125th Anniversary of Haymarket Affair Celebrates Origin of May Day

By David Moberg

An illustrator's version of the bomb that triggered the "Haymarket affair," aka the Haymarket massacre of 1886.

Chicago in 1886 was the most advanced, cutting-edge capitalist city in the world. Industrialization, commodification, and mechanization on an unprecedented scale transformed the raw materials of the newly opened West in far more efficient ways than anyone had previously imagined.

But this new economic machine transformed workers—mainly European immigrants but also once-independent farmers and mechanics—into proletarian drudges working brutally long days. When the economy took one of its frequent dives, as it had not long before, employers slashed wages and crushed workers’ organizations.

Trotsky’s socialism

Seventy years ago the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was murdered.  

Esme Choonara looks at his life, ideas and his legacy

from Socialist Worker UK

Leon Trotsky addresses Red Army troops in 1918

Seventy years ago this week an agent of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin murdered the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky by smashing his skull with an ice pick. 

Trotsky was at his home in Mexico when the assassin came into his study and attacked him. This was not Stalin’s first attempt.

Only a few weeks earlier, a group of his Mexican followers had launched an armed attack on Trotsky’s household, killing a guard.

In fact, Stalin was so determined to crush Trotsky and his legacy that he had already murdered, or driven to suicide, most of Trotsky’s immediate family.

He forced Trotsky into exile in 1929 and slandered him as a fascist spy and enemy of the workers”.

An exhibition at a museum in St Petersburg last year exposed some of the ludicrous lengths the Russian regime went to wipe out any trace of Trotsky’s real legacy.

Among the exhibits was a teachers’ union scarf from 1925 bearing portraits of revolutionary leaders. The picture of Trotsky had been carefully cut out and replaced with blank cloth.

Hundreds of photographs from the revolutionary years were also doctored to remove Trotsky from his place in history.

Yet by the time he was killed Trotsky had been in exile for 11 years.

He had only a small handful of supporters scattered in different countries and no real influence on world events. His allies in Russia had either been killed or broken by Stalin’s terror.

So why did Stalin still see him as a threat?

Hiroshima Day poem: No Ordinary Sun

by Hone Tuwhare
from www.honetuwhare.co.nz


No Ordinary Sun

Tree let your arms fall:

raise them not sharply in supplication
to the bright enhaloed cloud.

Let your arms lack toughness and

resilience for this is no mere axe
to blunt nor fire to smother.

Your sap shall not rise again
to the moon’s pull.

No more incline a deferential head
to the wind’s talk, or stir
to the tickle of coursing rain.

Your former shagginess shall not be
wreathed with the delightful flight

of birds nor shield

nor cool the ardour of unheeding
lovers from the monstrous sun.

Tree let your naked arms fall

nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball.

This is no gallant monsoon’s flash,

no dashing trade wind’s blast.

The fading green of your magic

emanations shall not make pure again
t
hese polluted skies . . . for this

is no ordinary sun.

O tree

in the shadowless mountains
the white plains and
the drab sea floor

your end at last is written.


***


As well as commemorating the atomic bombing of the Japanese city, this poem serves as a reminder of the long, successful struggle to declare New Zealand nuclear free and break the formal military alliance with US imperialism.

I hope it will also be the first of many more poems on UNITYblog.
– David

Is capitalism on the path to collapse? – Video from Wellington public meeting

Grant Morgan, author of UNITYblog's current Feature Essay, has just completed a short speaking tour. 

His talks in Christchurch and Wellington drew on, and developed, his 20,000 word essay on why global capitalism is tipping towards collapse, and how we can act for a decent future.

He argues that for the first time in capitalism’s 500-year history, a perfect storm is beginning to engulf the world system.

The main elements are system-level crises of profitability, ecology, resources, imperialism and legitimacy. Their concentration and intensification look set to trigger world system collapse within a historically short time period.

Humanity will face a life-and-death struggle as we confront economic chaos, global warming, resource scarcity and imperial breakdown.

Can we survive the chaos, conflict and carnage of looming collapse? Can Earth’s citizens collectively built a decent future in the face of elite counteractions? Yes, says Grant.

He resurrects Marx’s analysis of social change to explain the growing intersection of system-level crises which will collapse global capitalism as surely as previous civilisations were brought down by their own perfect storms.

“At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production,” said Marx. “Then begins an era of social revolution.”

An era of social revolution will be triggered by the perfect storm appearing over capitalism’s horizon as it collapses the economic, ecological and imperial foundations of the world system. The need to unite or die will call forth a Global Uniting of the mass of humanity which ushers in a society of solidarity.

Watch video footage of the Wellington talk below (apologies for the background hum in the audio track)

Histories of the four Internationals

Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez [right] has called for the formation of a Fifth International to unite socialists around the world. The previous internationals were places of debate and action, established to strengthen the international socialist movement. Dan Swain of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has writen a breif history of each one, arguing that we “can learn an enormous amount by studying them”.

The First International was forged in struggle On 28 September 1864, delegations of workers from different countries met in London to form the International Working Men’s Association. This was later known as the First International. The Second International: From class war to imperialist slaughter Divisions over the question of revolution led to the break up of the First International. The same problem was also of decisive importance to the fate of the next attempt to unite socialists across borders. The Socialist International, known as the Second International, was established in 1889. The Third International: Revolutionary hope crushed by Stalinism When the parties of the Second International voted to support the First World War many socialists were left uncertain about what to do next. From the carnage of the war, however, came a beacon of hope that inspired millions across the world. A revolution in Russia put workers in control in October 1917. The success of the revolution inspired the creation of Communist Parties across Europe. The Fourth International: Keeping the flame alive Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian revolution, opposed Joseph Stalin’s increasing stranglehold on the Soviet Union and the Third International. As a result he was exiled from Russia. In 1938 he gathered together a small number of his supporters to form the Fourth International. You can read the full articles here on UNITYblog.

Left-wing historian Howard Zinn has died

Best known for “A People’s History of the United States” (1980) Zinn was a leading activist since the civil rights movement of the 1950s. In October 2008 Zinn was interviewed about US election, the global economic crisis and his own life by National Radio’s Kathryn Ryan. You can listen to that interview here. This obituary from the Boston Globe gives a brief outline of his life and acheivements. The short video interview below was posted on the Monthly Review Zine. They also have a transcript and another short interview.

The People’s Poet – Robert Burns [1759-1796]

By Colin Fox from Socialist Unity January 25th [was] Burns night, that unique Scottish occasion when poetry finds itself centre stage and the life and work of an ‘Ayrshire ploughman’ is celebrated. And this year with a Westminster General Election pending we might reflect on the progressive message contained in his ‘Ballad of Mr Heron’s Election’ where Burns’ vision of a democratic and truly representative Parliament written more than 200 years ago still resonates Wham will we send to London town 
To Parliament and a’ that? 
Or wha in a’ the country round 
The best deserves to fa that? 
For a’ that and a’ that, 
Here’s Heron yet for a’ that! 
The independent commoner 
The honest man, and a’ that! A beardless boy comes o’er the hill 
Wi’s uncle’s purse and a’ that; 
But we’ll hae one frae amang ourselves 
A man we ken and a’ that 
For a’ that and a’ that 
Here’s Heron yet for a’ that 
We are no tae be bought and sold 
Like nowte and nags, and a that Then let us drink: ‘The Stewartry, 
Kerroughtree’s laird, and a’ that 
Our representative to be: 
For weel he’s worthy a’ that 
For a’ that and a’ that 
Here’s Heron yet for a’ that! 
A House of Commons such as he, 
They wad be blest that saw that.

Keep reading

Haiti, a very brief history

By David
Here’s the briefest summary of Haiti’s inspiring and tragic history I can manage. For more details, check out the links in the previous posts. Inspired by the French Revolution’s proclamation of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” black slaves in the French colony of Haiti rose up and fought for their freedom. The British tried to take advantage of the chaos, and invaded with 90,000 troops, the former slaves defeated them. Napoleon – who had conqured Europe – tried to re-impose slavery, his army was beaten too. And in 1804 Haiti was free. Haitian freedom fighters had fought with the American revolutionaries against the British. But the USA’s slave-owning elite didn’t return the favour, instead they ganged up with the French and British to impose trade and investment embargoes. Eventually the Haitians were forced to agree to pay the French “compensation” for the “property” they had lost when the slaves freed themselves. Since then Haiti (like so many other poor countries) has been in debt to European and US banks. Haiti was invaded and occupied by the US in 1915 and 1934, and suffered under a succession of brutal, US-backed dictators. The current government is part of this pattern. During the latest coup in 2004, the elected president, the hugely popular left-winger Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by US troops and left stranded in Africa. UN “peacekeepers” backed the new regime and shot Aristide’s protesting supporters. Although the current government won elections, they were neither free nor fair. Not only was Aristide in exile, but his party – which still has the support of most Haitians – was banned from standing. Now there are fears that the government and its US bakers will exploit the tragedy to impose a “disaster capitalism” programme of free market reforms and political repression.

Talking Seattle, ten years on

Looking at this article from ten years ago reminded me just how exciting and inspiring Seattle and the birth of global anti-capitalist movement was. It occurs to me that there’s a lot for the left in general, and the climate justice and eco-socialist movements in particular to learn / remember about how the Seattle protests and the subsequent global movement nited a diverse range of activists – notably the ‘Teamster Turtle Alliance’ of trade unionists and environmentalists – who recognised neo-liberal capitalism as the common enemy. So I’ll be kicking off a discussion / workshop at Climate Camp on the topic: “Ten years after the ‘Battle of Seattle’, what can the Climate Justice activists learn from the Global Anti-Capitalist Movement?” Hope to see you there.

