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Title: Another alternative is possible Author: Antti Rautiainen Date: December 3, 2006 Language: en Topics: NGO, anti-globalization Source: Retrieved on 3rd November 2021 from https://anttirautiainen.livejournal.com/18545.html Notes: First part of this article was published in Finnish in Kapinatyцlдinen #34.
In December 1997 French left-wing paper Le Monde Diplomatique wrote an
editorial for Tobin tax on international financial transactions. This
launched discussion, which lead to foundation of Attac (Action pour une
Taxe Tobin d’Aide aux Citoyens) the next June. Today Attac has spread to
dozens of countries, but the strongest presence is by far in the France,
where organisation claims more than 30 000 members and 220 local
organisations.
Advocates of the Tobin tax never forget to mention that author of the
idea, James Tobin, is a Nobel prize winning economist. And as most of
the other Nobel prize winning economists, he is also disgusting advocate
of any reforms of the far-right liberals, which supposedly progressive
Attac seldom remembers. The original proposal was a 0.1% tax on
international financial transactions, which would decrease the
short-time speculation considered harmful. According to estimates, this
way some 50–200 billion dollars of additional tax revenues would be
collected annually. Advocates of the tax optimistically propose that
money would be allocated to UN and similar organisations to erase global
poverty. I am not at all enthousiastic with this idea..
Attac makes difference between two kinds of capitals — financial and
industrial. Second one is good, creating work and wealth, first one is
evil, creating speculation, volatility and economic crisis. This is
complete bullshit, last 200 years of capitalism is a proof that
industrial capital is just as destructive, cruel and dangerous as the
financial one. Vast majority of the mankind was not better off when
there were 50%, 90% or 99.9% less international financial transactions
than today, since industrial capital was still there provoking imperial
wars, plunder of natural resources, overtake of commons and creating
humiliating working conditions everywhere.
Developed states already collect 100 times more tax revenues than Tobin
tax would bring, but global poverty hardly seems to be decreasing —
quite a contrary. And what if the most unlikely scenario that revenues
of this new tax were allocated differently from the 1000 old taxes would
take place? Vast majority of the “development aid” which is supposed to
“erase the poverty of the world” is export subsidies for Western
transnational corporations for projects which may destroy lives of
millions of people (such as building of dams or pulp mills). In the
least harmful end of this “aid” are small-scale projects which create
corrupted “civil society” and better paid career perspectives to elites
of the developing world than their government may offer. Do we need more
this kind of “aid”? No thanks.
Besides the Tobin tax, Attac campaigns for a variety of other
“progressive issues”, most importantly for debt relief for third world
countries, against tax heavens, against privatisation of the public
services and against war. As for the debt relief goes, I do not quite
see why poorest of the world should beg for pardon from the West for
loans which were pumped to their corrupt never elected leaders some 30
years ago by their Western supporters. Germany always never paid any
compensations which where sanctioned to it after World Wars. Developing
countries which have tried the same only failed because they were trying
it one by one, not united. As for the war, Attac has issued few anti-war
declarations usually without analysis of the business interests on
control of raw materials as reason of wars, but for example a visible
French Attac member, minister Daniel Cohn — Bendt was a vehement
supporter of US invasion to Afghanistan. What comes to tax heavens,
champions of “law and order” should remember that tax evasion is not
only privilege of the rich, but also only way for millions to make their
ends meet. Complete implementation of such stupidity as intellectual
property rights would not only push millions into a more deeper misery,
but also deprive access of consumers to affordable pirate products,
which seldom loose in quality to original ones.
Chairman of the French Attac Bernard Cassen noted in founding conference
of their German sister organisation that “President Bush has taken steps
in the direction of Attac’s proposals since September 11, 2001. It is
clear that we still have a long ways to go. But it is necessary to note
that ... Mr. Bush is now against tax shelters”. The extremely stupid
joke of Mr. Cassen is also a good reminder that in essence campaign of
Attac against tax heavens is for more or less violent imperial
intervention against state sovereignty. As an anarchist I am in no means
an apologist of the state sovereignty, but I do not see how global
empire, or “global democracy” as such ideologists of Attac as Heikki
Patomäki and Network Institute for Global Democratisation (NIGD) think
tank call it, would be any better. Campaign against tax heavens has also
stirred up the global anti-terrorist hysteria.
