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Workers' Liberty
the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class Workers Liberty Australia |
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After the Workers' Liberty summer school in London on 17-18 June, a number of us held discussions with Hal Traven, a US Teamsters' (truck-drivers') union activist and socialist who had come to speak at the event. What ideas and themes should working-class advocates for a society based on solidarity and common ownership be proposing in the movements and discussions developing after the Seattle demonstration against the World Trade Organisation? This article presents for discussion some of the tentative ideas we came up with.
The Seattle demonstration's success in shutting down the World Trade Organisation conference inspired many. But a strategy of just trying again and again to repeat that feat - calling one demonstration after another to "shut down" the IMF, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and maybe the Democratic and Republican party conventions - has severe limitations. To irritate the fat cats by demonstrations outside their meetings may make a useful gesture, but it will not overthrow them or even stop them meeting. The slogans "End this" and "Shut down that" contain no clear idea of what we're fighting for. And the "shut it down" strategy is likely to lead the movement into a cycle of ever-more-violent confrontations with ever-better-prepared police. That is likely to narrow our base of support, rather than reaching out to workers currently hesitant and uninvolved. It promises no gain that would compensate for that loss.
AFL-CIO
The US trade union movement, the AFL-CIO,
has launched a "Campaign for Global Fairness", advocating "a new internationalism"
around four points. "We must first undertake a program of broad-based education
with our members and our leaders, then extend it to our allies and to the
general public. "Second, we must make workers' rights and human rights
a mainstay of our trade and investment agreements... "Third, we must undertake
major new efforts to build international solidarity with our brothers and
sisters in emerging nations as well as in development nations... We must
escalate our support for their struggles to build strong unions... "Finally,
we must launch aggressive new initiatives to hold multinational corporations
accountable... demanding that [they] disclose the location of their affiliates,
joint venture partners and contractors internationally..."
The AFL-CIO also insists: "We must free
up indebted nations". It explains: "For the past 30 years, corporations
have been waging war against working families, using the emerging global
economy as a club to free themselves from regulation and responsibilities
to their employees and communities, drive down working standards worldwide
and ship American jobs overseas. They marched under the banner of free
trade, but their agenda was much broader - bank and currency deregulation,
privatisation of public services, dismantling of social supports and the
freedom to organise here at home. They used crushing debt burdens to force
Third World countries into a competition for exports that became a race
to the bottom... "Today, the global economy is enriching corporate profiteers,
wealthy families and dictators, but it isn't working for working families...
If the global system continues to generate growing inequality, environmental
destruction and a race to the bottom for working people - then it will
trigger an increasingly volatile reaction from workers, farmers, human
rights activists and environmentalists".
There is much to be criticised here. The AFL-CIO leaders do not understand that growing inequality, environmental destruction and a race to the bottom come from the very nature of capital and its exploitation of wage-labour, not just from unfortunate policies of the last 30 years. They do not understand that the vast accumulations of financial and industrial capital which dominate the world today can be dealt with only by an international federation of workers' republics. Their posture is that of people lobbying the powers-that-be to throw well-calculated sops and thus avert a "volatile reaction" from workers, rather than of people rousing and mobilising those workers to act with maximum independence and strength.
Workers' control
Many of the AFL-CIO demands are vague.
They do not spell out ideas for workers' control over the operations of
the multinationals. All the limitations are summed in the fact that while
criticising "the global system", the AFL-CIO leaders are also going flat-out
to support Al Gore for president. Gore has been vice-president helping
to push through the capitalist "broader agenda" which, as the AFL-CIO rightly
says, has gone with free trade, and as president he will certainly continue
to do the same. Yet the new AFL-CIO line is a great, and very welcome,
shift from the old AFL-CIO stance of "Buy American" and intense suspicion
(or downright sabotage) of independent and militant trade-union movements
elsewhere in the world on the grounds that they might be tinged with "communism".
All its elements orient in the right direction - if, sometimes, not very
far in that direction - and provide many points of leverage for socialists
active in the trade union movement.
The "New Voices" team now leading the
AFL-CIO is broadly social-democratic, rather than having the narrower business-unionist
orientation typical of AFL-CIO leaders for many decades back. AFL-CIO president
John Sweeney is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, an un-militant
ginger group inside the Democratic Party. Partly the leadership is reflecting
some new moods in the US working class, shown in some fine recent struggles.