David

***

by John Charlton from International Socialism Journal, Issue 86, Spring 2000 Only a couple of months after the event the word ‘Seattle’ has acquired a new meaning. It is where ‘we’ kicked the system. The word pops up in India when power and port workers come out on mass strike against privatisation. ‘Is it the Seattle effect?’ asks a newspaper. The internet is replete with articles analysing its meaning. I posted a questionnaire on the internet between November 1999 and January 2000. The responses I received, along with personal testimonies and articles, became the basis of this piece.[1] That a turning point in the struggle against the excesses of world capitalism should take place in Seattle is not without its ironies. Seattle has been lauded as a hub of the burgeoning economies of the Pacific Rim. A boom town of the 20th century’s last quarter, ‘Seattle’ is almost a metaphor for high-tech consumption. It is the home of Boeing, of Microsoft, and those symbols of galloping consumerism, the Starbucks coffee shop empire and Nike, just down the road. A place to live in grace and comfort. All this explains why the Clinton administration wanted to take the World Trade Organisation to Seattle. Yet there is a downside. In the liberalisation of the global economy US domination may have may have increased, but millions of American workers have been victims of the shrinkage of basic industry, its relocation and the intensification of exploitation in the workplace. For some time the cynical and corrupt leaders of the labour unions have been under pressure from their members to organise a fightback. They chose Seattle because their public profiles would be enhanced in the glare of the international media circus surrounding the WTO meeting. There is another twist which should not be lost. The new millennium was being ushered in by the system’s leaders and its media on an extravagant tide of hype. Millions of new shopping opportunities were being heralded via the cyber-supermarket. But their party was ruined in the virtual home of e-commerce. A fightback starting in Seattle has yet another lovely resonance. The city was the location of the only general strike in US history so far. In 1919, in the crisis following the end of the First World War with the US government attempting to smash the Russian Revolution, Seattle workers struck. Jeremy Brecher wrote:

Anger, hope and militance grew as in a pressure cooker. Nowhere did this radicalisation go further than in Seattle. The radical IWW and the AFL Metal Trades Council co-operated in sponsoring a Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Workingmen’s Council, taking the soviets of the recent Russian Revolution as their model.[2]

This forms a nice backcloth to the events of November and December 1999.

‘Think the WTO is bad?... Wait till you hear about capitalism!’ – placard

Seattle hit the international media on Tuesday 30 November, but events were moving in the previous week. Mitchel C wrote, ‘No matter where you turn, rallies, teach-ins and other events are exploding out of the pavement. I went to the International Forum on Globalisation that occurred Friday and Saturday... Tickets were sold by Ticketron. Around 2,500 people participated, the huge auditorium filled to capacity for two days, 9am to 9pm... Sunday, 1,500 people took to the streets in a wonderfully colourful and peaceful (if raucous) procession, hundreds of giant puppets and mass performance theatre against genetic engineering and the WTO, drummers beating on makeshift instruments, an army of genetically engineered corn, another “army of forested trees, fighting against the evil soldiers of the New World Order”.’ Damon, Pittsburgh: I got on a Greyhound bus in Pittsburgh at 3am the morning after Thanksgiving and travelled two and a half days to Seattle to join the protests against the World Trade Organisation. I arrived to see tens of thousands of activists from the widest range of causes I’ve ever seen in one place, united around a common concern – their desire to have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, otherwise known as democracy.

‘The senators who ratified the WTO treaty should be tried for treason’ – placard

Continue

John Pilger: Breaking the great Australian silence

In a speech at the Sydney Opera House to mark his award of Australia’s human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize, John Pilger describes the “unique features” of a political silence in Australia: how it affects the national life of his homeland and the way Australians see the world and are manipulated by great power “which speaks through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war – against our own first people and those seeking refuge, or in someone else’s country”. Thank you all for coming tonight, and my thanks to the City of Sydney and especially to the Sydney Peace Foundation for awarding me the Peace Prize. It’s an honour I cherish, because it comes from where I come from. I am a seventh generation Australian. My great-great grandfather landed not far from here, on November 8th, 1821. He wore leg irons, each weighing four pounds. His name was Francis McCarty. He was an Irishman, convicted of the crime of insurrection and “uttering unlawful oaths”. In October of the same year, an 18 year old girl called Mary Palmer stood in the dock at Middlesex Gaol and was sentenced to be transported to New South Wales for the term of her natural life. Her crime was stealing in order to live. Only the fact that she was pregnant saved her from the gallows. She was my great-great grandmother. She was sent from the ship to the Female Factory at Parramatta, a notorious prison where every third Monday, male convicts were brought for a “courting day” – a rather desperate measure of social engineering. Mary and Francis met that way and were married on October 21st, 1823. Growing up in Sydney, I knew nothing about this. My mother’s eight siblings used the word “stock” a great deal. You either came from “good stock” or “bad stock”. It was unmentionable that we came from bad stock – that we had what was called “the stain”. One Christmas Day, with all of her family assembled, my mother broached the subject of our criminal origins, and one of my aunts almost swallowed her teeth. “Leave them dead and buried, Elsie!” she said. And we did – until many years later and my own research in Dublin and London led to a television film that revealed the full horror of our “bad stock”. There was outrage. “Your son,” my aunt Vera wrote to Elsie, “is no better than a damn communist”. She promised never to speak to us again. The Australian silence has unique features. Growing up, I would make illicit trips to La Perouse and stand on the sandhills and look at people who were said to have died off. I would gape at the children of my age, who were said to be dirty, and feckless. At high school, I read a text book by the celebrated historian, Russel Ward, who wrote: “We are civilized today and they are not.” “They”, of course, were the Aboriginal people. My real Australian education began at the end of the 1960s when Charlie Perkins and his mother, Hetti, took me to the Aboriginal compound at Jay Creek in the Northern Territory. We had to smash down the gate to get in. The shock at what I saw is unforgettable. The poverty. The sickness. The despair. The quiet anger. I began to recognise and understand the Australian silence.

Continue

Peterloo: Ye are many – they are few

From Climate and Capitalism blog http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=1029 August 16, was the 190th anniversary of the day when English cavalry attacked a peaceful crowd of 60,000 in Manchester, gathered to call for democratic rights. The event is remembered as the Peterloo, a word that combines the location of the attack, St. Peters Field, with an ironic reference to the recent British military victory at Waterloo. In The Making of the English Working Class, the great Marxist historian E.P. Thompson writes: “There is no term for this but class war. But it was a pitifully one-sided war. The people, closely packed and trampling upon each other in the effort to escape, made no effort at retaliation until the very edges of the field, where a few trapped remnants – finding themselves pursued into the streets and yards – threw brick-bats at their-pursuers. Eleven·were killed or died from their wounds. “That evening, on every road out of Manchester, the injured were to be seen. The Peterloo Relief Committee had, by the end of 1819, authenticated 421 claims for relief for injuries received on the field (a further 150 cases still awaited investigation). Of these, 161 cases were of sabre wounds, the remainder were injuries sustained while lying beneath the crowd or beneath the horses’ hooves. More than 100 of the injured were women or girls.” For many years, Peterloo was a rallying cry for working class and democratic radicals in England, a symbol of the vile nature of England’s ruling class. The lesson they drew from it, a lesson that remains valid today (witness the continuing struggle in Honduras) was summed up in The Masque of Anarchy, written by Shelley to honour those who rallied at Peterloo:

Rise like Lions after slumber
 In unvanquishable number,
 Shake your chains to earth like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you – Ye are many – they are few.

Footnote: After this note was written and posted, I discovered that Links had published a very good and much fuller account of Peterloo, and that author Graham Milner had concluded his essay with the same verse from Shelley. See: http://links.org.au/node/1206

"The struggle of memory against forgetting"

