Unite, organise, activate, solidarise
Attack capital at its heart
From the World Economic Forum, the bosses of global capital will go away
to push forward their plans for profit. What will we do? Here are some
suggestions:
1. Stay united. The bosses of the big corporations represented at the WEF
do not just come together to promote the cause of profit once in a while at
special occasions. They do it every day. If the alliances built around
S11-12 are allowed to fragment again into dispersed campaigns and one-off
actions, it will weaken us. The movement is diverse. There is no point
denying that. Only by making room for proper open political debate among us
will we develop a common strategy to unify large numbers. In the meantime
compromises will be necessary. But there are plenty of possibilities for
united activity. We need to build a movement as multifarious, as
nimble-footed, as little limited to set-piece spectaculars, as capital
itself, and one which also is capable of drawing in and offering channels
of involvement to every worker and to every person willing to ally
themselves to the working class in the great worldwide struggle between
capital and labour.
2. Capital is most vulnerable at its heart, where it is produced. The
power, the riches, and the new technologies of modern capital are produced
not by financial speculators or sharp sales managers, but by the collective
efforts of workers of many sorts. The profiteers appear as the active agent
of the whole process only because they can sustain a social order in which
the cooperation of labour and science can be expressed only through the
presiding voice of capital. As soon as workers become even halfway
conscious that we, not capital, are the creative force - and that we can
stop capital's flow of profit whenever we have enough solidarity,
organisation and determination to stop production - the rule of capital is
limited or endangered.
3. Day to day struggles. A drive to take on capital, not just in its
assembly halls and ceremonial chambers, but in the clatter and roar of its
production lines, means taking our cue not just from headline events in the
capitalist media, but also and primarily from the concerns of working-class
people in their daily struggles. It means a strategic priority for helping
and developing rank and file movements in the unions and workplaces. Many
activists other than trade unionists can contribute to this, supporting
struggles, building campaigns, making connections. It also means organising
working people in their community battles and arguing for the unions to
take up the issues of all the oppressed. 4. Global solidarity. In the 21st
century, capital is being reproduced much larger on a world scale; but so
is working-class resistance. In South Korea, Brazil, Taiwan, South Africa,
Zimbabwe, Indonesia and other countries, assertive new workers' movements
have emerged. They have fought not just on wages and hours, but on wider
issues, as in the Korean unions' recent strikes against sexual harassment
and the Brazilian Workers' Party's stand for lesbian and gay rights. Our
solidarity should be global. Our cause is not anti-globalist, but
anti-capitalist. Against capitalist free trade, we advocate not national
protectionism, or renewed economic barriers between countries, but an
international alliance to level up working-class conditions across the
world and to bring global wealth under common ownership and democratic
planning.
5. Organise the activists. The movement cannot afford to be dependent on
analysis and information from sympathetic but more or less detached
academics and journalists. Activists themselves need to develop core groups
which can combine activism with intensive analysis, research,
self-education and study. Capital can push ahead "instinctively" without
any strategy beyond its inbuilt priority of the bottom line. We have to
depend on the clarity of our awareness, vision, and strategic long view to
give shape and strength to our efforts. We are for the strengthening of the
organised revolutionary socialist groups in the movement - in the first
place our own, Workers' Liberty - and for debate, dialogue and cooperation
between them to build a revolutionary socialist party.
Workers' Liberty is a Marxist group committed to working-class
self-emancipation against both capitalism and Stalinism. We invite
activists to come and discuss, debate and work with us.
Meeting, 4pm, Sunday 10 September, at Cafe La Notte, 140 Lygon Street, Carlton.
Rendezvous for discussion, Monday and Tuesday evenings from 6 pm,
downstairs at the Bull and Bear Tavern, 347 Flinders' Lane, City
Website and online discussion forums, www.workersliberty.org/australia.
Discussion list: www.egroups.com/list/workersliberty
0416238840 PO Box 313 Leichhardt, NSW 2040
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