”La apariencia de administracion profesional es en realidad la administracion profesional de apariencias.” - El Libertario.
***
Anti-globalisation has died a quiet death in its sleep…
Anti-globalisation has died a quiet death in its sleep…
Total ideologies and total solutions are obsolete. They became obsolete in the mid 1990’s. The anti-globalisation ‘upsurge’ of 1999-2003 was the last hurrah of the 20th Century Western Left. It is “objectively true” that “another world is always possible” and that such a world COULD BE built on the basis of “social and ecological solutions”, but it is clear now that the so-called ‘movement of movements’ calling on these slogans failed. It simply evaporated. The demonstrations against global capital and war became ritualised. Social democrat careerists penetrated the organisational networks and degraded the programmatic horizon to the level of electoral work in favour of the social-liberal wing of capitalism. These finks were aided in the process by “Trotskyist” opportunists more interested in selling their propaganda and paraphernalia than in advancing the cause of anti-capitalism. Former members of the Black Bloc mutated into armchair activism pretending to be “anarchist”, “feminist”, or “green”; illustrating what Situationist social critic Guy Debord once denounced as “the spectacle”. The Western Left has retreated to the ‘safe’ confines of Academia and Media. I do not mean to say that it is not worth it to read the works of Noam Chomsky or to listen to Pacifica Radio, to browse the pages of World Socialist Website or surf the Indymedia domains. All this is necessary to get “The Truth”. Yet, in doing so one must remember that one is interacting with narratives and symbols that have no objective substance.
The war is coming and there will be no ‘general strike’ to stop it. There will be no second coming of Lenin, Trotsky, Mao or Che before the tactical nukes and white phosphorus begin to hit. ‘Shake and Bake’ with no Soviets. The coming war will decide if the neoliberal capitalist world of the 21st century is going to be unipolar or multipolar. It cannot be both. Looking at the recent historical pattern it is likely that the Real War is just around the corner. The 2001/2003 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2006 Israeli war against Hizbollah (and subsequent asymmetrical warfare continuums) are only a precursor for the horrors that are to come. In all cases: The 20th Century Left is DEAD. It tried to save itself in the 1999-2003 period of anti-neoliberal ‘upsurge’ by co-opting information technologies and by modifying its traditional “class warfare” narrative with language and concepts borrowed from Ecology and Feminism; and it did accomplish in this manner the brief flash of an anti-capitalist mood – but it did not stop the imposition of neo-liberal capitalism (so-called “market democracy” sic.) as the official ideology of globalisation. The ‘Multitude’ of Negri fizzled out into the mass of consumers.
The bankruptcy of the Western Left
It is clear that the Western Left has no theoretical solutions; save to appeal to recycled social democrat formulas. Tactically it has become suicidal. In the United States, the “Turtle-Teamster” project opted for exactly this course by following Kerry in 2004. With the possible exception of the few principled elements who bravely followed Ralph Nader, the bulk of the “1999 Movement” of “Battle of Seattle” lore died on November 2, 2004. Kerry destroyed the North American anti-globalisation and anti-war movements – with the help of the anti-globalisation and anti-war activists themselves. The Democrat party was able to – once more- perform its systemic and historical role as gravedigger of social movements. The same process of co-option happened again in lieu of the brief upsurges of social outrage in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster and with the recent Immigrant Rights movement. As long as North American anti-capitalists and progressives do not take the step to admit that there is no “lesser evil” they will never advance. The United States anti-capitalist progressive community is still under the influence of Liberalism: The belief in “constitutional rights” and related illusions. “We The People” really means “We the WEALTHY people”. The United States anti-capitalist intelligentsia and progressive media workers know this fact, but they continue to prefer to not draw appropriate conclusions.
In Western Europe the official death of the upsurge came in the summer of 2005 with the Glenn Eagles-7/7 fiasco in the UK. A mixture of ritualised demonstrations in context of police repression (cynically dubbed “post-anarchism” by some), “Make Poverty History” co-option (orchestrated by Bono, Madonna and the Labour Party), and well-timed ‘false flag’ terrorism did the job. And it was over. Fast forward to 2007: “Everyone is a Feminist” has become fashion in the West European “left” café scene. Lately the German and French “Greens” are working closely with their respective neo-Conservative parliamentary counterparts in Berlin and Paris. There is a widespread and blatant upsurge of anti-Arab (and anti-Russian) racism throughout Western Europe. The term ‘Islam fascism’ is making the rounds in the editorial pages of the mainstream news media. The European presidency is fast working to introduce “American conditions” into the Euro zone, meaning that a wave of continent wide mass lay offs with no or drastically reduced unemployment benefits will impact the working class. The truth is that a depressingly demoralising form of lifestyle ‘anti-capitalism’ has become the norm among former anti-war and anti-globalisation activists. The social-liberals have joined the political Right.
Meanwhile – on both sides of the Atlantic- the targets of neoliberal repression and austerity – immigrants and the unemployed – find themselves with no organised movement to appeal to for redress. No hope but a crude survivalism in context of overall post-social erosion and grotesque narratives of “national security” and “generational war” …
Unless socially and ecologically concerned people (re-)act.
