WTO Protests

When a small group of anarchists smashed downtown storefronts, the
media played it up in order to discredit the protests against the
WTO.  Since then, many of the messages posted  on WSN, PSN, and ABS
have emphasized the non-violent character of most of the protests.

I think that a focus on violent versus non-violent protest distracts
us from discussing other important issues related to the anti-WTO
protests.  I'd like to raise a few of those issues.

First, although it is great to see tens of thousands of workers marching
to denounce what corporations are doing to them, AFL-CIO head John
Sweeney and the leaders of the Teamsters, Steelworkers, Autoworkers,
and Machinists unions are demanding that the WTO and the US
Government protect American jobs by restricting both the movement of
production offshore to low wage countries and the importation into
the US (dumping) of products made in low wage countries.

For example, the Steelworkers Union has joined with big US steel
companies to oppose the dumping of low priced steel from Russia and
Brazil in the US.  The Machinists Union leadership  (the union at
Boeing in Seattle) has joined with Boeing management to implement
massive job cuts and the contracting out of Boeing work to prison
labor, while protesting European government subsidies to its rival
Airbus.

This patriotic (US nationalist) strategy put US workers in an
alliance with US capitalists and their political servants like
Clinton, Gore, Bradley, and Bush, because it amounts to a call for
protectionist measures that benefit US capitalists at the expense of
European, Asian, and Third World capitalists.  At the same time,
this strategy and the ideology with which it is justified pit US workers
against workers in other countries.

Whether workers march peacefully or smash store windows, they are
marching behind those who would mislead them into a patriotic
strategy of class collaboration with corporate bosses and Democratic
and Republican politicians who are trying to use the WTO for their
own class interests.

Second, many anti-WTO protestors  fear that the WTO will become an elite
international capitalist conspiracy that will destroy labor,
health, and environmental protection.  The first problem with this
view is that most of the workers of the world do not presently have
any labor, health, and environmental protection.  But the bigger
problem with this view is that the real danger to the world's workers
is not unity of the world's capitalists, but increasing division and
conflict among them.

North American, European, and Asian capitalists could not even agree
on an agenda for the WTO meeting.  Asian capitalists held their own
ASEAN meeting earlier.  European capitalists are mounting their own
efforts to keep US products out of their market and to compete
against North American and Asian capitalists in Latin America and
elsewhere.  Wars in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf have exposed
sharp divisions between capitalist countries.

Thus, the main danger to workers (and students and professionals) is
increasing inter-imperialist rivalry throughout the world,
intensified by the uneven development of the economic crisis that has
already shaken Asia, Russia, and Brazil.  This crisis can potentially
lead to decade similar to the 1930s, with a resurgence of nationalist
fascist regimes and preparations for a third world war.  That is the
biggest reason why we must oppose the WTO and all capitalist
organizations.

The reformist labor, environmental, and consumer groups protesting in
Seattle are not arming their members with this understanding.  Nor,
for that matter, are the anarchists.  They are not warning their
members that internationalist Democrats and Republicans represented
by people like Clinton and Gore and Bush and McCain actually
constitute the biggest long term danger of fascism and imperialist
war.

As we develop this understanding of where the world is headed, we
will learn how to smash capitalism, instead of smashing the windows
of Nordstroms and Starbucks.

Steve Rosenthal