During its 50 years of existence, UN has been nothing but an arena for
superpower intrigue, and it will never be anything else. I do not see
how the current “global democracy” of the US would be any better if
spiced with a mixture of Chinese politruks, Indian Hindu fascists and
African dictators. Attac also supports “democratisation” of WTO, IMF and
World Bank, thus agreeing about necessity of these structures in
governing the global capitalism they support.
But even more, I see no any democracy in the bullshit workplace where I
have to make my living, or the bullshit university discipline to which I
must submit to gain any bearable place in the ladder of the state and
capital. Why should I expect big bosses be any more “democratic” after
any reform, when no change will take place in the position of the
smallest bosses kicking my head and humiliating me in my immediate
vicinity? And here we come to the very essence of the critic against
Attac — it is not that goals of Attac are harmful, they are just
irrelevant. They are pointless in the context of oppressive local and
global systems in which we are living in. At worst they are creating new
power structures or legitimising the old ones, at best just weak and
confused reactions against the most recent attacks by capital against
our conditions of living, without any vision how peoples movements
should move from reaction to offensive.
The formal goal of the Attac might be impossible ideal of capitalism
with a human face, but I think its final role will be something very
different, whatever the intention of its founders. Role of Attac will be
reforming the West-European social democracy. In the turn of year 1999,
social democracy seemed to be in its final agony, social democrats in
power in 12 of the 15 EU countries, nothing remaining from their
original socialist ideals. Labour movement controlled by social
democratic parties seemed to be in a complete dead end, absolutely
powerless against neo-liberal attacks rubber-stamped by parliaments
ruled by their mother parties. No one would have believed that now, four
years later, social democracy has been reborn as a relevant oppositional
force after having lost Austria, Denmark, France, Greece and Italy and
suffering serious backlashes in Germany and Finland among others.
The wing of globalisation-critical movement Attac represents was a
jackpot for the 110 year old movement in a complete ideological
bankruptcy. With Attac, they do not have to regain their original
Marxist and Kautskyist ideas of workers control over their workplaces,
reclamation of wealth created by them. Ultra-moderate and ridiculous
goals of Attac such as Tobin tax and busting tax heavens represent less
than 1% of the original thing, the very minimal necessary to give
rebirth to the dead movement. Sounds totally absurd, but it seems to be
working, at least judging from the state of the globalisation critical
movement.
There is no need to refoundate social-democracy in Eastern Europe, since
there are other ways to maintain capitalism there. Editorial collective
of Polish Obywatel (Citizen) paper includes Maciej Muskat, the chairman
of Attac-Poland, and Stefan J Adamski, deputy chairman of Attac’s
Programming Board. The strong Attac involvement in Obywatel suggests
that the magazine is a semi-official mouthpiece of the association.
Obywatel regularly publishes materials from new-right and fascists
ideologists, such as Horst Mahler, who is former RAF member but nowadays
leading German neo-nazi ideologist. Since Polish Attac has not a clear
social function, it is a completely confused entity which attracts
people who attempt to create a sort of synthesis between some
“progressive” and some fascist ideas. In international level, at least
French Attac is aware of the situation in Poland, but has rebuffed the
charges against Polish Attac, claiming that “changes of collaboration do
not depend from ideas, but on the methods chosen to defend these ideas”.
French Attac has followed this policy consistently, for example by
inviting a bunch of violently anti-Semite patriots including Alexandr
Nikolaev from Russian Communist Workers Party to events organised around
G8 protests of Genoa. Another spice in that soup was Sergei Khramov from
Sotsprof trade union, who organised illegal money laundering for
Yeltsin’s presidential campaign fund in 1996. In co-operation with these
people, minuscule trotskist KRI (Russian section of Committee for a
Workers’ International, one of the dozens of fourth internationals)
managed to set up Russian Attac in autumn of 2001. Organisation has not
had social democrats as its trouble, but gaining some political
coherence has been even more difficult — in Mayday 2003 Attac was
another main organiser in free rock concert organised in Lubyanka square
(they however called it Dzerzhinsky square according to infamous founder
of Soviet secret service), where another main organiser was biggest
Russian “communist” party, anti-Semite KPRF which supports war in
Chechnya. Small Attac was necessary for big KPRF to get faintest idea
what would attract youth, and Ilya Budraistkis from Attac was the
announcer in concert, calling to stage groups such as Grazhdanskaya
Oborona whose leader Yegor Letov was co-founding fascist
National-Bolshevik Party 10 year ago and has since moved to even more
extreme right-wing direction. Among organisers and supporters of the
conference were some more hard-line racist initiatives, such as journal
Duel.