This excellent address by filmmaker and journalist John Pilger reminds us all of an uncomfortable truth - that all the great breakthroughs in history, like the end of apartheid in South Africa, happened because ordinary people fought for it. Those people were called "criminals" and "terrorists" at the time, they were harrassed, jailed, beaten, even killed... and then, after they won, the rich and powerful tried to pretend that they were on the right side of history all the time. The media and the history books will always tell the stories of those in power, and lie to us that no other world is possible. Those of us fighting to change the world now have to remember this lesson, if we want them to be telling our stories in the future. Honouring the 'unbreakable promise' by John Pilger March 2008 Almost fourteen years after South Africa's first democratic elections and the fall of racial apartheid, John Pilger describes, in an address at Rhodes University, the dream and reality of the new South Africa and the responsibility of its new elite. On my wall in London is a photograph I have never grown tired of looking at. Indeed, I always find it thrilling to behold. You might even say it helps keep me going. It is a picture of a lone woman standing between two armoured vehicles, the notorious 'hippos', as they rolled into Soweto. Her arms are raised. Her fists are clenched. Her thin body is both beckoning and defiant of the enemy. It was May Day 1985 and the uprising against apartheid had begun. The fine chronicler of apartheid, Paul Weinberg, took that photograph. He described crouching in a ditch at the roadside as the hippos entered Soweto. People were being shot with rubber bullets and real bullets. "I looked around," he said, "and there in the ditch next to me was this bird-like woman, who suddenly pulled out a bottle of gin, took a swig, then went over the top and marched straight into the moving line of vehicles. It was one of the bravest things I've seen." Paul's photograph brings to mind one of my favourite quotations. "The struggle of people against power," wrote Milan Kundera, " is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Moments such as that woman's bravery ought to be unforgettable, for they symbolise all the great movements of resistance to oppression: in South Africa, the Freedom Charter, Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial, the heroism of Steve Biko, the women who somehow kept their children alive on freezing hillsides in places like Dimbaza where they had been removed and declared redundant, and beyond, the Jews who rose against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Palestinians who just the other day smashed down the walls of their prison in Gaza. Unforgettable? For some, yes. But there are those who prefer we celebrate a system of organised forgetting: of unbridled freedom for the few and obedience for the many; of socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor. They prefer that the demonstrable power of ordinary people is committed to what George Orwell called the memory hole. You may ask how we can possibly forget when we live in an information age? The answer to that is another question: Who are "we"? Unlike you and me, most human beings have never used a computer and never owned a telephone. And those of us who are technologically blessed often confuse information with media, and corporate training with knowledge. These are probably the most powerful illusions of our times. We even have a new vocabulary, in which noble concepts have been corporatised and given deceptive, perverse, even opposite meanings. "Democracy" is now the free market - a concept itself berefet of freedom. "Reform" is now the denial of reform. "Economics" is the relegation of most human endeavour to material value, a bottom line. Alternative models that relate to the needs of the majority of humanity end up in the memory hole. And "governance" - so fashionable these days - means an economic system approved in Washington, Brussels and Davos. "Foreign policy" is service to the dominant power. Conquest is "humanitarian intervention". Invasion is "nation-building". Every day, we breathe the hot air of these pseudo ideas with their pseudo truths and pseudo experts. They set the limits of public debate within the most advanced societies. They determine who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. They manipulate our compassion and our anger and make many of us feel there is nothing we can do. Take the "war on terror". This is an entirely bogus idea that actually means a war of terror. Its aim is to convince people in the rich world that we all must live in an enduring state of fear: that Muslim fanatics are threatening our civilisation. In fact, the opposite is true. The threat to our societies comes not from Al Qaeda but from the terrorism of powerful states. Ask the people of Iraq, who in five years have seen the physical and social destruction of their country. President Bush calls this "nation-building". Ask the people of Afghanistan, who have been bombed back into the arms of the Taliban - this is known in the West as a "good war". Or the people of Gaza, who are denied water, food, medicines and hope by the forces of so-called civilisation. The list is long and the arithmetic simple. The greatest number of victims of this war of terror are not Westerners, but Muslims: from Iraq to Palestine, to the refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria and beyond. We are constantly told that September 11th 2001 was a day that changed the world and - according to John McCain - justifies a 100-year war against America's perceived enemies. And yet, while the world mourned the deaths of 3,000 innocent Americans, the UN routinely reported that the mortality rate of children dead from the effects of extreme poverty had not changed. The figure for September 11th 2001 was more than 36,000 children. That is the figure every day. It has not changed. It is not news. The difference between the two tragedies is that the people who died in the Twin Towers in New York were worthy victims, and the thousands of children who die every day are unworthy victims. That is how many of us are programmed to perceive the world. Or so the programmers hope. In the information age, these children are expendable. In South Africa, they are the children of the evicted and dispossessed, children carrying water home from a contaminated dam. They are not the children in the gated estates with names like Tuscany. They are not covered by the theories of GEAR or NEPAD or any of the other acronyms of power given respectability by journalism and scholarship. It seems to me vital that young people today equip themselves with an understanding of how this often subliminal propaganda works in modern societies - liberal societies: societies with proud constitutions and freedom of speech, like South Africa. For it says that freedom from poverty - the essence of true democracy - is a freedom too far. In South Africa, new graduates have, it seems to me, both a special obligation and an advantage. The advantage they have is that the past is still vividly present. Only last month, the National Institute for Occupational Health revealed that in the last six years deadly silicosis had almost doubled among South Africa's gold miners. There are huge profits in this industry. Many of the miners are abandoned and die in their 40s - their families too poor to afford a burial. Why is there still no proper prevention and compensation? And although Desmond Tutu pleaded with them, not one company boss in any of the apartheid-propping industries ever sought an amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They were that confident that for things to change on the surface, things would remain the same. For young graduates these days, there is a temptation to set themselves apart from the conditions I have described and from the world some have come from. As members of a new privileged elite, they have an obligation, I believe, to forge the vital link with the genius of everyday life and the resourcefulness and resilience of ordinary people. This will allow them, in whatever way you choose, to finish the job begun by Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko and the brave woman in the photograph. In a nutshell, it means standing by one's compatriots in order to bring true freedom to South Africa. Those who led the struggle against racial apartheid often said no. They dissented. They caused trouble. They took risks. They put people first. And they were the best that people can be. Above all, they had a social and political imagination that unaccountable power always fears. And they had courage. It is this imagination and courage that opens up real debate with real information and allows ordinary people to reclaim their confidence to demand their human and democratic rights. Oscar Wilde wrote: "Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue". I read the other day that the South African police calculated that the number of protests across the country had doubled in just two years to more than 10,000 every year. That may be the highest rate of dissent in the world. That's something to be proud of - just as the Freedom Charter remains something to be proud of. Let me remind you how it begins: "We, the people of South Africa, declare that our country belongs to everyone...". And that, as Nelson Mandela once said, was the "unbreakable promise". Isn't it time the promise was kept? This is edited version of an address in March 2008 by John Pilger to graduating students at Rhodes University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in literature.

Histories of the four Internationals

Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez [right] has called for the formation of a Fifth International to unite socialists around the world. The previous internationals were places of debate and action, established to strengthen the international socialist movement. Dan Swain of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has writen a breif history of each one, arguing that we “can learn an enormous amount by studying them”.

The First International was forged in struggle In the first of a new series Dan Swain looks at how socialists have organised for change globally. On 28 September 1864, delegations of workers from different countries met in London to form the International Working Men’s Association. This was later known as the First International. It was an historic moment uniting working people in a genuinely international organisation. Uprisings in Poland against the Russian empire provided the spark for its formation. British workers issued a call to workers in Paris to deliver joint solidarity. A delegation from France travelled to London. By the time the first meeting was convened large numbers of Polish, German and Italian workers were also present. Battle of Węgrów, Poland 1863 The first few years of the international saw some impressive successes. It won solidarity from British workers for a strike of bronze workers in Paris, which went on to victory. It was also crucial to defeating attempts by bosses to use scab labour to break the London tailors’ strike in 1866 and the Geneva building workers’ strike in 1868. Arguments for international solidarity had a strong resonance with workers across Europe. In 1869 mine owners in Belgium unleashed an attack on working conditions. Workers and their families rose up and were met with vicious repression. Belgian troops killed or wounded many workers. The First International organised solidarity meetings and provided legal representation for the arrested miners. They were acquitted, increasing support for the International. It was a place of intense debates. [Karl] Marx and his supporters were not the only voices. Anarchists, represented mainly by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon from France and the Russian Mikhail Bakunin were one strand.