As important, probably more important,
is the AFL-CIO leaders' own recognition that their old policy had hit a
dead-end, and they must find a new one or see their movement (and with
it, their offices and their salaries) collapse under them. With US capital
increasingly organising its production on a global scale, and the US government
increasingly unresponsive to union lobbying, they must find new alliances
with unions in other countries. They must make the unions a sufficiently
visible active force to recruit new members. And they must recruit energetic
new cadres for the trade-union machine from rebellious and socially-minded
youth. The AFL-CIO has been doing that on a large scale with its "Union
Summer" initiatives, and continues to do so.
Socialists in the trade unions can build
on those impulses, supplementing the AFL-CIO initiatives with specific
policies: solidarity with particular workers' struggles, workers' control
(rights to information and veto) over the operations of the big corporations,
an international minimum wage, international charters of trade union and
social-welfare rights. In some other countries, like Britain, the trade
union leaders, more complacent or simply more demoralised than in the USA,
have failed to come up with any better answer to the new challenges of
globalised capitalism than more and more abject attempts to sell themselves
to the employers as "responsible" policemen of the workforce. Elsewhere,
as in Australia, there are signs of a new approach paralleling the AFL-CIO's,
with all its problems but with some of its possibilities, too. In all cases,
however, the ideas of a new internationalism, of global solidarity, of
international workers' charters of rights, and of demanding the multinational
corporations "open their books", can be valuable guides for action.
What about the young activists, from environmentalist
and other groups, who provided so much of the radical surge and spark in
Seattle? Some of them are already seeking jobs as union organisers. This
orientation to the unions is very welcome. But in the first place this
cannot be a policy for the whole movement. In the second place, individual
ex-radicals will come under strong pressure to assimilate them into the
bureaucracy. That will certainly happen if no powerful radical rank and
file movement provides a counterweight. It will happen to many even if
there is such a counterweight. Socialists must strive to offer the street-activist
movement perspectives broader and more immediate than the hope that they
can make progress as individuals by finding niches in the trade union movement
and burrowing away there.
Local or global
In the movement, there is some talk of
turning to a "local" focus, and there is a strand which says local good,
global bad; small good, big bad. In fact genuinely localised economic life
- a return to the village communities of pre-capitalist societies - would
be stultify and impoverish. To get "outside" capitalist globalisation by
"going local" is also unworkable.
Michael Hardt and Toni Negri put it well
in their otherwise obscure and often foolish new book Empire: "It is false
to claim that we can (re)establish local identities that are in some sense
outside and protected against the global flows of capital and Empire...
We are by no means opposed to the globalisation of relationships as such...
The enemy, rather, is a specific regime of global relations we call Empire...
This strategy of defending the local is damaging because it obscures and
even negates the real alternatives and the potentials for liberation that
exist within Empire. We should be done once and for all with the search
for an outside, a standpoint that imagines a purity for our politics".
To make our resistance localised and atomised, when the enemy, global capital,
is coordinated and mobile across the world, is to damage the struggle.
We need global solidarity against global capital.
There is, however, a core of sense in
the idea of going global. We cannot mobilise effectively against global
capital just by standing in its foothills and hurling curses at its distant
summits - WTO, IMF, World Bank and so on. We have to find ways of mobilising
our workmates and neighbours, starting from their immediate circumstances,
for a battle across the whole terrain. We have to find footholds. Maybe
the best immediate foothold can be found in struggles against particular
transnational corporations. If we take our cue from the struggles of workers
in the hearts of the beasts - and at any particular time, several of the
giant transnational corporations will be facing workers' struggles somewhere
or other in their operations, or in their networks of suppliers and sub-contractors
- then there is immense scope to amplify and build on those struggles by
diverse actions across the world. If a group of workers in RTZ or Ford
is on strike, then lobbies, pickets, leaflets and so on can send ripples
right round the world, and help win real victories.