Due to West-European character of the movement, it is not surprising to
see occasional anti-American outbursts by some Attac figureheads, such
as those of a longstanding Finnish minister of foreign affairs Erkki
Tuomioja, another veteran of the Social Democratic Party and Attac
member.
Anti-Americanism serves many functions for social democrat politics. At
first, it gives a scapegoat for injustices of the global capitalism.
Until 60’s European states executed just as aggressive imperialist
politics as US, and since then the problem has been mostly lack of
force, not lack of will as the never-ending French adventures in Africa
prove. At second, it legitimises European integration in defence and
foreign policy issues, since we need “good” European military force in
order to defend our welfare state values against “evil American”
neo-liberalism — as if European welfare states are not destroyed by
Social Democrats themselves in the first place. At third, competition
with USA serves well the Orwellian newspeak where Democrats call
destruction of the welfare benefits as “saving the welfare state”, we
must cut welfare as much as possible in order to be able to complete
with the evil USA, who threats our welfare services.
Relation of the globalisation critical movement to Attac, which has been
branded as about the main subject of the movement by mainstream media,
is a separate interesting story. Needless to say, Attac did not played
much of a role in Seattle nor in any other events organised in USA. As
for Prague, Attac boycotted protest actions because they did not
received in prior enough guarantees on keeping the event non-violent, I
suppose that is their concept of solidarity. Dozens of Christian and
other non-violent organisations showed up, and were maybe disappointed
for the riots but not sorry for the fact that they came in the first
place.
Besides social forums, Attac has played role only in Western European
events, which maybe have been massive but usually the most
institutionalised and unvisionary among the global protests. During big
anti-border camp of Strasbourg last summer for rights of illegal
immigrants, local organisation of Attac decided not only not to give any
help to camp organisation, but also to sent press releases attacking the
event. Sort of climax of this development were the anti-EU
demonstrations of the Copenhagen in December 2002, here a small
anarchist demonstration with few hundred participators was the only
critical voice against xenophobic policies of Danish right-wing
government and EU in general. Anarchist demonstrators suffered from
serious police harassment and provocateurs (one of whom is currently
charged), and four persons were facing trumped-up felony charges while
large “coalition against violence” with Attac was serving cake to chief
of local police as a reward for a “good co-operation”. I suppose their
goal was to show that never mind tax evasion, financial speculation and
war — the most serious problem of the planet are the violent
demonstrators.
Hostility of Attac against protests for rights of illegal immigrants
complies with hostile attitude of many prominent Attac members towards
immigrants. For example Oskar Lafontaine, prominent Attac member, former
German Social Democratic Party chairman and briefly economics minister
in the SPD-Green Party coalition under Gerhard Schroeder has been
demanding more tighter measures against immigration. He has for example
claimed in German Bild-paper that the German green card program, which
granted working permission to few well-trained foreign professionals was
a measure which “facilitated the training of potential terrorists in
Germany”.
In the same article, Lafontaine went on barricades for the cause of the
nation states: “We have to put an end to the belittling of the state. We
are the state!”. Creation of the homogenous nation states in Europe
began in suppressing the French minority languages since the 1789
revolution, and was finished in the Balkan bloodbath of the 1990’s,
climax being the 1916 genocide of the Armenians and the Holocaust. This
process went always hand in hand with the capital accumulation. Division
of the working class by national lines, state protectionist measures and
subsidies were the foundations on which the global economic system of
today has been built, although lately latter two have disappeared from
rhetorics, but not from political practice of the rich countries.
Attac seems to be deeply confused whether we should turn back the wheel
of the history to return to the not so glorious era of the nation
states, or to create a global government. For example the already
mentioned goals of “democratisation of the international institutions”
and “closing tax heavens” are in a total controversy with the state
sovereignty called by Lafontaine, since this “democratisation”
translated to normal language would mean that subject of the
decisionmaking were not anymore nation states but individual citizens.
But these two wings seems to have a consensus that we should fight
against power of “international capital” and “transnational
corporations” — but private corporate armies are nowhere to be seen, all
wars for the interests of the capital are waged by good old nation
states. Nation states are also subjects of decisionmaking in all the
official international institutions, such as WTO and Bretton Woods
institutions. They have not lost their power and they will never be
replaced by corporations, these two just may not do without each other.
