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Title: Who needs the WSSD?
Author: Zabalaza
Date: March 2002
Language: en
Topics: anti-globalization, Zabalaza
Source: Retrieved on 6th August 2021 from https://zabalaza.net/2002/03/02/zabalaza-2-march-2002/
Notes: Published in Zabalaza #2.

Zabalaza

Who needs the WSSD?

Within the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) in Gauteng, a debate is raging

about whether or not the left should participate in the United

Nations’-sponsored “NGO Summit” that is being planned for the UN’s “Rio

+10” conference, which will be held in Johannesburg in 2002.

The Rio + 10 summit by the UN is a follow-up to the UN conference on the

environment that was held in 1992 in Rio, Brazil. The UN is inviting

non-governmental structures to participate in a parallel “NGO Summit”

and is willing to foot the bill.

ANARCHIST ROLE

Now, there is nothing wrong in principle with anti-globalisation

activists coming forward to discuss campaigns against – and alternatives

to – capitalist globalisation. As anarchists we are ready to use any

popular forums as an opportunity to win people to our programme. And

where possible we play a leading role in developing and defending such

forums as a space for radically democratic grassroots decision-making,

and as a platform for direct action against capitalism.

This was, for example, the case for the anti-Free Trade Area of the

Americas summit in Quebec in April 2001, where anarchists were key

actors in the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC) and helped establish

anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist struggle as the central themes of

the anti-FTAA protests. And this is precisely why anarchists support

structures such as the APF.

CO-OPTATION

However, the proposed UN-sponsored “NGO Summit” is a different matter

entirely. Before we decide to try and “use” this Summit, it is vital to

understand the agenda of the UN and other capitalist bodies in

organising and funding such Summits in the first place. Since the

momentous events in Seattle in 1999 – when protesters disrupted the

globalisation summit of the World Trade Organisation – the capitalist

class has been under siege at most of its international policy/planning

meetings, whether by the IMF, UN or WEF.

In this climate, capital has begun to fund (official) summits for civil

society organisations, “NGO Summits” running parallel to the official

globalisation summits of the capitalist class. Capital claims that these

forums will allow ordinary voices to be heard, and provide a channel for

popular concerns to be integrated into the decisions of the official

meetings. This is why, for example, the UN poured millions into an “NGO

Summit” designed to run parallel to the official World Conference

Against Racism summit in Durban.

DUAL POWER

The motives, in other words are clear: the official “NGO Summits” are

used to legitimise the capitalists’ meetings, whilst also removing the

teeth from the anti-globalisation movement. This is exactly why we

should not participate in the government – and corporate-run and funded

“NGO summits.” They hide the undemocratic nature of the gatherings of

the capitalist class by posing as democratic spaces. Yet these “NGO

Summits” are themselves undemocratic. In return for capitalist blood

money, progressives get drawn into stage-managed gatherings in which

small groups of delegates draw up documents that are, at best, totally

ignored by the official summits, and, at worst, used to legitimise

neo-liberal policies.

This type of “participation” also runs totally counter to the spirit of

the anti-globalisation movement. The movement has based itself on mass

direct action, and on a democratic model of struggle organising. Yet

participation in the “NGO Summits” is limited to a few delegates who

spend their time fighting with other delegates for money and over the

wording of the declaration of the NGO Summits. What we want instead are

tens of thousands on the streets, based not on participation within the

NGO Summits or official summits, but on direct action against the

capitalist class and its agents, a mass struggle against capitalism, for

libertarian communism, for anarchism. We must organise outside and

against the capitalist class and the governments, creating a new world

that can crush the world of wage-slavery, unemployment and racial

oppression.