Internationalist Perspective

An account by a member of IP who visited Occupations in New York, Seattle and Vancouver. This account is a slightly modified version of a piece posted here on November 7, 2011.

Before I went to New York, I had only had a few hours’ experience at Occupy Vancouver. Some of it had been less than inspiring, including, on my last time there, having one person standing next to me (who I had never seen before) in a highly emotional state turn to me and very intensely tell me how there had just been a split amongst the core group of people involved in the organizing of the occupation, with the “liberals” (alternatively, the “hippie liberals”) having taken over, that it was a bunch of b.s. and that this was a terrible development. That was a little unsettling. I was, however, impressed with how the General Assemblies I attended were ‘facilitated’ so as to permit everyone present to participate, if they accepted and followed the agreed upon procedure, and to try to achieve maximum unity (the 90% consensus model). I was also impressed by the level of passion and openness expressed by the person who vented themselves to me. This thing was obviously very important to a number of these people.

Zuccotti Park in NYC was a different story. Even though the content of the first GA there I attended was uninteresting and not at all political, the ‘process’ was very impressive. The participants seemed more comfortable with and more proficient at the process. (Of course, they had been at it for almost a month longer than the ones in Vancouver.) And then their collective self-confidence – New Yorkers, you know – that was truly inspiring to experience. It seemed clear that this process was working well for them and they were proud of it. It really is something new, a new way of working together, in the most horizontal, the most “directly democratic” (beyond that, even, I would say) way yet realized by human beings. And the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park is where it began. A sense that history was in the making here was felt but not easy to articulate at the time.

That sense became much clearer the next day. With the weather significantly warmer, there was a more relaxed, comfortable vibe to the place. (it was also afternoon, rather than evening.) This was several hours before the day’s GA. The person I was there with, a comrade, had been there a few times previously, and clearly felt very comfortable and confident about getting involved in any open discussion of interest to him. Various different conversations/discussions were going on in different parts of the park. In each case, we could listen in, ask what it was about, be informed about who it concerned/who was involved, and follow along if we wanted. It wasn’t long before we came across what I later learned is called the “Think Tank”. It is a place in the park, close to the middle, where open discussions on any topics can occur. One announces one’s topic, then sees who else wants to participate. It seems that the topics usually arise out of spontaneous discussions involving, initially, two or three people, which others then want to join into. My comrade and I participated in two of these discussions, one, which we stumbled upon, on capitalism vs. socialism, and another on how to find new ways to try to open people’s imaginations in a way that allows them to think outside of the restricted sphere of existence that the existing mass media, governments, educational systems, etc. enforce/impose on us. Each discussion involved about 8-10 people, with about 10-15 others just listening in. It was very informal – with just a “stacker” taking a list of people wanting to speak – but it seemed to work so well because people really wanted to make it work, rather than just get into another shouting match.

Here was real, serious discussion and debate, back and forth, with people really concerned to sharpen their views, to learn from each, in the most respectful way, among the widest variety of people (age, dress, style, race, sexual orientation, etc.) I think I had ever experienced. And although I was, unlike my comrade, slow to get involved, I did become actively involved and felt none of the unease and anxiety I would normally expect to feel in such a situation. Clearly, there was something big happening here, something that I had dreamt about being a part of for decades, something that has probably not existed in America since the late 1960s (when I was a child, but able to vaguely sense a feeling of ‘change in the air’). It was, and still is, exhilarating, to be sure.

My comrade suggested that I attend at least one session of one Working Group, since that was where a lot of good discussions occurred, and also where proposals put forward in the GA’s were initially worked out. I did attend one working group, on “visions and goals”, but only briefly, since the content at that time was not of interest, but again, the process used and its facilitation were impressive to witness. It was Halloween that day, and when I returned to Zuccotti Park from where the working group was meeting, it seemed that there was not an ‘official’ GA that evening; but there was a group of about 50-60 people near where the GA’s were being held holding an impromptu assembly, complete with various people dressed in very impressive Halloween costumes, including an impeccably dressed Emma Goldman. It was as much fun and convivial as it was serious and militant, but when we decided to hold a half hour break and then resume again, a few people announced different proposals for what to do during the half hour, including one to do a chain dance around the Merrill Lynch bull near the Bowling Green, another to go to the graveyard at nearby Trinity Church, across Broadway from Wall Street, to ask the spirits of the dead buried there for advice on what to do, to one to “go over there and discuss revolutionary politics.” Needless to say, I opted for the latter. It turned out this guy was still in high school and identified as an anarchist, and judged council communism to be a political tendency proximate to his. Another person self-identified as an anarcho-syndicalist. I didn’t label myself, but I did argue for the necessity of a Marxist critique and analysis of the economy and its crisis, after another person said it was essential for us to follow what’s happening in the economy, and to see how things are going to get a lot worse pretty soon – to which I wholeheartedly agreed. The discussion, involving at various times between six and twelve highly varied people, focused mostly on strategy towards the occupation movement from a revolutionary perspective. There seemed to be agreement reached that it was still too early to be focusing on ‘direct actions’ and trying to achieve any specific ‘gains’ or ‘victories’; that the principle aim should be, currently, to try grow the movement to involve as many people as possible from the ‘99%’, and to focus on discussion and mutual ‘education’, to get as many people as possible to recognize that our big goal should be the abolition of capitalism, and that we need to better understand how it dominates all our lives. It was one very satisfying discussion, one I won’t soon forget. That was pretty much it for that day at Occupy Wall Street, as it seemed all but a small number had left for Halloween events, including a massive Halloween march up Sixth Avenue.

The next day was a flight back to Seattle. The day after that I went to check out the Occupy Seattle encampment, which had recently been moved from Westlake Park, adjacent to the financial district in downtown Seattle, to Seattle Central Community College, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, actually not very far away. It was about 1:30 p.m. when I got there, and it turned out that the little under a hundred people assembled there were holding a sort of rally to pep themselves up for what was coming. I had met one of the people who spoke at the rally, actually the best one in my estimation, at a recent public meeting. He’s a member of Seattle’s Black Orchid Collective and a very good public speaker. In fact, he was able to not only link the coming event to global capitalism, he also invoked the ever-increasing numbers of permanently unemployed that capitalism produces and contains in its various slums around the planet.

It turned out the coming event was a march up Seattle’s Broadway to a local branch of Chase Bank, owned by JP Morgan/Chase Bank, apparently one of the largest financial corporation in the world. I happily went along, up the street, with police escort. We chanted various slogans and chants along the way. Some were quite fun, including “Hey, hey, ho, ho, capitalism’s got to go!” and “Workers of the world unite, come and join the general strike!” (which was a reference specifically to the Occupy Oakland called strike, occurring that day). When we got to the bank branch we heard a few facts about JP Morgan/Chase Bank and its CEO, who was apparently in Seattle for a conference. It further turned out that about a half dozen people were already in the bank branch, ‘occupying’ it. We marched around the building a couple of times, chanting some more, and with a few people saying ‘their piece’ about banks. Several police with bicycles guarded the entrances to the building. It seemed that nothing much more was going to happen, for a while at least, but people remained, following what was going on inside. (1) At that point I had to leave, to catch a bus to Vancouver. I will say, though, that I was impressed by the militancy and the generally anti-capitalist tenor of the activity I saw and participated in that day in Seattle. The racial mix of the participants was also greater than what I saw in New York (even though it was impressive there too), and definitely more so than what I’ve seen in Vancouver.

