Subcommandante Marcos focussed this debate in the 1990s by his declaration that the Zapatistas refused, as a matter of principle, to fight for state power.
I don't want to attack Marcos too much, because in my opinion the real start of the anti-globalisation movement and the fightback against neoliberalism was the Zapatista uprising on 1 January 1994.
But Marcos and those who think like him are wrong to believe that anti-capitalist social transformation is possible without dealing with the question of state power, by simply turning your back on the state.
This can be seen by looking at some crucial contemporary social struggles. First, Argentina. In the last four years the social and political struggle in Argentina has been the most advanced in the world. When the Argentinean
collapsed in December 2001, a direct result of 'dollarisation' and extreme neo-liberal policies, the savings and livelihood of millions of working class and middle class Argentineans was expropriated. This led to a massive social explosion.
and Red Pepper sponsored a seminar entitled Strategies for Social Change, which featured a debate with libertarian author John Holloway. Phil Hearse spoke from Socialist Resistance: here is his
contribution
As a consequence a massive process of self-organisation developed, including the formation of neighbourhood and factory committees, the occupation of factories, which continued production under workers self-management, the piqueteros movement, and many other forms of struggle. Self-organisation on a massive scale, while all the capitalist parties and leaders were completely discredited. But where is this movement today? It has largely disappeared or even been co-opted into government work projects at poverty wages.
Naomi Klein wrote a widely published article in which she said the decline of the mass movement was because of the sectarianism of the far-left organisations. She claims they brought their ideological arguments and petty squabbles into the movement, and as a consequence the masses became bored and frustrated and went
I don't discount the possibility that there is an element of truth in this, but it is not the fundamental problem. The basic problem is there was no big anti-capitalist party capable of uniting the movements and struggles in an overall project for taking the power.
That's my criticism of the Argentinean left groups - that despite all the opportunities they failed to create such a party on a united basis, when they have had more opportunities in the past 30 years than in most countries.
The decline of the Argentinean movement is a massive tragedy because for a time in that country there was a real vacuum at the top, and an anti-capitalist way out of the crisis was possible.
Now we just have capitalist normalisation and the return of the corrupt and right-wing Peronists. As James Petras has put it,
"The original strength of the popular uprising - its spontaneous, mass, autonomous character - became its strategic weakness, the absence of a national leadership capable of unifying the diverse forces behind a coherent program aimed at taking state power." (This article is available at www.rebelion.com)
The same problem is posed in a different context In
In 2003 the Observer published a very interesting article reporting from the massively self-organised barrios in Caracas. People were taking over the schools and utilities like water and electricity, organising literacy campaigns and so on.
One militant told the reporter "We don't want a government like that of Hugo Chavez to represent us, we want to be the government." This article also told of some hostility to the Bolivarian circles among some barrio activists, accusing them of dragging politics into the struggles.
I sympathise with these feelings, but ultimately they are a dead-end and a trap. Why is there this tremendous Bolivarian process, this enormous level of struggle against the right wing and the bourgeoisie, in Venezuela? Because of the election of a left-wing government.
Where have all the resources come from for the literacy campaign, the pension and wage increases, the free children's breakfast programme? From the government, of course.
If you say we must turn your back on the state and power, then it becomes a matter of indifference, completely irrelevant, if Hugo Chavez is defeated in the right-wing referendum, because all that is about the state and doesn't COLCCI ES
In reality, if Hugo Chavez had been defeated in the August 23 referendum it would have been a massive defeat for the Bolivarian revolutionary process - there would have been a carnival of reaction. Vast numbers of the working class and the poor understood this and did not turn their backs on Chavez and their revolution. They in their millions to vote and deal the hysterical bourgeoisie, the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie and US imperialism a fearful political blow.
Now I don't say that Chavez, a left-wing populist, is the final answer to socialist transformation in Venezuela. I say we defend him against the right wing. But to progress towards the victory of the Bolivarian revolution the Venezuelan masses need to create their own self-organised system of national administration.
That's not turning your back on the state, that's creating a different kind of state and a different kind of power.
You can see the same thing in Mexico. The Zapatistas have created their own self-organised space in the highland villages of Chiapas, formally declaring their own independBill MacKeith and Liz Peretz Getting to the Forum HOW OPEN are "Social Forums"? Migrants were not much in evidence at this social forum, despite the best efforts of some people to improve access and promote discussion of migration.
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It is difficult enough for people on the margin of society-most importantly the poor of the "host country" - to get to such an event.
For migrants, the decision to hold the ESF in the UK with its strict border controls and Channel barrier was definitely not a winner.
The cost of entry and travel
municipalities in CIL September 2003.
But it is the product of very particular circumstances, of geographical isolation and the fact that these communities are defended by the whole of Mexican civil society. For the moment, it is too politically dangerous for the Mexican bourgeoisie to launch any kind of all-out attack. In the future, this could easily change.
However, autonomy has not solved the problems of the Zapatista base communities. They are impoverished communities, and the people there share the same problems of health, of nutrition and of living standards of poor people in may other parts of Mexico.
