Anti-WTO actions – unified against capitalism?
Here we present two recent articles from the USA about the widely publicised demonstrations which took place in Seattle, Washington State, at the end of November 1999, against its hosting of the World Trade Organisation summit and nominally against globalisation of capitalism in general. These protests were the focus of events that took place around the world, known collectively as N30 in tribute to the earlier J18 international day of action (see last issue of Organise!). Both articles originate from Boston, Massachusetts, hundreds of miles away from Seattle on the East Coast, a fact which in itself helps to highlight the impact that N30 has had across America. The first, a thorough, evocative, but mostly uncritical account of the direct action and confrontations with the police was printed in We Dare Be Free newspaper (#6). Its editors are involved in important developments towards a North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) in the USA and Canada, including the hosting of its founding conference in April this year. The second is an article printed in the first issue of The Bad Days Will End - for council communism/libertarian socialism, and concentrates on a critique of the role and motivations of the labour unions. Read on, and after these articles we’ll conclude with a few more words of our own.
From all reaches of the globe, countless millions witnessed the dramatic televised broadcasts from the streets of Seattle. For many, the visual imagery that has since come to be associated with the historic meeting of the World Trade Organization has left a lasting impression - the massive protests; the brutal police repression; the burning barricades; the tear gas and rubber bullets; the attacks on corporate property; the riotous clashes; the mass arrests; and of course, the economically prosperous city of Seattle reduced to a declared state of civil emergency... at last the world can truly appreciate the social impact of global capitalism.
After months of organizing and mobilization, it was anyone's guess as to how the resistance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) would manifest itself in the streets of Seattle. When the WTO last met in Geneva over a year ago, the small Swiss city erupted into the worst rioting since 1932 - streets were blocked by spontaneous demonstrations, banks and multinationals were occupied, corporate property was destroyed, cars were overturned and torched, and overall damages were estimated to be in the millions. It seemed highly improbable that effective insurgency on this scale could be translated to a generally passive American left-protest movement - or could it?
In what turned out to be one of the most effective direct action campaigns of the last decade, the disruptive protests in Seattle have managed to give a new breath of radical militancy to a largely co-opted and irrelevant American left. In contrast to the traditionally safe forms of protest commonly used by left-activists (which rely heavily on appealing to the powers that be in order to grant reforms and concessions), the more defiant forms of protests that took place in Seattle demonstrated a new determination and willingness on the part of certain activists in working towards making this system increasingly more unmanageable for the capitalist ruling class.
Through many levels of complimentary direct action -- which included non-violent civil disobedience, riotous clashes with police, militant street occupations, strategic corporate property destruction, and confrontational resistance - activists effectively shut down the WTO's opening ceremonies and first working sessions, took control of the streets of downtown Seattle for over twelve hours, were responsible in part for the total collapse of a new round of neo-liberal trade negotiations, and exposed for all the world to see that capitalist interests are no longer safe, even here, within the confines of the United States. Indeed, history had been made.
Late last winter, the Clinton administration announced to the world that Seattle had been chosen as the host city for the Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which was scheduled to take place from November 29th through December 3rd. From this publicly announced point of departure, a diverse international coalition of left activists and peoples' movements were quick to take up the task of mounting a successful campaign of opposition to this conference, which was expected to mark the starting point of a new round of negotiations (the so-called 'Millennium Round') aimed at expanding the powers of the WTO. For anarchists and other activists on the radical left, the opposition and resistance to the World Trade Organization was seen, not as a specific and isolated campaign within itself, but instead as an integral part of the larger struggle against globalized capitalism as a whole. For this reason, the participation from anarchists in organizing against the WTO was significant from the very beginning.
In what was to become a pre-cursor to the global resistance aimed at the WTO, a successful 'international day of action against the global capitalist system' was organized for June 18th (J18) by a decentralized and informal network based around the People's Global Action (PGA). Timed to coincide with the first day of the 'Group of Eight' (G8) Summit held in Cologne, Germany, June 18th saw riots, street parties, direct actions, and creative protests take place in over 40 cities around the globe, with significant confrontations in London, Cologne, Nigeria, Pakistan, New York City, and Eugene, Oregon. From the success of J18, another international day of action was called for November 30th (N30), which was to coincide with the opening ceremonies of the WTO. A strategy of autonomous and decentralized action was adopted by the People's Global Action at the group's second conference held in Karnataka, India, and this call to action went out to a number of international groups and movements.
