"That is to say, the anarchists -- unsatisfied with protesting indirectly against an abstraction -- directly attacked the physical manifestations in real space of "the global economy" to which the World Trade Organization is committed to furthering, not people or "mom and pop" stores." -- Active Transfromation
"Some of the proud nonviolent protesters spent yesterday cleaning up the damage done by the smashers and distancing themselves from them philosophically. Among them was Medea Bejamin of Global Exchange, who, along with some of her colleagues, actually tried to defend Niketown's windows against breakage. Benjamin also - incredibly - suggested that the cops should have arrested the people who blocked the streets on Tuesday, making it impossible for the WTO to meet. Sober reformists are incapable of understanding that they need immoderates to help make their case; without crazies to which they can appear like moderate alternatives, no one would ever listen to them."
-- Doug Henwood
There are a wide range of reasons to break windows. The breaking of windows in Seattle was a revolutionary act, insofar that it sparked a revolutionary change in consciousness on the left. The breaking of windows in Seattle was the Boston Tea Party of this movement. This is how revolutionary change usually starts: with some kind of incident. While it's true that we aren't in a revolution at this moment, the surge of radical change since Seattle has gotten close to the revolutionary moment on occasions.
Let's look at the words of the Seattle black bloc, to see what they said about the property destruction:
N30 Black Bloc Communique by ACME Collective
ON THE VIOLENCE OF PROPERTY
We contend that property destruction is not a violent activity unless it destroys lives or causes pain in the process. By this definition, private property--especially corporate private property--is itself infinitely more violent than any action taken against it.
Private property should be distinguished from personal property. The latter is based upon use while the former is based upon trade. The premise of personal property is that each of us has what s/he needs. The premise of private property is that each of us has something that someone else needs or wants. In a society based on private property rights, those who are able to accrue more of what others need or want have greater power. By extension, they wield greater control over what others perceive as needs and desires, usually in the interest of increasing profit to themselves.
Advocates of "free trade" would like to see this process to its logical conclusion: a network of a few industry monopolists with ultimate control over the lives of the everyone else. Advocates of "fair trade" would like to see this process mitigated by government regulations meant to superficially impose basic humanitarian standards. As anarchists, we despise both positions.
Private property--and capitalism, by extension--is intrinsicly violent and repressive and cannot be reformed or mitigated. Whether the power of everyone is concentrated into the hands of a few corporate heads or diverted into a regulatory apparatus charged with mitigating the disasters of the latter, no one can be as free or as powerful as they could be in a non-hierarchical society.
When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights. At the same time, we exorcize that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around us. By "destroying" private property, we convert its limited exchange value into an expanded use value. A storefront window becomes a vent to let some fresh air into the oppressive atmosphere of a retail outlet (at least until the police decide to tear-gas a nearby road blockade). A newspaper box becomes a tool for creating such vents or a small blockade for the reclamation of public space or an object to improve one's vantage point by standing on it. A dumpster becomes an obstruction to a phalanx of rioting cops and a source of heat and light. A building facade becomes a message board to record brainstorm ideas for a better world.
After N30, many people will never see a shop window or a hammer the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in comparison to the number broken spells--spells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of all the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded up (with yet more waste of our forests) and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come.
...and...
"6. 'They are a bunch of angry adolescent boys.' Aside from the fact that it belies a disturbing ageism and sexism, it is false. Property destruction is not merely macho rabble-rousing or testosterone-laden angst release. Nor is it displaced and reactionary anger. It is strategically and specifically targeted direct action against corporate interests."
>From http://www.infoshop.org/octo/wto_blackbloc.html
That was published several days after the N30 protest in Seattle. The reasoning behind property destruction has developed further since that time.
I have long argued since Seattle that the black bloc tour of downtown Seattle was the logical thing to do at that time. The actions were quite revolutionary in that a major capitalist district in a major American city was trashed during the Christmas holiday season during the height of the dot-com boom. If you believed the inane advocates of the "end of history" thesis, Seattle just wasn't supposed to have happened. If you remember, the dot-com boom was peaking around this time--it experienced a decline afterwards before hitting its last peak in March 2000.
The direct actions in Seattle (including the street CD) were also a revolutionary rupture with the last 30 years of cooperation between the Left and the police. I have also argued that the police were so unprepared in Seattle because American police in general had gotten to the point where they didn't take protesters seriously. If all protester ever do is have rallies, march around and wave signs, then what use is there in training cops in anti-protester/anti-riot tactics. This was also the end of the progressive policing techniques that the police had implemented after the Vietnam War protests. These techniques emphasized getting activists to cooperate in the policing of themselves.
