(We are reproducing here from International Newsletter No. 24, 19 July 2001, a comment from the Revolutionary Marxist Organization A/synechia (Greece). This was delivered as an intervention at the Seminar of Parties and Organizations from Europe organized by the Communists' Network in Torino, Italy, 14-15 July 2001 i.e. prior to Genoa protests.   -Editor)

1. An important, polymorphous, not uniform movement with mass characteristics, has been already born, characterized by considerable persistence and continuous presence: it is the “anti-globalization movement”. A movement that, during the last two years, embraces and mobilizes hundreds of thousands of people all over the world- from Seattle to Genoa.

Together with this movement, a new conscience has been born too: the main characteristic of this new conscience is that it considers the globalization as a negative process, and its main representatives (G8, WTO, NAFTA, IMF, EWB, EU, etc.) as the principal enemies. The main criticism of this movement focuses on two central links of the  world situation:

(a)        The capitalism, who has been globalized after the collapse of the so-called bipolar world, with all its mechanisms and its repercussions for the peoples, nations, regions, continents, the environment and the social relations.

(b)        The G8, WTO, IMF, EU etc., as well as the governments and the multinational corporations, that are considered as the source of all the suffering.

That is, this criticism focuses against the main and principal mechanisms and representatives of the contemporary imperialism. Of course, as with every genuine mass movement, this new conscience is not created in a linear way: there coexist several tendencies and opinions, and take place many interactions and discussions.

So:  Next to the networks created by the globalized capitalism (the economic, military and “information” networks), now another network is constructed – the one of the movement against the globalization. This new network, product of globalization itself and of the opposition against it, embraces a multitude of social and political forces: workers, unemployed, immigrants, peasants, indigenous people, scientists, intellectuals and artists, activists, cooperatives, trade unions, progressive press, local initiatives, women’s and youth organizations, NGOs, radio stations, internet portals, left organizations and parties, environmental movements, anarchist groups, religious organizations, … All these constitute the “people of Seattle”, as this movement has characteristically been named.

The protests during all the summits of the international imperialist organizations are only one moment of the anti-globalization movement: an important and symbolic moment, and also a moment of building – but just a moment. In reality, the most important characteristic of this movement is its connection with local issues of bigger or smaller importance and with various movements. Without such connections and the roots in local situations, there would be no moments such as those of Seattle, Washington, Okinawa, Melbourne, Nice, Prague, Gothenburg and tens of others all over the world. But those “rear bases” of the movement are not visible, are not underlined, are “forgotten” – on purpose. For example: the Seattle protest had been prepared for more than 6 months – and the actions of the militants there have their roots in important movements of the previous decades. Another example: behind the Gothenburg protests there were years of struggle against the imperialist EU, undertaken by the anti-EU mass movements of the Scandinavian peoples. In the “rear bases” of the anti-globalization movement we can also include all the struggles, resistances and criticisms since the mid 80s against the programs of structural adjustment, the liquidation of the rural economy and of other sectors in a series of countries. Furthermore, we include the tens of revolts and the spontaneous outbursts of the hungry, the homeless, the “invisible” people of Africa, Asia and Latin America. We include also those “forgotten” guerilla and national liberation movements that did not capitulate during the difficult years of the 80s and early 90s. The veritable roots of the new mass movement against the globalization are located in the struggles – and the experience extracted from them – of the 80s and 90s all over the world.

2. If we attempt to compare this movement with other mass movements that emerged during the last 20 years (like the pacifist and the ecological movement), we can say that the first one is more political, has more concrete targets, is less inclined to be assimilated and incorporated by the system. This is so because the anti-globalization movement focuses its attacks and criticisms in a more concrete way than other movements did. It targets the “enemy” in a bigger clarity. Moreover it has a huge capacity to embrace and express a big variety of social and political forces on local, regional and international level. This characteristic corresponds to the necessity and duty posed, with great emphasis and urgency, by the present historical period: the building of an international front against the “New World Order”, against the imperialist globalization.

