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The anti-globalisation movement after September 11
By Peter Boyle
The following paper opened the plenary session, "The movement against capitalist globalisation after September 11". Peter Boyle is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia.
It is tempting to offer a simple string of place names and numbers to the question "What effect did September 11 terror attacks in the US have on the movement against capitalist globalisation?": Barcelona 500,000, Rome 1million, Porto Allegre 51,000.
That gives us part of the answer. The new movement against the "inevitable" global advance of capitalist power has not been cowed by the imperialists’ military and ideological offensive in the name of the "war against terrorism". Indeed their offensive has underlined and exacerbated the dangerous instability of global capitalism.
Certainly the giant mobilisations in Barcelona and Rome will radiate a new wave of political confidence to progressive activists around the world.
But we can’t rest comfortably on this happy observation. We have still to find out how even this new forward momentum is, in countries like the USA, Australia and in most of the Third World where the longstanding resistance to capitalist globalisation is still seen by most of its activists in specific national contexts.
We also have to acknowledge that the imperialist offensive is still gathering momentum for targets beyond mercilessly pulverised Afghanistan. Sharon’s attempt to "do a Bush" on the Palestinians is a graphic reminder that the movement’s enemies are in a dangerously aggressive mood, prepared to risk a lot to inflict more devastating blows on any resistance to their rule.
In our different arenas of struggle we are all still testing the impact of imperialism’s offensives.
How successful is the imperialists military and economic terror? We saw how the corporate rulers what they wanted at the Doha WTO summit with thinly disguised terror against Third World governments. But we also see that the war in Afghanistan is far from over and that overwhelming military superiority hasn’t broken the Palestinian intifada.
How successful is the imperialist ideological offensive – the new xeno-racism – in poisoning the minds of the masses in the imperialist countries against global solidarity?
These are complex questions whose answers depend on the directions of both the new movement and the capitalist rulers. And here the question of the character of the new movement is pertinent.
We, in the Democratic Socialist Party, first seriously grappled with this question after the "spirit of Seattle" came to Australia on September 11, 2000. The fantastic 3-day blockade of the World Economic Forum regional summit in Melbourne involved some 20,000 people and entered the list of global sequels to Seattle 1999.
But what was the next step for the new movement in Australia? The capitalists rarely hold global summits in Australia, and – given the distance from North America and Europe – summit-hopping was not a good option for most activists in this country.
We put forward the idea of a May 1 blockade of the stock exchanges and last year this became a fitting sequel to S11. It mobilised about 20,000 people around the country in audacious actions, some of which were attacked by the police. Except for Melbourne, the trade unions did not participate in the actions, though many individual union members did so. May Day was renewed as a day of international solidarity and radical struggle in this country. This year union involvement in M1 has increased particularly in Melbourne and Perth.
In the process of working out what to propose as a sequel to S11 we studied the new movement with the method of Karl Marx. If we want to understand a thing, we must study it in its development, study the contradictions that fuel its motion and study its interaction with other forces.
We recognised that the power of the movement really lay beyond the thousands who have so far mobilised outside the various summits. It lay with much broader masses beginning to or threatening to move into struggle against neoliberalism:
So the legacy of past defeats and retreats was not all negative as it opened up the possibility of much needed renewal in the progressive movements. But it also gave the new movement a loose and semi-spontaneous character.
We observed that although the central principle of the movement could be said to be global solidarity against corporate tyranny the very real North-South gap also left its mark on the movement. This could be seen in numerous ways, including, for instance, the restricted participation of Third World activists in the celebrated sequels to Seattle and the role of NGOs as moneyed-brokers for Third World participation and self-appointed voices for so-called "civil society".
The movement’s character also showed itself in a number of important discussions and debates among activists.
The first could be called the tactics debate. This covered questions such as how does the movement go beyond protesting at the corporate tyrants’ summits? Confrontationist tactics, independent mass action or some combination of both? Should the activists build the movement around general "anti-capitalism" or around a combination of the specific areas of mass discontent and resistance? Is the new movement separate to the current movements against war and racism? How should it organise?
Like other activists we are working out our positions on these debates. But we are committed to learning from experience, to listening to others in the movement and to having a constructive discussion on how to take the movement forward. This is the opposite of sectarian point scoring to "prove" that one always had the right answer.
In summary, we relate to the attraction of confrontationist tactics to many activists because of their frustration and disillusionment with co-opted or conservativised old movements and the anger at the monstrous crimes of the capitalist globalisers. We share the desire to impose the greatest possible political costs on the corporate rulers. But we also know that the ruling class will not be shocked or terrorised into behaving. September 11, 2001 should have demolished such illusions.
