Patrick, I always respect what you have to say, but you seem to be basing your argument on the given that calling for abolition of the WTO, WB and IMF are the "radical positions" and calling for social clauses is the "reformist" strategy. By this given, all actions get analyzed on that basis.
Corporate global capitalism minus the WTO, WB and IMF is still corporate global capitalism, so by definition your preferred strategy is a call for reforms. Maybe it would be a better reform than those advocating social clauses, but that is what is at stake in the debate. So if the AFL-CIO and other progressive activists believe the creation of social clauses is better than outright abolition, they are not being more reformist, just having a different political evaluation.
So with that understanding, going back over the arguments:
>On Behalf Of Patrick Bond
> The criticisms of the AFL-CIO labour aristocracy are purely against
> the Washington leadership's conservative visions and strategic
> orientation, Nathan. No one wants to prevent an alliance of radicals
> from the various movements.
I know the Left is always waiting for the wobblies to break off from the AFL-CIO leadership, but empirically, distinguishing between a conservative "labor aristocracy" and the labor movement in the US just does not get you very far. If you think the labor movement is reactionary as a whole, then I hate to tell you that Sweeney is far more progressive than much of the local leadership you'll find across the country. And for that reason, even the more radical local leadership is going to stick with Sweeney most of the time.
So you can construct a global movement against global capitalism without the US labor movement or one including Sweeney, but there is really no phantom radical union "base" that you can unite with that is going to be substantially more radical than Sweeney et al. (Although a lot of us are working hard to over time, create a more radical base, but that is for the future).
And again, you are free to make your definition of "radical" to suit yourself, but as a radical, there is good reason why many see Sweeney - who has pushed for immigration amnesty and organizing of the poorest workers in the US - as one of the best bets for advancing radicalism in the US.
> Are we in agreement that the goal of
> Sweeney-Hoffa was to get a seat at the table, to lobby for
> Social Clause reforms (notwithstanding their unpopularity amongst
> the better Global South leftists) that even if approved (unlikely)
> would mainly have the effect of empowering WTO trade-rule
> gatekeepers
Yes on the first part, debateable on the second. Just as the progressive results of complete abolition of the IMF, WB and WTO are debateable. There are radicals in the South who support a social clause strategy. And the most reactionary forces in the US agree with your position on abolition of all three institutions. That doesn't prove that your position will have reactionary results, since their evaluation may be wrong. But it's worth noting that the Steelworkers, the most pro-abolition union who Cockburn has praised, largely want its abolition so the US would be more free to impose antidumping tariffs against foreign imports. So I am unconvinced that the progressive features you see from abolition are so great.
But unlike you, I am not so convinced of my theoretical righteousness that I will label those who differ with me reactionaries or dupes of reactionaries. Especially since neither complete abolition of those institutions nor real social clauses are going to happen any time soon, I think strengthening grassroots alliances and day-to-day organizing are far more important than slagging other activists for differing slightly on tactics or even strategic goals, as long as they share the values of economic justice and opposing corporate power.
> > Would a few more unionists getting tear gassed and arrrested
> have helped...
>
> I'm not in agreement with your other points here about the
> tactical circumstances facing the Seattle sit-downers, partly because
> in discussing this a few weeks ago with some SF-based organisers I
> got the distinct impression that reinforcement from the rally would
> have substantially altered the outcome in favour of continued
> disruption, perhaps for days (not just hours). But I wasn't there and
> would rather let someone like Jeff St.Clair reflect on this again if
> he feels it necessary. So on we go...
As I noted, whether the protests went on an extra hour or an extra few days, it's not clear to me what you think would have been gained, except symbolically. The WTO round was derailed in Seattle. The corporate elite was royally spooked and have been chattering about it ever since. That was the common goal of the protesters.
Despite a long list of demos and arrests on my resume, I just have never been that much of a true believer in them. At crucial points, they are useful in showing organizational strength, but they rarely win anything at all on their own. They are symbolic and I really don't worship at the altar of symbolism.
Real change comes from power, power in elections, power in the workplace, power in the community. I respect an activist who spends 100 hours doing person-by-person organizing, whether to form a union or a community police review organization, far more than another person who takes the current mass of people already politicized and has them show up at a rally. The rally is nice, but the real organizing and work is what happened to create that base of activists.
If I have a soft spot for Sweeney, it is that like John L. Lewis before him (who was personally more reactionary in many ways than Sweeney), he is devoting lots of resources to that day-to-day task of organizing. I can wish Sweeney was more radical in certain areas, but the fact that he spends so much of his own time and organizational resources on that critical organizing means that I am just not going to consider that less important than that he didn't extend a demo in Seattle for an extra few hours, or even days.
The WTO round was derailed. That was the substantive goal. The rest is symbolism, not power.
>The Sun Tzu point is that any warrior who belittles diplomacy and
> negotiation in
> > favor of the romance of unmitigated battle is ultimately a poor
> and losing strategist.