I came back to Vancouver highly inspired by what I had experienced in New York and Seattle. I was convinced that there was ‘something in the air’ in America, that now is a time of soon-coming social change, and that many people’s consciousness was already changing, changing rapidly and massively, in the context of this very concentrated #OWS movement, and that we were likely still in the very early stages of it. Having had those American experiences, I was more comfortable and confident in participating in the occupation in my Canadian city, even if I find it difficult to shake my cynicism about the political attitudes and activities of my fellow citizens, especially those on the ‘left’. It could well be that the “liberals” have “taken over” control of Occupy Van., but it is still Occupy Van., part of the global #OWS (or “occupy together”) movement, and it is still open to everyone. I have participated, and tried to defend an anti-capitalist perspective, both in the GA’s and in informal discussions, and I have found other participants to be open to what I say and very respectful. I plan to stay involved and engaged, to defend and discuss an anti-capitalist perspective, specifically, an internationalist communist one, and to learn what I can from the others I engage with. I am also trying to get Occupy Van. to set up a ‘think tank’ like the one in Zuccotti Park.

E.

1. The Occupy Seattle action of Nov. 2 is described in this mainstream media article: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2011/11/02/occupy-seattle-demonstrators-rally-at-chase-bank/

The following is a revised version of our leaflet posted on October 6, 2011. In addition to US events, it will be distributed in Canada and Belgium this weekend.

THEY DON’T GET IT….

When the media talk about Occupy Wall Street, they often do so with disdain: a movement that has no leaders, no set of demands, can’t be taken seriously. In a typical article, the New York Times quoted an ‘expert’ saying, “if the movement is to have lasting impact, it will have to develop leaders and clear demands”, and another one which stated that the passions have to be “channeled into institutions”. (NYT, 10/4) Their message to you is clear: ‘Go back to ‘politics as usual’, follow leaders, work within institutions, become foot-soldiers for the Democratic party and the unions in elections and other campaigns that change nothing at all, that don’t question the power structures that prop up this insane money-system.

They don’t get it that the absence of leaders in this movement is not a weakness but a strength, testifying to our collective determination, to our refusal to remain followers. They don’t get it that the absence of a narrow set of demands that can be recuperated by this or that institution, results from our understanding that the problem lies much deeper. That there are no quick fixes for a system that produces growing inequality, mass unemployment and misery, wars and ecological disasters.

If these problems could be solved by electing wiser politicians, adopting better laws etc, ‘politics as usual’ might be the way to go. But they can’t be solved that way. Politicians everywhere are bound by higher laws, the laws of capital. That’s why governments everywhere, regardless of their political color, are imposing austerity, forcing the working population to sacrifice so that more can be paid to the owners of capital. In fact the harshest cuts in wages, pensions and jobs are implemented by a ‘socialist’ government (in Greece). Politicians on the left may clamor for massive public spending , but that would only mean that we would be made poorer in a different way, through inflation.

There are no quick fixes because the system itself is obsolete. Pain and suffering are sometimes unavoidable but capitalism creates ever more pain that is easily avoidable, that only exists because in this society, profit trumps human needs. Almost two billion people on this planet are unemployed because capitalism has no need for them. Hundreds of millions live in slums, because building decent houses for them is not profitable. Many die of hunger each day because it’s not profitable to feed them. Everyone knows our planet is in danger and yet capitalism is continuing to destroy it in its desperate hunt for profit. Productivity never was higher, yet poverty increases. The know-how and resources are there for every inhabitant of this planet to live a decent life but that would not be profitable. Abundance has become possible but capitalism can’t handle abundance. It needs scarcity. Abundance in capitalism means overproduction, crisis, misery. This is insane. It must stop.

WE HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Capitalism is not “the end of history” but just a transient phase. It has changed the world but now no longer fits into it. We have to accept the fact that capitalism offers no perspective, no future. We have to prepare for a post-capitalist world, in which human relations are no longer commercial transactions, in which goods no longer represent a quantity of money but a concrete means to satisfy real human needs. A world in which competing corporations and warring nations are replaced by a human community that uses the resources of all for the benefit of all. We call that communism but it has nothing in common with the state-capitalist regimes that exist or existed in Russia, China and Cuba. Nothing is changed fundamentally if capitalists are replaced with bureaucrats with supposedly better intentions. Those regimes were not only thoroughly undemocratic, they also perpetuate wage-labor, exploitation and oppression of the vast majority of the population. The change must go deeper and must emancipate the oppressed, make them part of a real democracy instead of the sham that exists today.

In 2011, ten years after the attacks on New York that launched a decade of fear and demoralization, a breach has been opened. From Tunis to Cairo to Athens to Madrid to Santiago to New York, a fever is spreading. After taking it on the chin for so long, the working class, employed or unemployed, is beginning to rise up. We’re not gonna take it anymore! Something has changed. True, the Occupy Wall Street movement will not last forever. At some point, it will end, without any clear victory. But it’s just the beginning. This dynamic will continue and will gather strength. Be a part of it!

THERE’S MORE…

It’s clear that the”Occupy Wall Street”-movement has touched a nerve. Its message resonates throughout the country, even throughout the world. Everywhere people are raising their voice in protest against a system that produces increasing misery for the many and absurd wealth for the few. No wonder that the unions, progressive Democrats, even the President, and governors like Cuomo who is imposing draconian austerity on workers in NY, are attaching their wagons to this train, in order to get control over the locomotive. Don’t be fooled: These political tendencies are themselves the representatives of the 1%, of the banks and the capitalist system, not of the 99%. Let’s not allow our movement to be co-opted by the very powers in opposition to which it has arisen. The left of capital cynically claims that they want ‘economic justice’, too; that they seek a more just distribution of the wealth, through taxation of the rich, etc. (that’s their rhetoric, their practice is something else, see Cuomo’s recent move to kill the ‘billionnaires tax’ because it would chase the rich away).

The truth is that the unfairness, the unjust distribution of wealth, is built into the system and can’t be taken out of it. It will only increase more as capitalism sinks deeper into its crisis, for which it knows no way out (to throw more money in the economy or to save: they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t). ‘Redistribution of wealth’ is an incomplete demand that can get nowhere if it’s not pushed further. As a slogan of May ’68 claimed: ‘Be realistic, demand the impossible”. The impossible within capitalism, that is. Although there are quite a few capitalists who profit from the crisis, overall, capitalism suffers from it too, so that there is less wealth to redistribute (and the competition between nations for capital assures that the 1% suffers least and the 99% most). No utopian plan for redistribution can address this shrinkage of wealth.

But what is wealth? In this society, goods and services equal money, abstract value that can be endlessly amassed, possessed ad infinitum, or, when no buyer is found, they equal pure waste. So money, abstract value, decides what is produced and what not. That is the box we’ve got to get out of. We have to abandon the idea that wealth is money, that work is wage-labor and start to see production of goods and services as things we can create for each other. We must realize that when we come together we can use the creative powers that humankind has to make technology, housing, food, transportation, art and so much more for everybody because the need is there, instead of for profit. Let’s get rid not just of Wall Street, but the whole exploitation-for-money-system. This perspective may seem utopian to many today, but it will become increasingly realistic as the crisis of capitalism deepens.

INTERNATIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

http://internationalist-perspective.org

The following leaflet was handed out at the Occupy Wall Street demo today in Manhattan:

THEY DON’T GET IT….

When the media talk about Occupy Wall Street, they often do so with disdain: a movement that has no leaders, no set of demands, can’t be taken seriously. In a typical article, the New York Times quoted an ‘expert’ saying, “if the movement is to have lasting impact, it will have to develop leaders and clear demands”, and another one which stated that the passions have to be “channeled into institutions”. (NYT, 10/4) Their message to you is clear: ‘Go back to ‘politics as usual’, follow leaders, work within institutions, become foot-soldiers for the Democratic party and the unions in elections and other campaigns that change nothing at all, that don’t question the power structures that prop up this insane money-system.

