BY PETER BOYLE
The indications from around the world are that the movement against globalised capitalist power has not been cowed by the United States' military and ideological offensive that masquerades as the post-September 11 "war against terrorism". If anything, this war has underlined the dangerous instability of global capitalism and hardened the resolve of the movement to fight for a better world.
This year alone, giant mobilisations — 500,000 in Barcelona, 50,000 in Porto Alegre, 2-3 million in Rome and 200,000 in Washington on April 20 — have radiated a new wave of political confidence to progressive activists across to the globe. They also show that the challenge of resisting Washington's and its allies' new wars against the Third World is resulting in a more politically mature movement.
This year's May 1 (M1) protests will be a test for the movement in Australia. Already, many activists have shown their willingness to tackle the new attacks by the global corporate rulers. In recent months, they have mobilised in significant numbers in solidarity with the detained refugees in Australia and the Pacific, and with the people of Palestine. The M1 actions throughout Australia have embraced these urgent issues.
After the "spirit of Seattle" came to Australia on September 11, 2000 — S11 — with the fantastic 20,000-strong, three-day blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, activists were confronted with the question: What is the next step for the global justice movement in Australia?
International capitalists rarely hold global summits in Australia, and — given our distance from North America and Europe — summit-hopping is not a good option for most activists in this country.
The Democratic Socialist Party proposed the idea of May 1 blockades of stock exchanges across Australia. M1 last year was a tremendous sequel to S11. It involved about 20,000 people around the country in audacious actions, some of which were attacked by the police. Except for Melbourne, trade union leaderships did not organise the participation of large numbers of workers in the actions, though many individual union members did take part.
May Day was renewed as a day of international solidarity and radical struggle in this country. This year, trade union involvement in M1 has increased, particularly in Melbourne and Perth.
In trying to understand the new movement, the DSP and Resistance recognised that its power lay in two great mass pressures:
- the growing resistance in the Third World to neo-liberalism and its political regimes; and
- the growing disillusionment with neo-liberalism/globalisation in the working class and 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the middle classes in the imperialist countries.
We also realised that these forces have been influenced by the years of retreat, and by disillusionment with the traditional leaderships of the workers' and social protest movements. New layers of activists have sought fresh ways to organise and mobilise. This has opened up the possibility of a much needed renewal of the progressive movements, which would at first have a loose and semi-spontaneous character.
The movement's character also showed itself in a number of important discussions and debates among activists.
Debate on tactics
There were debates about what tactics the new movement should adopt. How does the movement go beyond simply protesting at the corporate tyrants' summits? Should it use confrontational tactics, independent mass action or some combination of both? Should activists build the movement around a general "anti-capitalism" or around a combination of demands that reflect specific mass discontent and resistance? How should the movement organise?
The DSP and Resistance recognised the attraction of civil disobedience tactics to many young activists, who were frustrated and disillusioned with the co-opted and conservative old movements. These newly radicalised activist were angry and felt the urgent need to confront the monstrous crimes of the capitalist globalisers.
But while we share their desire to resist injustice and impose the greatest possible political costs on the corporate rulers, we also know that the ruling class cannot be shocked or terrorised into behaving better. The terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, should have demolished such illusions.
To impose real political costs on the capitalist ruling class, you need to mobilise masses of people into a struggle which has a dynamic that is subversive of the system.
The organisational tactics of the movement should be those that advance such ends. We need organisational forms that are broad, inclusive, democratic and politically independent of the institutions of corporate tyranny.
Finally, we recognised that a movement for global justice had to take on the new attacks by the global corporate rulers, such as the new imperialist wars. These new attacks also give a special importance to mass civil disobedience.
More and more laws will have to be broken: laws that imprison asylum seekers (including children) without trial; new laws that outlaw solidarity actions and make it possible to detain dissidents indefinitely without trial. These laws will be resisted.
Vision and strategy
The second set of debates have been about the movement's vision and strategy. If we are against capitalist globalisation, what are we for?
We say "socialism" and others say "anarchism", but what does that mean? And do we have the skill and confidence to explain what we are for to the broad range of people being attracted into the movement? These debates are to be expected in a movement that has arisen after more than a decade of significant retreats and defeats.
The movement is not united around a single vision for the better world that we agree we have to fight to win. Not all 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the movement are even against capitalism or in favour of its replacement with something fundamentally different.
The largest section of the movement's activists are probably only convinced that neo-liberal or "free market" capitalism — with its dramatic enhancement of the power of the biggest global corporations and the states that serve their interests — is the problem.
Socialists could avoid the real debate about the movement's vision by pointing out that neo-liberal capitalism is "actually existing capitalism", and that a movement that struggles against neo-liberal capitalism — which is the only sort of capitalism there can be these days — favours anti-capitalist ideas.
But this important debate won't be won for us by the capitalist crisis. Indeed, capitalism in its current phase of development offers certain 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the exploited a chance to try and benefit from privatisation or deregulation.
Capitalist globalisation fosters greater competition among those it exploits, and so not only unleashes movements for greater global solidarity but also fans xenophobia, 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 still to be won. So we cannot see our task in the movement simply to unite the broadest forces in struggle. We also have to win the movement to the side of global solidarity and socialism.
An important source of the "vision problem" is the contradictions in the movement. This is revealed in the political agenda of that section of the movement, chiefly represented by trade union officials in the rich countries, that advocate the economic protection of their privileged economies against Third World competition.
There is place for both unity and struggle within the movement. The process of struggle between anti-capitalists and pro-capitalists in the movement offers great prospects for the emergence of a "new left" and left regroupment and renewal. The Socialist Alliance is an example.
The new movement will also create new institutions of struggle which could prefigure or 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 popular power exercised by the soviets (councils) of workers', peasants' and soldiers' delegates attracted millions to the socialist movement. With the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union, the confidence of millions of workers around the world in the possibility of popular democracy was severely undermined. The new movement can turn this around if it can create credible new institutions of popular resistance.
Regional advances
The growing international collaboration that underlies gatherings like the World Social Forum in Brazil and in the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference in Sydney is part of the process of creating new institutions of popular resistance.
This process operates on many levels, under all sort of labels and in unexpected places. New activist networks like Rural Australians for Refugees are growing very fast and encouraging people to get organised in small country towns. They are part of this process.
So while we are involved in the World Social Forum and local forums, we do so with the view that all the real and new forces and institutions of struggle must be included. We don't want to help create institutions that serve to block struggles.
The progressive regional movements and parties that were represented at the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference in Sydney over Easter agreed to begin to gather broader anti-globalisation forces to call for an Asia-Pacific Social Forum. Certainly getting together a broad regional gathering of anti-capitalist globalisation resistance would be a great achievement. Such a forum may also formulate some specific proposals for joint regional action.
Before M1 2001, the idea of a global strike against corporate tyranny on May Day flew around the internet lists. It was a good idea and spawned last year's M1 stock exchange blockades in Australia, but it was a little ahead of its time.
Perhaps we can help make that dream, or something like it, a reality at least in our region in the not too distant future.
[Peter Boyle is a member of the national executive of the DSP. This article is based on a presentation to the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference held in Sydney over Easter.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 1, 2002.
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