what in particular is bullshit: a) that this coalition you keep talking about is mythical; b) that such a coalition, as you have outlined it, only makes sense as a lever in domestic elections and WTO adjuncts; c) that your discourse all along has been to draw distinctions between 'those proper democratic representatives of the masses' and 'those who refuse to play by the agreed upon rules'; d) all of the above?
if it isn't in fact true that you have, as i wrote, launched "an impassioned plea for maintaining some mythical coalition upon which to advance a programme of reforms in time for the next US elections" and/or a vision of a new round of "policy conferences and workshops for various NGO and labour reps attached to the WTO" supplemented by "the exclusion of those darned negative types who refuse to play by the rules we have all agreed to at such conferences because, after all, we are represented", then why are you so focussed on who gets the credit and who is/isn't representative?
the 'problem' here, nathan, is that you're loudly taking offense at an argument in order not to pay much attention to the reasons for why such an argument was made. in particular, i said nothing about credit for the seattle events. nor am i impressed by some virtuous (or really, pretty abstract) sense of unity. all claims about unity are founded on exclusions, including yours and my own -- i've noted this now three times. i'm interested, for instance, in why you see fit to get all bothered (now a number of times) about those apparently rule-breaking eugenians and fail to make any serious criticisms when it comes to the xenophobic elements at seattle? is this because you see the latter as part of some coalition who's unity you have to defend; and why?
you have to argue the scope and basis of unity, not assert it, because nowhere is it self-evident to me (given the question i posed about what strategy capitalists might reach for in order to decompose this movement) that the nike-trashers constitute a real stake for debate in the way that the question of reforming the WTO does (see my post in full below).
let me put it like this: in order to be seen as sufficiently worthy of being negotiated with you have to be seen as fulfilling two basic questions: do you represent something that we are compelled to negotiate with; and are you capable of guaranteeing that you represent what you claim you do and can stick to an agreement? that is, these are prefatory questions to a negotiation, a necessary component of the 'reform the WTO' position. this has been the constant refrain from the 'fix it' position; and unless you're advancing up to the negotiating table, such questions are only relevant in terms of a critique of the 'reform the WTO' strategy. if you were not interested in reforming the WTO, then why would it ever be necessary to make these two particular claims for 'oneself': that of representation and the need for unity?
as for the slurs regarding the psychopathology of the left and leftist failure, don't worry nathan, you seem to be holding up your end pretty well there. more to the point, you should be embarassed.
Angela _________
Um, Angela- this is kind of complete bullshit and ad hominen, and this is getting to be the problem with this list that real debate degenerates into insults and caricatures of peoples's positions. I've done plenty of activism with anarchists and even been arrested with them and went out of my way to distinguish between anarchists as a group (many of whom did outstanding work in Seattle) and the specific subset of window-breakers in Seattle who I had criticism of in this particular situation.
Post after post, we've had folks trying to exclude established labor folks from any credit for their work in Seattle, with Cockburn/St. Clair accusing them of "stealing" the demo, while frankly most labor folks have been quite generous in sharing credit and admiring the work of the non-violent activists in the streets.
The exclusions are almost all coming from the anarchist direction, with enemies lists being drawn up and ad hominen attacks at the fore.
Why the Left wants to find enemies everywhere and mold allies into those enemies, I don't know. It's an odd and destructive psychological problem. Probably the most serious one on the Left and probably the biggest reason we fail.
-- Nathan Newman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- i'd written:
capital does need state forms to exert its power, and specifically to do so when what is at issue is a moment of crisis-inducement and crisis-management -- or, in other terms, a moment of decomposition and recomposition of the terms of class struggle, of its figures, forms and spaces. without that sense, the shift to the WTO makes no sense at all.
nathan wrote:
> Multinational Organizations like the World Bank, IMF and WTO are of
> absolutely recent origin, yet global capitalism has been able to florish
> for centuries.
they are recent because they institutionalised a recent strategy viz capital accumulation (or, what is the same thing, the guarantor of exploitation. previous state forms proved to be either insufficient (in themselves) or downright failures in enacting such a role _for reasons which have to do with the configuration of struggles_.
crudely, the WTO etc presuppose a shift toward the integration of 'third world governments', they presuppose the establishment of a system of debt which guarantees the futurity of capitalist exploitation in the 'third world' and indeed 'second', and so forth -- ie., they presuppose a history of struggles within and by something that was for a time configured as 'the third world'. the WTO is a consequence of decades of struggle, which forced a shift to a new kind of organisation of and for capitalist strategising; but the framework was put in place and operates as a limit to those struggles. what are IMF structural adjustment packages other than a heightening of the disciplinary role of credit -- not just on workers and the poor with consequences we are all too familiar with, but also -- on capitalists themselves. without this kind of discipline, capitalists would not appear and act as capital viz workers. to put it another way, what the WTO has tried to acheive is the final act in the decomposition of 'the third world' (specifically as a figure of global struggle) by including 'representatives' of that 'world' at the table of a trading regime only on condition that they take responsibility for policing their own domestic exploitation with greater intensity.
it's in that context that the debate over 'fix it' or 'nix it' becomes important. not because the abolition of the WTO will weaken global capitalism (though i wouldn't for a moment underesteminate the extent to which capitalist strategising has been disoriented for the moment); but because what has crudely been called the 'nix it' position is the emergence of a figure that is not tempted by the invitations to participation in some 'we'll take your concerns on board' forum. more importantly, perhaps, and even though it presents itself as a sheer kind of negativity, it is for the first time in a long time a figure that is (to borrow a phrase) a globalisation from below. for all the neat dialectical side-stepping, i have no idea how one would go about distinguishing nathan's 'neither/nor' position from the 'fix it' one. what i do read instead, is an impassioned plea for maintaining some mythical coalition upon which to advance a programme of reforms in time for the next US elections.
> 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.
this 'no' already presuppose something: a 'we' that says 'no'. this _is_ the basis of a global democratic structure. without this 'no', it's tied to the terrain of domestic elections and the conference set. without this implacable 'no', capitalist strategising will not be compelled to promote any kind of settlement. the real question is not whether we should find a way to justify a reformist practice in the high tones of a soft dialectics, but what kind of strategy capitalists will reach for. i think nathan has already offered us a glimpse of such a strategy: policy conferences and workshops for various NGO and labour reps attached to the WTO (we might enoble this by calling it 'the coalition' creatively setting forth the basis of a new society); and the exclusion of those darned negative types who refuse to play by the rules we have all agreed to at such conferences because, after all, we are represented (oh, let's call them 'anarchists').
> In fact, the United States example is a good example of how economic
> institutions thrive in political units smaller than that of their
> economic scope.
when i think of the US in the context of a discussion of the role of the state in policing capitalist relations, and when i think of these capitalist relations as a transnational process, i think of the special role of the US in the world. far from being an example of how much 'the state' is not a part of capitalist production or the 'units' of exploitation can be 'sub-national' (???), the US has been the figure of the international state for most of this century: international credit in the form of the US$ and the US military, the coercion of money and bombs... even if we want to be weberian about it and define 'the state' as the monopolisation of force, is there a better sense of what played this role on an international level in the 20th than the US?
Angela _________