They don’t get it that the absence of leaders in this movement is not a weakness but a strength, testifying to our collective determination, to our refusal to remain followers. They don’t get it that the absence of a narrow set of demands that can be recuperated by this or that institution, results from our understanding that the problem lies much deeper. That there are no quick fixes for a system that produces growing inequality, mass unemployment and misery, wars and ecological disasters.

If these problems could be solved by electing wiser politicians, adopting better laws etc, ‘politics as usual’ might be the way to go. But they can’t be solved that way. Politicians everywhere are bound by higher laws, the laws of capital. That’s why governments everywhere, regardless of their political color, are imposing austerity, forcing the working population to sacrifice so that more can be paid to the owners of capital. In fact the harshest cuts in wages, pensions and jobs are implemented by a ‘socialist’ government (in Greece). Politicians on the left may clamor for massive public spending , but that would only mean that we would be made poorer in a different way, through inflation.

There are no quick fixes because the system itself is obsolete. Pain and suffering are sometimes unavoidable but capitalism creates ever more pain that is easily avoidable, that only exists because in this society, profit trumps human needs. Almost two billion people on this planet are unemployed because capitalism has no need for them. Hundreds of millions live in slums, because building decent houses for them is not profitable. Many die of hunger each day because it’s not profitable to feed them. Everyone knows our planet is in danger and yet capitalism is continuing to destroy it in its desperate hunt for profit. Productivity never was higher, yet poverty increases. The know-how and resources are there for every inhabitant of this planet to live a decent life but that would not be profitable. Abundance has become possible but capitalism can’t handle abundance. It needs scarcity. Abundance in capitalism means overproduction, crisis, misery. This is insane. It must stop.

WE HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Capitalism is not “the end of history” but just a transient phase. It has changed the world but now no longer fits into it. We have to accept the fact that capitalism offers no perspective, no future. We have to prepare for a post-capitalist world, in which human relations are no longer commercial transactions, in which goods no longer represent a quantity of money but a concrete means to satisfy real human needs. A world in which competing corporations and warring nations are replaced by a human community that uses the resources of all for the benefit of all. We call that communism but it has nothing in common with the state-capitalist regimes that exist or existed in Russia, China and Cuba. Nothing is changed fundamentally if capitalists are replaced with bureaucrats with supposedly better intentions. Those regimes were not only thoroughly undemocratic, they also perpetuate wage-labor, exploitation and oppression of the vast majority of the population. The change must go deeper and must emancipate the oppressed, make them part of a real democracy instead of the sham that exists today.

In 2011, ten years after the attacks on New York that launched a decade of fear and demoralization, a breach has been opened. From Tunis to Cairo to Athens to Madrid to Santiago to New York, a fever is spreading. After taking it on the chin for so long, the working class, employed or unemployed, is beginning to rise up. We’re not gonna take it anymore! Something has changed. True, the Occupy Wall Street movement will not last forever. At some point, it will end, without any clear victory. But it’s just the beginning. This dynamic will continue and will gather strength. Be a part of it!

INTERNATIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

Well, the vengeance of the ruling class and its state continues. Heavy prison sentences are being dished out. Two men were charged with inciting disorder in Cheshire – they used Facebook to start a riot; no one turned up but they were still sent down for four years. Laughably, Cameron, the Prime Minister, is supplementing state repression by dreaming up measures to fix his ‘broken society’, the latest being to stop payments to parents on benefit if their children truant from school.

The governments displays its usual ‘ingenuity’ in its explanations for the events in early August. While Theresa May (the Home Secretary) now concedes that the riots were not caused by the activity of gangs, others in the government – Justice Minister Ken Clarke at the fore – are focussing on the rioters as ‘a feral underclass’ or members of the ‘criminal classes’. Clarke underpins his claim with statistics: “the hardcore of the rioters were, in fact, known criminals. Close to three-quarters of those aged 18 or over charged with riot offences already had a prior conviction.” And just how were those charged selected? One method involved the police examining photographs taken during the riots and comparing them with faces with those they knew and mug shots on record. Perhaps face recognition software too. Ergo, these are designated ‘hardcore’ and then by association the entire social outburst is characterised as criminal in its propaganda with a view to aiming at the population as a whole.

Sander’s questioning of my earlier observations made me look again at what I had written. I had thought that my view was clear, but evidently it was not. So I now affirm it explicitly: leaving aside a small minority, the participants in the rioting and looting were overwhelmingly strata of the working class. This was not the expression of an underclass as some of the bourgeoisie assert, nor of the lumpenproletariat that Marx described in very different historical circumstances. My remarks were not, however, intended to be interpreted as comment on social composition. To my mind there is no “advantage” in “saving the honour of the working class” by distancing it from the riots. On the contrary, that would be to disservice the class. We have to face the realities, good and ill, warts and all. That’s why an honest critique must not turn a blind eye to weaknesses and certainly not minimise the significance of activities that are profoundly contrary to the interests of the proletarian struggle.

Content and action cannot be analysed only at the level of social composition. Many of the participants in the August events are estranged from productive work and face long-term unemployment, and have little or no prospects in this society. In the current phase of capitalism’s development we might also call them the ‘disemployed’. These young people also face in their daily lives an increasingly brutal police force and it is little wonder that they exploded against the police in the way they did.

The looting is another matter and on this matter I would refer anyone reading this note on our website to refer to the debate with Blaumachen in Internationalist Perspective 55 – specifically the last few paragraphs in the response by Sander and MacIntosh. Looting can be part of a proletarian struggle, as Sander and MacIntosh point out: “Looting to distribute use-values is one thing; looting as an expression of mere rage is another.” The smash and grab activity here was not for social redistribution, nor was it a basis for expropriation; it was individualistic.

And what of the trashing of working class neighbourhoods, the torching of workers’ homes, the muggings of working class men and women? As far as I’m concerned violence within the class has to be criticised strongly, a criticism from within the class. For some commentators, such as on the Libcom thread about the UK riots, there’s good things and bad things about the riots and “the best thing to do against the bad aspects of the riots is pushing forward what was good in it.” Amplifying the looting to attenuate the arson? This is complacent at best.

There is a world of difference between the actions of crowds and collective action. The latter may well start in the former, but when action is collective it surely means there is some discussion going on, some organisational expression of struggle. There could be little realistic expectation in August of full-blown assemblies or councils but, however embryonic, these struggles need some forum where members of our class can discuss the issues they face. True, the conflicts with the police certainly generated a battlefield cohesion to some degree, but collective action isn’t just that. And collective action against stores? Apart from the sociological dimension what criteria can be used to argue that this looting and arson in the English events had a proletarian content? My previous remarks – some posed hopefully – were an open invitation for anyone to point to actual gatherings having taken place at which a collective will to act on a class terrain could be expressed; to date, so far as I am aware, no one has done it. So, in the absence of such an expression of struggle, I don’t see how we can talk about class activity.

Sander appeals for our critique to attack the distance between ourselves and the young rebels. Our critique should also attack the distance between them and the rest of the working class. If it doesn’t, and instead overlooks the damage that intra-class violence does to the social fabric of common proletarian interest, then it’s a price too high. It would be dreadful if another breakout was confronted by other strata having to organise to defend themselves; you can just imagine the glee in the state propaganda describing the police as guardians of the non-rioters, of ‘ordinary people’, as they put it. Such scenarios cry out for some means for organising on a class basis if only to fight the next wave of police aggression.

What legacy has been left? Certainly, no model for future collective action. What will really matter is the depth of consideration that all workers give in the coming months to what happened in August. And in the widest way we can, we have to emphasise that intra-class violence only benefits the bourgeoisie. We won’t hear all the discussions that go on in small groups, in homes, in social meetings, at the workplace, so it’s not possible to tell what will come out of the immediate period of quiescence until we see it emerge. .

