On 16 Dec 99, at 9:46, Nathan Newman wrote:
> Honestly, my position is that both the "fix-it" and "nix-it" positions are
> non-viable, which is why I will fight with every fibre of my body to prevent
> the ideologues of either camp to win out and destroy the coalition of forces
> that made Seattle a success.
>
> Obviously, the fix it "reforms" have at best ended mostly the worst stupid
> excesses of neoliberalism
Or worse instead: given them a new lease on life by windowdressing structural adjustment with "programmes to mitigate" which are invariably obnoxious, corrupt patronage schemes. Likewise for gender, environment, transparency and participation reforms ... they tend to be worse than useless when you get into the gory details.
> - slowing the "dam every river" WOrld Bank focus
> being the obvious example
Wish it were so. A year ago community groups from Soweto and Alexandra townships of Jhb, plus some environmentalists, had a mammoth fight here against the largest, most stupid and anti- egalitarian (not to mention corrupt) dam scheme in African history (the Lesotho Highlands Water Project), very directly involving the WB (and its ridiculous "Inspection Panel"), and lost (gobs of details available if you want). And the Cape Town-based WB-sponsored World Commission on Dams is looking very dicey. Yes, nice to see the WB pulling out of Narmada and Arun, and not going into Three Gorges, but that's purely because activists had these projects in very clear sights and shooting range. But the underlying philosophy on both sides of 18th and H Sts, NW is really no different than it was in 1997, the peak of WashCon-think, as Stiglitz's bitter resignation last month shows.
- which mostly constitutes saving capitalism from
> its own mistakes.
Or worse instead: finding new, creative ways to make yet more mistakes. Watch for a bevy of new names ("Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility," "G-20," "New Financial Architecture") that essentially amplify existing self-destructive tendencies by failing to come up with anything beyond the short-term -- albeit dressed-up -- Wall St/City agenda.
> ...
> But the nix-it crowd is intellectually weak as well. Global capital will
> not fall to its knees if the IMF, World Bank and the WTO ceased to exist
> tomorrow.
Who said it would? The argument is simply that global K's main cops would be taken off the beat, and that would be good news for the world's majority.
> Its operations will be clumsier with more local and even global
> plunges,
Or, on the contrary (quite conceivably), a lot more stable (as in the wake of the demise of all int'l financial bubbles in recorded history) - - if as a result, the IMF/WB/USTreasury bailout system is no longer available to NY/London/Frankfurt/Tokyo bankers, and if the WashCon global deregulatory finance agenda fades because there's now more space for nation-states to impose capital controls, financial repression, reflation, etc.
> but it is not clear to me that the result would be a more equal
> distribution of power and wealth. I remember when we were fighting the
> NAFTA deal, Ross Perot was feeding all the anti-NAFTA lines about worker
> suffering and environmental destruction in the Mexican Macquilladoras in his
> debate with Al Gore. And Gore rightly noted that all of that destruction
> and exploitation was happening without NAFTA in place. The same is true
> without these global deals.
Without the IMF/WB? They've been here since 1944, Nathan, doing enormous damage, especially since their power increased so dramatically during the early 1980s.
> Unless you subscribe to the crisis model of
> revolution - destabilize capitalism until everything goes to hell, then it's
> our turn - the nix-it position gets us little.
You've not been following the argument, Nathan, or you're just stooping to distortion.
> The multinational
> institutions are just one factor in global capitalism and even as we battle
> them, letting these obvious signs of that global oppression become
> synonymous with it just leads to the illusion that their elimination solves
> the problem.
Nah, no one I know is promoting such an illusion. The point of the growing campaign to abolish the IMF/WB/WTO is, however, to change the international balance of power, in the interests of the world's working-class, oppressed nationalities, women, youth, elderly, disabled people, environment, etc. The most important, yet also in some ways also terribly vulnerable, concentration of power and neoliberal ideology lies in the WashCon institutions. After Seattle, opponents of neoliberalism can rightly claim unprecedented self-confidence in both the bottom-up critique and our capacity to gum up the neolib works. But that doesn't solve "the" problem, just provides a great deal more room for maneuvre in each local, national and regional site of progressive struggle.
> Pat Buchanan can take a pure "nix-it" position, but that kind
> of racist nationalism is the only kind where it works on its own.
Yes, and it is quite a mistake for our comrades -- Nader, Cockburn, whomever -- to work "with" Buchanan's social forces, I agree (if that's indeed what they're doing).
But as you know from last year's IMF recapitalisation, the right- wing republicans are absolutely not into "nix-it," they just want leaner, meaner agencies, to again quote Phil Gramm, so they pretend they want to shut down the BWIs until they can squeeze out a stronger commitment to oppression (which apparently Summers has just endorsed, too).
> Instead, our battle as the global left is a lot tougher than either "fix-it"
> or "nix-it."
Yes, the struggle for socialism is tough, agreed. But the international progressive movement debate in December 1999 that I think is most immediate -- and also most important for keeping up the leftward momentum -- is whether to play insider reform games on the one hand, or on the other to definitively end any pretense of a global state "regulating" (sic) capital movements in neoliberal (or even Post-WashCon) mode, instead moving towards restored national (and regional) sovereignty so that working-class and other progressive movements can get back on their feet.
You can't step between these positions, or over them, you have to take a stand: turning to the right (avoiding the Seattle convention centre) or digging in on the left.
> We have to build anew, create the institutions of the new
> world in the cradle of the old, fight for a global democratic structure of
> peoples forces to overturn the power of global capitalist power. "Just say
> no" to global capitalism doesn't cut it. We need radical comprehensive
> treatment for the suffering of the disease, even while we creat the vaccine
> to end it. What is needed is a bridging of global boundaries to unite
> labor unions worldwide, create a global environmental force and a fight for
> global democratic suffrage in running the world economy,
This is great rhetoric but is absolutely out of the question given the character of the global state-forming process. Even the most sophisticated academic advocate of global state-reform, Iris Marion Young, writes in her forthcoming book about the need to shut down the IMF/WB and also about how the struggle to get the UN cosmopolitanly-democratised will be absolutely formidable given the existing balance of forces.
> And, damn it, a few window-breakers in Seattle are not going to do it. Not
> that often timid labor leaders in DC are going to do it on their own, but
> that's why we need everyone- hell, yeah "can't we call get along." That
> doesn't mean we don't criticize each other, even occasionally picket one
> another. I've written multiple times for LaborNotes in the fight for union
> democracy, slammed progressive institutions for failures of racism and had
> my own ass (rightly) in a sling at times for my own failures of vision. But
> even as I'll fight within the movement for the best vision, I will not
> declare any needed ally a permanent enemy but instead try to keep the
> revolutionary love for fellow activists in my heart even when I castigate
> them for their perceived failures.
Great rhetoric, but at some point the reformers become very much part of the problem, as shown by, for example, the Oxfam Int'l endorsements of Wolfensohn (September 1995) and Camdessus (September 1999) at precisely the time of the greatest potential to block those guys' schemes from the left. It seems to me that in many respects we have reached that point.
> And what is clear to me is that we are at that classic dialectic moment,
> when two bankrupt positions - "fix it" or "nix it" - have to be surmounted
> by a new synthesis of global challenge to the global order...
Sorry, sounds like "fix it" to me. Still not convincing. But good to talk, as ever, comrade.