Karl Marx Mikhail Bakunin Utopian Socialism was another. Utopians saw the route to socialism through enlightenment and education. Robert Owen, one of its key proponents, had established co-operatives and ideal working communities to show how work and society could be organised differently. Marx argued that while these were good examples, they would not lead to socialism—building isolated communities could never be enough. “To conquer political power has... become the great duty of the working classes”, he said in his first address to the International. Many of Marx’s most important political arguments were made in debates with these trends. The International’s biggest challenge was the Paris Commune in 1871. War had broken out between France and Prussia. The defeat of France led to the collapse of the government and the declaration of a new republic. In Paris workers rose up and declared their own government under the Commune. Marx offered his full support, and his analysis of it is among his most important writings. His The Civil War in France offers a powerful defence of the Commune and a stark description how far the ruling class would go to crush a revolution. The Paris Commune, 1871 These events saw socialism condemned internationally, and Marx was labelled the “Red Doctor” by the press. There was debate within the International itself. Faced with a revolutionary moment, the divisions in the International became increasingly important. Anarchists and [Marxist] socialists drew very different conclusions. The English trade unions left the International because of its support for the Commune and the British representatives resigned from its general council. They argued that change should come through parliament and trade union activity. With the loss of the British section the divisions between Marx and the anarchists became more intractable. It led to the eventual dissolution of the International in 1872. While the International had brought together workers across Europe, the division between reformists and revolutionaries was too much. It remains a crucial question in debates about building international organisations in the future. The Second International: From class war to imperialist slaughter In the second part of our series Dan Swain looks at the rise and fall of the Second International. Last week I explored how divisions over the question of revolution led to the break up of the First International. The same problem was also of decisive importance to the fate of the next attempt to unite socialists across borders. The Socialist International, known as the Second International, was established in 1889. It brought together socialist groups from across the world, the most successful being the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). These organisations were generally well rooted in the working class. They spoke of the need for revolution, and were involved in organising unions and contesting elections. The SPD participated in every aspect of workers’ lives, even organising socialist choirs and socialist gyms. It is because of calls by the Second International that we celebrate International Workers Day on May Day, and International Women’s Day on 8 March. May Day was launched as part of an international campaign for an eight-hour working day. Workers across Europe stopped work and demonstrated on 1 May 1890. Governments were forced to recognise the day as a national holiday. As capitalism underwent a period of stability at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the parties of the Second International were able to gain legal recognition and win some major reforms. As a result, many began to draw the conclusion that capitalism could be reformed to benefit the working class. While most of these people still called themselves Marxists, and paid lip service to the idea of revolution, they began to move away from it in practice. Karl Kautsky, a leading intellectual in the SPD, was a key figure in this debate. Formally he supported revolution against a section of the party who wanted to abandon it. Karl Kautsky However, while denouncing them at party conferences, he also accommodated to them, allowing them to set the agenda. This meant the left was isolated. The leading Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin called for the reformists to be expelled from the International. He argued that having two different currents in the same organisation could only paralyse it. Revolutionaries and reformists should, and must, work together, but they need to organise separately, he said. The tensions in the International began to reveal themselves in an argument about colonialism, as the great powers grabbed parts of the world. Some delegates to the International’s 1907 congress defended aspects of colonialism, saying that it could be a force for good. Lenin proposed an alternative, opposing all colonialism. This was passed, but the vote was very close. Even worse was the debate over war. All agreed that socialists should oppose war, which resulted from the competitive nature of capitalism. But there were disagreements over how to do this. Many argued for mass strikes and uprisings, but some of the German delegates were concerned about this affecting their legal status. A compromise was reached. This said that if war broke out, it was the duty of socialists “to intervene for its speedy termination and to strive with all their power to utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule”. But this did not happen when the First World War broke out in 1914. The majority of SPD MPs in the German parliament, including Kautsky, voted for war. Most of the other Second International parties followed suit, voting to support their country’s war effort. This was a terrible betrayal. Lenin refused to believe the news at first, presuming the newspaper story was a forgery. Failure to oppose the war ripped apart the International. It left many confused and demoralised. However, those who did break with it and opposed the war would go on to form the backbone of a genuinely revolutionary international movement. As Leon Trotsky wrote in 1914, “The Second International did not live in vain. It carried out enormous cultural work, the likes of which the world has never seen: the education and rallying of an oppressed class. “The proletariat does not have to begin all over again… The period now concluded bequeathed it a rich arsenal of ideas.” The Third International: Revolutionary hope crushed by Stalinism Dan Swain continues our series with a look at the third attempt to unite workers across borders. Poster for the Third International When the parties of the Second International voted to support the First World War many socialists were left uncertain about what to do next. From the carnage of the war, however, came a beacon of hope that inspired millions across the world. A revolution in Russia put workers in control in October 1917. The Bolshevik Party argued for forming a workers’ state by placing power in the hands of the soviets – councils of workers based in the factories and communities. The Bolsheviks had opposed the war. After the revolution they ended Russia’s involvement. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin had argued that revolutionaries and reformists should organise separately. The success of the revolution had proved how important this was. It inspired the creation of Communist Parties across Europe. Trotsky, Lenin and Kamenev in 1919 In 1919 these organisations were formally united in the Communist International, known as the Third International. It was formed in a period of huge social upheaval. There were mass strikes all over Europe. Soviets similar to those in Russia were formed in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. Socialists in Russia knew that if the revolution did not spread to other countries it would be defeated. Germany, which had the largest working class in Europe, was the most important country. Lenin declared in 1918 that, “It is an absolute truth that without a German revolution we are doomed.” German sailors revolt ended World War One and sparked the German revolution. Their placard reads: “Soldiers warship Prince Regent Luitpold. Long live the Socialist Republic” However, the Communist Party in Germany was a new and relatively small one. It had only recently broken from the Social Democratic Party. Revolution was a real possibility in Germany between 1919 and 1923. But the leaders of the Communist Party made a series of tactical mistakes that led to their defeat. They squandered the trust of workers through irresponsible uprisings that were doomed to defeat. As a result of this they were too timid to take a lead at other times. The defeat of the German Revolution led to Russia becoming increasingly isolated. Lenin’s death in 1924, and the enormous damage done to Russia by civil war, created the conditions in which a growing bureaucracy could concentrate their power. Joseph Stalin, who headed the bureaucracy, asserted that it was possible to construct “socialism in one country”. This was the complete opposite of what Lenin had argued. Joseph Stalin The International increasingly became a tool of Russia. Communist Parties around the world were instructed to respond to every whim from Moscow. This led to bizarre twists in strategy. First, members of the International were told not to work with social democrats at all. Instead they were denounced as “social fascists”. This was utterly disastrous. The left was divided when unity was needed against the Nazis. Then suddenly the International switched, and Communists were ordered to seek alliances with anyone and everyone. This “Popular Front” tactic even led to Communists participating in governments in Europe and breaking strikes. As the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky put it, the International had become a “submissive apparatus in the service of Soviet foreign policy, ready at any time for any zigzag whatever”. Against this, Trotsky argued consistently for the idea of the united front. This had been a strategy put forward at the Third International’s 1922 congress. It argued that the Communist Parties must seek to work with social democratic parties in an effort to influence the majority of workers. The policy adopted in 1922 argued that the role of the International “is not to establish small communist sects aiming to influence the working masses purely through agitation and propaganda, but to participate directly in the struggle of the working masses”. The Third International brought together millions of workers under a banner committed to the need for world revolution. It inspired millions to fight for a better world. It educated generations of activists and militants, and played a key role in many struggles. The early struggles of the International still hold many important lessons for us today. However, its fate was too closely tied to that of Russia. Stalin misled the workers organised in the International as did their own national leaderships, who too often meekly obeyed every command. Also of interest, from the the British Socialist Worker newspaper: The Communist International – a major nine part series How a workers’ uprising ended the First World War The Fourth International: Keeping the flame alive Our series concludes by looking at Trotsky and the Fourth International. Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian revolution, opposed Joseph Stalin’s increasing stranglehold on the Soviet Union and the Third International. Leon Trotsky As a result he was exiled from Russia. In 1938 he gathered together a small number of his supporters to form the Fourth International. The contrast between the founding congresses of the other internationals and the fourth was stark. There were only 21 delegates representing 11 organisations. The largest was the US section, with only 2,500 members. This was not the mass organisation that the previous internationals had been. Nonetheless Trotsky believed that the extraordinary world situation demanded a new formation. The Great Depression was feeding the rise of fascism, while Stalinism prevented workers fighting back successfully. The Fourth International argued that capitalism was entering a terminal crisis. It was no longer possible to fight for reforms within capitalism. The choice was either revolution or fascist dictatorship. The old Communist parties had been turned into tools of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia, and were now opposed to revolution. It was necessary to form new revolutionary organisations, however weak they might start out. Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent two years later. Unfortunately, the remaining leadership of the Fourth International stuck to this perspective even when circumstances changed. Far from collapsing following the war, capitalism went through a period of sustained growth and prosperity. Under these conditions reformist and Communist parties grew rapidly. They were able to win many reforms. Trotsky had also predicted that the war would lead to the overthrow of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. Instead, the Soviet Union’s influence expanded and Stalin consolidated his position. Yet in 1946 James Cannon, a leading figure in the Fourth International, announced that Trotsky was still right, “only we disagree with some people who carelessly think the war is over”. This was an extraordinary denial of reality in an attempt to stick to all of Trotsky’s words! The Fourth International debated the nature of the Soviet Union and the replica regimes it established across Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. Its position became that the Soviet Union was a “degenerated workers’ state”. The theory was of a genuine socialist revolution that had developed defects. The East European satellites were however “deformed workers’ states”, defective from birth. This created a huge problem. Karl Marx had argued that socialism must be brought about by the working class themselves. But the regimes in Eastern Europe had been instituted by Stalin’s armies, not by the workers of those countries. To argue that they were in any sense workers’ states abandoned a key principle of Marxism. These were “workers’ states” that the workers had never had any say in. Against this, the Palestinian Marxist Tony Cliff, a founder of the SWP, argued that the Soviet Union and its mirror images in Eastern Europe were state capitalist regimes, in which the workers had no control. The revolutionary upheavals that began in May 1968 created an opportunity for Trotsky’s ideas to gain influence and for organisations that looked to his legacy to grow. But by this time the “official” Fourth International was split into warring factions, and Cliff had left to form the International Socialists, the predecessor of the SWP. Unfortunately, dogmatic adherence to Trotsky’s 30-year old ideas helped many squander these opportunities. The logic of the “deformed workers’ state” argument was that socialism could be brought about by forces other than the working class, for example students, peasants or guerrilla armies. Some parts of the Fourth International did stay closer to the real Marxist tradition. Whatever the later difficulties of some his followers, Trotsky’s break from the rotten politics of Stalin’s Third International kept the flame of revolutionary internationalism alive. It is this tradition that we should gain inspiration from today.

The People’s Poet – Robert Burns [1759-1796]