The campaign over workers' conditions
in subcontractors for Nike is not a bad example. The Campaign for Labour
Rights in the USA (http://summersault.com/~agj/clr/)
played a big role there, and is expanding its work. That campaigns be geared
to specific workers' struggles is essential if they are not to drift into
"ethical shopping", or sidetracked into efforts like the current friends-of'-"socialist"-Cuba
drive to get people to boycott Bacardi rum in favour of Havana Club rum
(produced in Cuba by workers with no more, in fact probably fewer, rights
to independent trade union organisation than those producing Bacardi).
Unity and coordination between different
campaigns is also essential. We need labour and community alliances for
global solidarity. In fact, we should aim for an organised international
labour and community alliance for global solidarity. This would be something
like an idea launched by the South African Marxist Neville Alexander -
a recomposition of the independent and militant strands of the workers'
movement worldwide on a roughly similar basis to the "First International"
of the 1860s. "Labour and community" seems to me a better term than "labour
and green". It is very important to draw left-wing environmentalists into
an alliance. But not only them: there are many other pro-working-class
community-based groups. And the term "green" smears over the difference
between the left-wing, pro-working-class environmentalists and the middle-class
official Green Parties such as those now in government coalitions in France
and Germany.
From activism to revolutionary party
Among the street activists there is much
"soft anarchism", a wish to steer clear of "parties" and "leaders". But
in the same way as dispersed local action is inadequate against an enemy,
global capital, which operates both locally and globally, so also an "anti-political"
stance is inadequate in a struggle which, like it or not, proceeds on both
economic and political fronts. The more new activists can be drawn into
efforts like the new Labor Party in the USA, or the Socialist Alliances
in Britain, or around papers like Action for Solidarity, the stronger our
fight will be. Political party organisation is, in fact, essential if the
movement is to become more democratic and define clearer positive goals.
At present most participants are limited to turning up at particular places
and dates, announced by we-don't-know-whom. We demonstrate on calls to
"shut down" this or "end" that, proposed by we-don't-know-whom. Our involvement
in debating any positive aims is limited to ad hoc talk in the course of
the demonstrations, with no possibility of formulating definite decisions.
So long as all that remains the case, the movement remains, despite all
the "soft-anarchist" talk, very "top-down". In fact, the historical record
is that anarchist organisations, wherever they get beyond the level of
tiny discussion groups, are much more conspiratorial and elitist than Leninist
organisations (meaning genuinely Leninist, not Stalinist or Stalinised-Trotskyist).
The activists need to organise ourselves
so that we can systematically discuss aims and objectives, and decide priorities
which govern our general direction while leaving room for dissident minorities
to express their ideas and keep alternatives before our minds. We need
to be sufficiently organised to pursue our general direction in a coordinated
way on several fronts - through leaflets, pamphlets, papers, speeches,
and individual conversation; through involvement with strikes and workplace
struggles; and in elections and in political campaigns on issues like asylum
and immigration laws, trade union law, publicly-financed health care and
so on. We need to be able to review our experiences on all those fronts,
learn from them, and revise ourselves accordingly. We need to have people
who specialise in the tasks of central coordination, but we also need them
not to be "invisible dictators". They should be duly elected, identifiable,
and thus open to criticism, censure or replacement when needed. And when
we have managed to develop all that, what will we have but a party? A revolutionary
party. The immediate action we can take towards that end is to strengthen
the best of the revolutionary groups that exist already, and to promote
united efforts and genuine debate between them.
WL: Can you give us some general
information about what September 11 - "S11" - actually is?
MT:September 11 is the meeting
date of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Melbourne, and 'S11' refers to
the demonstration that is being held against this meeting. The WEF is meeting
in Melbourne for 2 days in the Crown Casino from September 11 -13. Protests
are presently being organized for the streets around the casino and the
organizational efforts call for action ranging from shutting this meeting
down, to making more visible publicity about how the WEF is linked to globalization.
