AUT: Leaflet distributed at N30 London, UK

[toby harrison <t_harrison99@xxxxxxxxx>]

World Community Not Global Economy

The idea of coming together today to coincide with the
start of the third meeting of the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) in Seattle, is an attempt to go
forward from the actions of June 18th earlier this
year. On that day, thousands of us descended on one of
the nerve centres of the world economic system for a
Carnival Against Capital. The crowd took over the City
of London for the day, invaded the Futures Exchange,
destroyed capitalist property, held off the police and
generally disrupted business as usual. The police
response since then shows that the authorities take us
very seriously when, by taking direct action, we
refuse to accept that politics is about voting for the
right-wing or left-wing capitalist politicians or
marching between police lines. The power of those who
rule us is based on our acting as isolated workers and
consumers - by taking action we felt our collective
strength. Now of course the police - the guard dogs of
capital - are trying to identify and punish
participants who took action on the day. A lesson we
must learn is that if we are going to act against the
law then MASK UP - oh yeah, and if we are going to
fling things at the cops then go to the front.

However, capitalism will not be destroyed by one
action - no matter how exhilarating. It will require a
sustained social movement of millions of people. It
will also require us to think about what we are doing,
to understand our enemy and the forces we can draw on
against it. Having an action on the day when the WTO
meets is as good a day as any to come together. In
Seattle, representatives of nation states and large
capitalist enterprises will try to agree on the rules
to govern the world of trade and commerce, which
treats humanity and the planet as resources to be
exploited for the expansion of abstract wealth.
Looking at the WTO reminds us that capitalism is
international and must be opposed globally. However,
many of the arguments that are used against the WTO
fail to grasp the nature of the beast.

Globalisation and all that...
The concept of globalisation is now a commonplace both
among those who support and many who try to criticise
the present world order, but this idea can be
misleading. It is not about the weakening of good
democratic nation states in favour of bad
unaccountable corporations. It is the democratic
states themselves and the big corporations which are
setting up international frameworks like the WTO, the
European Union etc. The plan which governments and
corporations are trying to agree on is to dismantle
the barriers to the free passage of money and
commodities while keeping up the barriers to the
movement of people. Nation states are in no danger
from the process of globalisation because they are to
remain prisons for their peoples. These states are not
getting weaker but are increasing their powers of
repression. Here in London it is the very British
bobby who is defending capitalism today while in
Seattle it is the very American cops and FBI. The
European Union allows its members to move around a bit
but it increases the power of the police to keep track
of them. For those from other countries who cross its
borders without permission it builds prisons like
Campsfield in Oxfordshire while at the same time
relying on such immigrants to do the most shitty jobs.
The state and capital are two sides of the same coin.

We need to think why we are against the WTO. The
problem is not free trade because the opposite of free
trade is protected markets, which are still markets.
The problem is not corporate rule because the opposite
of corporate rule is government rule, which is the
control of our lives by politicians rather than
businessmen. The problem is not the loss of
sovereignty to an undemocratic and unaccountable
institution because we are no more in control of the
sovereign democratic state than we are in control of
the WTO. The problem is not just private capitalists
because state run enterprises rely on the same
exploitation and drudgery). The problem is not big
business because small business lives by the rules of
the market just as much. The problem is not that the
free trade of the WTO is not fair because all trade is
about the trading in human misery.

The problem is capitalism as a whole, the fact that
humanity is divided against itself, politically into
seperate nation states, economically into separate
capitalist enterprises (whether private or state run)
and individually into seperate atomised
worker/consumers competing with each other. Capitalism
separates us from the means of production, forcing us
to sell ourselves as wage labourers in order to buy
the commodities we need in order to survive. Human
beings produce those commodities and the means to
produce them but what we produce exists separate to us
as capital. In this upside down world we are the
objects, while it is the things - money, commodities,
capital - that are the subjects. Capital, while it
appears in the form of things, is not a thing but a
social relation. It is nothing but our own power, our
own activity existing against us as an alien power.
Some people, those with political or economic power,
gain from this division. They identify with capital
and think of it it as a natural order. For most of us
it is a misery. It seems here that we are dealing with
abstractions but these are real abstractions which
dominate people's lives. We may not all be experts on
the WTO, but we all are experts in the power that
money has over our lives. Ultimately the social
relation of capital and labour is that between us and
our alienated activity. All we have to do is take it
all back.

