Die Neue Zeit
27th March 2009, 04:23
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/762/revolutionary.html
The April 2 G20 meeting in London symbolises in a distorted way the world’s need for global solidarity and common action, writes Mike Macnair. It will also symbolise the capitalist world order’s inability to provide either
Around the G20 meeting, the ‘international floating crowd’ of anti-globalisation activists will attempt yet again to trigger the world revolution by symbolic minority actions, from forms of street theatre to punch-ups with the police and breaking things. Beyond the ‘r-r-revolutionary’ symbols, however, the substantive ‘alternatives to capitalist globalisation’ on offer are ... forms of nationalism and localism.
Behind the G20 charade is a gradually developing game of beggar-my-neighbour or musical chairs between the various capitalist states. Hence it is appropriate in an ironical way that the ‘anti-globalisation’ left should mirror both the charade and the games.
The real, possible alternative is derided as ‘utopian’ by the large majority of the left as much as by the right: the practical cooperation of the working class as an international class to fight for global solutions to problems which everyone can see are global.
[...]
G8 meetings have been repeated targets of ‘anti-globalisation’ protests and this one will no doubt be no different.
The BBC reports: “G20 Meltdown is appealing to those who have lost their ‘homes, jobs, savings or pensions’ to join what they call a ‘Financial Fools Day’ targeting the banking elite on April 1. Organisers say they have seen a ‘groundswell’ in support since the start of the recession and their Facebook site has attracted more than 1,000 members. ‘There really is a shift because people feel no-one is listening - the government is in some world of its own,’ said one of the organisers, Camilla Power. ‘Our aim is to challenge the legitimacy of the G20 summit.’”
This has, of course, been the aim of the several anti-globalisation protests at international capitalist events and summits since 1994 in Madrid and the ‘battle of Seattle’ 10 years ago; and of the World Social Forum meetings since 2001. Camilla Power rightly says that the crisis changes the terms of engagement. But then the question is: why the same methods which have been used unsuccessfully for the last 15 years?
The anti-globalisation ‘direct action’ enthusiasts have hold of some fundamental truths; but they also cling to some fundamental mistakes.
First and most prominently, the activists correctly understand that to confine protest and resistance within the boundaries of legality is to confine it to forms of protest acceptable to our rulers. But this is also to confine what may be said to what is acceptable to our rulers. Corporate political donations to political parties and the advertising-funded media are in substance forms of corruption of electoral politics no different in their end result from bribes paid to individual MPs and public officials. The ‘free market in legal services’ is in substance a form of corruption of the judicial process no different in its end result from bribes paid to individual judges. ‘New Labour’ is precisely what results from accepting these ‘democratic’ - actually timocratic - limits on opposition.
The second and most fundamental truth is symbolised by the attacks on the junkets of the international institutions. It is that the basic enemy of humanity is capitalism as a world system. This system can only be replaced - or even in the slightest degree reformed - at an international level. Where single countries attempt reforms, they are met with flights of capital and runs on the currency; to attempt to opt out of the system altogether on a national level, even the level of a very big nation like Russia or China, produces sanctions, blockade and military pressure from the capitalist powers and in the end failure, Soviet-style.
Thirdly, the activists understand that fundamental change is needed - not just small reforms - ‘Another world is possible’. The present economic crisis is just one of the symptoms of this need. Among others: human-induced climate change requires both global and radical measures. Capitalism displays a systemic dynamic towards increasing inequality both within countries and between countries. Imperialist wars and ‘interventions’ in third-world countries have continued more or less unceasingly since the emergence of European capitalism in the 16th century and have certainly not declined in the late 20th and early 21st. ‘Musical chairs’ competition between states implies an objective dynamic towards great-power war - however unthinkable and irrational it may seem now.
The fourth and fifth points are both truths and weaknesses. Fourth: fundamental change means revolution: a rapid and radical reconstruction of the social order. And revolutions, we know from history, are not orderly, regimented processes which follow neat, bureaucratic lines. They are extraordinarily chaotic mass outpourings of human creativity, as the old order fails and millions of people set about creating a new one. The direct-action-istas therefore counterpose creativity and spontaneity to permanent organisations and structured majority decision-making.
