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Updated from Paper to State and Society Seminar, Institute of Social Studies,
The Hague, October 23, 2001.
Peter Waterman
©
waterman@antenna.nl
www.antenna.nl/~waterman/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GloSoDia
Written before the Two Outrages (the group terrorist one against the USA, the state terrorist one against Afghanistan), this piece simply has to be updated after these events. I am not the only person whose fear it was that the variously named 'global justice, anti-corporate', even 'anti-capitalist' movement, would become the collateral damage of these twin militarist acts. I deal with this toward the end of this piece. But let us first consider how this movement looked before these obscene and primitive demonstrations of the darkest side of that brave new world order (promised to us during the Gulf War a decade or so ago).
I want to begin by distinguishing between the New Global Solidarity and the notion of 'Left Nationalism/Internationalism' (LN/I). It has been recently said that this is 'the movement that dare not speak its name' (Laxer 2001). I find this complaint paradoxical, given that LN/I spoke its name, deafeningly, in various left-nationalist dialects, for a century or so before losing all purchase on capitalist reality or socialist imagination, and then disappearing from all but ritual use. Which may explain why New Left Review, at the forefront of international Left thinking for 40 years, carried its first article on internationalism in 2001!1 However, as NLR is now emphasising, there is a growing internationalist 'movement of movements', against capitalist globalization. I want to differentiate this new movement from LN/I, 1) because it expresses a solidarity addressed not to the international but to globalisation, and 2) because the movements developing this solidarity are increasingly global in extent (with this including cyberspace). One could also argue, 3) that it is global in the sense of being holistic, whereas classical labour and socialist internationalism were and are capital-and-state-centric. Other contemporary writers (perhaps intimidated by attacks on universalism as ultimate evil or original sin, perhaps because they are concerned with other political arenas, values or goals) call the new phenomenon 'cross-border co-operation', 'transnational advocacy' or 'cosmopolitanism'. I prefer something a little more feisty, something in dialectical tension with the labour and socialist internationalism of the past. And something which, whilst in similar dialectical tension with Left nationalism, is less a threat to such than a condition for its existence. Or at least its reinvention in the light of globalisation. This brave new internationalism – these internationalisms for a brave new world of capitalism - have been dramatically demonstrated over the last few years by the following:
This was the headline over a French newspaper report, late-1999. The Battle of Seattle (BoS) not only contributed to the collapse of the World Trade Organisation conference. It was also projected worldwide, by the dominant international (i.e. US) news magazines! Seattle, the city, is or was a utopia of globalised, informatised American capitalism. Seattle, the event, revealed the contradictions of such a city (which in 2001 voted to accept and apply Kyoto!) and demonstrated its dystopian aspect. Life imitated art: the media cybercops, presented to the world in a dozen futuristic movies of urban decay and alienation, here demonstrated on the streets their ‘state-of-the-art’ methods and equipment. This was to brutalise not the handful who destroyed multinational retail outlets, but the hundreds inspired by the Gandhian ethic of non-violent resistance. Major damage was done to both the WTO in particular and neo-liberal pensamiento único (Spanish for 'There is No Alternative!') in general. What we witnessed in Seattle was not only a ‘cross-movement, cross-border’ alliance (two Indians from an international fishworker network were there), but one that was also cross-ideological, cross-strategy, networked, informatised - and cultural in form and content.
Cross-movement: The national US and international trade unions were neither initiators or leaders here, even if around half the participants were brought by the unions. That the unions did participate and follow demonstrates a new union mood in the US, a new realism and a new modesty. The BoS is going to be a constant reference in the struggle to further transform the US unions – and their internationalism. It is likely to play a similar role in moving international unionism in the direction of some kind of ‘global social unionism’.
Cross-ideological: Having ‘fix-it’ reformists and ‘nix-it’ radicals together in one place and time, and pointed in the same general direction (neo-liberalism, globalism, corporate capitalism), is quite a breakthrough. Having the demonstration and demonstrators named in the dominant press as ‘anti-capitalist', re-introduces into international politics a term that many international social movements and international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) - and specialists on such - have long avoided or even forgotten. If this sentence seems to contradict the ‘cross-ideological’ subtitle, then I would argue: 1) this is not your father’s anti-capitalist internationalism, because 2) there now many meanings to ‘anti-capitalism’: it is inflected in ecological, anarchist, socialist, humanist, pacifist, feminist and even liberal ways. Many of these found expression there.
