poverty levels for most LAUSD students and their families are shockingly high. It is very common to see young kids? teeth rotting in their mouths until they fall out because of the amount of poverty and inability to afford the 'free' market rates for medical insurance coverage.
Over that last 5 years or so, the unions, the political hacks & district bosses will cackle that teachers and other school employees have again 'received' yearly pay raises. But to call 4 or 5 % more a year before taxes a 'raise' is a real stretch! These have been basically just 'cost of living increases' and even that description today is fast becoming a stretch as well.
As much as wages/salaries are a key issue in current LAUSD/union negotiations. Today there are now other key issues as well, bosses demands for more standardized testing (Stanford 9, etc), district appointed coordinators, extra time on campus, a new one size fits all reading program, District-Union joint peer review boards which will also become clearing houses for disciplinary action against so-called 'troublemaking' teachers.
We have in LAUSD a bought-and-paid-for School Board, the majority of whom each garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mayor Riordan's Committee of 30 Corporate CEO's to 'win' board positions that pay but $25,000/yr! Four board members are so stuffed with corporate loot, they could not possibly have spent all of it. They want the public schools run like typical capitalist corporations, top-down and in semi-military style with the Administrators barking the orders, and all below them must immediately 'pop-tall' standing unquestioning & at attention- or be held to the most corrupt and hypocritical kind of "accountability". Mind you, there is no real 'accountability' for present Superintendent Romer's little pets! In fact he just brought back five administrators who were neck deep in the New Belmont High School building fiasco that will cost the district a minimum of $200,000.000.00. Gee, could not many of our struggling students in dilapidated facilities, and bungalows have used these monies to fund needed school materials and tutoring, or working air-conditioners, or space for safe new schools, etc? Now there is a tentative strike date announced by UTLA leaders of February 27, 2001. There are even a number of pre-strike actions being planned. The current wage offers are not even much of raise. 20% more spread over a 3 year contract may not even keep up with inflation! And implementation of more standardized tests and longer hours of work with yet more class overcrowding in many areas would actually amount to huge concessions to management and the big corporate bosses.
We school employees need to help parents organize to defend their class interests as well, and not just on the education front, we need new organization as a class against the austerity and take-back offensives of the rich. A strike could bring 40,000 or more workers out in protest. We should try to make the actions as strong and united as is possible but this should be based on recognition and support of the class struggle for education and in the key industries where the worker parents of our students also toil and are ground down by lousy pay, unsafe conditions, and overwork. New organizations cannot be built from above, by career-seeking petty reformers who support and cover for an outmoded and deadly social system. Instead new organizations and struggles must be built by the workers /students whose interests lie in the fight for a new social order where workers control society with planned production for human needs and not for capitalists profit rates and greed.
LAWV/Internationalist Notes-US
A mythology of the "libertarian" the "anti-authoritarian" is built up around a political current that has often been neither libertarian nor anti-authoritarian. In practical activity we see a tendency that is little different from those whom they wrongly claim are "Marxists". When they speak of Marxists they mean, Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyists, and all those political groups falsely laid claim to some sort of version of "Marxism", indeed anyone except those who genuinely represent Marxism are called Marxist by this tendency. This is quite simply a convenient homage to the dominant lie, the lie of the bourgeoisie that Marx=Lenin=Stalin. Of course it is far more convenient for opportunists to go along with this lie than to challenge it.
A deeper examination reveals that not only is there a lack of critical examination of the experience of the struggles of the working class but there is no clear examination of the class nature of capitalist society or any clear stand on the real role of institutions within capitalist society. We see that the role of unions in capitalism not understood, nor is the role of national liberation movements. One would think that a critique of Marxism would require an understanding of Marxism. Likewise a critique of the Russian Revolution would require an understanding of the actual events surrounding it. What comes from the camp of the libertarian left is not a critique but an empty argument that relies on the bourgeois version of what passes for history. The ultimate end of this logic of the evil "authoritarian Marxism" is not that there are historical lessons to be learned but that events such as the Russian Revolution should not have taken place. Of course it is ridiculous to look back in hindsight and say that a historical fact "should not have happened" as much as it is ridiculous to hold up a vision of a revolutionary society composed of self-managed cooperatives of small producers.
