THE EZLN IS NOT ANARCHIST: Or Struggles at the Margins and Revolutionary
Solidarity
In a future revolutionary period the most subtle and most dangerous
defenders of capitalism will not be the people shouting pro-capitalist and
pro-statist slogans, but those who have understood the possible point of
total rupture. Far from eulogizing TV commercials and social submission,
they will propose to change life�but to that end, call for building a true
democratic power first. If they succeed in dominating the situation, the
creation of this new political form will use up people�s energy, fritter
away radical aspirations and, with the means becoming the end, will once
again turn revolution into an ideology. �Gilles Dauve
The current restructuring of capital and its global expansion intrudes to
an ever greater extent in to the lives of those on its margins. Peasants
and indigenous people in non-Western, so-called �third world� nations, who
have maintained some level of control over their subsistence up to now, are
finding themselves forced to leave their lands or conform their activities
to the needs of the world capitalist market simply to survive. It is,
therefore, not surprising that movements of resistance against the various
aspects of capitalist intrusion have arisen among these people in many
parts of the world.
In previous issues of Willful Disobedience, I have written about the West
Papua Freedom Movement (OPM). This movement of the indigenous people West
Papua, many of whom continue to live as they did for centuries before any
colonial powers arrived, against their Indonesian rulers is quite clear
about refusing �modern life��that is, the state, capital and everything
that industrial civilization imposes. Or as they have said in communiqu�s:
�We want to be left alone!� But this is the one thing that capital and the
state will never grant. Although the OPM has sent delegates to demand talks
with the Indonesian government, the West Papuans are increasingly aware of
the futility of such negotiations. Recent communiqu�s talk increasingly of
fighting to the death if necessary. After all, succumbing to the intrusion
of capital would mean their spiritual death in any case. Their clarity
about what they do not want has probably played an important part in
guaranteeing that this movement, though armed, has never developed a
separated military body, but rather has fought using methods traditional to
their cultures. On the other hand, they have not completely escaped the
ideology of nationalism, or at least its use in an attempt to have some
credibility before world opinion. Still, this movement stands for having
very few illusions about what the civilized social order and its
institutions have to offer.
Another struggle at the farthest fringes of capitalist expansion is that of
the people of Bougainville, an island about five miles west of the Solomon
Islands, which has been under the rule of Papua New Guinea (not to be
mistaken for West Papua) since 1975. The people of this island were pushed
to revolt when CRA, an Australian subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc, installed a
copper mine, causing hundreds of locals to lose their homes, lands and
fishing rights, as well as destroying much of the jungle. The mine expanded
until it was a half kilometer deep and seven kilometers in diameter.
Protests, petitions and demands for compensation proved ineffective. So in
1988, a handful of islanders stole explosives from the mining company and
began to destroy its structures and machinery. When the Papua New Guinea
(PNG) government sent in its armed forces, the Bougainville Revolutionary
Army (BRA) was formed to battle the PNG military and their Australian
advisers. Armed only with homemade guns, dealing with a total blockade of
the island by Australian boats and helicopters and largely ignored by the
outside world, the people of Bougainville have nearly achieved autonomy. A
peace process began in 1997 and those PNG soldiers still on the island have
been confined to their barracks. An independent governing authority has
begun to develop certainly to give credibility in the eyes of the states of
the world to an autonomous Bougainvilleand this will likely have a negative
effect on the reconstructing of the community and the environment, making
it easier for Bougainville to be drawn into the world economic order. As
was said in Terra Selvaggio: The history of rebellion is much too full of
liberators who transform themselves into jailers and radicals who �forget�
their programs of social change once they�ve seized power. Nonetheless, the
small dimensions of the island combined with the absence of any urban
centers makes the process of construction of state power difficult. And the
determination of the people not to allow the mine to reopen is their best
protection against the expansion of capital on the island.
While the indigenous people of West Papua and Bougainville have not really
yet been integrated in to the capitalist market at all giving them certain
advantages both in terms of clarity about what they have to lose and in
terms of knowledge of the still mostly wild terrain on which they fight
other indigenous people and small-holding peasants who were already
involved in the market economy to some extent, but have maintained some
real control over their subsistence, are now seeing this last bit of
self-determination eaten away and are responding.