In the weeks leading up to the WTO conference, this strategy of autonomous action was beginning to successfully take shape around the world. In late October, it was reported that a Seattle branch-outlet of The GAP (which has been a focus for anti-globalization and anti-sweat shop activism) was the target of a late-night firebombing attempt, where apparently two molotov cocktails were lobbed into the store but did not result in any serious damages.
On November 4th, a total of 11 activists from Northcoast Earth First! were arrested for hanging a banner that read: "Free Trade: Our World For Corporate Profits" from the roof of a building that was hosting an International Conference on Trade, Investment and Tourism in Eureka, CA. That same day, Canadian anti-free trade "goblins" disrupted a negotiating meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Toronto, where stink bombs made from shit and rotting eggs were let off.
On November 15th, Dutch activists from the MayDay action group boarded and occupied a tourist replica of a ship that was owned by the 17th century Dutch East Indian Company (one of the first multinationals), which lies in the harbor of Amsterdam, and hung a giant banner between the masts which read: "Stop The WTO." In Geneva, 27 Swiss protesters managed to occupy the WTO's world headquarters on November 16th for over two hours before being ejected by police. On November 24th, over 300 people scaled the fence of the World Bank headquarters in India, covering it with posters, graffiti, cow shit and mud.
In Turkey, peasants, environmentalists, and trade unionists marched over 2,000 miles between November 22-29th against the WTO and global capitalism. Similar pre-N30 marches and demonstrations also took place in Korea, Czech Republic, Switzerland, France, India, Canada, and the United States.
From Protest To Resistance
Even before the WTO Ministerial Conference officially began, all hell started to break loose as thousands of activists made their way to Seattle days in advance. The Direct Action Network (DAN) had rented a large space in the Capitol Hill district which was to act as a center for anti-WTO activities throughout the week. In this space direct action strategies were planned, workshops and teach-ins were scheduled, affinity groups were formed, legal briefings were given, giant puppets were constructed, and people were trained in non-violent civil disobedience, street theatre, jail solidarity and first aid. A lot of this activity spilled over to a smaller space rented by the Seattle Anarchist Response (SAR), which acted as both an infoshop and meeting space, and the Indy Media Center, where most of the alternative media activism took place.
Within a relatively short time sporadic banner hangings became a commonplace occurrence in Seattle as activists repelled from highway overpasses, buildings, and giant cranes to unfurl bold messages of protest against the WTO. Throughout the city, scattered demonstrations and direct actions also increased dramatically in the days leading up to the WTO conference.
On November 26th, an underground group calling itself the "Washington Tree Improvement Association" paid a visit to genetic engineering tree research facilities at the University of Washington's College of Urban Horticulture, where over 200 genetically modified trees and saplings were reported to have been destroyed, water lines and hoses were cut, and research materials were sabotaged. On November 27th, activists participated in a Critical Mass ride that managed to enter the Washington Trade and Convention Center en masse, with police frantically trying clear circling bicyclists from the downstairs foyer.
On Sunday, November 28th, the Direct Action Network (DAN) organized "a rehearsal for insurrection," which consisted of a large and festive demonstration through the Capitol Hill neighborhood that managed to attract the participation of over 700 people. Later that night, between 50-75 people squatted a 12-unit apartment complex in protest of "a system in which human rights are subordinated to property rights" (after the WTO conference, squatters turned the building over to two homeless-advocacy groups who, through Seattle's Low Income Housing Institute, have attempted to broker a deal with the landlord). Also, fifteen thousand copies of the Seattle Post-Intelligence (a parody on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of the city's largest dailies), with articles mocking the WTO, Monsanto, Boeing, privatization, and neo-liberal trade policies, were meticulously placed in newspaper dispensers all over the city.
