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The G-8 summit in Genoa: illusion and reality
By Peter Schwarz
25 July 2001
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If one were to ask a filmmaker to make a movie depicting the gulf
between the world�s political elite and the broad masses of people,
it would be hard to come up with a more appropriate script than
that offered by the G8 summit held last weekend in Genoa.
The meeting between leaders of the eight most powerful industrial
countries was overshadowed by an air of unreality. Stage-managed
by a master of his trade, media mogul and Italian head of state
Silvio Berlusconi, every detail of the summit was decided upon in
terms of what looked good for television. The scene of the meeting,
Genoa�s historic Palazzo Ducale, was restored at a cost of 200
million German marks. Surrounding facades, which did not fit into
the picture frame, were draped with huge tarpaulins.
Attention was paid to every detail. In the background of photos of
the smiling heads of state, fully ripened lemons had been attached
to the branches of nearby lemon trees with nylon twine.
In order to keep the real world at bay, a two square kilometre cage
was constructed, surrounded by a five-metre-high steel wire wall,
guarded by 20,000 members of the security forces. For days,
countless inhabitants of the 690,000-strong city were unable to
receive visitors, use public transport or open �critical� windows.
Army snipers were positioned on their terraces and balconies.
In the course of the summit and outside the steel cage, civil war-
type battles of enormous brutality took place between protesters
and police. Armed with truncheons and tear gas, police repeatedly
attacked the 200,000 demonstrators who had come from all over
the world to protest the summit proceedings. The peak of the
conflict came on Saturday night, when police charged the
headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum (GSF), which had
coordinated the demonstrations. Police forced their way into
buildings occupied by demonstrators, beat up and injured those
present, smashed computers and confiscated numerous hard
discs.
One demonstrator dead, at least 500 wounded, over 120 arrested
and at least 40 million marks in damage to property�this was the
balance sheet of two days of street battles. Police and politicians
were unanimous in claiming that sole responsibility for the violence
lay with the demonstrators, specifically the so-called �Black
Bloc��groups of masked demonstrators, garbed in black sporting
helmets and gas masks, who appeared virtually from nowhere, laid
waste to the immediate vicinity, set cars and shops in flames, and
then disappeared as rapidly as they had come.
In order to justify the savage attack on the GSF, Italian Prime
Minister Berlusconi claimed that the organisers of the
demonstration had not officially distanced themselves from the
Black Block, but had rather protected and covered for them.
Therefore, they (the GSF) were also to blame for the violence.
Testimony from demonstrators, however, presents a very different
picture. According to witnesses, there was a considerable degree
of cooperation between the Black Block and security forces. Many
protesters claimed that police allowed the masked demonstrators
to roam free. As the latter disappeared following outbreaks of
violence, the police picked on peaceful demonstrators and beat
them up. Entire gangs of masked demonstrators were able to move
through the city without interference from the security forces.
In the course of visiting arrested demonstrators at a local police
station, Senate Deputy Gigi Malabarba reported seeing black-
masked demonstrators gather and engage in friendly discussion
with police. Demonstrators themselves repulsed the troublemakers,
shouting �Murderers out!� and calling on them to leave the
demonstration.
Bearing in mind the history of the Italian security forces, it is
entirely possible that state provocateurs were at work. In the
middle of the 1960s, leading members of the intelligence forces,
army and police were involved in an extensive conspiracy known as
the �strategy of tension�. It was aimed at destabilising the republic
and preparing a coup, should the Communist Party come to power.
In the course of the �strategy� bomb explosions occurred, which
were blamed on the left. At the time, the fascist MSI played a
prominent role in the provocations. Now the chairman of the
successor party to the MSI, Gianfranco Fini of the National
Alliance, is Italian deputy premier.
Growing concerns
It would, however, be wrong to reduce the violent clashes
witnessed in Genoa to merely the activities of police provocateurs
and violent �hooligans �. Every international summit since the
conference in Seattle a year-and-a-half ago�Davos, Washington,
Prague, Nice, Quebec and G�teborg�has been accompanied by
demonstrations that have often ended in violent confrontations with
the police. The yawning gulf between the telegenic, artificial world
within the gilded cage of Genoa and the brutal scenes that took
place in the city itself says more about current reality than any of
the summit participants are prepared to concede.
The broad coalition of demonstrators�ranging from left-wing
radicals, environmentalists and Third World activists to Catholic
youth groups�reflects growing concerns over a society that is
increasingly careering out of control. Issues such as the enormous
divide between rich and poor, increasing worries about everyday
life, the destruction of the environment, the spread of devastating
diseases, and the social decay gripping entire continents have
unsettled wide layers of the population.
The government heads in Genoa are not only removed from the
cares and concerns of broad layers of humanity, they are also
gripped by a growing inability to confront reality. At the first summit
in the middle of the 1970s there was at least some serious
discussion on the problems of the world economy, even if one
could argue about the viability of the solutions proposed. In Genoa,
on the other hand, the main concern of the assembled heads of
government was to plaster over the problems and blame one
another when things went wrong.
Under circumstances where the US, Europe and Japan are
experiencing a dramatic economic downturn and financial crises in
Argentina and Turkey threaten to unleash an international chain
reaction, German Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der informed the press:
�Nobody is worried about a recession and there is no reason to do
so.� For its part, the American government declared that with
interest and tax cuts, it had created the conditions for accelerated
economic growth in the second half of this year.