WEF is basically a trade group made up of the top 1000 richest multinational
corporations in world. Normally it holds its annual meeting in Davos in
the Swiss Alps and has done so since about 1982. But this year it is holding
its Asia-Pacific forum and so is meeting in Melbourne. The actual people
constituting these meetings are Chief Executive Officers of the companies
involved, political leaders, academics, influential media etc. WEF claims
it was the driving force behind setting up the World Trade Organization
(WTO). WEF started as an informal gathering in 1982 inviting representatives
from multinational companies and political leaders. This eventually kickstarted
the 'Uruguay Round' in 1995, out of which the WTO was born. Some of the
companies who will be represented at the Melbourne meeting are: Amcor,
BHP, BP, Boeing, Citibank, Commonwealth Bank, Microsoft, Dupont, Chevron,
Dow Corning, General Motors, Holden, McDonalds, Monsanto, Nestle, Rio Tinto,
Shell, Siemens, Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, Westfield, and so
on. We love them all!
WL: Who is actually organizing the
'S11' demonstration?
MT:Good question. If only we knew!
It's all rather complicated. There's a group called the "S11 Alliance"
based in Melbourne who actually set up a website earlier in the year containing
information about the WEF protest. The address for it is www.s11.org.
The Alliance is apparently getting about 80 people to its organizing meetings,
which is very good. Things are a lot more disorganized here in Brisbane.
WL: Is it in fact based on the University
of Melbourne campus?
MT: No.
WL: At any of the other Victorian
universities' campuses?
MT: No. The meeting place is advertised
on the web, but the membership is secret. The S11 Alliance has also got
an 'egroups' list on the web as well, which most people have been writing
to anonymously. The Alliance is encouraging people from all over Australia
and overseas to come to the demonstration and are hoping to get at least
10,000 people to the demonstration on the day. Actions are being held in
the lead-up to September in order to publicize it, and actions were also
held on the various Mayday demonstrations last month.
WL: What actually happened on Mayday
in Melbourne, Sydney and here in Brisbane in this respect?
MT: I don't know much about Melbourne.
There was a big turn out in Sydney, and the S11 Alliance Sydney contingent
is a group called 'CACTUS' (Collective Against Corporate Tyranny in Unity
and Solidarity). On the Brisbane Mayday the Brisbane S11 contingent held
a 'Carnival Against Capitalism'. We marched behind the trade unions at
the end of the demonstration. We had endorsement, so supporters were able
to march with us. We had about 100 people and a speaker when we got to
Musgrave Park where we publicized S11 and got a contact list going.
WL: Apart from the S11 Alliance
organizing out of Melbourne, do you have any ideas of what's going on in
Sydney?
MT: Most of the different socialist
groups and anarchist groups seem to be represented, evidenced by the continuous
political arguments that have been going on across the email list about
different methods of organizing and what the priorities should be on the
actual day. There are also unaffiliated students involved.
WL: And Brisbane?
MT: There is to be a mass meeting
about the state of readiness for S11 in Brisbane during the 'Students and
Sustainability' conference coming up shortly, as a lot of people who are
involved in the Alliance from down south will be represented at the conference
and so it is very convenient to report back at this time on what has been
organized so far. As far as planning is concerned, Brisbane is still disorganized.
As I mentioned, we spoke about the WEF and Mayday and using the contacts
we made there we organized a meeting about what Brisbane's role in S11
could be, which unfortunately did not go too successfully as it was dominated
by certain groups. I was hoping that at this initial meeting we could establish
some sort of S11 Brisbane 'branch', but it ended up being more of a general
discussion about which actions were to be prioritized in the lead up to
September. And so far the political differences of the different groups
involved in the Alliance in Brisbane have not been defined, which slows
things right down. For example, apart from the traditional anarchist/socialist
political differences that emerge, there are also 2 others groups coming
called 'WTO Watch', who are a sort of a research group.
WL: Where are they from?
MT:They used to be the 'Stop MAI
Coalition' people. And there's also another called 'Community Alliance
for Economic and Social Justice'. The problem here is that a lot of the
members want to continue up to Sydney after S11 for the opening of the
Olympics on September 15 and demonstrate about some of the same sorts of
issues, tying in with issues about corporatisation and Olympic sponsorship.
Well, some of the members of these groups came to the last meeting and
felt that they weren't actually that keen on organizing around the Olympics
and that it didn't really apply to their own activities. So whilst we are
a contingent of the Alliance, we are not really an alliance as yet as the
politics of the group are not yet defined. And so we still need to set
down some basic ground rules about the Alliance politics in Brisbane.