Marlowe
11 September

A comment on Marlowe’s post

I think the formulations “class activity there is none” and “so far as I’ve found yet, there was no class content” do create the impression that we think the riots were not a struggle of a strata of the working class, and thus that the participants were either ‘lumpen proletariat’ or ‘underclass’ or criminal gangs or acted as individuals, simply reflecting the power of capitalist ideology, or more profoundly, of the value-form. I am not saying Marlowe is saying this, but it seems implied. The advantage of that is the honor of the working class is saved by separating it from struggles that are wild outbursts of pent-up anger and frustration, that are without rudder or direction, or that sometimes take forms that affirm the value-form by imitating capitalism in its plundering and violence. Judging from the arrest-records, the participants were overwhemingly working class, both employed and unemployed. They acted clearly collectively, against the police, against the stores. I don’t see how we can maintain that there was no class struggle there. There was clearly also involvment of criminals using the occasion to be criminals, but we cannot reduce the whole event to just that like the mass media tend to do.

That doesn’t mean that we should applaud it. Nor does it imply that the UK riots will have a positive impact on the development of revolutionary consciousness. I think we should be uncompromising in our critique of the riots, but also that the critique should recognize that such riots are indeed class struggle, and will probably become more frequent and intense in the coming years, whether we like it or not.

But if the class struggle would remain limited to riots, no matter how intense they’d be, it would be doomed. Struggle at the points of production is indispensable to give the working class struggle both power and perspective. But in that struggle, the anger and energy displayed by young rebels in the UK, the “current of thoughtfulness” that Marlowe recognized, will also be a needed factor. So rather than distancing ourselves from them, our critique should attack that distance and aim at overcoming it.

Sander

There’s madness in the air – of rioters and rulers, of quite different kinds, and what’s to be made of it? The majority of the population looks on with near-disbelief. But, class activity there is none.

The extent of the riots – in many major cities – following on from the first in London shows that the social conditions and feelings are widespread throughout this country. Clearly, the marginalisation of vast swathes of young people provides the condition from which much of the rage and nihilism comes from. The condition under which they live did not arise from current government policy (as the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harman, said this week) but from decades of successive governments restructuring economic activity and stripping out of social life whatever it could to drive down the social wage. As everywhere else in the world, this process has ejected millions from the production process in the UK. So many of our young people see no future in this situation; and they’re right. At the same time, they see the most egregious displays of wealth, the worship of greed by the bankers, the scams by Members of Parliament syphoning outrageous expenses into their pockets, and most recently the exposure of the hugely profitable relationships between journalists, police, lawyers and politicians; everyone knew they were all corrupt, it’s just that the evidence is all pouring out. It’s little wonder that looters talked about ‘taking’ just as the rich did.

Many swept on by social adrenaline were caught up in the action. Rioting and looting are not the same thing. Youngsters and children involved. Fights with the police. Targeting the more impersonal stores; also some iconic brands. But also a wildness that led to looting of small local shops, setting fire to homes and to killings; effectively turning against their own neighbours. It wasn’t just unemployed youth and children; those turning up at the courts have included adult employed.

This looting and arson had nothing to do with the social distribution of unobtainable necessities; it was a physical re-enactment of what the bourgeoisie does to society. So far as I’ve found yet, there was no class content. Regarding positive collective activity, this could be seen in local people getting together to defend their neighbourhoods. In other words, they were defending their neighbourhoods, not against the violence of the thugs of a Maghreb state but against the madness of local young people. However, there was a current of thoughtfulness to which I’ll return.

The madness in the state and in the ruling class is of a different kind – reaching from their side of the streets all the way to the global markets – and shows in the tortuous issues and relationships that entwine the bourgeoisie. In Tottenham, the current events were triggered in the aftermath of what appears to have been yet another summary state execution in an undercover police operation. The callousness of the police to the family of the victim was evident – and not that unusual – and certainly riled local people. In the police reaction then and over the next few days, the already severe tensions between them and the government have only heightened. On top of the plans for large cuts in police budgets and manpower London’s Metropolitan Police has had its Chief Commissioner and an Assistant Chief Commissioner resign in recent weeks over their roles in the phone-hacking rackets. The lack of ‘appropriate response’ to the riots, as the politicians now put it, might well be seen as a warning to the government of the consequences of acting against their interests. And even now the police spokesmen and the government are still slagging each other off publicly while the embers of the street fires have not yet cooled.

Not that the police are not the only ones pressing on the government. Industry – particularly the SMEs (small and medium enterprises) – are still complaining vociferously about the behaviour of the banks towards them and the difficulty of getting the kind of financing they need to expand. They want the government to do more to support this section of industry. The military rumble on about the commitments they are given while budgets shrink. The Health Service is being turned into a shambles. These budget cuts are digging into all aspects of the state and most other sections of capital; the favoured area remains the financial services sector. Still the government stands on its policy of hard spending cuts to the worry of more sections of the ruling class. It would seem that its objective is still to look to finance as a way of staving off the effects of the global crisis. This week the Chancellor, Osborne, was still banging on about the importance of having the world see the UK as a haven, a refuge for global capital. Of course, the sight of London Burning does not fit the image for a politically and socially stable haven for their capital.

The recent scandals and the new-found courage of British politicians to criticise the Murdoch empire have provided a smokescreen that has diverted public attention in the UK away from the worsening state of the world economy and the shenanigans in the Eurozone. Osborne and the other European finance ministers all know that the economic outlook is dire and just don’t know what to do. They can see that they have no solution – but they have to do something. They are faced with a system that is awash with money, and it is nonetheless bankrupt. No wonder they exude a sense of madness. (The behaviour of the US political class over the debt ceiling legislation shows that the UK bourgeoisie is not alone.)

They may have no solution to their problems but the UK ruling class – like all others – will have to follow some course of action, part of which will be to face up to the social disaffection across the country. When they have sorted out their disputes with the police, whatever else, they will turn on the streets and we’ll all be targets. It will be soon.

I said there is evidence of a current of thoughtfulness. Although the media has focussed on ‘mindlessness’ and ‘criminality’ and continues to set up interviews to denounce or to drown discussion into moralistic pap, some people on the streets have had sound reflections on the events. It was impressive how many people – some were victims of specific actions – said that they were against the actions but could see where the young people were coming from and why they had erupted. Others asked ‘why were we looting shops? – in Egypt they went for the government’. There were also insightful social critiques accompanied by a sense that this was not the way forward; these, of course, are a minority voice on television.

Anger is necessary to want to revolt against the system, but this mix of rage and opportunism had no perspective. For me it shows the absolute necessity for a class expression that can provide a context for the development of consciousness, and a focus for collective action. Outside of this, explosions of anger can be dangerously self-defeating. I don’t know how this is to come about, and it has been frustrating not to have seen more explicit political expression. It certainly shows that immiseration on its own doesn’t generate consciousness. We’ll see what develops in the aftermath.

Marlowe / 12 August 2011

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Afterword

The judicial conveyor belt is running at full speed: over 1400 people have been sentenced so far as the courts stay open day and night. Exemplary sentences are being handed out to rioters and looters not only pour décourager les autres but also as a ‘respectable’ vent for the bourgeoisie’s own anger.