By Colin Fox from Socialist Unity January 25th [was] Burns night, that unique Scottish occasion when poetry finds itself centre stage and the life and work of an ‘Ayrshire ploughman’ is celebrated. And this year with a Westminster General Election pending we might reflect on the progressive message contained in his ‘Ballad of Mr Heron’s Election’ where Burns’ vision of a democratic and truly representative Parliament written more than 200 years ago still resonates Wham will we send to London town 
To Parliament and a’ that? 
Or wha in a’ the country round 
The best deserves to fa that? 
For a’ that and a’ that, 
Here’s Heron yet for a’ that! 
The independent commoner 
The honest man, and a’ that! A beardless boy comes o’er the hill 
Wi’s uncle’s purse and a’ that; 
But we’ll hae one frae amang ourselves 
A man we ken and a’ that 
For a’ that and a’ that 
Here’s Heron yet for a’ that 
We are no tae be bought and sold 
Like nowte and nags, and a that Then let us drink: ‘The Stewartry, 
Kerroughtree’s laird, and a’ that 
Our representative to be: 
For weel he’s worthy a’ that 
For a’ that and a’ that 
Here’s Heron yet for a’ that! 
A House of Commons such as he, 
They wad be blest that saw that. Robert Burns is that rare breed in Scots life an internationally acclaimed literary genius and political radical. Indeed so potent and powerful is his legacy today that even the Tories, whom he despised and ridiculed throughout his life, attempt to get in on the act. Alex Salmond, never one to miss a political trick, is another. He declared 2009 – the 250th anniversary of Burns’ birth – as ‘The Year of Homecoming’ to entice the worldwide Scots Diaspora to come and spend money here. But the same political establishment desperate to adopt him now did their utmost to destroy him in life and in death. Part of the task facing our socialist movement then is to ensure the full significance of Burns’ life and work is understood and enjoyed by new generations of working people. His language can of course initially be difficult to understand but perseverance wins its own reward and the task is made easier when considering the joy he stirs up in others. The United Nations cultural arm UNESCO for example declared Burns the world’s first ‘people’s poet’ because he began the practice of writing poetry, prose and songs about the commonplace experiences of the poor. This international appeal helps explains why his work has been translated into 40 languages and touches billions. When asked to name his greatest creative inspiration recently, Bob Dylan replied unhesitatingly that it was Robert Burns and his song ‘My luve’s like a red, red, rose.’ Similarly inspired by Burns, although on different grounds, is the celebrated African American author and activist Maya Angelou. Whilst teaching in Georgia at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960’s she used Burns’ poems to inspire her young black students with a sense of pride in who they were and what they were fighting for. She recalls how they were ‘just blown away’ by ‘The Slave’s Lament’ in which Burns conveys with incredible passion and subtlety the anguish of those kidnapped, bundled aboard the ‘death ships’ and forced to work on the plantations as they yearn for the land of their birth. Written in the 1790’s when the conventional wisdom used to mask this evil trade was that ‘these people are savages incapable of cogent thought’ the poem also confronts the role played by Scottish merchants heavily involved in the highly profitable business. It was in sweet Senegal 
That my foes did me enthral 
For the lands of Virginia, -ginia, O 
Torn from that lovely shore 
And must never see it more 
And alas! I am weary, weary, O! Karl Liebnecht the German revolutionary leader assassinated in 1919 was also inspired by Burns, in fact his dying words were taken from the magnificent final verse of Burns’ anthem ‘Is there for honest poverty’, ‘Its coming yet for a’ that 
That man to man the world’ o’er 
Shall brithers be for a’ that ’ When I was elected to the Scottish Parliament in May 2003 as the new Scottish Socialist Party MSP for the Lothians and confronted with demands to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen I decided to protest by singing words from Burns A prince can mak’ a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke and a’ that 
But an honest man’s above his might, 
Guid faith he manna fa that 
For a’ that and a’ that 
The man o’ independent mind 
He looks and laughs at a’ that They threw me out but I made my point. Burns certainly belongs to the radical tradition and early socialist movement, but it is also true that it was our movement that rescued him from obscurity. Hugh Macdiarmid, arguably Scotland’s second greatest poet, did more than anyone else to re-establish Burns’ reputation and work. For a hundred years after his death Burns was forgotten. There were no Burns suppers in the nineteenth century, no celebrations of his work, no commemorations of his life and no statues. Indeed the first biography of Burns, written by one of his many opponents, did such enormous damage to his reputation that it sent him into a period of prolonged obscurity. It was Macdiarmid who, in the early 20th century, began to put Burns back in his rightful place atop the Scots cultural ladder. Hugh Macdiarmid was elected as a socialist Councillor in Montrose before WW1 and later joined the Communist Party standing as their candidate in a famous by-election in Perth in the 1950’s. The Communist Party in Scotland, through its cultural work over 50 years, deserves much credit for promoting Burns at home and abroad. If everyone is a product of their time and place then Robert Burns’ birth in 1759 just 14 years after the second Jacobite rebellion, following the hugely unpopular Act of Union of 1707 and amid the revolutionary ferment in Europe and North America put him in extraordinary times indeed. He took a keen interest in the world around him. Thanks to the work of outstanding Burns scholars like Patrick Scott Hogg and Professor Robert Crawford we also now know that he was an activist, a participant in that struggle. The Act of Union of 1707 was hugely unpopular in Scotland among the mass of the population who suffered economic hardship and felt betrayed by the merchantile classes who negotiated it. Bankrupted by the disastrous Darien project in Panama the merchants and bankers had been bailed out by their English counterparts on condition both Parliaments united in London. Burns refers to these Scots nobles who signed the Act on terms so damaging to the masses
‘Bought and sold for English gold, sic a parcel of rogues in a nation.’ Following the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 Scots culture and its tongues [Scots and Gaelic] were repressed by the powers that be in both London and Edinburgh. Wearing tartan was outlawed and the Highlands were subdued militarily. Edinburgh’s genteel nobility, in deference to the new arrangements, referred now to Scotland as ‘North Britain’ and spent as little time here as possible. They considered the Scots language to be coarse, couthy and backward. Out of nowhere then – Alloway in Ayrshire – and into this overwhelmingly subservient, stultifying atmosphere of ‘British’ conformity came a peasant farmer with a prolific poetic voice writing with beauty, wit, irreverence, intelligence and power on a stimulating array of subjects; lovemaking, farming, beauty, drinking and carousing, the human condition, the environment, fiction and current affairs – and in the Scots tongue! Burns’ poems published in the ‘Kilmarnock edition’ of 1786 caused a sensation. They shook Scottish society to its roots. All of a sudden the effete middle classes were all a quiver, titillated and aroused by the vulgarity and beauty, wit and wisdom, subtlety and humour of this obscure peasant farmer. They could hardly wait to see what he was like. Burns was whisked to Edinburgh, wined and dined, lionised and celebrated. He was the talk of the town at twenty-five. Everyone wanted to meet him, to be in his company. But inevitably this ‘courtship’ by the New Town ladies was not to last. When he continued to write and sing in support of the French and American revolutionaries and the Scots reform movement led by Glaswegian Thomas Muir he was soon blacklisted and victimised. All of a sudden no one would publish his work. Unable to make a living from his farm and with a family to feed he ended up taking a job as an excise man down in Dumfriesshire. He continued to write prodigiously but no one would publish his work. He resorted to sending poems and prose anonymously to the London Gazetteer an underground newspaper. Scotland greatest literary talent died penniless at the age of 37 on 21st July 1796. Some 50,000 mourners turned up in Dumfries for his funeral. Colin Fox is the national spokesman of the Scottish Socialist Party and the Chairman of the Edinburgh People’s Festival. Visit Colin’s blog at www.sspcolinfox.blogspot.com

Talking Seattle, ten years on

Looking at this article from ten years ago reminded me just how exciting and inspiring Seattle and the birth of global anti-capitalist movement was. It occurs to me that there’s a lot for the left in general, and the climate justice and eco-socialist movements in particular to learn / remember about how the Seattle protests and the subsequent global movement nited a diverse range of activists – notably the ‘Teamster Turtle Alliance’ of trade unionists and environmentalists – who recognised neo-liberal capitalism as the common enemy. So I’ll be kicking off a discussion / workshop at Climate Camp on the topic: “Ten years after the ‘Battle of Seattle’, what can the Climate Justice activists learn from the Global Anti-Capitalist Movement?” Hope to see you there. by John Charlton from International Socialism Journal, Issue 86, Spring 2000 Only a couple of months after the event the word ‘Seattle’ has acquired a new meaning. It is where ‘we’ kicked the system. The word pops up in India when power and port workers come out on mass strike against privatisation. ‘Is it the Seattle effect?’ asks a newspaper. The internet is replete with articles analysing its meaning. I posted a questionnaire on the internet between November 1999 and January 2000. The responses I received, along with personal testimonies and articles, became the basis of this piece.[1] That a turning point in the struggle against the excesses of world capitalism should take place in Seattle is not without its ironies. Seattle has been lauded as a hub of the burgeoning economies of the Pacific Rim. A boom town of the 20th century’s last quarter, ‘Seattle’ is almost a metaphor for high-tech consumption. It is the home of Boeing, of Microsoft, and those symbols of galloping consumerism, the Starbucks coffee shop empire and Nike, just down the road. A place to live in grace and comfort. All this explains why the Clinton administration wanted to take the World Trade Organisation to Seattle. Yet there is a downside. In the liberalisation of the global economy US domination may have may have increased, but millions of American workers have been victims of the shrinkage of basic industry, its relocation and the intensification of exploitation in the workplace. For some time the cynical and corrupt leaders of the labour unions have been under pressure from their members to organise a fightback. They chose Seattle because their public profiles would be enhanced in the glare of the international media circus surrounding the WTO meeting. There is another twist which should not be lost. The new millennium was being ushered in by the system’s leaders and its media on an extravagant tide of hype. Millions of new shopping opportunities were being heralded via the cyber-supermarket. But their party was ruined in the virtual home of e-commerce. A fightback starting in Seattle has yet another lovely resonance. The city was the location of the only general strike in US history so far. In 1919, in the crisis following the end of the First World War with the US government attempting to smash the Russian Revolution, Seattle workers struck. Jeremy Brecher wrote:

Anger, hope and militance grew as in a pressure cooker. Nowhere did this radicalisation go further than in Seattle. The radical IWW and the AFL Metal Trades Council co-operated in sponsoring a Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Workingmen’s Council, taking the soviets of the recent Russian Revolution as their model.[2]

This forms a nice backcloth to the events of November and December 1999.

‘Think the WTO is bad?... Wait till you hear about capitalism!’ – placard

Seattle hit the international media on Tuesday 30 November, but events were moving in the previous week. Mitchel C wrote, ‘No matter where you turn, rallies, teach-ins and other events are exploding out of the pavement. I went to the International Forum on Globalisation that occurred Friday and Saturday... Tickets were sold by Ticketron. Around 2,500 people participated, the huge auditorium filled to capacity for two days, 9am to 9pm... Sunday, 1,500 people took to the streets in a wonderfully colourful and peaceful (if raucous) procession, hundreds of giant puppets and mass performance theatre against genetic engineering and the WTO, drummers beating on makeshift instruments, an army of genetically engineered corn, another “army of forested trees, fighting against the evil soldiers of the New World Order”.’ Damon, Pittsburgh: I got on a Greyhound bus in Pittsburgh at 3am the morning after Thanksgiving and travelled two and a half days to Seattle to join the protests against the World Trade Organisation. I arrived to see tens of thousands of activists from the widest range of causes I’ve ever seen in one place, united around a common concern – their desire to have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, otherwise known as democracy.

