<nettime> Endorsing the Call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc

[dr wooo <vornman@excite.com>]

...


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 00:45:35 -0500
From: Edmond Caldwell <bronterre@earthlink.net
Reply-To: a-infos-d@lists.tao.ca
To: aut-op-sy@lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: [spanet] (Fwd: Anarchist Unity)

This development in the USA is interesting in itself, but I think also
has some practical relevence to the discussion on the nature of class
taking place
here.

****** Forwarded Message Follows *******

________________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
http://www.ainfos.ca/
________________________________________________

Endorsing the Call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc

Recently a number of anarchist groups issued a call for a Revolutionary
Anti-Capitalist Bloc for the upcoming "A16" demonstrations against the
International Monetary Fund in Washington D..C. Not restricting themselves
to organizing an anarchist black bloc, these activists extended a hand to
autonomists, "anti-state libertarian marxists," anarcho-syndicalists, and
council communists to form a common front, organized separately but acting
in concert as a revolutionary and anti-capitalist pole of attraction within
the larger movement against "globalization." As adherents of council
communist political perspectives, the publications Collective Action Notes,
Red & Black Notes, and The Bad Days Will End endorse this call issued by
our anarchist friends. We do so not as representatives of membership
organizations, and still less as "leaders" of any kind, but rather as
individuals who represent publications with modest circulations.

The "A16" actions are intended to build on the momentum from last years
anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. In the growing resistance to
"globalization" and global financial institutions such as the WTO, the IMF,
and the World Bank, some are now heralding the emergence of a "new
movement" and even a "new anti-capitalism." These protests certainly
demonstrate that globalization is not the inevitable juggernaut that the
capitalist bosses and bureaucrats say it is. But the "new anti-capitalism"
that was on display in Seattle was a mixed bag, containing, it turned out,
a lot of the old reformism, in the form of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, the
Sierra Club, the National Lawyers Guild, Ralph Nader and his ilk, and
assorted "NGOs." These elements see the movement against globalization
simply as a way of putting pressure on the capitalist state to curtail or
revamp international financial institutions or to replace "free trade" with
"fair trade." This reformist perspective brings with it an ugly nationalist
protectionism, where what is needed is thoroughgoing international
solidarity. Tensions between some among the reformists and radicals
surfaced in Seattle, where "peacekeepers" willingly acted as adjuncts for
the state and its brutal cops in trying to keep radicals "in line." As the
movement builds for A16 in Washington, so does the need for political
clarification.

On a whole host of questions, the call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist
Bloc takes the road of class struggle rather than reform. The call declares
that the reformist message of "fair trade, not free trade" and of "pruning"
and "fixing" global capitalist financial institutions is unacceptable. The
call rejects the narrowness of "single-issue" organizing and opts instead
for a total revolutionary critique of capitalism. The call repudiates the
protectionism and nationalism that infect much of the anti-globalization
movement, agitating instead for the abolition of nations. The call rejects
the participation in the movement of so-called "peacekeepers" and insists
on the right of groups and individuals to organize and act autonomously
within the larger movement against globalization. All of these things are
not only supportable, but are necessary.

The anarchists call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc is not a call
to split the movement. It is a call to strengthen and concentrate a
political pole of attraction within the anti-globalization movement which
advances the understanding that, to be against globalization, you must be
against capitalism, the state, and the nation. This opposition necessitates
a proletarian perspective: To be for the working class and for the working
class revolutionary self-organization through workers councils.

This idea is not the stale "old left" or Leninist dogma in which only the
factory proletariat, organized in the trade unions, is allowed to be the
"real" subject of history. Globalization itself has meant the
de-industrialization of large segments of the U.S. workforce. At the same
time, modern capitalism has made of society as a whole a "social factory"
in which we are all workers. As the British journal Aufheben wrote in a
recent editorial on the J18 demonstrations in London, "if we are fighting
capital then we must constitute ourselves as the proletariat." Through this
union of the working class and its essence, we forge the basis of a genuine
international unity, which will one day lay the basis for the abolition of
capitalism, wage slavery, and work itself. Its with this perspective in
mind that we support the call for a Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc.

Signed,
Curtis Price / Collective Action Notes
Neil Fettes / Red & Black Notes
Ed Caldwell / The Bad Days Will End

March 2000

Contact addresses:

Collective Action Notes
POB 22962
Baltimore, MD  21203
USA
<cansv@igc.apc.org

Red & Black Notes
PO Box 47643 - 939 Lawrence Ave E
Don Mills, ON  M3C 3S7
Canada
<benn@idirect.com

The Bad Days Will End
c/o Merrymount Publications
PO Box 441597
Somerville, MA  02144
USA
<bronterre@earthlink.net


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