In the 1880s anarchists were active in the working class movements in the US such that a city like Chicago could boast 5 anarchist journals with a total circulation of about 30,000. Of course, things have changed somewhat since then and during the intervening years such a presence has considerably diminished. So when did the myth of the authoritarian Marx get its start? One of the founders of anarchism as an organized movement was Mikhail Bakunin. His personal ideology was one that placed a halo around peasant revolution and pan-slavicism. His beliefs were imbued with a fierce hostility towards German Social Democracy. We are given a picture of a man who was particularly anti-German, nationalist and anti-Semitic. We see this in Statism and Anarchy where in speaking of Marx and Engels he expressed the following sentiments: "As statists come what may, they are obliged to curse any popular revolution, especially a popular revolution, which is by nature anarchistic and leads directly to the abolition of the state. As all devouring pan-Germanists, they are obliged to reject a peasant revolution for the very fact that it is a specifically Slavic revolution." Bakunin initially viewed the peasant class as the most exploited class and therefore the true agent of revolutionary change. His statement above, betrays a basic hostility to Marx and Engels that emanated above from an anti-German national chauvinist standpoint.
In Marxism, Freedom and the State we see again his view of Marx as the proponent of a rival nationalism: "Let us consider the real, national policy of Marx himself. Like Bismarck, he is a German patriot, he desires the greatness and power of Germany as a state." Marx, far from being a national chauvinist did see a progressive historical role for the bourgeoisie in the development of the means of production that would lead to the creation of a proletariat capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Bakunin viewed history more from a romantic and metaphysical viewpoint that comes through clearly in his writing.
Bakunin created the Alliance des D‚mocrates Socialistes, the program of the organization was one that he had proposed at the Berne Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom of September of 1868 were it was rejected. He then took this as the Platform for his Alliance des D‚mocrates Socialistes whose members were from the minority of the League of Peace and Freedom, a bourgeois reformist organization. The new organization was intended to be a part of the First International but was to have a separate organizational existence at the same time.
From the program and rules of this Alliance we read: "The Socialist minority of the League of Peace and Freedom, having separated itself from the League as a result of the majority vote at the Berne congress, the majority being formally opposed to the fundamental principle of all workers? associations ? that of economic and social equalization of classes and individuals?" On the uprisings in Spain in 1873, in point 3 of conclusion Engels wrote: "All that remains of the so-called principles of anarchy, free federation of independent groups, etc., is the boundless, senseless disintegration of the revolutionary means of struggle, which enabled the government to subdue one town after another with a handful of troops practically unresisted." It was during the creation of the first Spanish Republic that the anarchism which had been preaching abstention from elections on principle at a time (unlike today) when voting was able to achieve significant reforms for workers and help lay the basis for the further growth of the working class through the capitalist development of a modern proletariat, they were forced to change their course. So a way out of this principle was proposed that allowed the anarchists to officially abstain as an organization but also allowed individual members to vote as they liked.
The result of this abdication of responsibility was that workers voted for those appeared to be the most radical, in this case many ended up voting for the Independent Party. This we can recognize as a familiar way of avoiding the task of coming to an understanding on the nature of elections, or unions, or national liberation. Many anarchist organization today practice this political cop-out as a matter of course, it helps avoid any kind of conflict or debate within an organization and it allows the loose structure of a federation to encompass a spectrum of tendencies that range from radical reformism to utopian reformism.
During the Mexican Revolution repeatedly made crippling compromises to the Constitutionalist leadership of the revolution. In recruiting some 7,000 Mexico City workers into "Red Battalions" La Casa del Obrero Mundial helped the Constitutionalists win major victories. By 1916 Mexico was shaken by a severe economic crisis and a working class response to the crisis that lead to a series of mass strikes. The government responded with a series of minor reforms. Indeed the May 1916 strikes did not result in a crisis with which the ruling class was incapable of dealing. The general strike passed and did not result in the overthrow of the ruling class. Eventually through their own misjudgment of their strengths and the willingness of Carranza to make a deal the Mexican government, after having made a few initial concessions declared martial law and two of La Casa?s leaders were killed, one, Ernesto Velasco, after a military show trial and the other, Barrag n Hern ndez was shot to death.
The structure of anarchist organizations far from being the non-hierarchical bodies that some would claim them to be have often proved to be indeed hierarchical. Even Bakunin?s own conception of the leadership of a revolutionary organization is much like that which today?s libertarians would call vanguardist. At the top of Bakunin?s hierarchy would stand a handful of militants lead by Bakunin himself. The militants at the bottom of this hierarchy would have to have unwavering loyalty to their own national leaderships. This conception of a revolutionary elite did play a role in the formation of anarcho-syndicalist theory. More often than not this "revolutionary elite" is implied or simply not discussed at all. Hierarchical structures are often found in the most democratic of organizations, though perhaps not officially as with the organizations of the state-capitalist left.