‘The senators who ratified the WTO treaty should be tried for treason’ – placard

Bill O, Chicago, Illinois: We were up at 5am on Tuesday 30 November. We had a big day planned. There were two main marches, one leaving from downtown and one from Capitol Hill. I was in the Capitol Hill march. We loaded up all the puppets into trucks and sent the larger ones up the road. On our side we had an Earth Mother puppet whose head was eight feet in diameter. Her head and each of her hands were mounted on a wheeled cart, and her fabric body stretched across the street. We also had a ten foot square rolling ‘pyramid of corporate power’. I was dressed in my full clown ensemble. I wore signs on my front and back that read, ‘WTO--who elected these clowns?’ I normally refrain from using ‘clown’ as a derogatory term, but I felt justified here somehow. I carried my diabolo with me. Shawna, Jeff and Corey, Victoria, British Columbia: The Progressive Librarians’ Guild banner elicited quite a few comments. Most surprise – all positive. We were quite a novelty. People first looked at the banner, then looked again (just to make sure), and looked us up and down as if to assess what librarians look like outside a library. Finally they would look one of us in the eye, smile or pat us on the shoulder. A child asked his mother who we were and she explained, ‘These are the people who make sure Harry Potter stays inside the library.’ She looked at us, grinned and added, ‘Among other activities, I’m sure.’ Bill O: At 7.30am, the march began and turned towards downtown. The rain beat down on us. As we reached key intersections we saw human chains, lockdowns and tripods start to emerge. The police forced us to turn several times. We wound our way about, around toward the Paramount Theatre, which was the location of that morning’s WTO opening ceremony. We found a way over the highway and there we were. The front of the Paramount Theatre was walled in with metro buses. Riot police stood on the other side. We had a tripod and a locked down human chain on the other side of the block. There was a bus blaring music down the block. Protesters got up on top of the bus barrier and yelled at the WTO delegates who made their way around the back of the theatre. For a while I thought that the protesters were going to go over the barrier and confront the relatively few police on the other side, but this did not happen. We set about making blockades so the delegates could not get through to attend the meeting.

‘Keep the sweatshop in the sauna’ – banner

Jake, Seattle: I found a great protester line to help barricade and actually exchanged with WTO delegates from South Africa (Afrikaner bastard), Egypt, Germany and France. Some delegates discussed the issues of child labour, genetically engineered food etc, in sympathy with our causes. Others were belligerent and got a good rash of chanting, blocking and deriding in mass numbers. The arrogance of some of these folks was unbelievable. They were very outnumbered but still tried to push through us. It was very satisfying to say ‘no’ to their faces, and there was not one damn thing they could do. The shoe was on the other foot. How does that feel? It wasn’t bricks that did it. It was massive peaceful protest after laborious turnout work. It was the most unbelievable feeling to rove the canyons of downtown corporate America completely free from state police authority. Tipped dumpsters blocked every intersection. All walks of life cruised the streets going from one line of police standoff to the next. Before the police gassing and macing rush at nightfall we felt completely safe in unity with the mass of humanity. If the bladder was full, pee on a Nordstrom Christmas display window next to a graffiti artist. Probably less human on human violent crime was committed downtown that day than any other day of the year. David, Berkeley, California: Tens of thousands of union members marched downtown to join the protest. Having shut down all the ports along the Pacific coast from Alaska to San Diego, union members chanted and waved picket signs as their ranks filled the streets as far as the eye could see. Each union’s members marched together, each with its own colour jacket or T-shirt, each carrying banners and hundreds of signs printed for the occasion. Many of the morning’s young protestors were visibly impressed by the strength of the numbers and organisation. For Annie Decker, ‘The power and size of it made me feel joyful. I was proud that we were together, bringing the WTO into the public eye.’

‘Capitalism destroys all life’ – placard

Bill O: A trickle of delegates was getting through, however, and teams were dispatched to plug the holes. All around the theatre were lines of riot police. At each of these lines protesters made human chains. The police were not going to let us in, but we were not going to let any delegates in either. Some of the delegates who came up on the line I was in were understanding, a few even had conversations with us. Many were very angry and violent, however. One screamed obscenities at us for ten minutes. We would not be provoked.

Ain’t no power 
Like the power of the people 
And the power of the people 
Don’t stop! 
Whose streets? Our streets!
 Whose streets? Our streets! – chants

Peter B: The vanguard of the ‘big’ march arrived downtown about 1.30pm, occupying the whole street. Although it came in fits and starts, it flowed past my vantage point for 50 minutes before I found my Salem friends and joined them. We looped through a number of blocks of downtown, and then began to head out of downtown a block over from where the march came in. To my amazement, we could see a steady stream still coming in! It was 2.45pm. I Ieft the march and stood on the corner to view the rest of the march. By 3pm the march’s end had passed the point at which I could see it entering downtown a block up the street. However, it was still another 20 minutes before the end passed my vantage point. This means that the march that often filled the entire street took about an hour and a half to pass one point. Could that be less than 50,000? Bill O: At this point the police were doing their best to be cordial and communicative. They talked to the spokespeople for the protesters. They tried to keep the tension down. This was good, but it did not last. As the afternoon wore on it became clear that we were winning. Most of the delegates were unable to make it to the opening of the meetings and they were cancelled. The bus barrier around the Paramount Theatre was removed.

‘Brush with direct action. Helps to prevent truth decay’ – placard

Peter B: I saw signs for at least these unions: steelworkers, electrical workers, teachers, bricklayers, ILWU (longshoremen), painters, Stanford workers, service employees, Teamsters, sheet metal workers, marine engineers, transit workers, boilermakers, plumbers, steamfitters and refrigeration workers, public service workers of Canada, cement masons, pulp, paper and wood workers, nurses, Canadian Airlines workers, and carpenters. Steve saw ‘United Steelworkers from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chicago and Gary, United Autoworkers from the Midwest, International Longshore and Warehouse Union from right down the West Coast, Service Employees International Union from all over, Teamsters from all over, International Association of Machinists mainly from the North West, and many craft unions – carpenters, boilermakers and sheet metal workers, mainly from the North West.’ Doug Henwood: Togetherness was the theme of the labour rally – not only solidarity among workers of the world, but of organised labour with everyone else. There were incredible sights of Teamster president James Hoffa sharing a stage with student anti-sweatshop activists, of Earth Firsters marching with Sierra Clubbers, and a chain of bare-breasted BGH-free Lesbian Avengers weaving through a crowd of machinists.[3]

We don’t need no corporations
 We don’t need no thought control 
Lock the delegates in the bathroom
 WTO has got to go
 Hey, coppers! Leave those kids alone! – street chant, after Pink Floyd

Police riot, mass arrests Steve, Seattle: There were around 1,000 Seattle Police with many coming in from outlying areas – King County Sheriffs and cops from other cities, perhaps as many as another 1,000. There were also 200 National Guards, who were mostly held in reserve. All the cops were in riot gear – padding, shields, with gas masks on or at the ready. The suppression of free speech and assembly was a conscious policy by the city, state and federal government. The pressure was intense from the Secret Service (since Clinton came to town on Wednesday 1 December) and specifically from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Attorney General Janet Reno. Reno demanded that the National Guard be called out. Mayor Schell imposed a ‘no protest zone’ around the convention centre and hotels where the delegates were staying. There was a 7pm to 7am curfew through wider areas of downtown. The ‘state of emergency’ declared by Mayor Schell was endorsed by the city council with no effective opposition, and even support from the so called ‘progressives’ on the council. The police chief tried to claim that ‘excesses’ by the cops were few and understandable considering the strain they were under. In fact, the ‘excesses’ were the rule. The government decided to clear out the protesters and punish them for their success on 30 November. In doing so tear gas, pepper spray, rubber and wooden bullets, percussion grenades, clubs and arrests were all allowed and encouraged. Six hundred plus were arrested. The police chased protesters into a residential/business neighbourhood a mile out of downtown with no pretext of defending the convention centre area. This was not an ‘excess’. It could have been stopped at any time by city officials and wasn’t. It was clear policy. Bill O: The mood was jubilant, but our work was not finished. I hooked back up with the giant puppets. The organisers with radios were sending us to ‘trouble spots’ where there was tension brewing or small groups in need of support. We brought the puppets to each of the barriers and I entertained the locked down human chains. Our Earth Mother puppet was so large that its very presence changed the energy of every intersection we came to.

‘WTO = global injustice!’ – placard

Shawna, Jeff and Corey: The ‘legal’ AFL-CIO march in which we were participating had originally planned to merge with the direct action people on 5th Avenue before turning round and heading back to Seattle centre... However, in a decision that we considered a betrayal of our frontline comrades, the AFL-CIO organisers detoured the march route... a group of marshals stood in front of a street to block our path towards the direct action protesters. We decided to join the direct action group and continued straight through the line of marshals. We found ourselves in a war zone. Bill O: In the late afternoon we arrived at a major downtown intersection. The human chain there had already been gassed, but they were holding strong. We rolled up with the puppets and it was clear that there was an attack brewing. Behind the protesters was a police line. Behind them were two more lines in formation, gas masks on and ready. Behind them was a line of mounted police. They were in formation as well. It was clear that this mass of protesters was about to be gassed and sprayed. We brought the puppets in close. My companions started the crowd singing:

Step by step the longest march, can be won, can be won
Many stones may form an arch, singly none, singly none,
And with union what we will, can be accomplished still
Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.

Drummers and a trumpeter played along. I moved up to the police line and started to do my clown routine, making a spectacle out of myself. The human chain, whose faces had been set in grimaces of fear and apprehension, became relaxed and joyful. A carnival atmosphere quickly developed, attracting TV cameras. It was a surreal sight, the joy of the protesters and the grim, Stormtrooper visages of the police, tensing for attack.

