When Capitalism Calls Andy Beckett The Protest Ethic: How the Anti-Globalisation Movement Challenges Social Democracy. | Demos, 94pp., £9.95, 9 November 2001
About a year ago, during one of the peaks of exasperation at the Government in the left-leaning parts of the British press, I interviewed a member of a think tank close to New Labour. For an hour or so he kept up a fairly convincing defence of the Government. He cited the increases under Blair of certain social security benefits, the reductions in taxes for some of the poorest Britons, the reforming energy of the Administration in general. But then his mood darkened. The problem with New Labour's busy modern brand of social democracy, he said, was that it was still too much about adjusting to the harsh modern world and not enough about challenging it. He looked suddenly frustrated, despite his open-necked shirt and confident insider's manner. He offered an example. 'You won't find a single member of the Cabinet with anything intelligently critical to say about capitalism.'
A few weeks later, I went to a discussion in London about the anti-capitalist movements that were then swelling in many countries. There were a dozen journalists, a couple of activists from the more respectable, charity-centred end of the anti-globalisation spectrum, and a quiet, youngish man from Reclaim The Streets, the direct action group that had become prominent in Britain thanks to its theatrical protests against roads and traffic pollution and big business. The talk, at first, was amicable around the long table. It quickly became clear that almost all the journalists present wanted to be sympathetic to the activists. They were eager to hear first-hand reports of the riot police and the shameful international trade deals at Gothenburg and Seattle. More than that, these journalists - old left-wingers, liberal pundits, lapsed Blairites - seemed to want to understand the new culture of anti-capitalist protest so that they could make common cause with it.
The man from Reclaim The Streets, however, said very little. He sat at the centre of the table, looking down, as weather-beaten and differently dressed and slightly alien as a deep-sea fisherman. Eventually, the conversation turned towards what kinds of alternative to the modern free market the anti-capitalists might prefer. And the man from Reclaim The Streets grew unexpectedly angry. 'It's not our job to suggest alternatives,' he said. He gestured dismissively at the roomful of potential allies. 'If my colleagues knew I was here, I would be thrown out of our organisation, just like that!'
To many people of more traditional left-of-centre politics, modern anti-capitalism can seem slightly baffling, sometimes infuriating, even a little adolescent.
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