Father Thomas J. Haggerty?s "Wheel of Fortune" was a graphic illustration of what a future society would look like once organized along the lines of Industrial Unionist Democracy. Around an amorphous Central Administration, radiate the sections of the working class in control of industry and separated into various "departments", public services, distribution, manufacture, food stuffs and so forth. The IWW version differed from the DeLeonist SLP?s version in that the SLP saw a role for an electoral party acting together with the Socialist Industrial Union.
In the Spanish Civil War anarchism would be a corner stone in dragooning workers into an imperialist war that the left-wing of capitalism still calls a "revolution". Shortly before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War anarchists were relied upon to vote for the Popular Front and they helped put Manuel Aza?a in power. They participated in placing Stalinists, Social Democrats and their own leaders in power in Spain.
Buenaventura Durruti speaking on the participation of workers in the Spanish Republic said: "The worker who votes and then quietly returns home, will be counterrevolutionary; so will the worker who does not vote but nonetheless refuses to fight." During the Civil War the FAI provided judges and the CNT provided police personnel. The CNT/FAI even had ministers in the parliament of the Spanish Republic. Indeed the participation of the CNT/FAI in the Popular Front government caused a schism between the CNT/FAI and the AIT as a whole.
Even after the murders of their own militants, even after the POUM had been outlawed the FAI continued to participate in the Popular Front parliament. FAI leaders such as Garc¡a Oliver, who became Minister of Justice under the Popular Front regime. This was hardly a betrayal of principle. In fact it was the logical extension of the lack of coherent theory or coherent organizational structure. As a result, anarchists today alongside (ex)Stalinists or Trotskyists still refer to the Spanish Civil War as a "Revolution". Even referring to this bloody imperialist episode as a revolution betrays the total lack of understanding of imperialism and of the role that revolutionaries play within the working class. Thus there was no betrayal, rather what occurred in Spain was the result of opportunistic counterrevolutionary activity and practice. More precisely, the self-proclaimed representatives of workers ended up fighting as footsoldiers of Russian imperialism.
This is example is not unique in the history of the libertarian left. In China, anarchists attempted to become involved in the Kuomintang in 1927.
Wu Zhi Hui defended anarchist involvment in the Kuomintang by pointing to Kropotkin?s support for the "war effort" during the First World War. The argument was that anarchists had always supported "progressive" causes. In essence they were agreeing with Kropotkin?s support of the "war effort" of imperialism during World War One. This was, in fact, nothing other than a last desperate and opportunistic attempt to regain ground lost to the young Chinese Communist Party that was brutally repressed by the very forces of the Kuomintang that Chinese anarchists attempted to work within.
Today anarchists make similar arguments when it comes to support for national liberation movements.
Of the anarchist tendencies today that attempt to maintain an official international existence they all uphold a theory and practice that has changed little except for a greater emphasis on the political flavors of the month, support for the latest national liberation movements, and activities within reformist issue oriented coalitions.
The organizations that comprise the AIT(IWA) today maintain activity largely centered around unions. The Spanish branch of this organization is the CNT that defines in their document CNT: Otra forma hacer sindicalismo itself as maintaining a "syndicalism of anarchist ideas". It would perhaps be better given their own historical record to say that they uphold another form of class collaboration. The IWW in the US, also arguably anarchosyndicalist, is practically identical at least in the actual form of their organization. Hampered by the march of history and the radically altered nature of unions today in capitalist society, the IWW being unable to organize a union along the lines of its unions during its heyday is forced to satisfy with other activities. Thus robbed of its purpose it can only go in whatever direction its members decide. In the 1970s the IWW attempted to carry out workplace union organizing activities in Chicago with little success this was referred to in the Anarchosyndicalist Review as "the Virden disaster". In 1981 they were involved in the Kolosas strike in Ann Arbor at a printing and publishing business called NRC in this strike they sought to gain control over the shop floor than attempt to gain legal certification. In four years of activity they never succeeded in winning control over the shop. Eventually in the 1990s they managed to unionize the University of California at Berkeley recyclers into a union.
They went through an extraordinary effort just to represent a small number of workers. One would think that the problems they encounter could be traced to the fact that unions today are called upon to serve capitalism and cannot represent workers. The relationship between unions and the state is fundamentally different than in the past this can be seen by the very fact that this "one big union" is really a collection of small cooperatives alongside a couple of unions. If they came to understand the role of unions as organs of the capitalist state then it would eliminate their purpose for being.