‘Teamsters and turtles together at last’ – placard carried by Teamster

Bill O: As it happened, however, no attack came. The police in the front started to relax their bodies. I heard one laugh at a bit of my slapstick. A whiff of tear gas from another confrontation floated past, making our eyes water. I waved my hand in front of my face. ‘Whoa, was that one of you guys?’ I asked the cops. Two broke out laughing. Behind the lines the ranking police officers were having a conference. They pointed in our direction and at the cameras. They ordered the horses and the reinforcements to stand down. They were willing to order their men to attack totally peaceful people but the clown and the puppets were too much for them. By about five o’clock the protests were winding down. Groups were unlocking and dispersing on their own. People were making plans for the next day. It was dark, meetings were over, and we had succeeded. We were moving the puppets around downtown to bring them back for storage for the night. It was in this context that the ‘violence’ started. Be clear, the only violence that happened up until this point was from the police, directed at peaceful, non-violent protesters engaged in civil disobedience. Jon: The police backlash that Tuesday and Wednesday night was atrocious. I witnessed it personally in the residential neighbourhood of Capitol Hill. Cops (on encouragement from Clinton’s Secret Service as reported in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, our own corporate media) aggressively chased and maced and gassed and clubbed and tackled innocent bystanders, as well as protesters, outside of the curfew police state zone. I was gassed but was too quick to be maced or clubbed. A moderate Republican county councilperson, a local CBS reporter, and a young innocent woman bystander were shoved and gassed, clubbed and arrested, and thrown face down on the concrete and her head stepped on while her arms were pulled back, respectively, in this residential neighbourhood. And yet the police could not maintain control.

‘Stop exploiting workers’ – placard

Damon: Onlookers began yelling, ‘Get ready! They’re going to do it! Get ready!’ I heard the spray and people began screaming in pain. I was just expecting spray, so I was pretty surprised when I felt one of those big clubs land on the top of my head. The guy behind me took most of the force from the blow so I wasn’t hurt badly. I covered my head with my arm and covered my eyes with my hand. As the screams continued it became obvious – even though I couldn’t see anything from underneath my bandana – that the cops were not only spraying but beating the people as well. A police officer then grabbed my hand, pulled it away from my face and sprayed me in the eyes with a canister of pepper spray. Dr Richard Andrea, New York City: The police were using percussion grenades. They were shooting tear gas canisters straight at protesters’ faces. They were using so called rubber bullets. These are actually hard plastic. Some of the damage I saw: these plastic bullets took off part of one person’s jaw, smashed teeth in other people’s mouths. I saw police arrest people who had their hands up in the air screaming, ‘We are peacefully protesting!’ Kent, Seattle: We were peacefully marching into downtown from the waterfront. The march was led by Bob Hasagawa, president of the 14,000-strong Teamsters Local 174. He attempted to make a speech at the steelworkers’ rally – but they cut him off. So he made a speech from a soapbox where he vowed that if anyone was going to be arrested he would be the first (although he wasn’t arrested).The march grew to nearly 1,000 people and it felt like we owned the streets of Seattle that feeling lasted about ten seconds. From out of nowhere, and from two different directions, the cops came in hard with tear gas and percussion grenades. They split the march into several pieces – one group of 300 and another group of 200. Neither group had broken any laws or even entered into the no-protest zone (although we were trying to take it there). Both were pinned downed by the cops and people were arrested. The cops put us on city buses to be processed. After they filled the fourth bus they ran out of room and let them go. It seems that everyone in the city knew who we were. People lined the streets to cheer us as our bus passed.