This is not a youth movement of contestation, nor a mass movement located exclusively in the “developed countries” of the world. It regroups, to a great extent, people marginalized and excluded by the system, new proletarians, sectors of the temporary employment, immigrants, peasants and indigenous people threatened by extermination. This movement has powerful bases in movements and struggles all over the “storms’ zone”. Compared to other movements of the last 20 years, the anti-globalization movement does not promote aggressive and divisive conceptions against the working class, it is not opposed to the history and the culture of the working class, it does not disregard the working class experience. Of course, this does not mean that the “meeting” of the anti-globalization and the working class movements is an easy, simple and problem-less issue. However, the difficulty is due mainly to the deficiencies of the communist movement in the contemporary conditions, and much less to some erroneous conceptions of the anti-globalization movements.

Conclusively, the anti-globalization movement embraces and may voice further the basic masses, social classes and strata, nations and populations attacked by imperialism. It is reasonable to conclude that this movement may give birth to even more important developments on both the theoretical and practical levels. It is not at all unrealistic to think that the hundreds and thousands of people who participate in it, will be able, through their experience, to further clarify their conceptions and to produce such a knowledge that will give life to a new great wave of movements, revolts and revolutions.

The revolt of Seattle, for example, differs from elementary and spontaneous revolts, like the one we witnessed in Los Angeles in the early 90s. Seattle was not a revolt of the “ghettoes”, nor an “ordinary” outburst. It was a conscious and planned action of a well-informed part of the society. A part of the society that has access to the knowledge and the technology, that feels on its skin all the processes of the new proletarianization, a part that understands the role and the methods of the multinational corporations and is very sensitive to the environmental issues. So the first and the most impressive characteristic of the Seattle mobilization is that different conscience and the role of knowledge. This was a mass revolt of a part of the society that knows very well why it revolts, it has full understanding of its choice, it is politicized and had/has (before and after Seattle) an activity in various collective forms of organization.

These are some reasons for which we consider unjustified a certain “skepticism” that is expressed even towards the word “globalization” – considered by many left people as a “trap in order to cover-up imperialism”. An imperialism that remained (just  in their minds) unchanged since the work “Imperialism, highest stage of capitalism” was written…

3. The reticence or even negative attitude of some concrete currents of the official (but also the extra-parliamentary) Left in front of the anti-globalization movement may be attributed to two main reasons: Firstly, to a reticence in front of a mobilization that they do not control. Secondly to a grave underestimation of the globalization issue and of its many-sided repercussions on society, labour, standard of living, culture and environment. It is true that several left currents (others on grounds of expediency and others because of their narrow political horizon) do not want or cannot recognize in the globalization and the New World Order the basic (and inter-related) pillars of imperialism nowadays.

The problem (and the responsibilities) becomes even bigger because the official Left currents as well, adopted an “objectivist” reading of imperialist, greeted the “Scientific Technical Revolution” and distorted the character of imperialism and capitalism. They denied the whole Leninist theory on imperialism (as a decaying capitalism), got dazed by the “successes” of capitalism, greeted the Gorbachovism and its infamous “inter-dependence”. Generally, they attributed and still attribute a positive character to the so-called internationalization processes and to the capitalist integrations. And let’s not refer to the Trotskyite conceptions, considering those movements as a … confirmation of their awaited “world revolution” – and completely ignoring whole regions of the world, where billions of people are living and being oppressed!

So, the analysis and the “theoretical” elaborations of the official Left were within the dominating framework of globalization. And mainly, their principal activity was to serve various forms of the New World Order and even to participate in governments (and all these happened after 1989), then we can say: It is extremely positive that the real movement is, once more, ahead of this “Left”! This movement is part of the multitude of the movements of the present period: a period of passive defense on international level- and this definition cannot be changed by the fact that in some regions the revolutionary movement has advanced much more. The anti-globalization movement has not a concrete and visible vanguard; it develops in conditions of crisis of the revolutionary movement and of grave lacks in the revolutionary theory (and this crisis and theoretical backwardness are a fact, a much telling fact for whoever wants to overcome the presently negative situation). But its very existence underlines in the most dramatic way the need to pass to a higher level, that we define as active resistance.

