Reform or revolution: (please note these are notes for a talk and have not being completely edited!)
In the space of a few years the movement around globalisation has moved from the radical fringes of the Zapatista gatherings and J18 through the more generalised but still isolated mobilisations of Seattle and Prague to the mass mobilisations of Genoa and Barcelona. In Genoa in July up to 300,000 took part, in the largest of the demonstrations to date in Barcelona this March up to 500 000 took part.
Significantly Barcelona, some 6 months after the S11 attacks, suggests the movement has not vanished as it may have first appeared but rather has once again mushroomed but this time bigger then ever. This success is to be welcomed, as obviously we want to see the mass of society becoming directly involved in this struggle. But it also comes with a political cost. As the globalisation movement has grown the radical libertarian ideas that have created it have been displaced by more traditional ones from the left. In its infancy the movement was strongly dominated by radical ideas of direct democracy and direct action. This was what attracted people to the Zapatista encounters for instance and was very definitely the method of J18 in London, the protest which kicked off the idea of direct action against aspects of corporate power. This was an attempt by up to 15,000 people to storm the Life building in the city of London, the centre of the Futures exchange.
The orthodox left was largely uninterested in the movement at this point in time, both in its 'revolutionary' and 'reformist' wings. Right up to Seattle the demonstrations were marked by an absence of these forces. Paper sellers in order words were quite rare. After Seattle everything changed as the Orthodox left realised this movement was a potential source of either paper sellers or electoral canvassers. We rapidly saw the development of the traditional methods used by political parties to achieve control of such movement, notably in the setting up of front organisations that would attempt to monopolise resistance. But parallel to this process another is occurring which may in time prove to be a lot more damaging to the prospect of the movement moving on to fighting for a radical new society. This is the process of taking people from a radical rejection of the idea of unaccountable organisations running the world on our behalf to one of supporting one set of unaccountable organisations over another. In short a break with direct democracy and a return to the demand for 'better leaders'.
The World Social Forum is the most powerful of these groupings of alternate leaders. The WSF arose as an alternative to the World Economic Forum which met in New York this March. Whereas the WEF was started as an NGO in the early 1970's the WSF was set up by eight NGO's in 2001. The WEF invites around 1750 leaders, 1000 from business the rest from politics the media and academia, the WSF had 16,000 delegates from various organisations at this years meeting along with tens of thousands of other activists. The WEF proclaims itself "tied to no political, partisan or national interests" while the WSF "brings together and interlinks ? organisations and movements of civil society from all the countries of the world". The WSF has already proved an important counter attraction for world leaders and even some corporations who are unhappy for one reason or another with the naked neo liberalism pursued by the WEF. This year the WSF included the Forum of Local Authorities (which includes big city mayors and administrators) and the World Parliamentary Forum. There were four French Cabinet Ministers, the Belgian Prime Minister, Mary Robinson and significantly the former president of Portugal, Mario Soares who played such a valuable role for capital in the 1970's by helping to ensure the Portuguese revolution took the road of reform rather then revolution. The presence of these people, plus the fact that they were given VIP status by the organisers confirms that the 'Another world is possible' slogan of the WSF is intended to be a world not all that different from our own.
Reports on the contributions made by the big academics of the globalisation movement confirm this trend. Susan George of ATTAC who not co-incidentally in one of the loudest voices not only opposing direct action in the big protests but advocating the exclusion of those who engage in such tactics, reissued the call for a world Marshall Plan financed by taxation on financial transactions and corporate mergers. The ATTAC scheme amounts to little more then a utopian call for a world government that would oversee capitalism in a way which is fairer. Other forces have talked of de-globalisation - a return to the sort of nationalist and social democratic economic structures from which neoliberalism emerged during the 1970's.
As anarchists we are obviously not interested in schemes for a better world government or a return to pre-neo liberal protectionism and social democracy. We want to move through globalisation to create a world based on libertarian communism and self-management. That is rather then having a good environmentally friendly boss who exploits us at some imagined fair level we want a world free of bosses and free of exploitation. There is an uncrossable gulf between this future anarchist society and the kinder, gentler capitalism that those leading the Porto Alegre process want to achieve. While there remains some common ground for organising against neo-liberalism the reality is that many of the reformist forces want to exclude us from that common ground. A lot of the 'debate' about the Black Block for instance is best understood as a way of demonising anarchism and anarchist methods in general. And it is not just the reformist movement leaders that are playing this game; the larger Leninist parties like the British SWP have also been playing it for the last year. What we need to do is go on the offensive against the ideas in the movement that if followed will lead it into a dead end. Many anarchists are reluctant to do this in an organised way fearing that such political discussion will be divisive. But the reality is that the same organisations that label any criticism of their program or history as sectarian are the very ones publishing acres of slander about anarchism.