Because the Zapatista movement raises questions which cannot be solved simply at the level of their own communities, or even at the level of the whole of Chiapas. To bring the indigenous people of Chiapas out of poverty, you need social transformation at (at least) an allMexico level.
I will pose John Holloway a question. The Zapatistas have
created their own liberated zone, through their own uprising. But suppose the same
thing happened all across
Mexico - the masses rose up were further barriers and there was some confusion about the cost of entry for migrants: Was it nothing, or E10? Would paper identification be asked?
In the event there was no charge or identification required of migrants, provided they obtained one of the several hundred entry wrist-bands made available mainly via UK groups in solidarity with, but not run by, migrants themselvesexclusively by the ad hoc London-based Refugee Network, Itself not run by migrants.
(A condition of this provision was that the Refugee Network would obtain funding of E10 for each such ticket, mainly from trade unions: this it did, but only for migrants resident in the UK)
During the ESF the German migrant organisation, THE and took control of their own workplaces and communities.
Now, shouldn't these selforganised communities in Veracruz, in Monterrey, in Mexico City, in Guadalajara -shouldn't they talk to each other? Plan their futures together? Co-ordinate their economic plans in an overall plan of social development of Mexico? Elect recallable representatives to an all-Mexico assembly to decide these things? Co-ordinate their response to the massive counter-revolutionary wave which is sure to hit them from inside and outside the country?
Obviously they should. If
they simply turn their back on
the Mexican capitalist state
without replacing it with something else, the capitalist state will not turn its back on them.
But if they do create their own
national, self-governed coordination, than they will have
created what is the slogan of the
whole of the militant Mexican
left - "Un gobierno obrera,
campesino, indigena y popular" - a workers', peasant,
indigenous and popular government.
Not only that: they will have
created an alternative form of
power, an alternative form of
state. Exactly what Marx called
All photos: Greg Tucker VOICE, reflected these difficulties by holding a big meeting, in Germany, to mark its tenth anniversary.
On the Friday there was demonstration in Calais by and in solidarity with migrants, to draw attention to the difficulty of getting to the ESF.
On the same day, Waterloo Station, the Eurotunnel terminus and site of a small detention centre, was occupied by hundreds of people protesting at immigration controls. A significant topic
Migration, including migrant workers' rights, was the theme of some eight meetings within the ESE. (Many more dealt with refugees, anti-racism, and with other trade union questions.) Trade unions were involved in
the "Commune state'.
John Holloway rejects both
any alternative form of state
and any form of political party.
The refusal to form political
parties of the left, and a refusal
to fight for any alternative form
of state power, are both disastrous choices.
Today in many parts of the
world there is an enormous
crisis of political representation of the working class and
the oppressed, as a result of the
old social democratic and
Stalinist parties going off to the
right.
This threatens the presence
of the working class in the
national political arena, and far
from being positive, this has a
negative impact not only on the two of these.
The TGWU and GMBTU had stalls on organising migrant workers. Phil Hearse and Hilary Wainwright debated John Holloway (right)
national political discourse, but
on the struggles and mass campaigns as well. To see this, look
at the example of the Scottish
Socialist Party (SSP).
The SSP now has
deputies in the Scottish parliament and a significant electoral
impact (up to 10% of the vote).
Is this a bad thing, a diversion?
I don't think so. In fact the
activity of the SSP deputies,
who are always on the picket
lines outside factories, who
have led the campaign against
racist immigrations laws and
the Iraq war, and who are regularly being arrested protesting
outside the Faslane nuclear
submarine base, is a positive
factor in the struggles, and not
counterposed to it.
The shared "precarisisation" of both indigenous and migrant workers was a significant theme.
Equally the existence
Ridondazione Comunista in
Italy or the United Left in
Spain is, for the moment at
least, a very positive factor for six the struggle.
agree with Antonio
Gramsci: the political party is
the 'modern prince'. Social
struggle always strives to find a
political representation, and
this we cannot turn our backs
on. Today means not trying to
find largely mythical
autonomous spaces in which
we can try to hide from the
state, but building united left
parties on an anti-capitalist
basis to propel the struggle forward. Another world IS possible... but not without
revolution. April 2nd 2005: Second European Day of Action A very constructive workshop organised by the Barbed Wire Britain Network to End Refugee and Migrant Detention (BWB) and the National Coalition of Anti Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) attracted 120
It was addressed by three migrants: ex Yart's Wood detainee Lucky Jacobs, anti deportation campaigner Ms Zahida and a member of the Commitato Immigranti de Italia.
As a result of months of preparation in the months leading up to the ESF between groups in different countries, the declaration of of the final ESF Assembly of the Social Movements included the call for a Second European Day of Actions for
Migrant Rights to be held on
the 2nd April 2005.
This offers great opportunity for migrants and solidarity organisations to build on
the success of the first day of
actions last January 31sst,
when over 40 actions took
place across Europe, notably
by tens of thousands of
migrants in the
Mediterranean countries.
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