Cross-strategy: Despite differences, and even mutual recriminations, between the fixers and nixers, the non-violent and pro-violent, over appropriate methods of struggle at Seattle, the BoS did seem to reveal the possibility for a combination of what would previously have been thought of in 1968 as incompatible or even opposed strategies. The leadership of the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO) marshalled their massed ranks away from where the non-violent resisters had chained themselves together to block the roads. They limited themselves to going down – in embarrassingly prayerful attitude – on their knees! It is quite difficult to imagine to whom or what they were praying. But there was both worker and union dissidence. The International Longshore Workers Union closed down the US West Coast ports for a day. And many workers and unions praised the Direct Action Network that was largely responsible for the sophisticated guerrilla action that literally ran circles around the authorities.
Communicational/cultural: Time ran a front-paged special feature on Seattle, and Newsweek did the same in both its English and Spanish editions. Although, typically, they concentrated on the violence, neither magazine did neo-liberalism any particular favours. Follow-up analyses in the mainstream US/international corporate media reflected, rather, the crisis of the neoliberal globalisation project, and the concern of hegemonic forces (state and capitalist) in the face of the anti-globalist alliance which their dogmatic arrogance has called into being. That the workers who formed half of the participants only received six percent of Time/Newsweek illustrated coverage, reflects less on ‘corporate media bias’ than on the failure of the unions to recognise the increasing centrality to social movements of communication and culture. The slogan, ‘Teamsters and Turtles Together at Last’, may have arisen from the streets of Seattle, but it was the turtles that got the media coverage. The BoS suggests as many problems for communicating internationalism as it does solutions. But these are at least 21st century and global ones.
It is capitalists rather than socialists who have put labour and union questions back on the international political agenda. Under the previous stage of national/industrial/colonial capitalism, workers and unions were successfully confined to their nation states and statist nationalisms (of business, liberal, social-christian, communist or radical-nationalist varieties). Deprived of such protection as these might have once provided, the labour movement has begun to confront the globalised, networked capitalism of today. The turn of the century and millennium has seen not only an unprecedented wave of labour protest against globalisation/neoliberalism, but an equally unprecedented wave of political, or political-cum-academic conferences on labour and globalisation. This is one significant meaning of labour as both a subject of and a subject for internationalism. Being a subject for internationalism means that other internationalists (ecological, feminist, student, academic, human rights) are realising that labour – too little, too much, the wrong kind, in the wrong place – is central both to globalist planning and to any post-globalist alternative. But, as we will see, this may mean more a recognition of profound crisis than even the beginnings of a solution to such.
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) held its Millennial Congress in Durban, South Africa, early 2000. Born on the Western side of the Cold War, the ICFTU now has 155 million members and can claim to have affiliates in all major reserves of the world's working class except China. Whilst making gestures in the direction of a general movement against neo-liberalism, and the necessity of restructuring the international union movement, the congress reproduced much of the pomp, circumstance, hierarchical ritual, and ideological dependency of the previous half-century of its existence. Lord Bill Jordan, a personification, willy-nilly, of the White, Northern, Male Industrial Worker that has long symbolised and dominated unionism internationally, was unanimously re-elected as ICFTU General Secretary. (His Lordship, and his lordship, also remind us of a deferential British labour tradition going back to the 19th century). His re-election, moreover, was with the participation of the major new radical unions of the South (Brazil, South Africa, South Korea). The ICFTU and its affiliates are still profoundly fixated on a set of institutions, procedures and principles – the national/ist industrial union, tripartism, collective bargaining, social partnership – from a capitalist era now passing. In their option between partnership with inter/national capital and inter/state organs on the one and the international anti-corporate movement on the other, the inter/national union organisations are still, as shown by Genoa, sitting on the razor wire.
The ICFTU is also, along with the allied international trade secretariats (ITSs), locked into a symbiotic relationship with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Often represented as a possible and desirable model for a future United Nations (UN) system more generally, the ‘tripartite’ ILO is actually an interstate organisation, in which state-approved organisations of employers and unions share 50 percent of the votes. However one considers the matter, the subaltern status of labour is here striking. In political-economic terms, we have 75 percent of power for the inter/national alliance of capital and state. In representative-democratic terms, we are presented with, say, one percent (the world’s capitalists/managers/administrators) having here as many votes as, say, the other 90 percent (its dependent working people). The ILO is dependent on nation-state acceptance, implementation and enforcement of its painfully-agreed norms - which the US loudly urges on others but quietly itself ignores. Moreover, the ILO is being either subordinated or marginalised by the international financial institutions that are no part of the UN system, but that have both money and teeth. The innovatory, bi-lingual, international electronic Conference on Organised Labour in the 21st Century, co-sponsored by the ILO and the ICFTU, and which began in 1999 with something of a bang, faded in 2000 with something of a whimper. It failed, precisely, to deal with the big questions confronting either of these bodies in the century to come.