To impose real costs you need to mobilise masses of people into a struggle which has a dynamic that is subversive of the system. The organisational tactics of our movement should be those that advance such ends. We need organisational forms that are broad, inclusive, democratic and politically independent from the institutions of corporate tyranny.
Finally we recognised that the movements against war and racism are an integral part of the anti-globalisation movement. Barcelona showed them to be seamless. The new antiwar movement is the anti-globalisation movement responding to the wars of globalising capital.
Vision
The second set of debates could be described as being about vision. If we are against capitalist globalisation what are we for? We could say socialism, but what does that mean? And do we have the skill and confidence to explain what we are for to the broad layers being brought into the movement?
Michael Albert is right that there is a "vision problem" arising out of the defensiveness of many progressive activists and a real concern about how to take as many people along with the movement. That’s one source of the vision problem.
But another source of the vision problem is the real contradictions in the movement itself, rooted in the gross and growing power and wealth gap between the North and South. There is more than one vision for the movement. It is revealed most graphically in the political agenda of that section of the movement, chiefly represented by trade union officials in imperialist countries, that advocates the economic protection of the privileged economies of the North against competition from the South. Certainly not all sections of the movement are against capitalism or for its replacement. The largest section of the movement’s activists may only be convinced that neoliberal capitalism, with its dramatic enhancement of the power of the biggest global corporations and the states that serve their interests, is the problem.
We could hide the real debate about the movement’s vision by pointing out that neoliberal capitalism is "actually existing capitalism". That is true and this gives us socialists an advantage in that a movement that goes into struggle against actually existing capitalism – indeed the only thing that capitalism can be in our time – will favour anti-capitalist ideas.
As socialists, part of our job in the movement is to engage in the debates about vision. The debate won’t be won for us by the capitalist crisis. Indeed capitalism in its current phase of development offers certain layers of the exploited a chance to try and benefit from the privatisation or deregulation. Capitalist globalisation also fosters greater competition among those its exploits and so unleashes both forces for greater global solidarity as well as forces of xenophopbia, racism and national chauvinism.
Ultimately global solidarity is in the interests of all the victims of corporate tyranny but in the real movement that is an argument to be won. So we cannot see our task in the movement simply to unite the broadest forces in struggle. We have to do that but we have also to win the struggle for global solidarity and socialism within the movement.
The process of struggle between anti-capitalist and pro-capitalists in the movement offers great prospects for a emergence of a "new left". Hence we are in a period which has great promise for left regroupment and renewal. Revolutionaries should embrace this opening.
The new movement will also throw up new institutions of struggle which could prefigure and lay the foundations for new institutions of popular power. This is a big part of the vision problem. In the early days of the Russian Revolution the idea of popular power exercise by the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers was a key attraction of the socialist movement. The degeneration of the Soviet Union destroyed the confidence of millions of workers around the world in the possibility of popular democracy. But the new movment can turn his around if it throws up credible new institutions of popular resistance.
The growing international left collaboration that underlies gatherings like the World Social Forum and in a more modest way this conference are part of the process of creating new institutions of popular resistance. But this process operates on many levels. Sometimes under all sort of labels and in unexpected places. In Australia one of the most interesting recent development in the movement has been the flowering of numerous activist networks and groups around building solidarity for the refugees and asylum seekers (children and adults) detained without trial in concentration camps like Woomera. Port Hedland and Villawood. New networks like Rural Australians for Refugees are growing very fast and encouraging people to get organised in the most unlikely places, small country towns. They are part of this process too.
So we should engage in processes like the World Social Forum, or any possible local social forums, with view to including all the real and new forces and institutions of struggle. We are justifiably wary of creating institutions, in the name of "social forums" that may serve more to block struggles.
Finally, I want to begin a discussion about the idea of initiating an Asia-Pacific Social Forum. We may great agreement from some of the regional movements and parties represented at this conference to begin the process of gathering broader anti-globalisation forces to call such a Forum.
Certainly getting together a broad a gathering of anti-capitalist globalisation resistance would be a great achievement. But perhaps we can aim for more that another conference to exchange ideas and experience perhaps and come out with some specific proposals for joint regional action.
The Asia-Pacific region is not the area where the summits of the IMF, World Bank, G8 etc take place. And if they do take place in our region you can be sure it will be in a place not easily accessible to activists. So maybe we should go for a "beyond-summit-hopping-type initiative".
Just as an example let me share the original dream for M1-2001. The idea of a global strike against corporate tyranny on May Day flew around the internet lists a bit. It was a good idea and spawned last year’s M1 stock exchange blockades in Australia. But perhaps we can make the full dream a reality – at least in our region – in the not too distant future. That, or something like it, might a worthy achievement and be a significant contribution to the new global movement from the resistance movements in the Asia-Pacific.