WL: Are you talking about things
like the equal right to publication of the constituent members of the Alliance?
MT: I'm talking about that we still
have different politics in what we even say in the pamphlets! There are
different ideas about what issues are actually being protested against
on S11 and also different views of the vehicle that will create change
in society. I don't know where I stand on such affinity groups. Ideally
we could have a mass movement where everyone is united around the same
thing, but at this stage in Brisbane it just does not exist, and certain
dominant voices are being repeatedly heard and I think this is driving
people away. Or should I say the Alliance meetings are not growing bigger
as we get closer to the day.
WL: Ah, Sectarianism. Do you think
that S11 is going to be some sort of test of the success of the 'anti-capitalist'
movement here in Australia? Have you heard the members of the Alliance
talking in this way? Is there any perspective within the group that this
demonstration will be a test of the 'take-up' of Seattle and Washington
here?
MT: Yes and no. There are people
amongst us who just see it as part of the ongoing process of struggle against
capitalism, and I am probably one of these people. Obviously it is going
to be a defining moment as far as Alliance politics are concerned, but
it's not going to make or break capitalism! I suppose the biggest thing
for me is the excitement about it. Not for a long time have so many people
in the broader community been coming out for something like this and with
so many people aware of the issues and able to recognize corporate domination
in all of its forms. I think what will be the defining characteristic is
whether the workers come out or not. That would be interesting, if the
unions come on the day.
WL: You've pre-empted my next question.
Are the trade unions likely to bring out the workers in any way? Have you
approached them?
MT: I know that there are 2 unions
planning to come out. One of them is the C.F.M.E.U. I talked to Phil Davies
of the C.F.M.E.U. in Sydney and he thought that the Melbourne branch would
definitely be doing something in support of S11. C.F.M.E.U. Sydney is planning
on sending some of their members down to Melbourne too. This is the sort
of thing that made Seattle - the breakdown of the distinction between anarchists/greenies
and workers. If they struck on the day that would be bloody great! In terms
of Brisbane we have a trade unions' sub-collective in the Alliance who
are going away and contacting the trade unions for some fundraising for
buses and so on. Buses are really scarce because of the Olympics and all
seem to be booked up already. We are going to ask the different trade unions
for money for carpooling etc, and to carry out solidarity actions. What
is concerning to me is that we don't just ask them to support us financially,
but get them to do solidarity actions in Brisbane if they can't come with
us.
WL: Can you see something else coming
of S11 besides a potentially big one-off demonstration sustained by the
presence of the WEF in Melbourne for 2 days? Do you have any feeling about
this or can you report any general sentiment?
MT: The most tangible thing at
the moment is a recognition of the green groups within the Alliance (I
obviously deal mostly with green groups being NUS(Q) Environment Officer)
that it is actually capitalism that is causing the environmental damage.
There's always been a big 'lifestylist' movement within the green groups
that puts a lot of pressure on people to live greenly and sustainably.
A lot of greenies put a hell of a lot of time into this instead of activism,
and believe that you're not credible if you go to a demo and walk around
with a can of coke in your hand etc. There's now a lot of recognition that
there is just no ethical company. A lot of debates of the different environmentalist
collectives on the campuses are focusing on the real cause of environmental
destruction - and these are your traditional permaculturists! They are
really coming around to realizing that they're putting a lot of energy
into their own back gardens and realizing that this is actually alienating
for people who do not have access to sustainable resources. A family out
at somewhere like Boonah just doesn't have an organic superstore to shop
at. This hinders participation within the green movement generally when
people feel they have to be wearing their hemp pants to be seen as green-credible
at meetings. And this is just the middle-class domination of the environmental
movement. So for me the most exciting thing is that environmentalists are
willing to take up working-class politics and a more holistic critique
of capitalism.
WL: Just to finalize, tell us about
the 'Students and Sustainability' conference you mentioned before.
MT: The 'Students and Sustainability'
conference is the national student environmental conference and is to be
held at Griffith University (Mt Gravatt campus) from 3 -7 July. This year
it has a much more political focus than it has had in past years when it
had been organized by social ecologists and 'lifestylists', but activists
have organized it this year. This year the plenaries are political. We
make no bones about the fact that this conference is openly left and progressive
and will not give a voice to right-wingers. We're trying to reach grass
roots campaigners instead of getting Bob Brown up here to speak! So we're
having a opening plenary on debunking the myth of overpopulation and looking
at right-wing arguments that overpopulation is the cause of environmental
damage.