By November 29th, activists started to engage in more directly confrontational forms of protest beginning with a demonstration in front of a McDonalds, where Jose Bove, a French goat farmer who has lead a campaign of direct action against the American fast food giant, spoke and shared with the public over 100 pounds of tariff-free Roquefort cheese that was illegally smuggled into the US. During the demonstration, groups of black-clad anarchists pushed through police lines and lay siege on the McDonalds, and after a few small skirmishes, were successful in smashing in the front windows and covering the exterior with spraypainted graffiti. Other protesters, who were carrying a banner against the genetic engineering of food, jumped on the roof of a city bus. From here, hundreds of protesters moved on to Niketown, where once again militants tried to engage in strategic acts of property destruction. Unfortunately, in what was to set the initial precedence for a week's worth of audacious and downright deplorable actions on the part of reactionary pacifists (who became popularly referred to as "peace police"), groups of confused peaceniks began to physically defend Niketown, a corporation universally known for it's use of sweatshop labor, from being trashed by the anarchists. Pacifism as pathology indeed!
In the early morning hours of November 30th, thousands of activists had gathered simultaneously at both the Victor Steinbrueck Park, near Seattle's waterfront Pike Place Market, and at the Seattle Central Community College, in the Capitol Hill district. In a staged procession, the motley assortment of activists began to march towards the Paramount Theatre, where the opening ceremonies of the WTO conference were set to take place. As hundreds of riot police attempted to prevent the two marches from reaching their perceived destination, participants broke off into large clusters of affinity groups and spread themselves throughout city, occupying every possible street, intersection, and point of entry leading to the Paramount Theatre, and surrounding almost all of the downtown hotels where delegates were staying. Downtown traffic became gridlocked, and hundreds of WTO delegates were successfully pushed back by activist blockades. By mid-morning, it was clear that the strategy of direct action was a complete success. Out of an expected 3,000 delegates, under 350 were able to make it to the Paramount Theatre, and as a result, the WTO officially cancelled it's opening ceremonies.
Frustrated by a total loss of control over the situation, heavily equipped riot police (known as "The Hard Team") began to mount a series of brutal offensives. Police indiscriminately shot canisters of tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds of demonstrators and used pain compliance holds, baton charges and pepper spray (at point blank range) on non-violent activist blockades. Responding accordingly to this violent provocation, groups of anarchists began to exchange volleys of tear gas canisters with police, and participated in a number of defensive scuffles. Whenever possible, small groups of protesters also began counter-offensives by throwing rocks, smoke bombs, and bottles at the lines of advancing riot cops. Make-shift barricades were formed out of overturned dumpsters, tree grates, and newspaper boxes. Police cars attempting to drive through human blockades were chased back, and in some instances, left completely immobile through the use of homemade caltrops. Unattended police cars, riot vans and delegates' limousines had their tires slashed, windows smashed, and when possible, were overturned by highly mobile groups of anarchist militants.
Rather than successfully regaining control over the streets, the police actions had the complete opposite effect as angered protesters became more confrontational in defending occupied intersections throughout the city. In addition to the unforeseen consequences of their aggressive actions, a huge strategic blunder was also committed by police as they left the entire downtown area unattended in order to secure positions between the Convention Center (where the WTO was scheduled to begin their first sessions of the afternoon) and the front lines of protest.
At 11:11am, a Reclaim The Streets! party was scheduled to take place in Westlake Center, the center of the city's newly liberated shopping district. Seizing the opportunity, between 60-80 masked anarchists grouped themselves into a highly organized 'black bloc' (an effective tactic adopted from the German autonome) and started on a politically motivated rampage that spanned the entire downtown area. Using everything from sledge hammers and crowbars to slingshots and newspaper boxes, the black bloc systematically trashed a number of banks, multinationals, and big businesses. In choosing clear targets such as Bank of America, US Bancorp, Fidelity Investment, The Gap, McDonalds, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Niketown, anarchists were successful in making a direct assault against some of the specific multi-national capitalist interests who stand to benefit most from institutions such as the WTO. Before long, huge stretches of windows were splintered into shards and buildings were covered with anarchist and anti-capitalist graffiti.
As the entire downtown area was transformed into a festive warzone of urban disorder, property destruction, clouds of tear gas, spontaneous street parties, and riotous clashes between protesters and police, the 50,000 strong labor march made it's way through the city. Unfortunately, by and large, the rank-and-file of organized labor proved themselves unwilling to break from the timid and reformist union leadership of the AFL-CIO in order to stand with protesters against the violent police advancements. However, as the main labor march pushed on, an IWW contingent (marching under a banner which read Capitalism Can Not Be Reformed!) pushed its way through the AFL marshalls and joined the blockades, This act of solidarity also managed to open the way for groups of rebellious Steelworkers, Electrical Workers, Longshoremen, Sheet Metal Workers and Teamsters who also joined with activists as they struggled to keep control of the streets.
