Chris Nineham’s article on the European Social Forum (ESF) in October’s Socialist Review lays down some important markers for the future of the movement. Opposition to war in Iraq is, of course, the priority.
The ESF in Florence is an opportunity to express that opposition on a Europe-wide basis, both in the three days of debates and on the streets at the Saturday demonstration. And the assembly of social movements on the Sunday should certainly take steps to co-ordinate future antiwar actions across the continent.
Chris Nineham’s general points are also widely shared in the movement the links between the ‘war on terror’ and corporate interests, between globalisation and militarism, the call to fuse ‘the energies and ideas of anti-capitalism with the power of the trade unions’, and to make the G8 summit at Evian in France next June a key target for future mobilisations.
But a couple of doubtful areas remain. These relate to the balance between campaigning against war and campaigning against neo-liberal globalisation; and with the way the socialist left positions itself and operates within the broader movement.
The comrades of the SWP have tended to make an emphasis on war the litmus test of what they see as the ‘radical pole’ emerging in the movement especially, according to them, in Greece, Italy, Germany and Britain. This, they argue, is in contrast to the ‘moderate elements’ like the leadership of ATTAC in France who ‘want to see the Social Forum as a kind of think-tank for social democracy’.
Certainly the ability to combine its traditional concerns with a clear stance against war is one reason the global justice movement survived and even grew after September 11. But there are several reasons why bending the stick too far towards the question of war could prove counter-productive.
Firstly it may not be the best way to mobilise a broad, sustainable movement. The ESF is part of an international movement and the precise balance between capital and war looks different from different parts of the world, even from different parts of Europe.
The balance between capital and war looks different from different parts of the world
For the Brazilian comrades who hosted the World Social Forum (WSF), the big success of this combination was that by taking a stand against the bombing in Afghanistan, the second WSF was able to help switch the international agenda back to debt, hunger, environmental destruction issues which Washington’s war on terror had hoped to sweep aside. For obvious reasons an attack on Iraq was not top of the agenda at the Argentina Social Forum in August.
When activists from across the Americas gathered in Quito, Ecuador, in October, to protest against Washington’s attempts to impose a Free Trade Area of the Americas, they were also protesting against the most important regional expression of the war drive Plan Colombia. But most of them see the key issue as free trade, and the military offensive as an adjunct to this.
In Bombay, Bangkok or Jakarta, there are other forms of armed globalisation that concern people just as much as, or more than, the threat to Iraq. When the Asia Social Forum meets in Hyderabad in January, quite possibly during the first phase of a ground war in Iraq, it will surely declare loudly its opposition.
But that will be expressed in terms of what the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva calls the ‘triple convergence’ between justice, sustainability and peace, which she believes represents the future of the global justice movement.
In Europe itself, some of the biggest mobilisations, like those in Barcelona and Rome, have been on the basis of linking anti-war and local anti-neoliberal issues (the environmental madness of Madrid’s water diversion scheme, labour market flexibility, and so on).
In fact Britain and the US itself, for obvious reasons, may be the only two countries where Stop the War/Don’t Attack Iraq, on their own, are the best slogans for building massive mobilizations.
As Chris Nineham and other SWP comrades have argued, this movement draws strength from its breadth and diversity. While most climate change, anti-GM, or trade justice campaigners will happily join in anti-war mobilisations when the need is obvious to all, they won’t stay actively engaged with a movement that does not give adequate space or importance to their specific concerns.
An attempt to turn the ESF into an antiwar movement may encourage a short-sighted understanding of the connection between capital and war, analogous to the simplistic argument put forward by many others on the left that attacking Iraq is mainly about oil.
But the ‘war on terrorism’ and the war on Iraq are part of a much more far-reaching attempt to reposition US imperial hegemony. Put simply, they are attempts by US imperialism to win back on the battlefield some of the terrain it had begun to lose on the economic and ideological fronts.
Of course it is, here and now, the over-riding duty of socialists to build the strongest possible anti-war movement. The September 28 demonstration was a magnificent step in that direction. However it could be a mistake to put all our eggs into confronting the beast on this terrain, whilst ignoring his weak points on the terrain of neo-liberal globalisation itself.
The US government may have used September 11 to force thorough a new round of trade talks at the WTO ministerial meeting in Doha in November last year, but it was a very fragile and incomplete agreement indeed.
Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South argues that the over-riding priority of the movement now must be to derail the WTO and to prevent the opening of full-blown free-trade talks at Cancun, Mexico in September 2003.
The cutting edge of this campaign, he believes, should be opposition to the obligation to privatise public services contained in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The fact that Tony Blair won on war at Blackpool, but lost on PFI, might seem to reinforce this strategic option. It’s a challenge that even the reformists of ATTAC have already recognized, by making GATS a priority for their campaigning in the coming period.
It is vital that the ESF in Florence moves to build Europe-wide networks and initiatives around core social issues, as well as opposing the war drive
This is a target the movement can achieve. If it does, the blow to neo-liberal globalisation, armed and unarmed, and to the states that promote it, will arguably be greater than anything that we can achieve exclusively through opposition to war.
Of course Chris Nineham is well aware of this. That’s why he also points, rightly, to the importance of privatisation struggles in South Africa, and why Globalise Resistance has taken the excellent initiative of helping to organise sessions in Florence on privatisation and unions, not to mention immigration, cultural resistance, and so forth.
In addition to a short statement against war, the assembly of social movements in Florence will also be asked to adopt a broader declaration against these neo-liberal policies, and possibly a third more specific statement targeting the EU’s attacks on social rights, coming from the Euromarches network of unemployed movements. It is vital that this ESF in Florence moves to build Europe-wide networks and initiatives around these core social issues as well. In the long run it will be these, even more than the indispensable co-ordination of actions against war, that begin to erect the scaffolding for a movement capable of convincing, not just tens of thousands, but tens of millions, that another Europe is possible.