Intellectual anarchy?

Lina Jamoul (WL64-5, 'Learn from Seattle') wants anti-capitalist life to be like a box of chocolates: you'll never know what politics you'll get, and the whole experience will be all the richer for it.

It's a superficially attractive idea. But when it comes to how we challenge capitalism, and what we replace it with, some ideas have to be wrong and others right, or at least nearer being right. Diversity is a necessary part of any new, living movement, and democracy and open debate are absolutely essential. But the point of the debate must be to reach some conclusions, at least provisionally, not just to go round and round forever.

Either the Marxist critique of capitalism, the positive socialist project, and the idea of the centrality of the working class, are right - or they're wrong. And that's where we differ.

Anti-capitalist groups do, as Lina says, debate - but, if so, shouldn't we putting our ideas into the debate, as clearly and forcefully as we can, and trying to win people over? Anti-capitalist groups do 'make demands', but if the demand is 'horticultural anarchy', to use one of Lina's examples, then it is, at best, of limited use.

'Shut down the WTO', say, has more grip than 'horticultural anarchy', but remains one-off and not part of an ongoing coherent strategy. Lina writes: 'On June 18 when groups organised to target the financial centres of the world, at the same time Jubilee 2000 held a demonstration outside the Treasury.' I'm in favour of that - but clearly we need much more.

Lina implies that we just need to do this sort of thing on a bigger scale. But how would this fundamentally challenge the system? What alternative does it offer? What sort of a movement can be built by a series of one-off actions, called by whoever happens to control the website and email lists?

I can certainly see why, particularly in this country, young people who want to resist the system are mostly not attracted to the labour movement (it could hardly be said to be particularly dynamic or radical at the moment) or the left (which has suffered from years of retreat, and, in a number of cases, is a bit mad).

The left has to make itself into a force that can attract these people - by getting the labour movement to actively take up the issues that are motivating the anti-capitalist movements, and by intervening in those movements to try to win them to the class-struggle socialist ideas which are irreplaceable if we are to overthrow capitalism.

The divisions within anti-capitalist activism between liberals (like George Monbiot), anarchists and Marxists cannot just be glossed over in the name of inclusivity. We can learn from Seattle, or any other experience, only by debating ideas, rejecting some and adopting others.