Fifth: the precise timing and form of the outbreak of revolutions is unpredictable. There is always, as in the Chinese proverb quoted by Mao, some ‘spark that lights a prairie fire’: from Jenny Geddes’ stool thrown at the Anglican Dean in Edinburgh in 1637 to the women who went out on strike on International Women’s Day in Petrograd in February 1917.
Both truths and weaknesses, because both points are true. But, while it is true that revolution is a mass outpouring of human creativity, organisation and democratic decision-making on common concerns are also necessary. They are, if anything, more necessary to a revolution against capitalism than to the revolutions which brought capitalism in. Capitalism provides - in money and markets - forms which allow partial coordination of human productive activity without conscious coordination: ie, organisation and democratic decision-making. Taking capitalism away without working out an alternative means of coordinating our diverse activities results, not in a better society, but in mass starvation. That is a lesson of April 1917-April 1918 which the left often forgets.
And, while it is true that the precise timing and form of revolutions is unpredictable and there is usually a ‘spark that lights the prairie fire’, breakdown of the old order is usually eminently predictable from visible symptoms. The English revolution took place amidst a general crisis of the European polities; the American revolution was preceded by a decade of conflicts and mass struggles; the French revolution of 1789 was in the immediate wake of the American revolution; the Russian Revolutions of both 1905 and 1917 were preceded by a dramatic rise in strikes and other mass actions. In all these cases, too, the existing state and social order was obviously failing. For the spark to light the prairie fire, the grass must be dry.
In the late 20th and early 21st century the grass has not been dry. The bubble economy has certainly produced losers, but it has produced enough winners in the main capitalist countries that broad millions have not felt the immediate need to revolt. The present crisis is gradually drying the grass out, but in Britain at least not yet so sharply as to produce an epidemic of mass struggles. The regimes may be staring into the abyss, but they are not yet - in the core capitalist countries - divided and despairing.
Under these conditions the minority initiatives of the anti-globalisation ‘direct action’ campaigners do not trigger revolutions, but produce small-group ‘spectaculars’ and clashes with the riot cops which, far from ‘lighting the prairie fire’, merely make a short-lived news story: charades of the revolution.
The April 2 G20 meeting in London symbolises in a distorted way the world’s need for global solidarity and common action, writes Mike Macnair. It will also symbolise the capitalist world order’s inability to provide either
Around the G20 meeting, the ‘international floating crowd’ of anti-globalisation activists will attempt yet again to trigger the world revolution by symbolic minority actions, from forms of street theatre to punch-ups with the police and breaking things. Beyond the ‘r-r-revolutionary’ symbols, however, the substantive ‘alternatives to capitalist globalisation’ on offer are ... forms of nationalism and localism.
Behind the G20 charade is a gradually developing game of beggar-my-neighbour or musical chairs between the various capitalist states. Hence it is appropriate in an ironical way that the ‘anti-globalisation’ left should mirror both the charade and the games.
The real, possible alternative is derided as ‘utopian’ by the large majority of the left as much as by the right: the practical cooperation of the working class as an international class to fight for global solutions to problems which everyone can see are global.
[...]
G8 meetings have been repeated targets of ‘anti-globalisation’ protests and this one will no doubt be no different.
The BBC reports: “G20 Meltdown is appealing to those who have lost their ‘homes, jobs, savings or pensions’ to join what they call a ‘Financial Fools Day’ targeting the banking elite on April 1. Organisers say they have seen a ‘groundswell’ in support since the start of the recession and their Facebook site has attracted more than 1,000 members. ‘There really is a shift because people feel no-one is listening - the government is in some world of its own,’ said one of the organisers, Camilla Power. ‘Our aim is to challenge the legitimacy of the G20 summit.’”
This has, of course, been the aim of the several anti-globalisation protests at international capitalist events and summits since 1994 in Madrid and the ‘battle of Seattle’ 10 years ago; and of the World Social Forum meetings since 2001. Camilla Power rightly says that the crisis changes the terms of engagement. But then the question is: why the same methods which have been used unsuccessfully for the last 15 years?
The anti-globalisation ‘direct action’ enthusiasts have hold of some fundamental truths; but they also cling to some fundamental mistakes.
