Socialist Action /December 1999
SEATTLE!
By NAT WEINSTEIN
An estimated 35,000 to 50,000 trade unionists, environmentalists, farmers
and other concerned people, including an unusually high proportion of youth,
went to Seattle to protest at the end of last month. The protests were directed
against the World Trade Organization (WTO), its so-called "free trade"
policy, and against the multinational corporations that are in complete
control of this global capitalist institution.
Most of the Seattle demonstrators, following the lead of the organizations
that initiated this mass protest action, hold the WTO largely responsible
for the ever-worsening social, economic, and environmental conditions that
have accompanied the uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) expansion of global
capitalism.
The Dec. 2 New York Times reported that Seattle Mayor Paul Schell started
out with a seemingly tolerant stance toward the demonstrators, which he
said was in the tradition of a city having a "strong union history
and a tolerance for diverse views." But he apparently bent to those
he holds in higher authority and unleashed heavily armed, helmeted police
firing tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful demonstrators.
Another Times report that day noted that while police were brutally assaulting
peaceful protesters "up to 50 people unveiled hammers, spray paint,
and large firecrackers [and] smashed windows of branches of virtually every
major retail chain, including F.A.O. Schwarz, Old Navy, Planet Hollywood,
and McDonald's."
But police failed to intervene because, as one of its spokespersons said,
"their primary goal was to protect trade delegates [and when] violence
began, they did not have enough force to [stop] the unruly crowds."
But virtually all eyewitnesses report that only a handful of frustrated
youth were "unruly," not the "crowds" of peaceful demonstrators.
The Times went on to report such eyewitness accounts of brutal attacks
on peaceful demonstrators: "It seemed like the police were everywhere
except where the real looting was going on, and I just don't understand
that," said Phil Pickers, the manager of a Planet Hollywood store on
6th Avenue. "They were containing the peaceful people while the anarchists
were going crazy."
Reports from around the world were remarkably sympathetic to the demonstrators
and stunned by televised scenes of rioting Seattle police. For instance,
the same issue of The Times, reports:
"In Britain, criticism tended to focus on the jarring spectacle
of black-clad, heavily insulated officers repelling nonviolent demonstrators
with what seemed like an arsenal of inessential weaponry. Glenys Kinnock,
a member of the European Parliament, said on a British television program
that the Seattle authorities had grievously overreacted: 'They dress in
very strange sort of Star Wars outfits, had tear gas, and I think it was
quite a draconian response to the demonstration.'"
Deepening radicalization
The protest demonstrations in Seattle were by all accounts entirely positive
and highly significant. It serves as evidence of a rapidly increasing awareness
by millions of people that the allegedly beneficent "tide that raises
all boats" has not benefited the overwhelming majority of this planet's
six billion people.
The masses of outraged protesters made very clear that at least they
were convinced that while the rich in their yachts are getting richer, billions
of the world's ordinary people are in a losing struggle to keep their heads
above water.
The organizations and individuals that initiated and supported the Seattle
demonstration list many legitimate grievances against the World Trade Organization.
Their critique falls into two related categories:
First, is their charge that the WTO subordinates human rights to "transnational
corporate profits." They hold the WTO responsible for the destruction
of the environment, supporting the exploitation of child labor and the driving
down of the living standards of workers, working farmers and others victimized
by what had been a little known and secretive global capitalist institution.
And second, is their charge that the peoples of the world are being stripped
of any control over their lives by the WTO and other unelected bodies. Even
the sovereignty of nations, they charge, is being rapidly undermined by
this institution of world capitalism, further negating the democratic rights
of the great majority of the world's peoples.
In effect, those who organized the Seattle protests have sent the clear
message that corporate greed is at the root of all evil. And because this
perception seems self-evident to so many people, it helps explain why tens
of thousands of ordinary people traveled hundreds and thousands of miles
to protest in a relatively distant corner of the country.