4. There are those who attempt to compare this movement with the movement of “May 1968”; moreover, some discover many similarities between those two movements. In our opinion, a central element is the general ideological framework, the correlation of power, and the propulsive elements existing at that time. Today the correlation of power is globally much more unfavourable, the ideological front has retreated considerably, the communist movement still is in a deep crisis – and it has not settled accounts with the past. All these may justify and explain the lackings of the “new’ movements on the level of conscience, orientation and political targets. As we said previously, with the anti-globalization movement appears a mass conscience and practice that exceeds the programs and the political practice of the official Left- but, of course, this cannot yet be brought to completion on the level of a more general program, vision, social plan. To ask for this from the anti-globalization movement would be unrealistic, because a mass movement cannot produce such things “spontaneously”. Consequently, the problem remains: From one side, this movement exceeds in radicalism and intensity all the sayings of : “centre-left” governments, and appears now more appealing than the dominating common “reasoning” of globalization. From the other side, there are not even indications that it will adopt a vision leading to socialism (no matter how it could be called), to another society. While the slogans for the smashing of the imperialist organizations indicate dynamism and a strong contestation of the system, they are not “completed” by a different perspective: socialism. The reason for this must be searched not so much to the immaturity of this movement, but mainly to the attitude of the labour and communist movement, which was deeply corroded by the reformism and revisionism. Unfortunately, there is no sign of a much necessary historical self-criticism of the communist movement.

As a result of these negative developments, there is a very visible lacking of a more general understanding and opinion for the processes of the globalization, as an expression and result of imperialism nowadays, by the anti-globalization movement. Net to the new forms and methods developed by the imperialism in order to ensure its domination on global level, there are always present the “classical” forms of intervention as well: markets’ sharing, armed confrontations, local and regional wars, partition of countries, interventions and creation of protectorates. The anti-globalization movement severely underestimates this. The anti-globalization activist may know everything about transgenic food, and another about AIDS, or about the “Third World” debt, or about this or the other multinational corporation. But almost nothing is said within and by this movement about, for example, the war in Yugoslavia, the interventions of the US and other imperialists in many regions, the piratical committal of Milosevic to “trial”, etc. Here the difference with the movements of  “May 1968” is more than visible!

It is on this basis that the social-democracy develops its efforts to influence and deviate the dynamics of this movement, to channels that are anodynes for the system. All the sayings about “neoliberal globalization”, “the main enemy is the neoliberalism” and so on, are attempting to suggest that it is possible to have a capitalism, an imperialism, and consequently a globalization as well, with “human face”, without “so much” injustice and exploitation…. The departure from the traditional labour movement and its aims, the multilateral attack against the historically necessary duty of destruction of the bourgeois political power and its replacement by the new political power of the working class and its allies, are the core objectives of those attempting to deviate the movement, and have already gained ground in its interior. There is such a component, or current, on ideological and political level. From this point results as well the whole possibility of arrangements, compromises and contacts with traditional reformist forces, with government, with social-democratic personalities, with international economic centres. The “Counter-Summit” of Porto Allegre brought to the surface with emphasis the whole problem. The political line proposed is the “right to the difference, in a more human and less unjust world”. The tactic concerns the dialogue with the other side, the promotion of common teleconferences with the dominant for and the transformation of the movement to a pressure group of different interests and points of view. This is the main danger in this movement.

The wing of the non-governmental organizations and the “non-violent” activists can be considered as a continuation of the above point of view. Nevertheless, we do not consider that all the people who get involved and active in this wing have clear points of view and follow concrete reactionary political lines.

Anarchism considers the various summit meetings and the related mass mobilizations as a good occasion to push further ahead the conflict with whatever represents the state and its international expressions. Anarchism is not interested in the participation of the masses in the movement, nor is interested into get roots and get local in each country. The hot moment of the collision become a fetish, and the “coup d’etat” mentality reappears. Anarchism is incapable to give any real perspective to this movement.

We have referred to Trotskyism before, but we would like to add something more. Moving inside its own seas of voluntary subjectivism and of continuous alternation of “left” and right positions and practices, trotskyism intervenes in those movements in close cooperation with the social-democracy. It considers the process of globalization as rather positive, since … it brings closer to the world revolution. Trotskyism fights the Leninist positions on imperialism, and even takes openly pro-imperialist positions, as it was the case with the war in the Balkans. To shout “the one and only solution, is the revolution” in a picturesque way, to consider that in Prague starts the world revolution, and to call the Czech people to “overthrow, after Stalinism, capitalism as well”, shows a certain takeoff from the reality. At the same time, it is a demonstration of a very real connection of the trotskyites with concrete sides of this reality and of its representatives.