The riots have been a godsend to the police as they fight against the budget and manpower cuts the government wants to make and hostilities have been open over the past couple of weeks. Exchanges of blows and insults have been overt and covert. Cameron has taken on the American ‘supercop’ William Bratton as unpaid advisor onto the UK government concerning gang violence; the Independent (sic) Police Complaints Commission exonerating the recently-resigned Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and others from misconduct over the phone-hacking scandal. More hidden arguments are taking place within the appointment process for the next Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

Other sections of the bourgeoisie are groping for the public explanation for the riots. ‘Sheer criminality and nothing else’, goes one refrain. Cameron has resurrected his ‘broken society’ bleat, a more difficult metaphor for his right wing to deal with given the actual experience of the riots. Both he and Miliband, the Labour opposition leader, talk of the moral decay in British society; Blair now enters the domestic scene arguing against his classmates to appeal for a focus on dealing with people who are ‘beyond the pale’. Decoded, the argument is about how much is to be dealt with by modified social policies and how much by state repression. To date, they seem to be searching for some background set of conditions that can be superficially addressed with legislative measures and – in the foreground – a gang culture that can be explicitly targeted by the police. All the arguments about what are the appropriate cuts and expenditures takes place in the context of the austerity promoted as a result of the global crisis.

But not only is this the context within which the ruling class in the UK has to decide how to deal with economic problems and social challenges, it is the context for all the social processes taking place today. There have been decades of corrosion of social and individual worth by the relentless development of the value-form exacerbated by politico-cultural specificities in different parts of the country. In Northern Ireland, the violence of the para-militaries is again on the streets – with bombs and bullets – showing up the so-called peace process for what it is. In Scotland, sectarian hostilities have been intensifying and they are again on the devolved national agenda. The explosion of anger seen on the English streets a few weeks ago has its specificities – including the police activity in major cities against young people, and especially against racial minorities. Also, in vast swathes of the country – particularly in Midlands and Northern areas of England – that were at one time based on heavy industries and have little perspective for future employment or re-building..

As Marxists, we always look for expressions of the development of consciousness within activity that is directed against the structures of capitalist society. What do we see here? The riots were inchoate, the looting directed towards expensive personal consumer items with no political project and did not show any challenge to capitalist norms. No class struggle is ‘pure’, without the accompaniment of ‘rioting’ and ‘disorder’ to a greater or lesser extent in the wider society. But, if the riots cannot be considered as ‘just gangsterism’ even if there were gang elements present, neither was there a conscious class dimension. And to my mind, the idea of an unconscious rejection of commodity relations implicit in some critiques is a non-starter. All of the social unrest we see across the world has roots in the deepening crisis of capitalism and with it has come substantial variations in political consciousness. The English riots share the same roots and illustrate the futility of reaction when there is no expression of communisation and a political project. There were a few brave souls within the mayhem who called for a redirection of energies (see Youtube for examples); future confrontations with the state will need a very different expression.

Marlowe

An ad-hoc group of pro-revolutionaries in Seattle present:

A presentation by Internationalist Perspective followed by an open discussion on the topic of:

POPULAR UPHEAVALS, THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM, AND THE MARXIST ANALYSIS OF THE VALUE-FORM

Where: Room 115, Smith Hall, University of Washington, Seattle.

When: 6:00 p.m., Thursday, August 11.

Presentation abstract:

The “Arab Spring,” the occupation of the statehouse in Madison Wisconsin, the encampments in Spain, the occupation and violent struggle in Syntagma square in Athens, are all responses to the present crisis of capitalism, and the resultant assault on the living and working conditions of the “collective worker” in every corner of the globe.

The occupation of Tahrir square in Cairo and the toppling of the Mubarak regime cannot be understood outside of the fact that most Egyptians – indeed most Arabs – today are under thirty and youth unemployment is around 40%. The encampments in Spain cannot be dissociated from the fact that in that country youth unemployment is now 40%. The bloody struggles in Greece are directly linked to the draconian austerity that the “Socialist” government is now imposing as its response to an imminent default on the country’s huge public debt. And the tens of thousands who demonstrated for more than a week in Madison were responding to huge wage and pension cuts, and layoffs, for public sector workers.

Within these popular upheavals, and the above are only a few examples of what is a global phenomenon, there are really two battles. One is focused on demands for democratic rights, for “real Democracy,” for the right of unions to engage in collective bargaining for their members (In Wisconsin the unions had accepted the austerity measures called for by Gov. Scott Walker, only opposing the effort to strip them of their collective bargaining rights, the key to their own power within the capitalist system). That is a battle to reform the system; a battle within the iron framework of the capitalist system. It is a battle that cannot be won. The second battle is the battle to abolish the dictatorship of the economy, as a leaflet distributed in Madrid put it, a battle to abolish capitalism, the system of wage labor that is its veritable basis, and to put an end to the subjection or subsumption of the collective worker to the value-form. That second battle is only beginning, but its presence in all the popular upheavals through the intervention of pro-revolutionaries, points the way to confrontations that constitute the only realistic perspective for a struggle against the looming austerity, and an existence in a planet of slums, which is the only future that capitalism can realistically promise.

It is here that a Marxist analysis of the trajectory of capitalism, of the necessity for capitalism to impose draconian austerity in response to its present crisis, can provide a theoretical framework to understand why the survival of capitalism demands massive austerity, dramatic cuts in the standard of living of the working class, and the creation of the planet of slums that Mike Davis has so accurately described. Traditional or “orthodox” Marxism has based itself on a vision of a world in which the productive forces can no longer grow within the framework of capitalism, leading to an inevitable revolution. Yet over the past century the material productive forces, the gigantism of technology, have massively increased, even as the condition of the collective worker has stagnated or worsened over the past thirty years. Indeed, capitalism’s very survival requires the development of the productive forces, ever-new technologies, and as a concomitant of that very development the massive expulsion of living labor, of workers, from the production process. The effect of that process is the creation of a vast population whose labor power, is no longer of any use to capital – an exponentially growing mass, whether educated or illiterate, who face an existence of permanent unemployment. That is the underlying source of the present popular upheavals, and that is why unless the value-form is abolished Davis’ planet of slums will continue to grow.
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The video shows a failed anti-immigrant raid in Lavapies, an ethnically diverse neighbourhood in central Madrid, in which the police is forced to retreat. The main slogan shouted is ” Ningun ser humano es illegal”, no human being is illegal, and of course ‘fuera’ (get out). A moving illustration of the wind of change that’s blowing..

watch?v=FOJt0vYQ2qk&feature=channel_video_title

An excellent account of the recent assemblies movement struggle in Greece by the pro-revolutionary organization TPGP. – IP

The movement of the assemblies in the squares started completely unexpectedly on the 25th of May in Athens. It’s unclear which was the initial group of people that took the initiative to post a call for a rally in Syntagma square on Facebook to express their “indignation” and anger at the government’s austerity measures. It seems though that some people around a political group influenced by the later Castoriadis’ democratic ideology were involved among others in that initiative. The call was publicized favourably by the mass media and during the first days there was a reference in the media to a banner that allegedly appeared in the Spanish mobilizations: “Shhh, do not shout, we will wake up the Greeks” or something like that. Of course, no one could expect what would follow.

The initial call was a declaration of independence and separation from political parties, representation and ideologies. It also declared the will to protest peacefully against the state management of the debt crisis and “all those who led us here”. Furthermore, a main slogan was the call for a “real democracy”. The slogan of “real democracy” was quickly replaced after a couple of days by the slogan of “direct democracy”. The initial effort of the organizers to set a body of specific democratic rules for the assembly was rejected by the participants. However, certain regulations were established after some days concerning the time-limit of the speeches (90 sec), the way that someone can propose a subject for the discussion (in written form, two hours before the beggining of the assembly) and the way that speakers are being chosen (through a lottery).. We should also mention that around the core of the general assembly there are always plenty of discussions, events or even confrontations among the participants.

In the beginning there was a communal spirit in the first efforts at self-organizing the occupation of the square and officially political parties were not tolerated. However, the leftists and especially those coming from SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left) got quickly involved in the Syntagma assembly and took over important positions in the groups that were formed in order to run the occupation of Syntagma square, and, more specifically, in the group for “secretarial support” and the one responsible for “communication”. These two groups are the most important ones because they organize the agenda of the assemblies as well as the flow of the discussion. It must be noted that these people do not openly declare their political allegiance and appear as ‘individuals’. However, these politicos are unable to completely manipulate such a volatile and heterogeneous assembly since the delegitimization of the political parties is prevalent. It is very difficult to participate as an individual in these specific groups though, since you have to confront the shadow party mechanisms of the leftists.