The environmental and labor movements were the high-profile organizers
of the Seattle protests. Each component contributed importantly to the action.
But first, it's important to look at how the environmentalist organizations
sought to mobilize people for the Seattle demonstration. It suggests that
the leaders of the environmental movement sense that deep changes in mass
consciousness are taking place. This largely explains why these organizations,
as we shall see, have come the closest to saying that the problem is capitalism
The environmental movement's leading organizations, for instance, ran
three full-page ads in The New York Times, one of them headlined "Globalization
vs. Nature."
The ad's sponsor, the "Turning Point Project," was described
as "a coalition of more than 60 non-profit organizations." It
listed 20 of the most prominent environmental organizations as signers of
the ad-including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace U.S., and Friends of the Earth.
The political thrust of these ads was clearly designed to transmit a
leftist anti-establishment message. And while none of these environmentalist
groups claims to be anticapitalist, the message could have easily been interpreted
as such.
The ads were evidently designed, moreover, to appeal to the incipient
and inchoate anticapitalist tendencies developing among a growing sector
of the population, primarily youth. Young people today are reacting against
the status quo because, among other things, they believe they are destined
to be the first generation that will not enjoy a living standard at least
equal to that of their parents.
That's something new and real, and is a harbinger of the far deeper,
class-conscious radicalization to come.
The following excerpt is from one of the three full-page advertisements.
It was published in the Nov. 22, 1999, edition of The New York Times. (The
quoted segment appears after a section describing the role of the WTO in
leading an assault on the environment-under the heading, "The deeper
problem.")
The authors of the "Globalization vs. Nature" ad pose the problem
facing humanity this way:
These attacks on environmental laws are symptoms of a larger environmental
problem: globalization itself. Under globalized free trade, countries as
diverse as Sweden and India, Canada and Thailand, Bolivia and Russia are
meant to merge their economies, and homogenize their values toward maximum
commodity accumulation. This puts the whole planet in a single giant economic
(and political) structure with global corporations in charge.
Such corporations depend on never-ending resource supplies, ever-expanding
growth, ever-expanding markets, and constant supplies of cheap labor. So,
WTO rules give top priority to such goals. Older values like preserving
nature, or protecting workers, or public health, or communities, or democracy
are viewed as impediments to global corporate growth.
But how long can this go on? Already we see serious ozone depletion,
global warming, habitat and species destruction, epidemic pollution; we
are on the brink of a global environmental collapse. How long can we keep
growing on a finite earth? This system is unsustainable. And one of its
most unsustainable aspects is the emphasis on export production... .
Until recently, most people in the world were fed by small farmers, producing
diverse staple food crops to serve local communities and local market. But
under WTO rules small farmers are disappearing. In much of the world (including
the U.S.) global corporations have taken over most aspects of farming, using
chemical-intensive methods, and now biotechnology. Small farmers have given
way to miles of single crop luxury monocultures for export to foreign markets....
This along with the other two ads get across the clear message that the
quest for profits is at the root of all the evils attributed by the Turning
Point Project sponsors to the policies of the WTO and its transnational
corporate masters. It is not entirely accidental that the spirit of the
above extract from the ad, in fact, bears an eerie resemblance to the spirit
of the following passage from "The Communist Manifesto," by Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels:
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere,
settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere....
All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily
being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction
becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries
that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from
the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at
home, but in every quarter of the globe.
To be sure, the sponsors of these ads are not Marxists. But it suggests
they are responding to a widespread radicalization gestating deeply beneath
the surface of mass consciousness, but surfacing first, for the most part,
among environmentalist youth.
The role of the AFL-CIO officialdom
Now, as to the role of the AFL-CIO in the Seattle protests: The labor
movement has a very big organizational advantage over the environmental
movement. With some 16 million members in a hierarchy of organizations from
local unions to city, state, and regional units, the AFL-CIO has a structure
very well suited for mobilizing millions of workers and their supporters
for effective action in their class interests.