No organization of a utopian or radical reformist nature has even attempted to assess the changes in the composition of the working class. A recent report from Human Rights Watch, entitled Unfair Advantage: Worker's Freedom of Association in the United States under International Human Rights Standards, asserts that almost one third of workers in the United States work in some form of "contingent" or precarious labor. Some forty million workers are working as temporary, part-time, contracted and sub-contracted, on-call, or day labor. These workers are excluded from the legal right to organize a Union, they most likely can't get bank loans and probably don't qualify for unemployment benefits. Employment in temporary agencies in the US doubled between 1982 and 1989, then doubled again between 1989 and 1997. If these figures are any indication of the course of events this figure will double again within a few short years. What this means is that for workers today a union, any type of union, is simply not even a possibility. Undaunted, many would be anti-authoritarians still caress the idea of a revolutionary union.
The International of Anarchist Federations, founded in 1968 by groups from four different countries, demonstrated its own inability to understand the role of unions. In 1990 at their congress in Valencia, Spain, a resolution was passed which encouraged participation of their members in anarchosyndicalist unions or other unions in "a non-bureaucratic way". In 1986 in Paris, from October 31st to November 3 during their fourth international congress they discussed "solidarity with the popular struggle in Nicaragua and Haiti" with a proposal to create a "commission of relations for Central and South America. We see that they also do not understand the nature of imperialism why the bourgeoisie exchanges one government for another and they confuse this with a popular struggle just as surely as many of them support the Zapatistas despite their actual track record. When these movements they support fail, they blame those whom they call "marxists" and they fail to ask themselves why they were supporting such movements in the first place. As a matter of truth these groups have never undertaken the task of coming to a solid understanding of the bourgeois nature of guerrilla warfare (or pseudo-guerrilla warfare as in the case of the Zapatistas armed radical reformism) and national liberation. Some groups have claimed a "critical" rather than an "uncritical" support for national liberation, this is indeed this stance is practically identical to that of many troskyist sects. Today, given that the great imperialist powers have long divided up the world, national liberation simply serves as a means for the redivision of the world among the imperialist powers. Therefore today, rather than during the period that ended with the outbreak of the First World War, national liberation will not serve a progressive purpose as in the days when such a movement could lead to the further development and growth of the working class.
When a deeper analysis is made one sees that any support for national liberation is uncritical. A lack theoretical grounding leads such tendencies to drift in the same radical and utopian reformist currents as the "authoritarian" state-capitalist left. This is not unintentional, rather than putting forward a revolutionary perspective for the need to overthrow capitalist class they choose to follow any movement dominated, ideologically or otherwise, by the class enemies of workers. This is put forward as practical activity.
Revolutionaries should use such events as an opportunity to advance their perspective through intervention aimed at the most conscious layers of the working class that are present. As we saw in Seattle, the promotion of such protests, that are perceived by some to be a beginning of a new more generalized struggle against capitalism, flies in the face of the fact that the very elements that control this movement are seeking a reformed capitalism and thus have no interest in truly opposing capitalism. Since the Seattle protests received such a brutal response from the police, the protest against the Transatlantic Business Dialog (TABD) in Cincinnati November 17th and 18th, by contrast, was considerably more under the control of non-violent reformist forces, rather than those of more radical reformists that seek a human face for capitalism. The coalitions that sponsored the protest, the Coalition for a Humane Economy and the Cincinnati Direct Action Coalition (with the operating definition of "direct action" being non-violent civil-disobedience), clearly desire a kinder, gentler capitalism. This of course is impossible. When faced with this impossibility utopian reformism react violently and in so doing demonstrate to the world that "anti-capitalist" activity is nothing more than a fruitless and destructive outburst that can be easily brought into line.
Any political tendency that claims a revolutionary alternative for the overthrow of the capitalist class surely must take a greater step in rejecting the all-pervasive ideology of the bourgeoisie. What we see in these organizations is essentially a reformist anti-partyist reaction combined with an arsenal of activities and practical positions that hardly differ from those of the left of capitalism as a whole. A real anti-capitalism in the sense of a revolutionary alternative to capitalism has been a potential reality ever since capitalism entered its imperialist phase. Communism, internationalist and revolutionary, is the real anti-capitalism. Today any attempt to make the institutions of global capitalism more just and responsive to the needs of the needy are simply illusions. Those who would genuinely seek the ultimate aim of overthrowing the rule of capital must make themselves, when and where it is possible, as a separate and unique force distinct from the Christians, liberals, national chauvinist trade union leaders and farmers. What is required is a revolutionary party capable to putting forward the revolutionary perspective facing the working class.
ASm
*See Revolutionary Perspectives 18, "Our "Anti-Capitalism" and Theirs",
available by writing to the comrades of the CWO.