“Corporate power” and “neoliberalism” are fake enemies meant to fool
idiots and to win votes for the Social democrats.
Porto Alegre is capital of the southmost Brazilian province, Rio Grande
do Sul. Brazilian Worker’s Party PT governed province until very
recently, and during time of its governance it set up a moderate
experiment of direct democracy, so called “participatory budgets”. In
the case of Porto Alegre, 17% of the city budget is earmarked for
discussion and allocation by the assemblies of representatives of
popular organisations. As resources are very limited and only a small
share of the budget, there is constant in-fighting among activist groups
over how the priorities should be set. The “participatory budget”
councillors are forced to choose which they prefer: the creation of a
school or a health clinic, pavement of the roads, or childcare centres,
etc. This is how the responsibility for not meeting the demands of the
population is shifted onto the backs of the participants in the
“participatory budget” themselves. Vast majority of budget is untouched,
especially payment of foreign debt should never be questioned.
Subject making decisions about the participatory budget is “the civil
society”. In the case of a participatory budget assembly in the
municipality of Camacua, a businessperson sent “his” representatives as
delegates and won close to 70% of the votes to prioritise the pavement
of a road — to the detriment of all the other demands. Concept of
society which lies behind this participatory budget is that of a society
without conflicts, without contradictions, based on “consensus among
equals.” But such an equality exists nowhere, and the whole concept of
the “civil society” has been developed in order to undermine workers
movement and the right of the exploited and oppressed to independent
organisation in the face of the state and the exploiters.
Experiments in Rio Grande do Sul have gained international attention,
and city government together with Attac, trade unions and other
organisations organised first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in
2001, 50 000–60 000 people participated. Since then, two even bigger
events have been organised in Porto Alegre and forum of the next year
will be organised in India. Besides these, there have been regional and
national forums, such as European Social Forum in Florence 2002. World
Social Forum is a sort of alternative event to much older World Economic
Forum, where business and political elites gather since 1971 usually in
Davos of Switzerland for informal discussions about their plans for the
future.
Concept of forums is a vast variety of lectures, discussions and
workshops combined with street actions and festivities. Open events with
minimal political coherence have served the original purpose of the
event, legitimisation of the PT (Workers’ Party) governance of Porto
Alegre and promotion of NGOs and trade unions co-organising the events.
But since organisers are hierarchical themselves, it is not surprising
to see attempts to create more closed and authoritarian structures to
govern the movement. The decision-making body of the WSF, the Organising
Committee (OC), is controlled by eight persons whom no-one really knows
from two movements and six NGOs. They are not really known even to
members of the International Council of the WSF which has 90–100 members
from NGO’s, unions and women’s networks. IC was created top-down by
invitation from the OC and is so far a rubberstamp of the OC. Members of
OC and IC are not accountable to their organisations, only to
themselves. IC does not operate behind closed doors, but its proceedings
are barely reported to interested public.
European Social Forum follows the same model of organisation, first
decisions on the ESF were made by six persons in the Rimini congress of
the Italian Refoundated Communist Party. These six individuals took
important decisions about the ESF’s structure, ultimately deciding who
spoke in Florence, when and on which topic. All the main speakers were
chosen in advance by the organisers — anyone else got a maximum of three
minutes speaking time and international NGOs such as Amnesty
International were prioritised. More moderate Left Democrats party
helped to set up and arrange the ESF, their policies in regional
government have included privatisation of local services and entailed
environmental destruction.
Some of the same organisations that control the WSF to a great extent,
Attac France, main Brazilian trade union CUT, movement of landless in
Brazil MST, Focus on the Global South (Thailand) and the World March of
Women (Quebec), have engaged in the creation of a Social Movement’s
World Network (SMWN) and its youth chapter, “Network of the Youth of the
WSF”. The members of hierarchical political organisations and NGOs try
to convince the rest of us that the network they were trying to set up
is going to be horizontal and decentralised. But if they now suddenly
believe in horizontal organising, why don’t they start by reforming
their own organisations?
And indeed, there are also some cracks in “the spirit of Porto Alegre”.
At the World Social Forum of 2001, anarchists and ecologists loosely
affiliated with People’s Global Action protested against their exclusion
from the decisionmaking. In 2002 600 attendees of the alternative
Anarchist Journeys occupied a three-storey house in order to emphasise
that, as one IMC (Independent Media Centre) poster put it, “Porto Alegre
isn’t the social democratic paradise that the PT makes it out to be”.