Moreover, the trade-union movement has the objective capability of backing
up mass street demonstrations with industrial action. And it was this objective
power of this massive labor organization that enabled it to mobilize the
largest contingent of Seattle demonstrators.
Such a combination of capabilities can change the world. The only thing
the labor movement lacks is an intelligent and effective leadership that
is totally committed to advance the interests of the entire working class
and all its natural allies.
But that enormous objective potential for progressive change in the
interests of the working class has been eroded by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy's
openly declared policy of partnership with American capitalism. That led
them, long ago, to subordinate the class interests of working people to
the profits of those American capitalists whom they perceive as their "partners."
For the last half-century, the labor bureaucracy's class-collaborationist
policy has disoriented, demoralized, and eroded the social and economic
power inherent in the workers' movement. And that, in turn, has resulted
in a decades-long series of setbacks and defeated strikes, which has resulted
in a massive decline in union membership from 35.5 percent of the workforce
in 1945 to 14.1 percent in 1997.
We come now to AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, who represents the
most conservative segment of the American labor movement. Sweeney and the
labor chiefs that preceded him have been among the foremost opponents of
free trade, and have placed the blame for the crimes of the WTO on unnamed
"transnational corporations." But the real policy of the labor
bureaucracy is really more complicated than that.
The fact is that Sweeney is on record supporting the WTO and has reportedly
accepted an appointment by President Clinton to serve on a WTO advisory
committee. He thereby commits himself and the movement he heads to serve
as window-dressing for the anti-labor, anti-human rights, anti-environmental
policies of the WTO.
Thus the AFL-CIO's chief's real stance toward the WTO is not to overthrow
it, as he has made it appear, but to reform an institution that is absolutely
unreformable.
And as far as U.S. President William Clinton is concerned, he welcomes
Sweeney's endorsement of the WTO, seeing it as providing the sugarcoating
that will help the WTO's bitter medicine go down working people's throats.
(It's not for naught that Clinton has earned the nickname "Slippery
Willie.")
Then came a seemingly strange sequence of events. First, Clinton floated
the demand to the assembled WTO delegates that sanctions be imposed on countries
that refused to abide by fair labor standards "to enforce core labor
rights around the world." Then, following that "pro-labor"
declaration, Clinton took it all back: The next few days were spent with
his spokespersons assuring low-wage neocolonial nations that he never meant
what he said!
Clinton sent them around to assure these countries, it was widely reported,
that he merely was proposing that a "study" of the question of
labor and human rights be made. And anyone with a modicum of experience
with "studies" proposed by capitalist politicians knows that proposing
a "study" is most often the last anyone is likely to hear of it.
A false thesis
Now in regard to the logic behind the labor bureaucracy's strategy of
class collaboration: It is based on the false thesis that without profits,
there will be no bosses, and without bosses, no jobs. In other words, Sweeney
and company (who know better) pretend to perceive American capitalists as
the goose that lays golden eggs.
But that is merely the labor bureaucracy's rationalization for pressuring
the union rank and file to accept giveback contracts. The bureaucracy's
case for givebacks, in a nutshell, goes like this:
"Competition in the world market is intense. To stay in business,
'our' employers need concessions so that they can make a reasonable profit.
You can't blame them-why would anyone stay in business only to lose money?
And, in any case, we're all in the same boat, and if the boat sinks we go
down along with our bosses. So, to save our jobs, we have to give a little.
And then when the economic tide rises, we'll get it all back."
But in real life, experience has made eminently clear, the promised getback
never follows the giveback!
Moreover, the labor bureaucracy's "opposition" to free trade
is as phony as a nine-dollar bill. The AFL-CIO's real position is in support
of free trade -that is, only when it strips away tariffs and other barriers
to American exports. But the bureaucracy supports such barriers when it
blocks foreign imports coming into the domestic American economy.