In so far as the ILO represents a 20th century solution to the 19th century ‘social question’, it clearly needs radical reinvention for a 21st century in which new forms of labour go way beyond the unionised and unionisable (U-labour?), and in which labour questions are literally ‘out of control’ of nation states. One radically-democratic notion, that space be made in the ILO for a fourth party – for those international social movement and civil society organisations that attempt to also serve the growing ranks of Non-U labour - has, however, been dismissed out of hand. Not by the ILO but by the ICFTU’s Millennial Congress. In so far as this organisation wishes to be recognised as even one legitimate body for unionised labour globally, it will clearly need to break out of its ghetto. This, evidently, does not so much defend it from rapacious capital and complicit/complacent states, as isolate it from 1) the new dynamic international/ist social movements, and 2) from the flesh and blood workers – of all kinds – who have little demonstrable influence upon it, and often do not even know of its existence (the ICFTWho?).
If the most we can expect from these two 20th century institutions is that they will move as far as they are pushed (from below, from their margins, from the outside), what about the non-institutionalised international labour networks and conferences that sprang up around the millennium to discuss labour and globalisation? It is clear that the networking principle is the one both compatible with the increasingly real virtuality of a computerised capitalism, and with the flexible, creative, informative, egalitarian, mobilising, consciousness-raising role of a radical-democratic challenge to such. That these labour networks of dialogue and action have sprung up and taken independent and innovative form reveals the growth of grassroots, shopfloor and community discontent with the new world disorder, and an implicit learning from the non-labour movements. But participation in or observation of a half-dozen such events only reinforces my perception that the labour Left worldwide still largely inhabits the old world capitalist order. The increasingly common reference point of these events and networks may be ‘a new international social movement unionism’. But they still seem to be directed to the revival of an institutional form criticised by a Social-Democratic academic, Robert Michels, as it was taking shape 100 years ago, as exemplifying the ‘iron law of oligarchy’!
My strong present inclination is to see the crisis of international labour, labour internationalism or international labourism as structural in the most literal sense. We cannot – yet – do without representative-democratic organisations, any more than we can parties and parliaments (which should not prevent discussion of more popular and radically-democratic alternatives to these either). But we cannot expect leadership, inspiration, mobility and creativity from them. They are there, all of them, national and international, to negotiate, codify, institutionalise, monitor and enforce. But since we increasingly need the speed, flexibility and mobilising capacities mentioned above, we will need to recognise, facilitate and empower international labour networks and networking: within, between and beyond labour.
Kofi Annan of the UN, Juan Somavia of the ILO and Bill Jordan of the ICFTU may be possible figureheads of a Global Neo-Keynesian Civil Society, but seem unlikely ones for the new global solidarity movements. What, however, of the Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Rigoberta Menchú? And, if the traditional international labour organisations and institutions provide unlikely models for the new internationalisms, what of Mexico’s Zapatistas and the international solidarity movement connected with them?
The small, round, multi-coloured figure of indigenous woman human-rights champion, and her wide-selling, much-translated 1980s testimony, turned Rigoberta Menchú into an icon of the Northern peace and rights movements. Here was a female, indigenous, non-militaristic Che Guevara! Her late-1990s book, published under the English title Crossing Frontiers, reveals her development from a local heroine into a personification of the new radical-democratic and internationalist social movements. But when, late-1998, a North American academic produced a work revealing much of her testimony to differ from her biography, the left and democratic solidarity movement, in the Americas and Western Europe, was either confused or divided. There were those who simply defended the iconic figure, condemned the exposé (customarily as a service to US imperialism). And there were those who took a more nuanced view of Rigoberta, whilst still recognising her iconic role. David Stoll held his ground against those who denounced him and produced a thought-provoking argument concerned with the relationship between international solidarity, human rights and historical analysis. He assumed, however, that ‘solidarity’ meant unconditional-identification-with, and that it was ‘not a very good basis for scholarship’. He also seemed to think that ‘scholarship’ was the court of last appeal. I beg to differ. But, then, that is because I propose a more complex understanding of solidarity (in terms of Identity, Substitution, Complementarity, Reciprocity, Affinity and Restitution, of Axes and Directions, of Depths, Breadths and Meanings), because I see tensions where he poses oppositions, and because I think that from such an understanding of solidarity one can return to critique ‘scholarship’.