The rallies organized on a daily basis gradually became very massive and expressed the complete delegitimization of the government and of the political system in general. In the most massive rally maybe 500.000 people participated (on Sunday 5/6).

The social composition of the mixed crowd that rallies everyday ranges from workers, unemployed, pensioners and students to small entrepreneurs or former small bosses hard hit by the crisis. In these rallies in the Syntagma square, a divide was formed from the first days between those who are “above” (near the Parliament) and those who are “below” (in the square proper). In the first category, some nationalist and extreme right-wing groups have been active from the beginning influencing the more conservative and/or less politicized people who participate in the demonstrations (being either proletarians or proletarianized former small entrepreneurs). It is quite common for most of them gathering outside the Parliament to wave Greek flags, make the open palm gesture against the MPs, cry out populist and nationalist slogans like “Traitors!” or “Thieves!” or even sing the national anthem. However, the fact that these people are more politically conservative does not necessarily mean that they are more controllable when the conflicts with the police escalate or that they can be counted to the lines of the organized extreme right-wing groups. On the other hand, the second group which forms the constituency of the assembly is much more oriented to the democratic left (patriotic, antifascist, anti-imperialist) as it can be seen by the voted communiqués (see http://real-democracy.gr) and is also proletarian in composition (unemployed workers, civil servants, university students, workers from the private sector, etc.)
The leftists have managed to organize a series of discussion events about the “debt crisis” and about “direct democracy” with invited speakers coming from the left academia (e.g. left political economists like Lapavitsas) who are connected to various left political parties (mainly SYRIZA and ANTARSYA). The organization of these events reproduces and reinforces the divide between “experts” and “non-experts” and the content of the presentations of the invited speakers has been centered on an alternative political and economic management of capitalist relations and the crisis. For example, the main views expressed with regard to the issue of debt vary from proposals for the “debt restructuring” and the cancellation of the “odious part of the debt” to calls for an immediate suspension of payments on the part of the Greek state or exit from the Euro-zone and the EU. In any case, the political content expressed in these events is that of an alternative and more patriotic path for the “development of the country” and the creation of a real social-democratic state. In other words, these events try to direct the discussions towards an alternative path for the reproduction of capitalist relations in Greece that will be implemented by a different government in which the leftists will have assumed the role they deserve… Occasionally there have been criticisms by participants in the assembly of the prominent role of experts in panels as well as of the conception of the debt as a logistical, national issue, however they have been too weak to change the whole direction. The most well-known proposal for a left management of the “national debt” is coming from the Greek Audit Commission which consists of various left politicians, academics and union bureaucrats and favours the idea of the cancellation of the “odious part of the debt” following the Equador model. This Commission’s presence was established in the square in the first days against voted resolutions for the exclusion of political parties and organizations with the pretext of being a “citizens’ association”!

Some of us have been involved in a thematic assembly that has been formed by the general assembly around the issues of labour and unemployment called Group of Workers and Unemployed. In cooperation with other comrades, this assembly has tried to promote the self-organized practice of the proletarian “suspension of payments” from below for the direct satisfaction of our needs. Of course, the latter is completely at odds with the left political proposals for the “suspension of payments of the sovereign debt”. Towards this aim some interventions in unemployment offices have been organized calling the unemployed workers to join the group in Syntagma square and attempting to initiate discussions aiming at the organization of local assemblies of unemployed workers (the latter aim was unfortunately not successful). Also 3 direct actions in the metro station of Syntagma square have been organized where, in cooperation with a collective that is already active on this issue, the so-called “I don’t pay” coalition of committees, the ticket validating machines were blocked. The leftists who participate in this assembly have tried to confine its activities to left political demands of “the right to work”, “full, decent and stable work for all”, etc. without any real interest to communicate their struggle experiences (if they had any) and engage in collective direct action. The results of this confrontation are depicted in the communiqué which was produced and is available in http://real-democracy.gr/en/node/159. But, the main problem is that apart from us, some anti-authoritarians/anarchists and the leftists, the participation of other people both in the discussions and the actions is almost non-existent, although the actions which were organized have been agreed upon by the general assembly.

This leads to another important observation about the assembly of the Syntagma square. Notwithstanding that the assembly has taken all these days decisions involving the organization of direct actions, in the end very few people really participate in them. It seems that the direct democratic process of just voting for or against a specific proposal in such a massive assembly tends to reproduce passivity and the role of the individualized spectator/voter.

This passivity and individualization of a significant part of the people was transcended on the day of the general strike (15/6) when the need to struggle against the attempts of the state to disband the demonstration and to reoccupy Syntagma square not only led practically to the participation of thousands of people in the conflicts with the police but also led to the expression of real solidarity between the demonstrators: people were freed from the hands of the cops by other protesters, the medical team helped anyone that was in danger because of the tear gas and the brutal strikes of the cops, the joyful dance of thousands of people amidst the tear gases, etc.

However, there were certain forces, i.e. the mass media, the left parties and the fascists, who tried to promote separations between the demonstrators around the issue of violence and through the accusation against some violent demonstrators of being instigated by police agent-provocateurs. When the anarchist/antiauthoritarian block and the blocks of the base unions arrived in Syntagma square and some of the comrades moved to the area in front of the parliament, a group of fascists exploited the throwing of a few (2-3) Molotov bombs by some individuals and started to shout through bullhorns to the demonstrators that the “kukuloforoi” (hooded persons) are undercover police provocateurs that should be isolated. This group started the attack against the anarchists/antiauthoritarians and managed to get other demonstrators involved in the attack as well. The anarchists/antiauthoritarians managed to face the attack and to respond successfully. However, the media exploited this incident by portraying it as an attack of the anarchists against the “indignants” (as the crowds demonstrating in the square are called) in order to promote the separation between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters within the movement. The video of this incident was played again and again for the rest of the day. However, on the level of street politics, this attempt was largely unsuccessful since when the police attacked later the demonstration they were confronted by a totally mixed crowd.
Apart from the media, the left parties tried as well to promote the separation between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters through their “provocateurology” and the continuous accusations and propaganda against the anarchist/antiauthoritarian milieu. Their aims are of course different: they want to restrain the movement to the limits of legality and peacefulness so that they will be able to capitalize on it politically according to their wishful thinking to participate in a future government that will follow an alternative left path for the development of Greek capitalism. We should add here that the Group of Workers and Unemployed of Syntagma square where some of us participate issued a resolution condemning provocateurology and false divisions within the movement but the text was never voted as a subject for discussion. This was the result of the leftist organizers’ intervention and manipulation combined with the weak support from other participants..

However, a lot of different views have been expressed concerning the issue of “provocateurology” and also the “violent or pacifist character of our movement”. The dynamic and contradictory character of the assembly can be traced to some of the assembly’s decisions two days before the 48-hour general strike on 28-29 of June. The left organizers managed to win a vote calling the police forces to “show respect to people’s will and the constitutional right of people’s sovereignty [...] and not to prevent the people from protecting its own Constitution”! At the same time, there was another resolution which condemned “the professionals of violence who serve the system and not the movement”, reflecting the leftist provocateurology against those who do not act according to the ideology of obedience to “law and order”. On the contrary, a day after, in another decision the assembly voted in favour of “those who clash with the repression forces. Nobody with a loudspeaker should speak against them”. On the same day, the proposal for “condemnation of any kind of violence during the coming 48-hour strike” was disapproved.