In addition to the large AFL-sponsored labor march, a sizeble contingent from the Peoples Assembly, intiated by the Filipino group Bayan-USA, also marched into the scene. The Peoples Assembly had been meeting for two days with delegates from many different nations in order to expose imperialist globalization and develop solidarity between their various struggles. At the front of the march were Korean drummers, followed by contingents from the Philippines, Filipino communities throughout North America, and represenetatives from Africa, Japan and Latin America.
By mid-afternoon, there were a number of tense stand-offs and running battles with police, who, in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets, began to employ the use of concussion grenades and large wooden and plastic bullets against crowds of people. In response, barricades were reinforced and a few overturned dumpsters were set aflame.
At around 4:30pm, black bloc anarchists managed to regroup in front of Niketown. After the windows were successfully smashed in, a number of local city youths entered the building and helped themselves to some of the overpriced merchandise. As with many of the other instances of direct action against corporate property, groups of "peace police" started to physically assault both black bloc anarchists and young looters. Forming a defensive circle around the battered Niketown, supposedly "non-violent" activists shoved and tackled militants, and in some cases attempted to restrain people with the intent of turning them over to police, all in an effort to safe-guard the exploitive multinational from further destruction and expropriation. This was one of at least six different occasions where self described "peacekeepers" attacked individuals engaging in direct action against corporate property throughout the day.
By early nightfall, a civil state of emergency was declared (for the first time in Seattle since World War II) and a curfew imposed. Police launched a massive tear-gas attack and series of violent charges against the remaining groups of demonstrators, forcing most people from the downtown area and up into the Capitol Hill district. As helicopter spotlights circled overhead, police fought pitched battles against hundreds of protesters and angry residents in what became some of the worst confrontations of the day. Volleys of tear-gas canisters were thrown back at advancing lines of police (who were also attacked with rocks and bottles), intersections were barricaded with burning dumpsters, and a local Starbucks was thoroughly gutted. The battle raged on late into the night.
Official reports claimed that 68 people had been arrested throughout the day, the number of injuries were estimated to be in the hundreds (most went unreported), and over $3 million in property damages had been sustained (with at least a further $10 million in lost Christmas shopping revenues throughout the week). By the weeks end, Seattles final costs for its handling of the WTO conference would exceed $9 million, far surpassing worst-case projections.
With President Clinton arriving in Seattle on December 1st to address the WTO, city officials (under pressure from federal authorities) had extended the state of emergency, and the greater downtown area was declared a "no-protest zone" for the remainder of the week. By early Wednesday morning, Seattle resembled a city under military occupation with hundreds of National Guard troops ordered in by the governor, riot police and state troopers assigned to every corner, and armored vehicles making routine patrols throughout downtown. Thousands had gathered downtown in defiance of the no-protest zone, resulting in mass arrests by police. Protest organizers, medics, alternative media, and people with radio communications were all specifically targeted by police, while many others were placed under arrest for "unlawful assembly," or else simply for possessing gas masks (which was declared illegal due to the civil emergency) or visible displays of protest such as signs, banners, stickers, or even buttons.
For the hundreds of arrested protesters, a special mass incarceration center was set up at the Sand Point Navy Base by police. Three busloads of arrestees managed to cut their plastic handcuffs with finger nail-clippers and refused to leave the buses in which they were transported in, resulting in a 14-hour occupation which came to an end only after police pepper sprayed and physically removed the occupants. There have been numerous reports of systematic police torture used against arrestees within both the Sand Point Navy Base and King County Jail. It has been reported that non-compliant individuals were beaten repeatedly, slammed against walls, overcrowded in cells, threatened at gunpoint, stripped naked, hog-tied and thrown into isolation, threatened with rape and torture, carried by their hair, and strapped into four-point restraint chairs where they were pepper sprayed and had pain-compliance techniques applied. Broken bones, concussions and other serious injuries were purposely left untreated and most people were denied access to legal representation. Despite this sadistic and brutal treatment by police, arrested protesters maintained a disciplined strategy of jail solidarity and engaged in numerous acts of resistance and non-compliance with legal proceedings.