When the Zapatista guerrillas amongst the indigenous peoples of Mexico Profundo (literally: Deep Mexico) not only appealed to civil society within Mexico but both broadcast and narrowcast (video and internet) their internationalist anti-globalisation message, a broad swathe of the Northern left (from social-democratic politicians to libertarian anarchists) identified with them as embodying a new kind of social movement and creating a new kind of internationalism. Here, it seemed, was the first revolutionary movement of our globalised, networked capitalist society, employing the latest communication technologies to not only seek defence for itself but propose an international solidarity movement against neo-liberalism in general. Western left hyperbole, myth and metaphor were piled on top of that of Marcos himself. Quite absent here was anything other than identification with an ideal projected by the Zapatistas or created by their partisans. Critical voices – liberal, socialist, radical-democratic – began to be heard, in Latin America as elsewhere. Some claimed to be rational de-mystifiers – providing the name and history of Sub-Commandante Marcos (in which the Zapatista partisans were either uninterested or which they proudly avoided). Others questioned the tendency of some partisans to conflate Marcos, the Zapatistas, the rural poor and indigenous peoples, and even radical Catholicism and the local NGOs. Some young radicals who attended one or other of the Intergalactic Encounters found themselves confronted by behaviour - of Marcos himself, of the Zapatistas, of the encounter-organisers - that seemed to them at serious odds with notions of civil society construction. One Canadian videomaker, Netty Wild, even enabled us to see the contradictions within Chiapas, and the problematic response to her of Marcos.
So problems remain, particularly for solidarity on the North-South axis and direction. The Western left, which would be cautious, sceptical or downright suspicious of any would-be icon in the North, still seems to need its iconic figures, transformatory (and transformed) movements, its promised islands and highlands. And then to find them in faraway places with strange-sounding names. And to endow them with the purity, simplicity, unity, purpose and capacity that the metropolitan Left – until now? - felt itself to lack. The new global solidarity movements still need their exemplary personalities, exceptional movements, and poetic inspiration. But idolatry is clearly an invitation to iconoclasm. And Gods to be Worshipped inevitably turn into Gods that Failed (or, in the marginally more secular but still ritual chant of the Romantic Left, ‘betrayed’, ‘sold out’, ‘became reformist’, ‘got incorporated’). So we still need ways of projecting and celebrating such internationalist figures and movements whilst preserving our critical faculties. We have to relate to the exemplary figures - particularly if in far away places with strange-sounding names - as neither saints nor sinners but as compañer@s (an attractively ambiguous contemporary Latin American form, meaning colleague, friend, comrade and even sexual partner, of either gender). This is, evidently, today not only a necessity but increasingly a possibility.
I have said that the problem of labour and its internationalism is structural. I should have made explicit that it is, by this token, also procedural. I have suggested that the ICFTU best (i.e. most seriously) reveals this problem. Yet I have been trying – actually for two or three decades! – to square a particular circle by simultaneously de-demonising Traditional Institutionalised Labour Internationalism (TILI) to the (Old) Left and criticising it from the (hopefully Newest) Left. This has been something of a task, given the blindness to the existence of TILI by many of the new internationalists/isms, and the anathema heaped on it by those Left labour internationalists who do know of it. Most, if not all, past exchanges concerning labour, left and socialist internationalism, have been polemical: aimed at the destruction of (at least the argument) of the other. Or they have been ideological: closed to any other discourse, impervious to subversive evidence or counter argument. The major institutions, moreover, have traditionally used their positions of power, relative to members internally and to critics externally, to either ignore, denigrate or incorporate the latter. (‘Incorporation’ here means to include - selectively, in a subordinate position, and without full recognition – previously autonomous organisations, individuals, ideas).
In considering this problem, under conditions of a globalised, networked capitalism, it is necessary to make a distinction between debate, discussion and dialogue. Debate implies victory and defeat (appropriate to the simplified Class War, the simplifying Cold War). Discussion implies listening to the other. Dialogue implies learning from the Other, or reaching a new synthesis together with the Other. In so far as we recognise, that 1) there is no guardian or vanguard of internationalist verity, 2) that there is no pre-ordained or political-economically determined mass subject of such, 3) that we live under an increasingly complex and multi-determined capitalism, and 4) that reform and transformation are conditions for each other's existence, it follows that the construction of a new kind of internationalism requires dialogue. That means we need a listening/learning process within, between and without (outside of) internationalist movements; and that this dialogue must occur horizontally and vertically; locally, globally, and – of course - cyberspatially. Given the inequalities of power, wealth and prestige that mark the world of internationalism (not to mention the world), a precondition of dialogue must be for those with power to provide space and allow voice to those on the margins of such.