It must be noted that till now the “movement of the squares” has been really effective in the sense that it managed to widen the field of opposition to the government’s policy, something that the conventional general strikes and the isolated sectional strikes had not managed to do. It obliged the discredited GSEE to call for a 24-hour strike on the 15/6 and a 48-hour strike when the second “memorandum” was going to be voted and many workers took the opportunity to participate in the demos from morning till night. Although it did not manage to cancel the voting of the memorandum, it nonetheless managed to create a deep cabinet and political crisis. Never before, not even during the December 2008 riots, was the political system of representation so irretrievably delegitimised. However, the leftist organizers managed to preserve the mediatory role of unions -at least on an ideological level- through a common poster calling for the 48-hour general strike.

A first observation about this strike is that it’s impossible to make an accurate estimation of the number of people that took part in the events during these two days. There was a continuous inflow and outflow of people to and from the terrain of the struggle in the centre of Athens (i.e. the Syntagma square and the surrounding streets) and the number of demonstrators fluctuated from a few thousands to as many as 100.000 people. However, the participation in the strike, in the rally and in the conflicts was far lower on the first day than in the second day: the number of demonstrators in Syntagma square on Tuesday 28/6 did not exceed 20.000 people. Both days, fierce clashes took place between demonstrators and the riot police over a large part of the centre of the city around Syntagma square. Thousands of chemical weapons were thrown by the riot police creating a toxic and suffocating atmosphere. Certainly, in the second day, the mobilization was more intense and more massive.

According to the police, 131 cops were injured, 75 persons were busted and charges were pressed against 38 people. According to the medical team of the Syntagma square, more than 700 people had been provided with first aid at the improvised medical centres in the square and inside the metro station of Syntagma and around 100 were transferred to hospitals. There were damages on banks, ministry buildings, luxurious hotels, the post-office of Syntagma square and a few commercial shops and restaurants.

There is no doubt that from the beginning the aim of the state was to evacuate the square, to terrorize and disperse the demonstrators. However, the persistent and spirited stance of the demonstrators may be perfectly expressed by the slogan: “we won’t leave the square”.As a result, the confrontation with the police, material and verbal, was almost continuous. On the first day, most of the people were pushed further back in the streets surrounding the square, giving longer or shorter battles, until the police managed to create a cop-boundary around the square, preventing anyone from approaching. Despite that, a few hundreds remained in the square until late in the night.

On the second day, apart from the gathering in the Syntagma square, there were efforts to make blockades early in the morning in order to prevent the MP’s entrance into the parliament. This plan was voted by the Syntagma assembly as well as by the assemblies that have been formed in other neighbourhoods of Athens outside the centre. Unfortunately, only a few hundreds of demonstrators participated in those blockades which were immediately attacked fiercely, pushed away and quickly disbanded by the police. So, the plan to prevent politicians from getting into the parliament didn’t work. In the case of the blockade in Vasileos Konstantinou avenue, the demonstrators were pushed back to nearby streets were they erected barricades and after a few hours and some mild confrontations with the riot police they started a long demonstration that passed through the touristic parts of the centre to finally reach the big rally in Syntagma square. It must be noted that the organization of the blockades was totally inefficient since the leftist organizations that played an important role through their control of the main groups of the Syntagma assembly did nothing to ensure a greater participation and a real confrontation with the police. Of course, the leftists’ attitude is not an excuse for the inability of the assembly itself to implement its decisions and the passivity of a great part of its participants.

As far as the conflicts around the parliament are concerned, similar scenes of the first day took place on the second day as well but it was much more difficult for the police to accomplish its aims. Thousands of demonstrators participated in the clashes of the second day. Most of the demonstrators were prepared for the clashes wearing gas masks or other improvised protection equipment; many carried anti-acid solutions while some were fully equipped for fighting the cops. In most cases, there was a “front zone” where the battles evolved and a “rear zone” where people yelled slogans, gave help to those in need and even “provided” the “front zone” with new people.
The “peaceful people” backed those clashing with the police: the physical presence of the huge crowd itself was an obstacle to the maneuvres of the police. Protesters blocked a group of motorcycles of the police infamous “DIAS” and “DELTA” forces by standing in front of them while the policemen were ready to launch an attack. “Peaceful” protesters weren’t scared by the clashes and only the continuous massive and violent attacks of riot police and motorcycle police forced them to abandon the streets surrounding Syntagma. Contrary to what many were preaching during the previous days and especially during the clashes with the police on June 28th, the clashes didn’t “frighten” the “people” but in a sense these clashes expressed the accumulated anger against a largely delegitimized government, the brutality of the police and the worsening of the living conditions of the working class.

Especially this day, there reappeared the insurgents of December 2008 (anarchists, anti-authoritarians, students, ultras, young precarious proletarians) in the streets of Athens alongside a considerable part of the more “respectable” and stable working class that protested against the austerity measures clashing with the police. It was the first time after May 5, 2010 that such a thing happened.

The 48-hour general strike had another similarity with the December 2008 rebellion: playfulness. Many slogans or chants of the protesters against the government and the IMF are based on slogans or chants from the terrace culture while during the confrontations with the police drummers encouraged the protesters and incited them to keep their positions.

Both days, the police eventually “cleared” the surroundings and the central streets late at night, and only few determined ones remained in the square overnight.

The thousands of people that participated in the clashes and their diversity defied in practice the conspiracy theories of the left organizations/parties and the media about “provocateurs” or “para-statal gangs” and proved how ridiculous similar mainstream propaganda about those “specific” groups who always “create chaos” is. Many people realized the necessity of throwing stones, lighting fires and barricading streets against armed, furious and ruthless cops who execute the orders of capital and its state.

This change was also the result of the overcoming of the (usually verbal) confrontations between the “non-violent” and the “violent” protesters during the last month’s mobilizations. Many “non-violent” protesters, especially the elder ones, realized at last that behind the “masks” of the “provocateurs” were mostly common young people, filled with rage. In a case, a sixty-year lady was talking in a friendly way with a “masked” 16-year old about the “right to fight back the cops” while at the same time well-dressed “indignant” protesters were disputing with “rioters” on similar matters. In other cases, “non-violent” people with breathing problems were helped by well-prepared “masked” demonstrators. Violence is just one issue in the continuous social and political discussions and disputes that emerge inside the mobilized crowd and play an important role in the shaping up of the mobilizations and the contradictory attitudes of many demonstrators. We can say that these disputes create a limited proletarian public sphere where theoretical and practical issues are posed.

Another prominent feature of the days of rage was the combination of rioting and celebration. During the fights there was live music, people sang and, as we mentioned before, in some cases drum players accompanied counter-attacks against the riot squads! During the afternoon of the 28th a concert was given despite the fights and chemical gases and the protesters were dancing while the police was tear-gasing the square. Expropriations of pastries, cakes and icecreams from a chain café in the square gave the struggle a sweet flavour on the 29th, although the food supply group later condemned lootings from the loudspeakers, probably after having been scolded by some left “organizers”. Later that afternoon a big group mainly of SYRIZA members tried to prevent people from piling up stones to be used against a possible attack by the riot squads, however, having no alternative plan to face the attack, they soon gave up their effort. Shortly after, the microphone equipment with the loudspeakers were removed from the square on the pretext that they could get damaged. The choice to take away the “voice” of the mobilization at that particular time, when clashes with the police in the surroundings of the square were still raging, was clearly undermining the defense of the square. Some minutes later a lot of riot squads invaded the square and in a particularly violent sweep operation managed to disperse the crowd down the metro station. Only some hundreds would return again and even less stayed in the square until late in the night.