‘Monsanto: don’t eat it. Bite back – defeat it!’ – placard

Jon, Seattle: In custody most of the people I met had never been arrested before but were no less militant for it. I was stunned by the level of militancy. There was no question in most people’s minds that they were fiercely devoted to solidarity, and that they would do whatever it would take to remain in jail till all our demands were met. The following were fellow-detainees of Kent from Seattle: • Teamster organiser: Young guy, early 30s. Progressive wing of the Teamsters and member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (reform movement in the Teamsters). • Postal worker: early 30s, active when he was in college but had not been active for years. He got fed up with the world and protested against the WTO. His arrest was an education for him. He now wants to tear the head off the city, state, and country that had him beaten, tear gassed and arrested. He has become more active in his union as a result of being disciplined at work for being jailed. • Graduate student from University of Indiana: late 30s. Studying agricultural engineering. A native of India, he faces possible deportation six months before he earns his PhD. • Sheet metal worker: late 20s. She helped organise an entire workplace into the sheet metal workers’ union. • Environmental activist: early 20s, from Arcadia, a Californian city (heavily into Green politics). I talked to him a lot. He asked about the history of the Teamsters and where he could find out more about the labour movement. He wants to hold a meeting in Arcadia about the Battle in Seattle. • Direct Action Network leading activist: early 30s. Helped lead the jail solidarity action. • Amanda, student activist: early 20s. Was arrested with me and on my bus. She was active against the US in Kosovo and the bombing of Iraq. • Mike, graduate student from University of Washington: studying genetics. Mid-20s. His first demonstration ever. Mobilisation and motives It seems that between 60,000[4] and 80,000 people participated in the events over the five days.[5] This raises two interesting points. Firstly, a total of some 30,000-40,000 people from one region is impressive enough, though not unprecedented. From the Seattle region it is remarkable when we realise its geographical location. The urban area is small and distant from other conurbations. By road, Vancouver is two hours to the north. Portland is three hours and the Bay Area 16 hours to the south. Minneapolis is 30 hours to the east. Organisers cannot rely on a vast influx from adjoining urban centres. Only very well prepared and financed contingents, plus highly motivated individuals, could drop in by air. All this makes a national demonstration in Seattle logistically difficult, and its success all the more startling.[6] It is remarkable just how many came from far and wide. On a conservative estimate of numbers 20,000 people travelled a very long way. Over 3,000 came from Canada – the bulk from Vancouver, but there were even busloads from Ontario 2,000 miles away. Probably more than 10,000 travelled up the coast from Oregon and California. One respondent mentions a ‘caravan’ from California and another from eastern Canada. There were certainly contingents from, at least, Chicago, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Fort Collins and Denver (Colorado), Hartford, Kent (Ohio), Bloomington, Knoxville (Tennessee), Nevada, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Iowa. It speaks of considerable organisation, and there is already plenty of evidence of that. From January 1999 messages were appearing on the internet. Many, like Sam from the Bay Area, first saw it there: ‘Six months prior to the WTO meeting I became aware from the internet that a massive protest was in preparation.’ The Direct Action Network and the Anarchist Information Service were very active on the internet but also on the ground, informing and co-ordinating and training. Many people say they heard about Seattle in the summer, and from local sources. Geoff said, ‘I heard about it from anarchist circles in the Bay Area.’ ‘I got an anonymous flyer from some anarchists in Olympia, a small city near Washington,’ recorded Steven. ‘Postering and media reports,’ said Chris from Vancouver. Akio reported, ‘On the West Coast activist communities had been abreast of the plans for six months prior to the event. It was widely circulated knowledge that big plans were being drafted.’ Ann from Victoria, British Columbia, said, ‘I first heard about it in May when a Philippines solidarity activist in Victoria went to a preparatory meeting in Seattle.’ Tresa, a 30 year old Seattle teacher, said, ‘I was in charge of the Religious School... We ended up having some great classes for the 7th, 8th and 9th graders. The 8th grade teacher in particular had been planning a Holocaust lesson and was wondering how to tie it in with Channukah. We talked about the Maccabees, then I got her to the WTO. The students came in early to class and we ate pizza together so we had a good chance to start conversations then. A number of them had been to demos before school.’ In the summer the Ruckus Society and the Rain Forest Action Network sponsored a training camp in northern Washington. According to Z Magazine 150 activists held workshops which ‘ranged from urban climbing and banner making to non-violence training and peacekeeping, scouting, technical lockdowns and blockades, media, website design, street theatre, legal tactics, even drumming.’ Throughout the autumn, ‘warehouses are being scouted as potential squats. Seattle Food Not Bombs is making preparations to feed the troops. A sophisticated media collective has formed to ensure that the good work of protesters is neither ignored nor marginalised. Low power “pirate” radio activists are communications for the masses, and a network of inconspicuous bike messengers will feed information from the streets to the clandestine transmitters’.[7] Direct action activists brought an enormous amount to the success in Seattle, but the biggest story was the engagement of labour unions after decades of relative passivity and defeat. The leadership of the AFL-CIO was there in force. Against a background of a long term employer offensive and falling revenues the WTO was a great stage to make its presence felt. With a vulnerable Democrat president in a presidential year, pressure on the wannabes, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, would not be out of place. So they brought their mobilising facilities to bear in a fashion not experienced in recent memory. The AFL-CIO website records that ‘union activists, many arriving in more than 200 buses hired for the occasion, began gathering at Memorial Stadium two hours before a 10.30am rally. An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 participants overflowed the stadium and spilled into the adjoining park... More than 50 unions, 25 states and 144 countries were [represented] among the activists.’ Many respondents to the questionnaire record that union funds were behind the mobilisation of their cohorts. The success of the operation depended on grassroots rank and file organisation. Ron Judd, executive secretary of the King County Labor Council (Seattle), said, ‘We went into churches, community groups, neighbourhood organisations, environmental meetings, schools, high schools, colleges, universities and labour halls, even in people’s homes, to talk to them about the WTO and how it affects their lives’.[8] Tina from Chicago said, ‘The first I heard was about the labour mobilisation at a labour organisers meeting in April.’ Kent from Seattle records, ‘In Seattle anti-WTO groups organised at colleges – and most unions had members organising their co-workers around the WTO. People started talking about the WTO nearly a year ago. The sting of NAFTA is still fresh in the minds of many – so the bitterness was already there.’ Jeff, an aerospace worker from Wilmington, Massachusetts, went with 15 members of the North Shore Boston Labour Council. His factory is being relocated to Mexico. ‘We were pissed. After seven or eight years working on trade issues in our local union it was not hard to sign up 11 people for the trip. Some great trade unionists in the council came along as well. All of us paid our own way and looked to have some fun as well as do some serious protesting,’ he said. When we consider who the activists were, and what took them to Seattle, we uncover an immense variety of background and personal history. Like Annie from Santa Cruz, several talk of ‘a radical family background in terms of fighting capitalism and racism through labour movement organising and civil rights, both communist and anarchist’. Several others record radical, socialist or union family histories, whilst others have activist histories themselves. Sam from the Bay Area says he is ‘70 plus, a Second World War veteran with many years of participation in union and political activities’. Michelle, a socialist from Toronto, is 37. She has been a political and trade union activist for 20 years, ‘from protesting against Anita Bryant in the late 1970s to the Gulf War, the national student strike in 1995, the mass strikes in Ontario in 1995-1997, etc’. Kent is a 29 year old socialist metal worker from Seattle, and six years a political and union activist. Annie is a 21 year old student. She has done ‘an AFL-CIO internship, civil disobedience for unions, started a student labour club on campus and done police brutality protests’. Bill O is 24. He writes, ‘I have been in Art and Revolution for about a year and a half (in Chicago). I am a clown and an actor by trade.’ Anon, 47, is an ‘unemployed paralegal, left anarchist Jewish atheist’. Tina from Chicago is 46. She writes, ‘[I have been] an activist for 30 years, women’s movement, anti-war, various (non-electoral) political movements, union for 20 years.’ Elizabeth, a student in her early 20s, ‘helped organise as a national leader in the North American Ad Hoc Student Coalition for Fair Trade’. Akio is a 24 year old college graduate from Eugene who says, ‘Seattle was my introduction to the culture of activism.’ Respondents indicated where they believed the pull to Seattle came from. ‘Among the rads and youth,’ wrote Akio, ‘the environment seemed to be the primary concern, followed pretty closely by human rights, especially sweatshop labour... The AFL’s constituency was primarily concerned with labour rights and erecting international child labour laws, and also voiced a significant amount of concern for the environment. In my opinion though, more significant than the variety of issues comprising the protest was the general sentiment that democracy is being replaced by corporate oligarchy.’ Elizabeth from Vancouver put it down to the ‘threat to public services, including education, threat to democracy and the ability of governments to regulate and create standards, protect labour rights, and safety and environmental standards, more pressure to privatise and on the global South to give up completely on labour, health and environmental standards.’ Tina saw ‘the extraordinary development of the organised labour movement calling for action in the streets on economic and political issues--first time I remember it happening ever.’ An anonymous man from Vancouver simply wrote, ‘I hate capitalism.’ ‘I want to tear down borders and democratise corporations. Looked like a good place to do it! Many people wanted to save trees. But most of all I think people are just sick as hell of corporate control. Here (in the States) elections are all bought and paid for by corporate money. Corporations are considered people, with freedom of speech, but are never given the death penalty for dumping millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, or for killing Indians at Bhopal, or whatever,’ wrote Steven. Tom’s view was this: ‘I think some people just want to fuck with the power structures because they resent their parents.’ Bill O said he was ‘interested in fighting the enormous and growing influence of unaccountable transnational corporations and the human rights and environmental havoc that these monsters promulgate. The WTO is one part of a vast complicated system to recolonise the Third World. Almost any issue can be traced back to the systematised power of capital.’ Thinking Seattle Surely the very first thing to register about the events in Seattle is their anarchic excitement – the sense, in the often almost breathless accounts, of people experiencing a birth of the new. Amber from Denver said, ‘I came here to protest the killing of turtles. I’m going home determined to turn the world upside down.’ ‘Best thing since...wholewheat bread!’ says Tina. For Dean, ‘It changed the world and the movement.’ Jon says, ‘I am still trying to understand it all. I am proud to have been there and feel like we accomplished far more than we could have predicted.’ ‘I think it made me believe we can actually change things,’ writes Albert. And Steve just writes, ‘Yeh! Fuck shit up!’ ‘When can we have another one?’ asks Michelle. A locked-out Kaiser aluminium worker said, ‘A year ago I thought a redwood deck was the most beautiful thing in the world. Now I understand the importance of sustainability. I guess I’m an environmentalist now’.[9] From the union bureaucrats paraphrasing Marx to the Lesbian Avenger proclaiming, ‘My nipples stand in solidarity with the steelworkers and Teamsters and all the labouring people,’ there is a sense of possibility of moving into a new politics with agendas not yet written. Many demonstrations would throw up an activist profile similar to Seattle in its variety, especially among its organisers and certainly round the environmental issues which have characterised much radical action in the recent past. Yet the best lieutenants cannot build a mass demonstration by themselves. There must be an ‘army’ ready to respond. That there was speaks of an enormous depth of feeling – a raised consciousness across a significant swathe of society. There have been numerous courageous actions by environmental activists, and a rising level of interest in the issues they constantly raise. A whole generation of high school and college students have been touched, so to speak, by dolphins, giant redwoods, the rain forests, the greenhouse effect and urban pollution. And there are no face masks strong enough to block the stench of corruption at the top. For workers across the Western world the past quarter of a century has been an experience of retreat and retrenchment, faced with declining wages, rising prices and severe discipline in the workplace. Joe B from Portland expresses it well: ‘You go out to work – if you’re lucky. Some trumped up bastard tells you the time of day. Your wages go up – but not at the rate of cabbages at WalMart. Then the plant shuts down.’ It is this cry that is being heard more and more, but it is still largely hesitant – if angry. The mobilisation for Seattle is the great example, so far, of a shift from awareness and attitude to action. In one important respect this movement’s composition is different from the movement of the 1960s when, by and large, the working class and its labour unions were not involved. In Seattle it is quite clear that the largest contingents were from that constituency. By the end of the event sections of it were in a close and apparently harmonious relationship with the ‘natural’ constituency of demonstrators: students, environmentalists of several stripes, 1968 veterans and their children. Much of the media evinced surprise, as if a sort of Berlin Wall existed between the constituencies. This ignores important changes which have taken place over the last 30 years. The working class has not disappeared; its composition has altered. There are new occupations, and old ones have changed. The skilled have been deskilled and whole areas of formerly ‘middle class’ labour have been subordinated to ‘factory-style’ routine, discipline and insecurity. At the same time the expansion of education has tipped masses of college graduates, often overqualified, into such jobs. The steadily falling vote in US presidential elections has been one register of the growth of an enormous chunk of the population with a rightly cynical attitude to the official political process. This does not make them conscious revolutionaries overnight. Nevertheless, there are fresh tensions and anxieties to add to permanent ones. Seattle is an example of a popular upsurge, a reaction to such tensions. They are quite thrilling in their capacity to break moulds. Most people, from all campaigns and groups, went to Seattle with only the vague goal of demonstrating effectively against the disparate excesses of the WTO. The scale of the mobilisation surprised many of them. The crude violence of the law and order machine shocked everyone. Enormous warmth was expressed for the birth of new alliances. Ideas were in the crucible. Labour bureaucrats arriving with a nationalist-protectionist agenda felt the pressure from their audience to mute such positions in favour of an internationalist stance. Jeff, the aerospace worker from Massachusetts, wrote, ‘There could be no mistake that this was not a Pat Buchanan crew. This makes building alliances easier, both within the US and across the borders. We’ve come a long way from thinking that the answer is just to “Buy American”.’ David, from Berkeley, California has the last word:

Those who marched or stood or sat in the streets of Seattle this week made history, and they knew it. And like the great marches against the Vietnam War, or the first sit-ins in the South in the late 1950s, it was not always easy to see just what history was being made, especially for those closest to the events of the time. Tear gas, rubber bullets and police sweeps, the object of incessant media coverage, are the outward signs of impending change – that the guardians of the social order have grown afraid. And there’s always a little history in that. But perhaps the greatest impact of Seattle will be on the people who were there. Just as anti-war demonstrations and civil rights sit-ins of decades ago were focal points from which people fanned out across the country, spreading the gospel of their movement, Seattle is also a beginning of something greater yet to come. What will the people who filled its downtown streets take with them back into this city’s rainy neighbourhoods, or to similar communities in towns and cities across the country?

Notes 1 I have to thank Albert, Dean, Geoff, Jon, Kent, Steve, Jake and Tresa from Seattle; Akio and Steve from Eugene; Ann, Chris and Elizabeth from Vancouver, British Columbia; Corey, Shelley, Shawna, and Jeff from Victoria, British Columbia; Michelle from Toronto; Bill O and Tina from Chicago; Peter from Kent; Mitchel from Brooklyn; Damon from Pittsburgh; Jeff from Massachusetts; Tom, Sam, Mark and David from the Bay Area; plus three anonymous respondents. Helpful suggestions were made by Abbie Bakan, Colin Barker, Mick Charlton, Nick Howard, Steve Leigh, Michelle Robidoux and Sabby Sagall. 2 J Brecher, Strike! (San Francisco, 1972), p104. 3 D Henwood, Left Business Observer (http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/ lbo_about.html), 30 November 1999. 4 No respondent estimated under 40,000. The highest suggestion was over 100,000. The best guess is somewhere in the 60,000-80,000 region. 5 Estimates of where people came from varied wildly from 15 percent to 80 percent from the Seattle locality, but the majority suggest 50 percent to 70 percent local, so we could settle for around 60 percent, or 40,000 people. 6 A WTO conference might easily have been scheduled for, say, Washington DC. Given that city’s relationship to contingent conurbations down the East Coast we might now have been reviewing and assessing a demonstration of upwards of a million. The level of local participation at Seattle is therefore very remarkable and must surely reflect a new engagement. 7 D Moynihan, Z Magazine, December 1999. 8 Report by K Murphy and N Cleeland, Los Angles Times, 4 December 1999. 9 D Henwood, op cit. From http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj86/charlton.htm Issue 86 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Spring 2000 Copyright © International Socialism