All the World's A Rage?
In the year since the November 30 protests against the World Trade
Organization in Seattle, the radical press have published article
after article proclaiming a new spirit of revolt: Surely the presence
of thousands of young radicals, often carrying the red and black
flags of anarchism, is the opening of a new era of global revolt
after years of capitalist business-as-usual.'
Seattle succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its organizers. The
tens of thousands of demonstrators, in an admittedly heterogeneous
crowd, actually succeeded in shutting down a meeting of the World
Trade Organization. In the months after Seattle a series of high
profile protests with a similar focus took place often mobilizing
around the slogan "turn [your city here..] into Seattle." The
pattern, appears to be, however, one of diminishing returns. Six
months after Seattle, a militant but smaller crowd of protesters
against the World Bank gathered in Washington. R&BN
endorsed the actions, and noted their success, but also that the
state had moved in advance to prevent a repetition of Seattle. A
protest against the Organization of American States in Windsor,
Ontario drew several thousand people, but the heavy hand of the state
was prepared. The protests against the Republican convention in
Philadelphia and the Democratic convention in Los Angeles drew plenty
of headlines, and even condemnation of the heavy handed tactics of
the LAPD, but the conventions accomplished their business with little
difficulty. A partial exception to this trend appears to be Prague,
where demonstrators forced the IMF meeting to close a day early.
Already in preparation is a "Carnival Against Capitalism" in Quebec
City next spring.
The capitalist mass media, whose task it is to explain these
events within an officially approved framework, has selected
anarchism' as the ideology de jour to explain the radicals. Two
generations ago the label would have been Marxist-Leninist',
but the bloom has rather gone off of that rose; a fact which is
deeply troubling to many would be revolutionary parties who have
spilt much ink fretting over this matter. The political labels the
media or the demonstrators themselves attach are not significant;
what is significant, is what those same demonstrators do. Opposition
to globalization is what has fueled much the protests, but what is
globalization and what does opposition to it mean: British truckers
upset over rising petrol costs; a French farmer who attacked a
McDonald's restaurant; anti-sweatshop protesters. All of these have
at certain times been seen as opposing globalization, yet clearly
they are all different (and in some ways the same).
Globalization is a fact of capitalist production and has been
since capital's inception. While the form of capital's
internationalism' has certainly evolved, it is quite erroneous
to see globalization as a recent phenomena. The WTO, the IMF and the
other institutions of global capital exist because capital likes
nominal agreements to control markets. This should not be taken to
mean the suppression of competition, rather these organizations exist
to protect the interests of the stronger capitalists against the
weaker ones. Globalization then, is not a misguided policy by the
powerful capitalist nations, who having grown tired of exploiting
their own workers, have ventured to remote parts of the globe in
search of greater rates of profit. Yet this idea is clearly present
in some of the arguments countering sweatshops: Pressure must be put
on the Gap or Kathy Lee Gifford to stop exploiting workers . The same
idea was present during the divestment campaigns against South Africa
in the 1980's; that we can persuade our' capitalists to act in
a moral way.
This misunderstanding of the nature of globalization, leads into
something called anti- capitalism. If capitalism is wage-labour and
the production of value, then to be worthy of the name
anti-capitalism must be a strategy or strategies which lead to the
abolition of these things. Yet, the ever-marginal left bestows the
magic label "anti- capitalist" on any movement which passes in front
of its eyes. Much of what is called anti-capitalism is in fact only
opposition to aspects of capitalism. Many unions oppose aspects of
globalization, such as tightening or relaxing of trade polices,
because they fear it will have a negative impact on their members'
jobs (save "our" jobs?), or their nation states. This is not
anti-capitalism, but defence of national capitalism. Earlier this
year on the socialism from below' list, a supporter of the
Canadian Trotskyist group Socialist Action boldly asserted that the
majority of the members of the social democratic New Democratic Party
were anti-capitalist; yet, the NDP has been since its inception, a
pro-capitalist reform movement: Anti- capitalism has become a
catch-all phrase taken to means any aspect of opposition to a
particular capitalist policy. The term has become more or less a
bastardized expression in the same way that anti-fascism or
anti-racism includes people who are opposed to fascism or racism, but
do so from the perspective of defence of the democratic state.
Many leftist papers have dusted off the term direct action to
describe the anti-globalization movement and actions, and here
something must be said about the term direct action. Direct action is
a strategy of political action which relies on workers self- action
to secure a desired goal. An example might be shutting down an
assembly line through a sit-down to protest unsafe working conditions
rather than filing a complaint with the union or government safety
agency. Both options might produce a safer working area, but the
former would not only take a much shorter time, it would build
solidarity among those involved in the struggle and also an awareness
of the power of collective action.
Yet in today's political vocabulary, "direct action" is
interpreted to mean any form of action short of marking an X'
on a ballot. Throwing a brick through a Starbucks window is certainly
a direct action and the thrower of the projectile is making a direct
statement against the glass window of the coffee chain; it may even
provide the thrower with a flush of adrenaline, but as a strategy it
will fail. First of all it is likely to be the action of a minority,
which acts as a de-facto vanguard. Second, it breeds no sense of
solidarity among the oppressed or a sense of collective strength.
Which is not to say, that the solution is organize more people to
throw bricks, but that actions ought to build solidarity not promote
activism. The professional activist, making sacrifices' for the
class has an unfortunately long history on the left.
In the US, the main beneficiary of Seattle, at least in the short
run, has been Ralph Nader, the Presidential candidate of the Green
Party. Actually while it is technically accurate to say Nader is the
Green candidate, it is truer to say that the Green Party is running
for Ralph Nader rather than the other way around. While some believe
that Nader might change the face of class composition in the US or at
least have a positive impact on the workers' movement, Nader is quite
clear about his role in all of this: He is beating the bushes for
Democratic candidates in upcoming elections.
The point is not to spit on the, in some cases, extremely
courageous actions of those who have engaged in a radical practice by
fighting the cops, etc., but simply to see the limitations of that
practice. As yet the protests have remained in the streets; but if it
should occur, as in France in 1968, that there is an echo in the
workplaces, then an anti-capitalism worthy of the name may
emerge.
First published in Red & Black Notes #12, Fall 2000
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