There was another new aspect to the property destruction that reflected trends that have been taking dissent and resistance into a new direction. The smashing of windows in Seattle reflected other types of p-d that was being done by activists, like the trashing of GM crops. This type of direct action went beyond mere protest of corporate targets, which aims at getting them to change polices, to the type of resistance which rejects the very existence of the corporation and its property.
If your mode of resistance to capitalism moves to the point where you think that the physical manifestations of capitalism need to be eliminated, then a whole range of destructive options open up. A good example of this has taken place in India, where farmers dismantled a local office of Monsanto. If there is no place for McDonalds in the anti-capitalist, socialist/anarchist world that you are trying to create, then it make sense for Jose Bove to take a bulldozer to his local McDonalds. What's the point of Starbucks selling some politically-correct coffee, when the whole chain should go out of existence? Why rearrange the furniture in the corporate, anti-union Starbucks when the mere existence of the chain reinforces alienated capitalist exploitation?
No, I'm trying to get theoretical here and probably not doing a good job of it. This is probably not the way that some window smashers are thinking. For many of them, they are acting on the basis of their class position: in other words, they used to work at these damn stores and they seize the opportunity to act with their comrades against the whole work culture that they despise. The folks I know in the black bloc are mostly young people who live on the margins of society. They are a mix of middle class and working class, but they all have in common that they've worked shit jobs for these multinational corporations. Many of them also reject the hyper-branded consumer culture of their peers.
There are other political reasons for engaging in window smashing. One of these is to generate publicity for the protests. The media loves property destruction. We know from long experience that the boss media won't cover large peaceful demonstrations, but they will cover stuff that involves property destruction and illegal activities.
This is *not* the primary reason for doing p-d (or black blocs for thatmatter), despite what the more moderate anti-globalization activists might think. Most of the militant anti-capitalists have no interest in "getting a message out" to the public via the media, which is what the moderate reformists are all about.
"They never knew what hit them. They had assumed it would be business as usual, the way it had been for decades. Rich men gather, meet, decide the fate of the world, then return home to amass more wealth. It's the way it's always been. Until Seattle."
- Michael Moore, U.S comedian (not director general of the WTO)
>From Not Bored:
OK: we've heard what you've said; now shut the fuck up, if only for a second, and let other voices be heard.
We, like the rioters in Seattle, are sick and tired of your monopolization of communication when it comes to the pressing issues of the day. Despite what you tell us, we know that you do not speak for us and your opinions do not represent what we think. This is especially true for the professional leftist activists who actually defended Starbucks and Niketown against attack, and now feel no shame in proudly reporting this ignominious fact to whomever will listen. These activists, some of whom have in the past actually pretended to protest against Starbucks and Nike, have nevertheless, at the most basic level, always defended them. But now these phony revolutionaries have visibly become what they essentially always were. The hypocrisy of the professional newspaper writers, television commentators, and politicians -- as well as their eager collaboration with the police and special services -- are well known; we intend to make the hypocrisy and collaboration of the "anti-violence" leftists infamous.
But, first and foremost, we must declare our unconditional support for the anarchists, who came to Seattle armed with a well-thought out form of protest that is different from and intended as an explicit alternative to those forms of protest practiced by the conventional leftist groups (rallies, marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, die-ins, street theater and "festival"). The anarchists -- an organic community able to take organized, collective and militant action against their real enemies -- formed themselves into "black blocks" (so named for the black clothes and masks the anarchists wore) and systematically attacked unoccupied corporate chain stores such as McDonalds, the Gap, Nike, Nordstrom, Levi, and Disney, as well as the notoriously corrupt Bank of America. That is to say, the anarchists -- unsatisfied with protesting indirectly against an abstraction -- directly attacked the physical manifestations in real space of "the global economy" to which the World Trade Organization is committed to furthering, not people or "mom and pop" stores.
http://www.notbored.org/seattle.html
"When the large scale window breaking began it was quite awe-inspiring. All of a sudden people we were walking with pulled out all sorts of tools: nail pullers, hammers, crow bars. They then proceeded to very quickly knock windows out of every bank, upper class or multi-national clothing store. I even saw a woman smashing an ATM machine with a sledge hammer. I was afraid at any moment a police tactical team would break through the crowd and violently assault the Black Block. " (Black Block Participant Interview by Active Transformation: http://www.infoshop.org/octo/wto_block_report.html)
Chuck0