Off the rails
J18 gave us a sense of how we can take back some of
our power when we come together, but to really
overthrow capital we must go beyond our isolated
situations and "scenes". Today one connection that is
being made is with the way that capital is attacking
both passengers and workers on the railways and
Underground. Most people can see through the bullshit
about 'private public partnership' and see a stitch up
where private companies are to be allowed to malke
huge profits by squeezing workers and putting up
fares. The government is obsessed with bringing in
private money and management to the tube despite the
disaster of rail privatisation, because it wants to
attack the tube workers. Tube and railworkers have
shown a willingness to strike in defense of their
interests. The government wants to attack their unity
by splitting London transport into numerous separate
bits like it has done with the railways. Passengers
will suffer through increased fares and worsening
safety as we saw at Paddington. This is the real story
behind the arguments over how to fund the tube. The
media wants us to get caught up on issues like how
much interest should be paid on the investment etc.
-even 'red'(?) Livingstone admits that his bonds plan
is also a private public partnership and would involve
private management practices. Above all they don't
want strikes because they claim that they cause
'commuter misery' and 'harm the economy'. But as the
Reclaim the Streets leaflet for today put it "But what
is the economy about? It is about working hard just to
survive, while making profits for others to live at
our expense. The economy is a human misery. By
striking, workers reduce the misery!"

Autonomous action
But if the attack represented by privatisation is to
be defeated, workers are going to have to break the
anti-strike laws. They need to take action without
following the rules, they need to connect to other
groups of workers. The RMT union will tell them that
they have got to stay within the law but the real
strength of workers lies not in following the law but
in supporting together. The electricians on the
Jubilee line and other sites have shown the way
forward for workers by taking action outside the union
against the anti-strike laws. They have won victories
as a result. Connecting different groups like tube
workers and those of us who took part in the carnival
in the City etc is a way forward, a way of getting
beyond our divisions and seeing that we are all in the
same position. Whether in a job or on the dole, we
share the reality of not having control over our lives
under capitalism, while at the same time acting
together gives us the power to do everything!

Moving onto the terrain of work, and the resistance to
it, we encounter groups and conceptions of the old
Left. Claiming to be experts in this topic of
capitalism certain groups try to send us down dead
ends. While privatisation is an attack on passengers
and workers alike we must not fall into some nostalgia
for the days of nationalised industry. In the slogan
"Reclaim Our Railways" the false picture is presented
that we ever owned or controlled the railways. Of
course it was people like us who built and worked the
railways but we have never controlled them; under
private or 'public' ownership they have always been a
capitalist enterprise. The old Left, whether old
labour, stalinist or trotskyist, have been tied to a
failed project of identifying our emancipation with
state control. They have always tried to make us put
our faith in something outside us - in left wing
politicians, in a 'workers government' etc. -the only
answer for u1s lies in organising and controlling our
own struggles autonomously from all those who would
seek to represent us. Some political groups say they
are against capitalism but believe we should lobby the
Labour Party or vote for Ken Livingstone. The problem
with them is not that they are not 'socialist' enough
-the problem is that they are capitalist! What the
20th Century has shown is that the old idea of
'socialism' as state control of industry rather than
private control was a dead end. Our future lies beyond
the nation state and separate enterprises, against the
plans of our rulers for a single global economy. We
need a world human community! The only way to that
community is by building communities of struggle in
the here and now.						 			
        Some Unknown Proletarians

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