THE ESF LOOKS IN THE MIRROR
Leftist Hilary Wainwright called the World Social Forum the 'people's UN'. But as the festival of the anti-capitalist movement developed it has fragmented along regional and now national lines, and lost its collegiate style and optimism. Gathering in London, the European Social Forum last weekend drew anti-globalization activists from many countries, but could not disguise the loss of momentum. A demonstration against the occupation of Iraq did follow, but the more lively actions were taken against the platform - when assorted 'Wombles' and anarchists sought to prevent first an Iraqi 'trade unionist' and then London Mayor Ken Livingstone from speaking. Across London, meetings were held with the title of 'Alternative Social Forum' or 'Beyond the Social Forum', before the London ESF had even begun.
Long-in-the-tooth environmentalists like Paul Kingsworth point the finger at the organisational domination of the Socialist Workers' Party and its supposed 'Leninist' style of leadership, and the dull uniformity of the speakers' panels ('two boring trade unionists and a trot'). Others pointed the finger at Mayor Livingstone's sponsorship and dominance of the event, leading to excessive entry prices, mass commercial catering, and bouncers. But these are symptoms of the events' decline, not its cause.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is to Lenin's revolution in 1917 what the Quaker Church is to Cromwell's revolution in 1649. It pays lip service to Lenin's vanguard party of the working class, just as the Quakers do to the light of inner conscience, but in circumstances so different that it cannot help but be a different kind of organisation altogether. The SWP owes its origins to the more recent disintegration of the Stalinist movement from the 1960s onwards. Its founders adopted a method of adopting the most militant demands of the day, and repeating them back to an uncertain working class. But as the militant working class movement ebbed away, the SWP was momentarily lost - only to be saved by the emergence of the 'anti-globalization' movement since the riots in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation in 1999 (see James Heartfield, 'Capitalism and Anti-Capitalism', interventions 5:2, 2003). Without the trade union movement to follow after, the SWP adopted the nom de guerre of 'Globalise Resistance' and trailed after the militant environmentalists of the anti-capitalist movement.
The anti-capitalist movement itself, though, blossomed precisely because of the defeats of organised labour in the 1980s. It was only once the middle class activists felt no threat from the working class, that they turned their polemical fervour against capitalism. The organisational underpinning of the movement was provided by the non-governmental organisations: charities working in the Third World, environmental pressure groups, welfare advocates. The movement was characterised by extremist posturing and decidedly piecemeal practice. 'Abolish capitalism', in one breath, and 'reform the World Trade Organisation' in the next. Ironically, it was the capitalists' own self doubts that gave the movement legs. Instead of dismissing the protests out of hand, leaders at the World Bank and G8 flattered the protestors as people with something important to contribute.
The organisational openness of the anti-capitalist movement was always a myth. In the flux, charismatic leadership held sway, and the floor was dominated by those who shouted loudest, and stayed longest. Organisational meetings to assemble platforms were always stitched up beforehand. But as the movement has ebbed, the dominance of political parties is felt as imposition. The criticisms of the SWP are unfair - they have only adopted the same organisational standards of the supposedly less formal, but actually cliquish, WSF.
In keeping with its organisational metier, the SWP simply held up a mirror to the anti-globalisation movement, and relayed back to them what they were already saying: the romantic anti-capitalism, the militant environmentalism, the identification of Israel with apartheid, the posturing ('behead Blair!' chanted the rally on Iraq). But strangely, the anti-capitalists did not like what they saw in the mirror.
THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES
Adam Curtis' new three part series the Power of Nightmares began on BBC2 on Wednesday, with a history of the anti-modernist philosophies of the American-adopted philosopher Leo Strauss and the Egyptian fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb. The underlying thesis is that the mobilisation of fear has replaced the mobilisation of hope in post-ideological politics. The first episode showed that American conservatives had mobilised panic over non-existent threats from the Soviet invasion to Saddam's WMDs to discipline US society.
Curtis' thesis has brought down a flurry of criticism from those myriad critics who rather like the politics of fear, not willing to give up the option of scaring people into practising safer sex, or reducing carbon emissions, just because conservatives are whipping up fears over Muslims. Most of the criticisms were caricatures.
There is one weakness, in Curtis' approach - his preoccupation with the history of ideas. In the New York Review of Books, Mark Silla makes a convincing case that the neo-Conservatives largely misunderstood Leo Strauss, who was pre-eminently concerned with ancient philosophy, not contemporary politics. Reading the history of the New Right backwards, Curtis finds the influence of Strauss's neo-conservative students dominant throughout. But one could make an equally strong case that Milton Friedman's militant individualism was dominant, as that Strauss's supposed communitarianism held sway. The truth is that many ideas, strictly speaking contradictory ones, coexisted alongside each other in the New Right.
The ascendance of the champions of 'full spectrum dominance' in international relations only came about by default. It was the emptiness of Bush's 'compassionate conservatism' that made the Paul Wolfowitz/Richard Perle policy of overthrowing Saddam seem attractive. This was less a case of the politics of fear being a conspiracy developed over decades, as a knee-jerk reaction to a political vacuum. But criticisms are churlish - Curtis' programme is one of the most thought-provoking on television today.