First and most prominently, the activists correctly understand that to confine protest and resistance within the boundaries of legality is to confine it to forms of protest acceptable to our rulers. But this is also to confine what may be said to what is acceptable to our rulers. Corporate political donations to political parties and the advertising-funded media are in substance forms of corruption of electoral politics no different in their end result from bribes paid to individual MPs and public officials. The ‘free market in legal services’ is in substance a form of corruption of the judicial process no different in its end result from bribes paid to individual judges. ‘New Labour’ is precisely what results from accepting these ‘democratic’ - actually timocratic - limits on opposition.
The second and most fundamental truth is symbolised by the attacks on the junkets of the international institutions. It is that the basic enemy of humanity is capitalism as a world system. This system can only be replaced - or even in the slightest degree reformed - at an international level. Where single countries attempt reforms, they are met with flights of capital and runs on the currency; to attempt to opt out of the system altogether on a national level, even the level of a very big nation like Russia or China, produces sanctions, blockade and military pressure from the capitalist powers and in the end failure, Soviet-style.
Thirdly, the activists understand that fundamental change is needed - not just small reforms - ‘Another world is possible’. The present economic crisis is just one of the symptoms of this need. Among others: human-induced climate change requires both global and radical measures. Capitalism displays a systemic dynamic towards increasing inequality both within countries and between countries. Imperialist wars and ‘interventions’ in third-world countries have continued more or less unceasingly since the emergence of European capitalism in the 16th century and have certainly not declined in the late 20th and early 21st. ‘Musical chairs’ competition between states implies an objective dynamic towards great-power war - however unthinkable and irrational it may seem now.
The fourth and fifth points are both truths and weaknesses. Fourth: fundamental change means revolution: a rapid and radical reconstruction of the social order. And revolutions, we know from history, are not orderly, regimented processes which follow neat, bureaucratic lines. They are extraordinarily chaotic mass outpourings of human creativity, as the old order fails and millions of people set about creating a new one. The direct-action-istas therefore counterpose creativity and spontaneity to permanent organisations and structured majority decision-making.
Fifth: the precise timing and form of the outbreak of revolutions is unpredictable. There is always, as in the Chinese proverb quoted by Mao, some ‘spark that lights a prairie fire’: from Jenny Geddes’ stool thrown at the Anglican Dean in Edinburgh in 1637 to the women who went out on strike on International Women’s Day in Petrograd in February 1917.
Both truths and weaknesses, because both points are true. But, while it is true that revolution is a mass outpouring of human creativity, organisation and democratic decision-making on common concerns are also necessary. They are, if anything, more necessary to a revolution against capitalism than to the revolutions which brought capitalism in. Capitalism provides - in money and markets - forms which allow partial coordination of human productive activity without conscious coordination: ie, organisation and democratic decision-making. Taking capitalism away without working out an alternative means of coordinating our diverse activities results, not in a better society, but in mass starvation. That is a lesson of April 1917-April 1918 which the left often forgets.
And, while it is true that the precise timing and form of revolutions is unpredictable and there is usually a ‘spark that lights the prairie fire’, breakdown of the old order is usually eminently predictable from visible symptoms. The English revolution took place amidst a general crisis of the European polities; the American revolution was preceded by a decade of conflicts and mass struggles; the French revolution of 1789 was in the immediate wake of the American revolution; the Russian Revolutions of both 1905 and 1917 were preceded by a dramatic rise in strikes and other mass actions. In all these cases, too, the existing state and social order was obviously failing. For the spark to light the prairie fire, the grass must be dry.
In the late 20th and early 21st century the grass has not been dry. The bubble economy has certainly produced losers, but it has produced enough winners in the main capitalist countries that broad millions have not felt the immediate need to revolt. The present crisis is gradually drying the grass out, but in Britain at least not yet so sharply as to produce an epidemic of mass struggles. The regimes may be staring into the abyss, but they are not yet - in the core capitalist countries - divided and despairing.
Under these conditions the minority initiatives of the anti-globalisation ‘direct action’ campaigners do not trigger revolutions, but produce small-group ‘spectaculars’ and clashes with the riot cops which, far from ‘lighting the prairie fire’, merely make a short-lived news story: charades of the revolution.