Today, thanks to the new electronic media (which include, it should be remembered, son et lumière as well as text), it is increasingly possible for marginalized minorities - and majorities such as women - to take voice and make themselves both visible and effective globally. Movements of indigenous peoples, surely the most localised of all, would not exist, and would have marginal national impact, if they did not form part of a global solidarity network. Being peripheral is no longer the same as being powerless. As someone who, in the words of Old Internationalist, E.P. Thompson 25 years ago, found himself for many years an alien not only within his own society but within major parts of the labour movement itself, I have been trying to engage with the ICFTU in particular and with TILI in general. The ICFTU carries out its lobbying and negotiating activities according to the rules of inter/state diplomacy - including a secrecy that simultaneously protects it from interference from below and beyond and obstructs effective appeal to such. In trying to simultaneously treat the ICFTU as significant, yet criticise it for failing to signify, I find it at one moment willing to carry on a public dialogue, at other times to impose confidentiality as a condition for access to information that should be available to the anti-corporate movement as a whole. I have had to break faith – at least the diplomatic kind – with it on the primacy of openness over confidentiality (except where arguably necessary and publicly argued). But, in so far as such disputes take place on the Internet, the odds are no longer 155 million to one. In cyberspace the parable of the emperor's new (in this case old) clothes takes on global relevance. Power can lie at the periphery (in this case evidently only a personal/political one). Traditional Institutionalised Labour Internationals will certainly learn that the alternatives are either continuing/increasing irrelevance, or engagement in public - and broad- or narrow-cast - dialogue with the new internationalists/isms.
I mentioned in passing that the new global solidarity is also a communications internationalism. If, in 1968, the slogan was 'The Revolution Will Not be Televised', since 1999 it seems to have become 'Don't Moan about the Media, Make the Media!' This new assertivity is represented by the well-known work and expanding impact of the Indy Media Centre – an object of particular police violence in Genoa. What, in the past, was a marginal academic recognition and project, shaped up, in 1999, as a ‘Global Movement for People’s Voices in Media and Communication in the 21st Century’. It is worthwhile noting that those behind this initiative were involved, 15-20 years ago, in a state-oriented project inspired by Neo-Marxist Dependency or Leninist Imperialism theory. Many of them were individually active, as lobbyists, consultants or researchers in the failed UNESCO project (backed by the Third World and Soviet Bloc) to create a New World Information and Communication Order. If certain states or blocs at that time recognised the importance of communication for power, this was not the general case for international social movements. A friend prominent in alternative communication complained to me, only five or six years ago, that ‘social movements do not see the media; they look through the media'. The Voices 21 document was agreed by the now-customary coalition of international networks, organisations and campaigns. Although the majority of the individuals and parties signing were from, or based in, the industrialised capitalist North, the declaration was preceded by five or more years of international conferences, sometimes taking place in the South, or being organised by and for women. And although, again, Voices 21 does not speak specifically of internationalism or solidarity, it exudes the spirit of both throughout:
This proposal calls for civil society and NGOs to form an international alliance to address concerns and to work jointly on matters around media and communication. We believe a new social movement in this field is need, and is ready to act internationally.
The need for such a movement is based on 1) awareness of the growing importance of mass media and communications for ‘civil society organisations’, 2) concern with media concentration and control in ever fewer hands, 3) the fact that state censorship is only giving way to a commercial one, and 4) an awareness that public influence is lacking here, not only in the South and under dictatorships but in the North and in democracies.
I have high expectations of this movement. Or perhaps I should say – bearing in mind that it immediately ran out of puff! – high demands on it. Voices 21 addresses itself to matters which are, or should be, or could be, of major significance to all radically-democratic movements. And, for that matter, to all citizens resistant to being reconstructed as consumers. The movement proposes to act at two levels, or in two areas, one having to do with co-operation between the relevant NGOs, the other with demands and activities in the following areas: 1) access and accessibility, 2) the right to communicate, 3) diversity of expression, 4) security and privacy, 5) the ‘cultural environment’. Within each of these areas there are activities related to the lobbying of (inter)state organisations and funders, as well as to the creative work of the alternative media, in the areas of radio, TV and video, the internet. With respect to the cultural environment, for example, the object is to develop ‘a culture of peace, solidarity and environmental awareness’. And if the project has lost its way on the long march through the media, there is nothing to prevent others from picking it up and running with it.
