27.06.2001
Reactionary anti-capitalisms
The slogans ?Independence?, ?Freedom?, and ?We, the people? sprayed on a Gap shop window are set off by the black and red of anarcho-syndicalism. Is this another anti-capitalist protest? Only if Gap Inc itself is anti-capitalist, for this is nothing more than the current Gap marketing gambit in the USA, as it tries to react pro-actively to those who demonstrated at the company?s stores over its (typically) capitalist methods, such as its extensive manufacturing bases in territories beyond the reach of US labour law.
Indeed, anti-capitalism?s umbrella has often been widely spread over the last 100 years. Here is an example from 1926: ?We are socialists, are enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system! ?
?We must achieve an entirely new kind of economic thinking ? We have to learn that the ideas ?world trade?, ?balance of trade?, ?export surplus? are ideas of a declining epoch ? And just as our fight against the form of the capitalist economy is at the same time a fight against the spirit of this capitalist economy ? so our fight against the form of society and of the present state is also a life or death struggle against the spirit of this society, this state: against liberalism and false democracy!?
The writer? Gregor Strasser, SA (Brownshirt) leader and Hitler?s right-hand man throughout the 1920s. Clearly, professing anti-capitalism is no guarantee of support for human liberation.
Over the last decade, Zapatista guerrillas have made an impact in the Chiapas region of Mexico. They have developed Zapatista villages as ?centres of resistance? in the countryside and have sought to challenge the neo-liberal capitalist policies of the Mexican government. This has endeared them to many in the developed world who see in them a reflection of their own anti-capitalism. But recent statements and actions show that these undoubtedly courageous fighters see their struggle in parochial terms, not in terms of mass mobilisation of the working class for the overthrow of the capitalist state and the system of capital.
The Zapatista Front of National Liberation and its parent, EZLN, look for nothing more than a transitional government that is better than the series of corrupt PRI ones Mexico has seen for decades. They limit themselves deliberately to the role of a ginger group, albeit armed. ?Zapatismo [the EZLN] ? is not a political party which fights for power, nor has it taken on the task of seeking to organise society politically. Zapatismo has been, first and foremost, a political force which has sought to open spaces for people to relate to each other and for movements not being isolated by the power?s politics.?
Green anti-capitalism has certainly been around for some years. However, while there are numerous currents in the green movement, including some that are socialistic, the thrust of its anti-capitalist message is that despoliation of the planet must be reversed by rolling back history to a non-urban, bucolic idyll - which of course never existed. Much as Marx found it necessary to tackle ?feudal socialism? in the Communist manifesto, we have to expose that green agenda insisting on de-industrialising the advanced capitalist economy as the preferred anti-capitalist project. Depopulating the towns and cities and relying on the countryside would in fact mean reducing the population in those countries with advanced economies to what could be supported through subsistence agriculture. This is the deeply reactionary subtext that green anti-capitalism espouses.
Much has been made of Naomi Klein?s No logo in the anti-capitalist movement, though in fact her book deals with corporations in a decidedly consumerist manner, ? la Nader. Klein?s central tenet is that the job of corporations now is to ?market the product? rather than simple ?product manufacturing?, typically by promoting a ?particular lifestyle to sell ? products?. She finds it curious that Tommy Hilfiger commissions ?all its products from a group of other companies: Jockey International makes Hilfiger underwear, Pepe Jeans London makes Hilfiger jeans, Oxford Industries make Tommy shirts, the Stride Rite Corporation makes its footwear. What does Tommy Hilfiger manufacture? Nothing at all.?
But Hilfiger makes a profit. Why does there have to be any logic beyond that? Unfortunately, Klein?s consumer anti-capitalism cannot answer since it does not question the basis of capitalist system: profit.
Shades of anti-capitalism of an anarchist tendency have been most in evidence at the big anti-capitalist events: J18, Seattle, Prague, London?s Monopoly May Day. Whether Genoa shall see their like is another question. But the working out on the ground of these ?non-hierarchical? groups has been most problematic. In a similar fashion to the Zapatistas, groups such as Ya Basta and the Wombles have asserted their right as frontline troops to tell other participants what to do during demonstrations. Without democratic accountability and with the main aim of simply attacking the police in kamikaze fashion, the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist formations have treated other demonstrators as extras to be shepherded for their purposes. The anarchists? approach has proved to be alienating and elitist, exposing them as hypocritical, power-hungry Blanquists without a hope in hell of seriously challenging capitalism.
None of the anti-capitalisms surveyed here, then, accords a central role to the working class (some of them accord it none at all), the motor of history in terms of removing the capitalist class from its rule over us. These critiques will be fully elaborated at the CPGB?s school this weekend in London. There will, naturally, also be plenty of time for questioning and debate. Be there.
Jim Gilbert