Great Cockburn/St. Clair piece on Seattle

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Dec 17 09:25:22 PST 1999


Patrick Bond wrote:


>Great. Now give us more help (as I know you have, to the WB bond
>boycott campaign) on strategy and tactics, ok?

You folks seem to be doing fine, but let me know how I can help.


>How do we nix the
>embryonic global economic-(de)regulatory state?

Fuck with it, a la Seattle. Two, three many Seattles.


>Yah yah, good point, we do tend to talk metaphorically in all of this
>(mainly because key Jubilee North technocrats have done strange
>things like endorse the Cologne G-8 scam and unilaterally ally with
>one J. Sachs and one Pope)(the J2000 South slogan is "Nothing
>about us without us"). But the same question applies to, say, the
>process by which the African National Congress -- banned in SA
>from 1963-90 -- got the support of the int'l progressive community
>to impose sanctions on Pretoria amongst other naughty tactics, in
>spite of a myriad of distractions (especially other favoured black
>organisations) promoted by the apartheid regime, SA white liberals,
>the State Dep't and Thatcher, etc.

The ANC developed a great deal of credibility through decades as a mass movement, and through the moral force of Mandela's leadership. By contrast, for all their talk of "civil society," the popular base of most NGOs - even the best ones - seems rather thin.


>Well, give us your spiel if you don't like mine. With whom do you
>make solidarity and how? (Peter Waterman has a recent article on
>this problem, including a helpful typology, which I can send along if
>you like, Doug -- though I think you've seen it on e-debate.)

I think I missed that.


> > 2) Wimpy compromised reformism is worst when it derails a
> > more radical momentum. Right now, having U.S. unions
>
>A more nuanced, unit of analysis, please comrade!

Eh?


> > weighing in on
> > the WTO is a net gain; they're not derailing or deluting anything,
> > they're adding to the heat.
>
>Until that right turn away from the Seattle convention centre.

Which sucked.


> Or
>their endorsement of IMF recapitalisation last year.

Which sucked too, both in itself and for the reasoning I've heard that was behind it - that having beaten Clinton on fast track, they didn't want to humiliate him with another defeat.


>Ach man, cheeky controversy is fun, and keeps the creative juices
>flowing. Nathan will figure it out, give him time. Last year on PEN-L,
>as I recall, he was actually endorsing the Republicans' IMF
>"reform" (higher interest rates and shorter loans, just like Summers'
>new spindoctoring) until we pointed out the devil in the detail. It
>seems the problem with Yale is that you become too clever by half,

Didn't John Major, of all people, say that you could never be too clever?

Doug



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