Later IMC posts reported that local police, under the command of the PT
and dressed in full riot gear, quickly surrounded the house, nearly
running over one squatter in their attempts to clear it. In 2003 an
indigenous Mapuche woman delegate of the World Social Forum in Porto
Alegre bathed nude in a river to cool off from the warm temperatures of
the Brazilian summertime, only to find herself arrested under charges of
“obscene acts”. Her arrest then sparked a non-violent naked protest by
400 activists. Police attacked the protesters arresting and injuring an
unknown number of them and then turned on fully clothed journalists and
bystanders.
European Social Forum is about to follow the same pattern. Next European
Social Forum will be organised in November in Saint-Denis, a suburb of
Paris governed by Patrick Braouezec of the Communist Party. Obviously
Braouezec tries to follow success formula of Lula by inviting ESF to
“his city”. More early this year group “Solidarité Sans Papiers 93”(part
of movement of undocumented immigrants) of Saint-Denis made an action of
occupying a building without the authorisation of the departmental
co-ordination to which the group belonged. The action was condemned by
the “democratically elected” board of the co-ordination and a split
followed. When board took one of the decisions on condemnation, 34
people were present, among whom 9 sans-papiers and at least a dozen
members of the CP and the trotskist LCR. Thus Saint-Papiers were a
minority in their own co-ordination! As a revenge, municipality ruled by
communists decided to take back a building which had been provided to
the sans-papiers in 1996 and where the Solidarité Sans Papiers 93 had an
office. Mayor promised that the building would not be evacuated until
another place was provided, but 23^(rd) of May 2003 he sent police to
evict the building.
In Florence ESF Spanish group Yomango presented a truly anti-capitalist
alternative to Tobin tax, “100% Robin tax” where poor are allowed to
expropriate necessary goods they may not afford from supermarket. A huge
party with expropriated food left no participator hungry.
Goal of social forums and Porto Alegre in general is first of all
spectacle and identity politics, idea that 100 000 people could just
gather and “plan alternatives to global capitalism” is just absurd. With
such mass of people in one place, communication is always
uni-directional, where lectures with “stars” of the globalisation
critical movement get the biggest audiences. Immediate results are
harvested only by those who made those 10 000 Che Guevara t-shirts sold
there, and those who could present themselves as successful organisers.
In year 2003 Porto Alegre spectacle developed to such level, that 3
French candidates of presidential elections were present — more than in
the WEF of Davos. Newly elected president of Brazil, Lula from Workers’
party quickly flied from WSF to Davos in order to “build a bridge
between two forums”. In Davos he spoke: “We want free trade, but free
trade with reciprocity. It’s useless to make an effort to develop
exportation when rich countries preach free trade and practice
protectionism.” Lula went there to criticise people in Davos for not
being neoliberal enough, and his speech was greeted with an ovation. As
a reaction, in social forum of 2003 a pie flied to the face of Jose
Genoino, the president of the PT.
WSF and ESF have been financed for example by Norwegian Foreign
Ministry, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and — World Bank.
World Bank even promotes WSF in its website, and has translated,
published and distributed the book “The Participatory Budget: The
Experience of Porto Alegre,” written by Tarso Genro (former mayor of
Porto Alegre) and Ubirata de Souza. A very convenient strategy, world
where “participation” is reserved for self-appointed corrupted NGO elite
(so called “civil society”) and where a total chaos of 100 000 strong
festival is called “a dialogue” fits Bretton Woods interests very well.
Formula of Porto Alegre has been successful to such extent, that
radicals who originally created the globalisation critical movement have
had no cue whatsoever how to oppose this take-over attempt. Some texts
have been circulating around, there has been various slogans such as
“abandon or contaminate”, but this is just wishful thinking — Porto
Alegre is so much bigger than we are that we have no chance nor to
abandon, nor to contaminate it with our presence. In contrary, attempts
of radicals to be present in Social Forums (such as Hub in Florence ESF,
and Intergalactika and Life after capitalism in WSF 2003) have had
little success in changing character of the event. Where they have not
been marginalised altogether, they have just increased legitimisation of
the event as “presenting all of us”, thus just being one spice of the
spectacle. Where a presence in any events where tens of thousands of
discontent people gather is always necessary, the real task in front of
us is that of organising our autonomous network and events.