We should also mention that the feeling of rage against politicians and the police is really growing. Except for the widespread clashes, this rage is also reflected in the verbal condemnations that one can catch here and there: “we should burn the parliament”, “we should hang them high”, “we should take up arms”, “we should visit the MP’s homes” etc. It’s remarkable that most of these declarations come from elder people. Several cases of “arrests” of undercover cops by loads of people are also revealing of the degree of anger mounting: in the evening of the 29th demonstrators got hold of an undercover cop inside the Syntagma metro station trying to detain him when the Red Cross rescuers intervened and helped him escape (according to some rumours, he had no gun when he left…).

As far as the role of the unions (GSEE-ADEDY) is concerned, except for their call for the 48-hour strike, which was more or less a result of the pressure of the “square’s movement”, they didn’t really play any important role. It is characteristic that their blocks attracted only few hundreds and on the second day, when the new austerity package would be voted, GSEE arranged its rally late in the afternoon in another square of the city centre (which was just a short stroll towards Omonia square which is in the opposite direction!)! In addition, on 30th of June, GSEE, faithful to the conspiracy theories, published a press release which condemned “the destructions and the pre-decided riots between “hooded people” and the police who co-operate against the workers and the demonstrators […] GSEE condemns any kind of violence wherever it comes from and calls the government to assume its responsibilities…”. On the other hand, ADEDY kept a more cautious stance: in its press releases on the 29th and the 30th of June, it condemned the “barbarism of the government” and “the police brutality” against the demonstrators and it even called for a rally on the 30th June on Syntagma square which it never organized!

Some general points concerning the movement against the imposition of the harshest austerity measures since the 2nd World War:

1) Nationalism (mostly in a populist form) is dominant, favoured both by the various extreme right wing cliques as well as by left parties and leftists. Even for a lot of proletarians or petty-bourgeois hit by the crisis who are not affiliated with political parties, national identity appears as a last imaginary refuge when everything else is rapidly crumbling. Behind the slogans against the “foreign, sell out government” or for the “Salvation of the country”, “National sovereignty” and a “New Constitution” lies a deep feeling of fear and alienation to which the “national community” appears as a magical unifying solution. Class interests are often expressed in nationalist and racist terms producing a confused and explosive political cocktail.

2) The manipulation of the main assembly in Syntagma square (there are several others in various neighbourhoods of Athens and cities in Greece) by “incognito” members of left parties and organizations is evident and really obstructive in a class direction of the movement. However, due to the deep legitimization crisis of the political system of representation in general they, too, have to hide their political identity and keep a balance between a general, abstract talk about “self-determination”, “direct democracy”, “collective action”, “anti-racism”, “social change” etc on the one hand and extreme nationalism, thug-like behaviour of some extreme-right wing individuals participating in groups in the square on the other hand, and all this in a not so successful way.

3) A significant part of the antiauthoritarian milieu as well as a part of the left (especially the marxist-leninists and most of the trade unionists) keep their distance from the assembly or are openly hostile to it: the former accuse it mainly for showing tolerance towards the fascists in front of the parliament or the members of the defence group of the assembly and for being a petty bourgeois, reformist political body manipulated by certain left parties. The latter accuse it for being apolitical, hostile to the Left and the “unionized, organized labour movement”.
One thing is certain: this volatile, contradictory movement attracts the attention from all sides of the political spectrum and constitutes an expression of the crisis of class relations and politics in general. No other struggle has expressed itself in a more ambivalent and explosive way in the last decades. What the whole political spectrum finds disquieting in this assembly movement is that the mounting proletarian (and petit-bourgeois) anger and indignation is not expressed anymore through the mediation channels of the political parties and the unions. Thus, it is not so much controllable and it is potentially dangerous for the political and unionist representation system in general. Therefore, the role of provocateurology is crucial: it serves as an exorcism, a slander against a growing part of the population which exiled in the no man’s land of «parastatal activity» should be rendered inert. On another level, the multiform and open character of this movement puts on the agenda the issue of the self-organization of the struggle, even if the content of this struggle remains vague. The public debate on the nature of the debt is a thorny question since it could lead to a movement of “refusal of payments” to the Greek state (an issue well beyond the political horizon of the parties, the unions and the vast majority of the extra-parliamentary left, statist as it is). After the bloody voting of the Medium-term Programme is uncertain what direction the movement of the assemblies will take in an era where all certainties seem to melt in the air.

TPTG
11/7/2011

After Tahrir Square in Cairo and the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, once again Syntagma Square in Athens is the focal point of resistance against the consequences of capitalism’s crisis. In Spain, the ‘indignados’ stated they were inspired by the revolt in Egypt and Tunisia, and likewise demonstrators in Syntagma are proclaiming their linkage to the struggles in North Africa and Spain. Clearly, in our times, borders cannot stop the spirit of resistance; and the official media can no longer control the flow of information. The struggle is contagious.

With admiration and solidarity we are watching the tens of thousands battling the security forces of the Greek government in response to the draconian austerity program that it is savagely imposing on the working class (youth, employed, unemployed, pensioners, immigrants without papers). But there’s more than one battle going on in Athens.

One is a battle between two factions of the ruling class over how to respond to the global capitalist crisis and the specific form that it has taken in Greece: a sovereign debt crisis, the specter of state bankruptcy, and the inability of the state to make its debt payments to bondholders (the big European banks). For the Socialist (PASOK) government, the necessary response is an austerity program that will satisfy the conditions set by the banks, by the European Central Bank (ECB), and the IMF, and that will permit new loans that will avert a default. For the “hard” left, the Stalinist KKE, the “radical left” (Syriza), and the unions, the necessary response is a rejection of the proposed austerity measures, a default on the debt, withdrawal from the euro zone, return to a Greek currency, and new parliamentary elections that will produce a government that will protect flag and nation. A new government of the KKE, Syriza, and the unions, a government that defaults on the state debt and sticks it to the big banks and bondholders, will not solve the present crisis or spare the working class the pain and misery of its own draconian austerity plan. So long as the capitalist state itself is not overthrown, so long as the commodity form and wage labor are not abolished, the capitalist law of value will impose its rules, its imperatives, and — in the face of the present global crisis – its austerity measures and attack on the living standards of those who have only their labor power to sell. Like PASOK, the KKE or Syriza, were it to come to power would have to put the working class on rations. And such a government would impose its will on the working class with the same tear gas and stun grenades if the workers did not accept the need for patriotic sacrifice – not sacrifice for the IMF, for bondholders, but sacrifice for the Nation, for the motherland, for Greece.

That lesson is already drawn by many of the militants fighting in Syntagma square: their leaflets and their arguments against the left, the unions, and the leftists, have made that clear. And that is the second battle being waged in Athens. For those engaged in that battle, the abolition of capitalism, of the dictatorship of the economy, of the commodification of every facet of human life, has to be an integral part of the present struggle, not some distant goal, a stage that can be reached only at some future time. The only way for workers to defend their immediate existence, to claim their “bread” today, to be able to have any possibility of living a decent life, is to directly attack the whole system of production, of social relations based on the value-form and wage-labor. It is that perspective that pro-revolutionaries can provide within these struggles, in the assemblies that arise in the occupations of the public space within this second battle. That conception, with all of the complex issues that it raises, is the only way to begin to create a human community. And that entails clarity on the actual bases of capitalism, its laws of motion, and its underlying social relations. Communism should not be seen either as state ownership of the means of production, nationalization, or as worker’s self-management of individual enterprises and units of production, both of which, in different ways, would perpetuate proletarian labor and the imperatives of the law of value, of capital accumulation. Nationalization or worker’s self-management, “radical” though each appears, will be subject to the same crisis tendencies, the same exploitation of living labor and extraction of surplus value, as any other form of capitalist production. It is the signs of that second battle in Athens that here and now concretely represents a principle of revolutionary hope.

INTERNATIONALIST PERSPECTIVE