WL: The Malthusian argument.
MT: Yes, Malthus, and look at the
effect of this argument on women in the third world and so the racist and
sexist implications of this argument. Another plenary is about fighting
corporate tyranny at which Phil Davies from the C.F.M.E.U. will talk about
Seattle. Another is entitled "whose movement is this?" and will have speakers
from queer, women, worker backgrounds, and looking at racism, sexism and
homophobia within the environmental movement.
WL: One last question: can you tell
us what's happening with the demonstration at the Olympic Games after S11?
MT: This is difficult as a lot
of it can't be discussed over the Internet and no logistics have been finalized.
It's really hard to find out exactly what's going on because of the secrecy.
The idea is to go up to Sydney after the 13th September for
the opening of the Olympics on the 15th and go as a solidarity
action with the indigenous people up there. As far as this affects Brisbane,
there has been a solidarity action planned for an Olympics soccer match
that is to be played in Brisbane at QEII Stadium.
This short article attempts to deal briefly with the impact the global economy has had and is having on the agriculture and food industries in the Third World and uses the experiences of India as being both a major and typical example.
In Vandana Shiva’s lecture he outlines
how these enormous U.S. based transnational food-processing corporations
are unleashing an almost unimaginable economic and social disaster on India’s
farming and agricultural communities.
Vandana Shiva says.
. "It is not that we Indians eat our
food raw. Global consultants fail to see that 99% of India's food processing
is done by women at household level or by small cottage industry because
it is not controlled by global agribusiness. 99% of India's agro-processing
has been intentionally kept at the small level. Now under gloalisation
things are rapidly changing. In August 1998 small scale processing in India
was banned through a packaging order. The takeover of the edible oil industry
has affected 10 million livelihoods. The takeover of flour by packaged
branded flour will cost 100 million livelihoods. It will also create
an ecological disaster."
I felt almost physically sick when I read
Vandana Shiva's lecture. People, with hopes and dreams, are having their
lives destroyed, quite deliberately, by the tens of millions. This is the
globalisation process unmasked. Put simply I believe it can be summed up
as "If you are not wealthy enough to be a consumer you have no place
in this world."
The wealthiest one percent of the earth's
population is richer than the poorest sixty percent. Our current Western
consumer society has duped most of us into a more is good, much more is
better type of outlook on life. A four year old child would almost break
your arm for the latest Pokemon card. Last year 59 million cars were produced
world wide more than in any previous year!
Not only is the western consumer model
unsustainable it is destroying the backbone of ancient cultures such as
India.
Orwellian double speak has reached new
heights. Vandana Shiva points out that whilst he was participating in the
United Nations Bio Safety Negotiations, Monsanto was claiming that Roundup
"prevented
weeds from stealing sunshine". What Monsanto did not state was
that what it called weeds were green fields of rice which provide vitamin
A and prevents blindness in children. Transnational corporations like Monsanto
are accusing bees of stealing genetically modified pollen They are
backed up by World Trade Organisation (WTO) rulings.
Sometimes I feel like the tall, gaunt spirit
of George Orwell is nodding his head saying "I told you so..." What can
we do? How do we of the First World help the dispossessed of the Third?
We need to re-evaluate what we want out of our lives. Do we want more or
do we want better world? If the answer is better world we need to combine
and we need to fight.
The present holders of political office
nearly all chant the same mantra of how wonderful globalisation is. They
need to be brought to account or voted out of office.
Some Trade Unions have done some good work
on the globalisation issue. However much more needs to be done. Many unions
are caught up in promoting massive growth in the economy when they should
be examining sustainability. A shorter working week does a lot more to
promote sustainability than overtime at double time rates.
The conservation societies need to expand
their vision and utilize their high standing in society to expose the myths
of globalisation being good for our economy.
There is so much needed to be done and
answers to be found.
However one thing is certain, as Gandhi
said, "The earth has enough for everyone's needs, but not for some
people's greed".