The prevailing air of self-satisfaction led to exclamations of
concern, even within banking circles. The chief economist of the
Deutsche Bank, Norbert Walter, commented in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung: �In my opinion we are in a worse crisis than
the government heads are willing to admit. It seems to me that
whenever they meet they put on their rose-tinted glasses. They
neither clearly enough see the risks in those regions for which they
are responsible, nor the risks arising from the combination of
various factors at work inside and outside these regions. To put it
briefly, there is no mention of the crisis in developing countries
such as Turkey and Argentina, with its possible consequences for
Brazil, nor of continuing sources of conflict, such as Indonesia,
which taken together are too much for the IMF. No one in the US
and Europe gives any real thought to the virtually hopeless
situation of Japan.�
Val�ry Giscard d�Estaing, the former French president and initiator
of the first summit in 1975, was contemptuous of the proceedings
in Genoa. Half of the participants have not even read the papers
under discussion at the conference, he ridiculed.
Giscard makes a mistake, however, if he thinks this is merely due
to the personal inadequacies of the assembled heads of
government. Much more fundamental processes are at work, giving
rise to the paralysis at the summit and its lack of results�which
stood in stark contrast to the extravagance and ceremony of the
event.
Contradictions between the great powers
The process of globalisation has not only brought individual national
economies closer together, it has also dramatically intensified
competitiveness on a world scale. The contradictions between the
US, Europe and Japan have reached a level that makes it
increasingly difficult for them to come to an agreement, even on
minor issues.
The extent of the conflicts were made clear at the international
Climate Conference which was meeting in the German city of Bonn
at the same time as the Genoa summit. The central issue in Bonn
was to secure an agreement, first made in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan,
for the world-wide reduction of greenhouse gases. The agreement
was in danger following resistance by the US government, which
regards the deal as a threat to American interests.
Environment ministers from around the world who assembled in
Bonn had hoped for a positive signal from Genoa, where the issue
was also discussed. Their hopes were in vain.
Following a 24-hour marathon negotiating session on Monday, the
Bonn conference finally came up with a compromise. Together with
Europe, Japan, Russia and Canada signed a deal which can now
be put into practice without the US.
The emission targets set by the agreement, however, have been so
watered down that the final deal can only be regarded as a
monument to the inability of the assembled governments to prevent
a future global catastrophe. The original agreement anticipated a 6
percent reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases by the year
2012 (compared with the level of 1990). Now this target has
dropped to less than 2 percent. Scientists had already criticised
the original 6 percent target as far too modest to prevent an
environmental disaster, threatening the living conditions of billions
of people.
The Genoa summit also made no further concessions regarding
debt relief for the poorest countries. At the beginning of the
summit, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, had declared that the
fight against poverty would be at the heart of the meeting. But then,
under American pressure, the conference agreed merely that the
World Bank should in future check whether subsidies should be
given to poor countries, instead of credits. As long as the industrial
countries are not prepared to free up more money for the World
Bank, this decision means, in fact, that poor countries will receive
less money than ever.
On one point the summit registered a �success�, but even then this
represented a drop in the ocean. The participants agreed to provide
$1.3 billion spread over a number of years toward a global health
fund to fight HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. According to UN
General Secretary Kofi Annan, a sum of between $7 billion and $10
billion annually is necessary to combat these illnesses.
The opponents of globalisation
The protests against the G-8 summit were entirely justified. It is
necessary, however, to make a distinction between the motives of
the demonstrators and the political solutions proposed by the
various organisations that took part. Despite their different political
orientations, these groups fundamentally agree on two questions.
In the first place, these groups are united by their national
orientation. They condemn globalisation as such, and make no
distinction between the globalisation of production and the social
relations under which it takes place. In fact, the global integration
of production is, in and of itself, a progressive development: it
brings together millions of workers in a process of production
extending far beyond national and local boundaries. It has,
moreover, brought about an enormous increase in labour
productivity, and thereby established the prerequisite for
overcoming the problems of poverty and backwardness.
This integration of production takes place, however, under
conditions where the process of production is subordinated to the
profit interests of the major business and financial concerns. The
task, therefore, is to bring property relations in line with the social
nature of production or, to put it another way, organise production
in the interests of society as a whole. In order to attain this end, it
is necessary to unite workers and overcome all national barriers
that divide them.
The organisations leading the protests pursue an entirely different
perspective. Their answer to globalisation is a strengthening of the
nation state. A typical representative of the opposition groups is
the Frenchman, Jos� Bov�, who was generally at the head of the
demonstrations in Genoa.
Bov� is a radical intellectual who some years ago devoted himself
to breeding sheep and living the simple life in the countryside. Two
years ago he demolished an American McDonald�s fast food
restaurant in protest against US �junk food�, and has since been
regarded as a hero of the anti-globalisation movement. In fact, his
combination of anti-Americanism and glorification of the simple life
in the countryside is compatible with the politics of extreme right-
wing, chauvinist movements.
A second common characteristic of the protest groups is that,
despite their anger and disgust with the G-8 governments, their
protest is directed towards those in power. They seek to put
pressure on the government heads, and expect changes to take
place. This is at the heart of their tactics.
Their response to the evidently hopeless nature of this project is to
intensify the pressure, and devote their energies to ensuring that
the next demonstration is bigger, more effective and better
publicised than the one before.
They cannot envisage any social force capable of genuinely
changing society. They reject a policy of mobilising the working
class. Such a policy would require a political struggle against
those organisations that have dominated the working class in the
past�the trade unions, social democracy, Stalinism and its
various successor organisations�and have used their influence to
subordinate workers to the interests of the ruling classes.
The organisers of the protest demonstrations are not interested in
such a struggle because they fear it would destroy the �unity� of
the anti-globalisation movement and endanger their support from a
few trade union bureaucrats and influential politicians. With such a
perspective, the various protest organisations are driving the
movement into a dead end.
The profound gulf between the ruling political elite and the masses,
so graphically displayed in Genoa, provides the objective
prerequisite for the building of a new international, socialist
movement of the working class.
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World Socialist Web Site
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