In short, the bureaucracy is for both free trade and protectionism at
one and the same time, but only insofar as it suits the profit interests
of their American capitalist partners in crime. Thus, nothing has really
changed. The real policy of the labor bureaucracy remains as it has been
all along-putting profits before human rights, the environment, and workers'
rights.
What workers want is something else again
But the rank and file of the labor movement are motivated by different
needs and different goals. They want jobs, they want health care, they want
living wages, they want air they can breathe and water they can drink. They
have no interest in destabilizing the ecology of the planet. They have no
interest in sending so-called "peace keepers" (i.e., their own
working-class youth) around the world to kill and be killed in the service
of profits.
Even if free trade or protectionist policies served the interests of
workers-and neither are designed to do anything but increase corporate profits-why
go that very indirect route to get better jobs, wages, working conditions,
health care, and all the other things workers want? As Malcolm X once pointedly
remarked: When chickens look to wolves or foxes to defend their interests,
the chickens are in big trouble!
It is far better for real workers' leaders to simply say what it is that
workers really want. But most important, to educate and mobilize them for
a struggle in the streets and workplaces of the land in which they live
for these things!
Class struggle: the only way forward
Instead of putting our faith in what the bureaucrats allege are pro-labor
capitalists and their political representatives, what is needed is to go
back to the goals and strategy that built the world's most powerful trade-union
movement starting 66 years ago.
The struggle for a shorter workday and workweek with no reduction in
pay best exemplifies the time-tested strategy of the independent mobilization
of the working class and its allies for class struggle in its own class
interests.
Starting toward the end of the 18th century, workers began engaging in
a campaign for as long as it takes to reduce the workday and workweek-which
tended then to be at least 12 hours a day and six days a week. By the mid-19th
century a sizeable section of the working class in the industrializing countries
had achieved the 10-hour day and 60-hour week. By the 1880s the movement
for the eight-hour day was well under way.
But it was not until the 1930s that the eight-hour day, 48-hour week
had become the norm. Then by the mid-1940s American workers had generally
established the 8-hour day, 40-hour week as the norm, and a significant
minority of workers had won a seven-hour day, 35-hour week.
Now, 50 years after the AFL-CIO bureaucracy won virtually absolute control
over the labor movement with the indispensable help of the U.S. capitalist
class and its bipartisan government, even the 40-hour week has become a
myth.
Many other givebacks were handed over to the bosses by the labor bureaucracy
along with the 40-hour week-and stifling and sabotaging any fightback-all
in the name of protecting the profitability of their capitalist geese that
lay golden eggs. But it's the working class that produces the wealth, and
it's the capitalists who are laughing all the way to the bank with their
loot.
The fight for an ever-shorter workweek with no reduction in pay is, of
course, strategically important in itself, but it is also symbolic of the
generalized struggle since it is organically linked to the defense of the
social, economic, and political interests of the entire working class and
its natural allies-the victims of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia,
and all other forms of capitalist- inspired and cultivated bigotry.
Divide and conquer, in short, is the name of the game.
Moreover, the struggle against the endemic plague of capitalist unemployment
by shortening the workweek is entirely logical and just. Technological advances
have produced such a vast abundance of the things everyone needs and wants
that there is not the slightest legitimate reason that anyone in the world
should be without a job and be forced to go without sharing in the fruits
of socialized human labor.
So what do we conclude from all the above? Three things:
First, neither free trade nor protectionism will solve a single problem
for working people and other victims of capitalist anarchy.
Second, only by relying on its strategic position at the centers of production,
transportation, communication and distribution-and by relying on the time-tested
strategy of mass mobilization for struggle-can the interests of the working
class and all its natural allies, the exploited and oppressed of this world,
be advanced.
And third, only a world socialist society based on human solidarity and
a system of production designed to satisfy human needs, not profits, can
provide an alternative to the current accelerating trend toward capitalist
barbarism.
Socialist Action /December 1999 |