Later in the afternoon, over a thousand people marched in solidarity with locked-out Steelworkers to Pier 63 for a waterfront rally. After listening to numerous speeches, hundreds of restless protesters started chanting "Downtown! Downtown!" and marched en mass towards the convention center in defiance of the declared no-protest zone. In response, riot police and National Guard troops blocked all streets leading downtown. With street access to the convention center effectively cut off, protesters instead changed strategies and began to occupy key intersections in an effort to tie-up rush hour traffic. Without warning, a massive police offensive began as numerous police cars and armored personnel carriers began arriving on the scene and riot police and National Guard moved in. In a heavy-handed attempt to disperse this "unlawful assembly," whole city blocks were completely engulfed by clouds of tear-gas while police indiscriminately shot rubber and plastic bullets and dozens of concussion grenades into the crowds of demonstrators and by-standers. As people fled down alleyways and re-grouped in Pike Place Market, riot police and National Guard followed close behind. Once again the volley of tear gas and concussion grenades were thrown into crowds of people, this time in Seattle's historic open marketplace (and reportedly with a stronger gas that contained an apparent nerve agent responsible for a number of seizures, spontaneous menstruation and blackouts amongst protesters). From here most people retreated and made their way back up to the Capitol Hill district, touching off another night of fierce clashes with police. In total, it was reported that 510 people had been arrested on this day (with injuries assumed to be even greater than the previous day).
Thursday morning began in front of Seattle Central Community College, where the Direct Action Network had scheduled a public meeting and press conference to expose and denounce the brutal police actions used against activists and residents throughout the week. From here over 2,000 people marched throughout the city in protest of the continued police state in Seattle. Due to the widespread anger at the police brutality, the city backed off with some of their more overt police attacks, however the state of emergency and night curfew remained in place. In an effort to shift attention from their own brutal actions, authorities announced that they were conducting a city-wide manhunt for anarchists who may have participated in Tuesday's spree of property destruction, targeting anyone dressed in black with black masks. For the remainder of the demonstrations and marches, groups of identifiable anarchists were continually singled out and closely monitored by police and federal authorities.
By noon, the anti-police brutality march met up with an equally large march in support of independent farmers (and against biotechnology and monopoly agribusiness supported by the WTO) in Victor Steinbrueck Park, where the farmers' groups had scheduled an outdoor news conference and rally. From here, the farmers march continued on to protest in front of the Seattle headquarters of Cargill (a leading global agribusiness monopoly) and anti-police brutality demonstrators made there way to the King County Jail, where many arrested protesters were still being held. Hundreds of people surrounded the jail, mounting a 24-hour blockade in solidarity with the arrested. In response, a King County judge ruled that police had eight hours to allow for all of the arrested to have access to legal representation, have those held in solitary moved back into the general population, and provide adequate medical attention for people in need.
On Friday, a labor march with over 10,000 participants made it's way through the downtown area to demonstrate against the no-protest zone and assert their right to free assembly. At about the same time, hundreds of people gathered in front of the Westin Hotel in support of a group of activists who managed to lock themselves to the hotel's entrance in an attempt to block WTO delegates from attending the final meeting of trade talks. Towards evening, when the curfew was set to take effect, groups of protesters occupied positions inside of the no-protest zone with dozens of riot police surrounding them.
Late into the night, hours after the WTO conference was officially scheduled to end, it was announced to the world that the WTO meetings had reached an impasse, trade talks had completely collapsed, and the conference ended in total confusion and disorder. With no agenda decided (Caribbean, Latin American and African delegations all refused their consent on grounds of the secretive and undemocratic nature of WTO process) and negotiations suspended, there will be no "Millennium Round" of neo-liberal trade agreements put into motion within the WTO. As the final session adjourned, exausted WTO delegates stated that they would try again next year in Geneva to bridge the large differences within the organization.
After the week's trade conference fizzled to a close (with little to celebrate, the official closing ceremonies were cancelled), most delegates could not wait to leave Seattle. As they made their way through downtown, they were met one last time by activists who displayed a large signboard which read: "Bye WTO, It's Been A Riot!".