>
> You're a former anti-apartheid activist, comrade Nathan,
Actually, I'm really not, which may be part of my perspective. I of course supported the movement, but when I first hit college back in 1984, a large number of activists were fighting in the antiapartheid movement. I thought (and wrote) at the time, that this was all to the good, but wasn't fighting corporate power and racism in the US as important as fighting it overseas, and as importantly, wouldn't fighting that power in the US be a large part of fighting it everywhere? So I spent my early activist years doing horribly mundane organizing - toxics in communities, fighting utility companies, health care - and went off to be a union organizer when I left school.
The point is that I never had the romance of the "pure" fight that so many antiapartheid activists had. I never had the illusion that there is some strategy without compromises, without its pluses and minuses, and that the struggle is a long and hard one where any "absolute demand" really ends up being just one more reform, however important.
Which brings us back to South Africa:
> You get to the negotiating
> table--let's say, "Codesa," the deal-making process in South Africa
> in 1991-92--by enhancing your street power and other means of
> disrupting business-as-usual...You do that by demanding an
> END to an unjust system, not incremental reform.
> In other
> words, only through an abolitionist platform did the movement arrive
> at the one-person, one-vote unitary state considered the basic
> foundation for democracy.
Of course street power is important but it is only one component, and I frankly give COSATU and other economic pressures more responsibility than street demos, but that is an interpretation from far away, so I won't push it too far.
But in the end, Apartheid lost because the capitalists decided it was not worth it to them, so a chunk of them defected from its support. And the result has not been a socialist South Africa (as you yourself have argued) but an IMF-aligned economy with some progressive features. Capitalism is still there, so the elite did not surrender, they reformed to maintain their existence.
This is a wonderful gain and radical as the best reforms are, or maybe reformist in the ways the best radical changes are-- the difference eludes me at times :)
But when we are looking at the global capitalist economy, there is no alternative elite to threaten with "no business as usual". If the alternative to "no business as usual" is no business at all, ie. the abolition of capitalism, the global corporate elite will choose no business as usual, no matter how many symbolic demonstrations or even riots are mounted. It will just be incorporated into the costs of doing business, from insurance to security guards, and the costs will be passed onto consumers.
No-business-as-usual is not enough, and that is where I differ from you on abolition and a strategy based on demos or sophisticated strategic rioting. I don't have problems with abolition because it is too radical, but because I don't see it as radical enough. It's merely an alternative reform strategy. Maybe it's better than the "social clause" strategy, but whether we have a WTO with a social clause or no WTO at all, we will still have global capitalism. It is just leftwing grandstanding to call your reformist strategy more "fundamental" or "radical"; that just begs the question, since the real question is whether it will be a better reform to advance us farther towards the real radical goal of abolition of capitalism.
Smart people like yourself or David Bacon or Kevin Dannaher or my friend Anuradha Mittal at Food First argue for the abolitionist strategy; other folks I know, mostly connected to the labor and some environmental groups argue for the social clause strategy. Style yourself as you will, but I know equally radical people in both camps, and while I intellectually lean towards the social clause strategy, I am open to opposing arguments.
Your argument for a labor "sellout" is based on assuming that they agree with your reform strategy, which they have never said they did. A difference in strategy is not a sellout. Argue the merits of your strategy on what it's results would be, which is fine, but if you assume that everyone supporting a social clause strategy is up front a "sellout", you will lose the argument by alienating them before they have even hear it.
And when I hear people of good faith denigrated - as Medea Benjamin has been by many so-called "radicals" for her tactics(ironic since she is largely on your side of the abolition argument) or Sweeney has been in your own arguments, I worry that people are raising strategic choices between reform strategies to a level of religion, where heretics will be burned and excommunicated as soon as the opportunity arises. And since my goal is building the global movement that can eventually overthrow capitalism, I hate that excommunication tendencies since we can't afford to pretend we can win this fight with a relatively tiny handful of people.
Frankly, tell me which reform strategy - abolition or social clause - will leave the stronger movement afterwards and I will choose that strategy in the next minute, regardless of its specific effects on global capitalism, since I think neither will have as much effect at this point as you are pretending they will.
For me, radicalism is building the movement for social justice, not turning specific reform campaigns into holy wars that divide that movement. And that movement has to include far more people than will ever agree on every specific campaign or issue, so I have no problem working in a post-Seattle coalition that is not "clear" in the way you would like, that holds an uneasy mixture of views on the best reform strategy but a shared desire for opposing corporate control of the trade and economic system.
And if being part of the campaign means choosing sides and denouncing others as sell-outs, I'll give the whole thing up as a mistaken focus for activist energies. I hope we can build a movement without that sort of denunciations, but if not, I'll put my organizing energies elsewhere, probably like most other activists who would rather find areas to fight the capitalist enemy, not engage in insults against allies over tactics. On the other hand, the evidence I have seen is that folks like Kevin Dannaher with a generally abolitionist approach are quite comfortable working with labor folks with a social clause strategy, and that is a big part of what makes the post-Seattle movement exciting to me and many others.
-- Nathan Newman