In India, groups of peasants have organized to attack genetically
engineered crops. Recognizing the genetic engineering of seeds and the and
the patenting of genetic structures as methods for finalizing the control
of multi-national corporations over food production, even on the
subsistence scale, these groups have attacked GMO fields and the property
of corporations like Monsanto. But by no means do these groups have a clear
critique of capitalism or the state. So alongside these direct attacks, the
groups also petition the Indian state to make laws protecting them and
preserving their place within the present social order. Their movement in
its present form remains a movement for anti-global reform.
Probably the best known of the indigenous struggles is the one happening in
Chiapas, Mexico. This struggle came into the light of day with the uprising
of January 1, 1994. The strength of the insurrection, the preciseness of
its targets and the general situation from which it arose aroused immediate
sympathy among leftists, progressives, revolutionaries and anarchists
throughout the world. The uprising was led by the Zapatista Army for
National Liberation (EZLN). The sympathy for this struggle is
understandable as is the desire to act in solidarity with the indigenous
people of Chiapas. What is not, from an anarchist perspective, is the
mostly uncritical support for the EZLN. The EZLN has not hidden their
agenda. Their aims are clear already in the declaration of war that they
issued at the time of the 1994 uprising, and not only are those aims not
anarchist; they are not even revolutionary. In this declaration,
nationalist language reinforced the implications of the army�s name.
Stating: We are the inheritors of the true builders of our nation, they go
on to call upon the constitutional right of the people to alter or modify
their form of government. They speak repeatedly of the right to freely and
democratically elect political representatives and administrative
authorities. And the goals for which they struggle are work, land, housing
, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice
and peace. In other words nothing concrete that could not be provided by
capitalism. Nothing in any later statement from this prolific organization
has changed this fundamentally reformist program. Instead the EZLN calls
for dialogue and negotiation, declaring their willingness to accept signs
of good faith from the Mexican government. Thus, they send out calls to the
legislature of Mexico, even inviting members of this body to participate in
the EZLN march to the capital, the purpose of which is to call on the
government to enforce the San Andres peace accords worked out by Cocopa, a
legislative committee in 1995. So we see, regardless of the fact that they
are armed and masked, the EZLN is a reformist organization. They claim to
be in the service of the indigenous people of Chiapas (much as Mao�s army
claimed to be in the service of the peasants and workers of China before
Mao came to power), but they remain a specialized military organization
separate from the people, not the people armed. They have made themselves
the public spokespeople for the struggle in Chiapas and have channeled it
into reformist demands and appeals to nationalism and democracy. There are
reasons why the EZLN has become the darling of the anti-globalization
movement: its rhetoric and its aims present no threat to those elements in
this movement who merely seek more national and local control of capitalism.
Of course, the social struggles of exploited and oppressed people cannot be
expected to conform to some abstract anarchist ideal. These struggles arise
in particular situations, sparked by specific events. The question of
revolutionary solidarity in these struggles is, therefore, the question of
how to intervene in a way that is fitting with one�s aims, in a way that
moves one�s revolutionary anarchist project forward. But in order to do
this, one must have clear aims and a clear concept of one�s project. In
other words, one must be pursuing one�s own daily struggle against the
present reality with lucidity and determination. Uncritical support of any
of the struggles described above is indicative of a lack of clarity about
what an anarchist revolutionary project might be, and such support is most
certainly not revolutionary solidarity. Each of our struggles springs from
our own lives and our own experiences of domination and exploitation. When
we go into these battles with full awareness of the nature of the state and
capital, of the institutions by which this civilization controls our
existence, it becomes obvious that only certain methods and practices can
lead toward the end we desire. With this knowledge, we can clarify our own
projects and make our awareness of the struggles around the world into a
tool for honing our own struggle against the present social order.
Revolutionary solidarity is precisely fighting against the totality of an
existence based on exploitation, domination and alienation wherever one
finds oneself. In this light, revolutionary solidarity needs to take up the
weapon of unflinching, merciless critique of all reformist, nationalist,
hierarchical, authoritarian, democratic or class collaborationist
tendencies that could undermine the autonomy and self-activity of those in
struggle and channel the struggle into negotiation and compromise with the
present order. This critique must be based in a lucid conception of the
world we must destroy and the means necessary to accomplish this destruction.
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