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by Loren Goldner
Mass politics in the streets disappeared in the U.S. between 1970 and 1973. In retrospect, it is clear that the years 1964 to 1970 were not a "pre-revolutionary situation", but anyone who lived through those years as an activist can be forgiven for thinking it was. Any number of people in the ruling circles shared the same error of judgment. The black urban insurrections of 1964 to 1968, the working-class wildcat rebellion (often led by black workers) from 1966 to 1973, the breakdown of the U.S. military in Indochina, the "student" and "youth" rebellions, and the appearance of militant feminist, gay and ecology movements were all indicators of a major social earthquake. Thirty years after they ended, the "sixties", for the left and for the right, still hang over American society like smoke after a conflagration.
The "oil crisis" and world recession of 1973-75 closed that era, and the revolutionary movement in the U.S. and everywhere else has been retrenching and regrouping ever since. If the ebb has seemed deeper in the U.S. than in Europe, it is only because U.S. capital is the cutting edge of the dismantling of the old Keynesian "social contract", such as it was, a dismantling in which Europe is still at the halfway point. The ebb of open struggle in the U.S., punctuated briefly but hardly reversed by actions against the Gulf War in 1990-91 or by the Los Angeles riots of 1992, expresses a vast "recomposition" of class lines in a world restructuring of capital. Many formerly successful forms of struggle, most notably the wildcat strike, have all but disappeared. The movements of the sixties were internationalist in sentiment, but they rarely transcended the national framework in practice. However much one wants to quibble about the reality of "globalization", it has been clear for a long time, even to avowed reformists, that any meaningful strategy, even in the day-to-day sense, has to be international, or better, "transnational", from the outset to win anything worth talking about. "Think globally, act locally" may sound like a solution, but its practical result usually comes down to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Some American and Chinese workers may have had a more radical consciousness, and perhaps were even more internationalist rhetorically, in the 1920's than today, but today conditions exist in which they are compelled, practically, to make internationalism concrete in a way that was unthinkable in the 1920's. Awareness of the need for a global strategy has been around, and widespread, for a long time, but it has been extremely difficult to make practical. The reformists at places such as the Institute for Policy Studies, supported by a few capitalists, are working hard to develop something like a "global Keynesianism" and a "global welfare state", once they solve the little problem of the "separate body of armed men", the sovereign nation state, which has not exactly disappeared. Meanwhile, the "centrist" Clinton administration has since 1993 pushed through NAFTA, the WTO, the ASEAN agreement, and the dismantling of welfare, a set of attacks on working people in America that would have been opposed in the streets if undertaken by the "right". It has delivered everything the globalists have asked for.
American workers have reacted to this situation in contradictory ways. There has been an important protectionist sentiment among American workers for a long time: "Buy American", "Save American Jobs", "Park Your Toyota in Tokyo", support for anti-immigrant legislation, occasional violence against Asians, the vile anti-Mexican propaganda of the Teamsters, the USW's (United Steel Workers) anti-dumping campaign, or the working-class electoral base for Buchanan's "Fortress America" are all ugly examples of this. Beyond it all ultimately lies the sentiment: lay off someone else, or don't hire someone else, and save my job, not to mention a fair dose of anti-Asian, anti-Latino racism. Many workers have been won over to sympathy for their employers, who are beleaguered by imports, and have swallowed big concessions on that basis. On the other hand, traditional unions such as the UAW (United Auto Workers) as well as “respectable” reformist opposition groups such as Labor Notes have made some serious attempts to hook up with workers (usually along industry lines) in Mexico, Asia and Europe, but strictly within a union and often corporatist framework. There have been some coordinated job actions in auto between the U.S. and Mexico, or the Bridgestone-Firestone campaign of U.S. and Japanese workers. But all these actions have been strictly under the control of some faction of union bureaucrats, in or out of power, and represent the extension of sectoral trade union reformism to a world scale.