Of course, in the movement intervenes the official Left as well, hesitantly or in complete alliance with the social-democracy. However, it plays no considerable role in it.

5. Let’s make a very brief assessment of some of the “moments” of the anti-globalization movement” Seattle was the peasant surprise and the “beginning”. Prague was “a little bit alone” and isolated. In Nice the European dimension was somehow underlined, but without connecting politically the adventure of the European Union with the course of globalization. In Port Allegre became obvious the existence of two, in reality, movements, and the deviationist effort of the social-democracy was evident. Naples brought to surface the rage of the proletariat and the unemployed. Gothenburg put a special emphasis on the anti-EU character, which is often “forgotten” by other wings. If this assessments are quite near to the reality, then we believe that the mobilization in Genoa, which is to come, will be more complex, richer more massive and more political.

As it appears already, the “big powers” are seriously considering to abandon the holding of such summit meetings, which have anyway a rather symbolic character. The fact by itself is, however, one first big victory of the anti-globalization movement. Why we believe this? Because recently, the dominant idea was that the globalization is a positive, objective process that makes uniform (for the better) the conditions all over the world, creates conditions to fight all the plagues and sufferings (poverty, war, exclusions, etc., etc.) – and the only thing to do was to leave the field of action open to the three networks we mentioned before. That was the “one-way road” which, according to the region (Europe, Africa, etc.), took on different code names.

Today the contestation of that “truth”, of that “knowledge” (in reality this was a deliberate confusion) has advanced so much, that even within the “international organizations” themselves (for example the Untied Nations), or even in the scientific community, there exists, after decades of silence, cracklings. There exist even contributions to the effort to acquire and construct a different Knowledge, a different consciousness, which brings back the ideas of collectivity and of common action to the centre of any positive development for the oppressed all over the world.

The communists have to underline the importance of this movement, to act within its frame as one of its main components, and to give a political and ideological battle for its correct orientation. This, though, presupposes that the communists will promote and elucidate the elements of their own political orientation and their own practical attitude in front of the new questions that are posed by the real movement. This means also that they have to coordinate their paths – and that’s why we believe that meetings such as the present one in Torino may be extremely useful and beneficial.

“Encircle those that are encircling you!”

We see this slogan of Mao being applied little by little, “molecularly” we could say, by the anti-globalization movement. While the situation develops, as characteristically declared in one of his interviews Emir Koustourista, “there are six billions of people on this planet, and just eight countries want to dominate them all!” They basically use three networks (the economic, military and the informative) in order to “encircle” the whole world. At the same time, the movement which emerges all over the planet and embraces broad masses and different situations (but whose problems, nevertheless, have the same root – and a minimum positive outcome for their survival would be exactly the breaking of the “encirclement” by the Eight), leads to a move of counter-encirclement. And this can be very concrete as well! Think of what happened in Seattle, where the representatives of the WTO did not manage to reach the place where the meetings should be held, because the demonstrators had blocked all the accesses and, indeed, they had encircled even the police force! Think about Genoa: Bush in his own aircraft carrier; the rest of them on a cruise boat; a red zone guarded by 18,000 soldiers and police - and a surrounding of this zone by 100,000, 150,000, perhaps even 200,000 demonstrators. Demonstrators who will arrive from all the corners of the world, from all over Italy, with all the means of transport, and who worked for this encirclement for months now. This network, the network of the movement, the human network, is much stronger than the three networks of the Eight. More correct, the movement can encircle its enemies because it has in its possession the strongest arm that ever existed. And that arm is the masses, the people of the whole world, who can achieve a lot and render inefficient the “clever” arms of the Eight, and make their networks riddled.

What is left as a basic coercive advantage of the Eight? The organized and systematic planetary terrorism and demonstration of force. But even this is not enough the peoples, who carry the history on their backs, start moving! In reality, they are “alone, immersed in their own arrogance, and incapable to rule the world” – and they can perish in a human sea that will abolish them…

The communists must inspire, promote, give life, participate, get taught but also serve this encirclement of those who encircle us!!!