But this is not just about ideas. It is also about the way we organise and encourage others to organise. There is a trend within the global protests that sees them as enough in themselves, as single mass manifestations that will legitimise our respectable spokespeople, self appointed and otherwise, enough so they must be listened to. This is an agenda that sections of the ruling class are willing to adapt to. This is why Bono for instance has been feted not only by the WEF in New York but also by the G8 in Genoa and even George Bush. To many the fact he gets to give out to them about the third world may look like progress, we need to not only argue that it is not but put forward alternative strategies. First and foremost this means looking at how the local activity of those involved around globalisation can be transformed from token protest activity to real ways of organising people around them. Most of the 'globalisation' protests in Ireland have been no more then mini versions of the international protests. There is nothing wrong in themselves with these marches, stock exchange pickets and Burlington protests if they are a way of encouraging people into activity. In truth though they became little more then a way of identifying potential recruits for whose attention the various left parties could compete. In general there has been almost no success at involving globalisation activists in the issues where neo liberalism is actually impacting, and more importantly being resisted in Ireland.
For instance outside of the context of activists who are members of the political organisations there is almost no contact between globalisation activists and the 50% plus of the population of Dublin that are refusing to pay the service charges. There is a clear theoretical connection between the neo liberal program of privatisation and the imposition of the costs of public services on the working class. But local bin charge organisation is centred around the political organisations, including ourselves, and layers of (mostly older) community activists and people coming into such activity for the first time. What is needed is not so much more of the younger globalisation activists turning up for city hall pickets but rather for these activists to search out or if necessary create, local bin charges groups and help in the door to door organisation of streets to resist the charges. The globalisation protests have attracted attention to anarchism and often created an easy way of starting a discussion about it. But to win 90% of the population to the anarchist idea we have to show that it works on their street or in their workplace as a way of overcoming day to day problems.
I'm not just talking about bringing political ideas to people's doorsteps. I'm talking about bringing actual libertarian organisation to people. As we found with the water charges getting a local group functioning along libertarian lines (e.g. direct democracy rather then leadership) in an area can have an impact there for years to come. Once people create the tools to organise themselves and demonstrate to their neighbours that victories can be won then this is the ground on which future activity can sprout. I'm selecting out the service charges because it is unusual in being a mass campaign that runs across the whole city in just about every single estate. Our own experience is that even if you are relatively young and a recent arrival in a well settled area with a bit of hard work you can get a local campaign going quite rapidly.
In the Liberties for instance five left activists including three WSM members went quite rapidly to a situation where fifty or more people would turn up to public meetings and 20 plus for organisational meetings. What is being said here of the service charges is however true of most local campaigns and work place struggles. Our strongest weapon against the idea that a new global leadership are needed to make the world fair is to help working people build the sort of local organisation that can win gains at the local level. Within this process we need to look at how to build links between these local movements and issues to the regional, national and global level. The ongoing role of the global protests will be as a focus for bringing activists from such movements together.
Anarchist organisations such as the WSM have an important role to play in this process. Through out publications we can reach out to very large numbers of people and link together what often seem to be disconnected and distant issues. Our organisational meetings provide a space for activists to take a step back from day to day activity and discuss with others who share their general political approach the political and organisational implications that arise. On a national and international level we help to provide a communications network that allows the lessons of one struggle in one place to become available to activists elsewhere. And on the theoretical level we try and provide an alternative analysis to that which seeks to reduce the problems of the world to one of who is in charge.
There are two core points I want activists to take away tonight. The first is the need to link our global activism with the local mass struggles against globalisation that already exist all around us. Not just on the level of turning up for protests but on the level of building local resistance. The second in the importance of anarchist organisation to provide a theoretical, organisational and communication framework that allows us to better understand where our local struggles fit into the global picture. Right now in Ireland such political anarchist organisation is very fragile, its growth into something stronger and with a real influence depends on you. The WSM provides one structure for building on; I'd ask you to consider joining with us.