There exists an inchoate desire in the U.S., including among some American workers, (which surfaced during the campaigns against NAFTA or 1995 "fast track" legislation), for a DIFFERENT KIND OF INTERNATIONALISM than that offered by either the globalist ruling class or by the timid actions of official unionists who unquestioningly accept the framework of capitalism. If, as seems to be the case, the world economy has become a "negative sum game" for workers, a "race to the bottom", then a "different kind of internationalism" would mean creating a situation for a "positive sum game" in which workers can concretely fight for their own interests on a CLASS FOR ITSELF basis, in a way that implicitly or, better still, explicitly, recognizes the practical unity of interests of working people in the U.S. and China, Japan and Bangladesh, Italy and Albania. Since society, like nature, abhors a vacuum, without this kind of perspective, the protectionists and/or the anti-protectionist, internationalist reformists will rush in, and contribute to a new anti-working class reshuffling of the deck, in the capitalist "sum which can never be a totality", as Bordiga used to say.
From a revolutionary viewpoint, it is easy to be skeptical about the events in Seattle. The American participants, both among the trade union contingent and the direct action groups, were overwhelmingly white, in a country in which 30% of the population is now constituted by people of color. The slogan "Fair Trade, Not Free Trade" could certainly be seen as a slightly-concealed variant of protectionism by those (and there were many) who wished to do so. The dominant nerve of the demonstrators was activated by the very real prospect of little groups of transnational corporate appointees overruling and overturning national labor and environmental laws and agreements, but just behind that animus was, for some, the idea of Chinese bureaucrats having such influence. Steel workers threw foreign steel into Seattle harbor and others held a "Seattle Tea Party" against foreign imports, with China the obvious main target. Few questioned as vociferously the negative impact of WTO entry on CHINESE workers, who obviously could not be present.
Throughout, the trade union bureaucracy remained firmly in control of the worker contingents, (determined, and successful, in their plan to have nothing but a peaceful, disciplined, unthreatening march independent of, if not indifferent to, the "crazies" of the direct action groups), and few if any workers seriously challenged that control. The animus of the Sweeney leadership of the AFL-CIO clearly came from the sense of "betrayal" at the recent US-China agreement on China's entry into the WTO. The failure of the Seattle meeting took the Democrats off the hook of having to push hard for China's entry into the WTO in an election year, when both the USW and the Teamsters have clearly gone for the protectionist option. Clinton's kind words for the rights of the demonstrators should be seen in that context, particularly after it became known that powerful forces at the top had pushed for heavy repression when the police lost control on the first day, and that US Army intelligence units disguised as demonstrators had been all over the place with concealed lapel cameras and all the new paraphernalia of the technotronic, "New Paradigm" surveillance state. In the Boston area, where I live, much of the "post-Seattle" organizing has an even more overtly protectionist agenda, with repugnant slogans such as "Not One More American Job to Mexico", and I doubt that this is exceptional.
Nevertheless, despite all the elements of "uneven", parochial or simply reactionary ("Buchananite") consciousness it may have contained, one has to characterize Seattle as a breakthrough. There was, in the patent lack of official preparedness for what happened, an unrepeatable singularity (no international trade summit will ever again take place, anywhere, with so little readiness for heavy repression) an opening to exactly that element of the unknown and unexpected that characterizes a situation momentarily beyond all manipulative control, whether by the state or the unions or the "left", when power lies for a moment "in the streets". In 24 hours, Seattle ripped away the "one note" unanimity of the tolerated "public discussion" of international economic issues of the past 20 years or more. Millions of people who never heard of the WTO learned what it was, and what it does, more thoroughly than through decades of peaceful opposition and think-tank chatter. Even strongly protectionist American workers were thrown together in the streets with activists, including worker activists, from 100 countries, and had to confront the human face of the producers of "foreign imports" in a way that had never previously occurred on such a scale, not to mention in such an open situation (as opposed to tedious international trade union conferences of bureaucratic delegations). Teamsters, bare-breasted Amazon lesbian warriors and tree-huggers were thrown together, and talked, on an unprecedented (for the U.S.) scale. The Seattle events gave a concrete target to opponents of the seemingly abstract forces that have made serious action on the appropriate level so difficult for so long. In accounts I heard from people who had been there, and in material I was able to gather, there was a genuine whiff of the spontaneous awakening, in the heat of confrontation, to the power of capital and the state that has not been seen in the U.S. since the sixties, a genuine demonstration by masses in motion of the truth of the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, to wit that classical materialism "does not understand sensuous activity as objective". The great majority of demonstrators in Seattle, particularly in the direct action contingents, had not been born or were children when the sixties ended, and had never experienced their own power in the streets in this way, anywhere. Trite as it may sound to the small numbers of sixties activists who still consider themselves revolutionaries, and who are jaded from having been through it all before, a first clubbing, a first tear-gassing, seeing the police go berserk against people detained in a holding cell, a first concrete experience of what bourgeois "rights" really mean when the state tears them up in a confrontational setting, is an irreversible crossing of a threshold, an irreplaceable experience of collective power and of the role of those who job is to repress it. People who go through this, whatever the consciousness or intentions that brought them to Seattle, can never be the same.
The brief, ephemeral opening of the sense that "nothing will ever be the same" experienced by some in Seattle and in the wake of Seattle will close again quickly (just as the opening, such as it was, of the LA riots, or that of the December 1995 strike wave in France, closed quickly) without a strategy for a real internationalism, an internationalism in which criticisms of slave labor in China or child labor in India are joined to, e.g. a practical critique of the mushroom-like proliferation of sweatshops and prison labor in the U.S. A perspective encompassing the most oppressed layers of the working class and its allies is always a safeguard against the parochialism, including militant parochialism, which sets the stage for a "reformist" reshuffling of the capitalist deck, as occurred in the 1930's and 1940's. Ever since "1973" closed the era of meaningful "wildcat" direct action on the shop floor of one factory, the workers' movement in the U.S. and many other countries has been groping toward a new concrete terrain on which to fight something beside endless losing local battles against plant closings and downsizing, or outright reactionary battles demanding in effect that the layoffs happen "somewhere else". In their greatly heightened global mobility, the capitalists stole a march on the world working class that more than 25 years of losing and defensive struggles has not yet overcome. If Seattle is in fact to be a positive turning point, at which history did in fact finally turn, it can only be on the path to solidifying and greatly expanding this terrain.
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The first article does an important job in defending direct action against police and property at N30. Its author and numerous other anarchist communists, notably those around the NEFAC initiative, are united in support of members of the ‘anarchist black bloc’ who are facing serious charges, and who are being scapegoated by some liberal elements. However, it seems clear that many of the other so-called anti-capitalists at Seattle do not have a class struggle, anti-state agenda. One problem with an uncritical attitude to ‘people’s global this and that’ is exactly its acceptance of cross-class unity in struggle, which has to be opposed if we are to recognise the true nature of capitalism, being based as it is on class privilege and ownership. A class analysis also puts direct action into context. It defends actions against the police and property but it can also be used to criticise autonomous actions if they become too divorced from the experiences of other working class people - as a guard against a tendency towards elitism, and ultimately terrorism. The blank acceptance of the firebombing incident is worrying in this respect. On the other hand, can anarchist communists really talk positively about breathing a new militancy into the left? Maybe we use the word ‘left’ differently in Britain compared to the USA, but anarchists really do need to be careful about identifying with non-libertarians. Since J18 and N30, the Socialist Workers Party here in Britain is trying to benefit by jumping on the anti-capitalism bandwagon (being careful not to mention the word anarchist of course), and promoting the party’s leadership as the way forward. Quite probably this will fall on deaf ears, and we won’t have to work too hard to stop them getting their democratic-centralist clutches into those who are unaware of their kind of politics, but any talk of the left in a positive light can only help them confuse our huge differences in objectives. On the contrary we should be pleased if they remained weak.
It is perhaps easier to criticise from outside, but the author of the second article doesn’t hide this fact. With a more detached analysis they do well to show how so-called anti-capitalist unity can be read in different ways, not least as the veiled (and not so veiled) protectionism of the unions and the Fair Trade lobby. So, whilst is it good to know that some in the worker contingents have openly supported the direct actions of N30 and have not been taken in by liberal pacifist condemnations, we find is it equally important to recognise the lack of a break from conventional leftist organisation. It is always most valuable when workers learn from struggling outside of their unions, and it is not clear to what extent this happened at Seattle, if at all. We must hope that workers involved in N30 will recognise how unions will defend jobs ‘at home’ in the guise of penalising companies with poor workers rights abroad (with the support of the US President, no less), which is against any true internationalism. This would be on the way to an understanding of why a national or state economy is not a benign alternative to the seemingly more anti-state ‘globalised’ variety, and that we need to fight instead for the real alternative of an anti-state communism – anarchist communism.
Read more reflections on J18.