The terrorist attack on the USA, September 11, 2001, was not some throwback to a primitive stage of tribal warfare but a product, precisely, of a globalised networked capitalism (Ahmed 1998). This is not only a matter of its provocation by neo-liberal aggression and devastation of the world. Nor is it only the blatant and equally provocative hypocrisy of the USA, as the one superpower, in its self-serving interpretation of globalised trade, aid, ecological standards, human rights, arms production and sales. Nor does explanation lie only the triumphalism of Western Civilisation, in its dismissal of The Other. It lies also in the evident fragility and vulnerability of this global hegemonic project in the face of: 1) a small network, 2) operating globally, 3) using the latest and most highly-developed financial and communicational means, 4) turning against the hegemon its own means of production, transportation, construction, mass communications (Castells: Vols. I:454-61, II:302-3). 'Fundamentalism' (religious, nationalist, even socialist), as is widely known, has little to do with historical foundations, more to do with a search for collective security, identity and certainty in a world of increasing commoditisation, insecurity, alienation and meaninglessness (Castells: Vol. 1:16-18).
And, although the Northern response bears the marks of past centuries – the Crusades, the 'civilising mission' of colonialism, the militarist strategies of imperialism – it is marked also by those of a globalised networked capitalism. A GNC, at war, implies flexible global coalitions rather than the old treaty organisations. We now have an 'international division of warfare', in which the parts that play well on TV (or future movies) are carried out by the USA, the other bits by other states – or terrorists. Supporting roles are assigned to NATO, the United Nations and even the international aid NGOs (which have shown rather more autonomy, humanism and fighting spirit, in this case, than the trade unions). In so far as this network of war is in the service of a particular interest of the rich and powerful (whether that of capital, state, or 'Western Civilisation as Only We Know it'), and against any humane universal interest, its flexibility is also combined with vulnerability. This is a general observation. But, in the meantime, the hegemon is reclaiming to itself the political and moral territory it has lost, over the last few years, to a 'new global civil society in the making'. And it is even trying to identify the global justice movement with terrorism!
The response of this global justice movement appears (from observation of the international mass and alternative media) to have combined the following elements: first, fear that it might become part of the 'collateral damage' of this war; second, an understanding that in so far as the war was a globalisation war, the anti-globalisation movement must continue (some insisting that it must rid itself of its own 'militarists'); third, that it needed to articulate itself with, or even become, a world peace movement (Karliner 2001)! This attempt is fraught with predictable difficulties and marked by predictable differences and divisions. These can be seen most dramatically in the case of trade unionism internationally.
Even during six months of 2001, it has been possible to witness a growing openness of the inter/national trade union organisations to the global justice movement, marked by a decision of the ICFTU, re-confirmed after September 11, to coordinate, on November 9, an International Day of Action against the WTO and for some kind of 'people-friendly' globalisation. This decision was in coalition with a significant part of the global justice movement. But what was further unique and challenging about the project was that this was to be organised within the workplace. This is a site previously untouched by the global solidarity movement. And, although the motive of the ICFTU and its allies might have been to keep this demonstration both off the streets and away from the more militant members of the global justice movement (presumed to be non-unionists, unemployed and focussed on the streets or the media?), it suggested a dramatic expansion of both the points at issue and the place of conflict. (see my own and other materials on the Global Solidiarity Dialogue Group/List, for which see below).
After October 11, the US's AFL-CIO and the ICFTU went back into 'national-industrial trade union mode', lining up, respectively, behind the US flag and that of the International Coalition, whilst qualifying their subordinate status within Western capitalism by sanctimonious references to civilian deaths, or demands that the US not dump its costs on 'working families'. Shortly after this, however, the three new shining stars of the ICFTU, in the 'South' – the South African COSATU, the South Korean KCTU and the Brazilian CUT – all came out in opposition to the war. Their opposition, it should be stressed, was clearly expressed not in traditional anti-imperialist terms (though it might have been built on top of such) but precisely in those of the global justice movement. Whether or not such trade unions, and their allies within and around the Northern unions, will make this an issue within the ICFTU, or with the AFL-CIO, remains an open question. As does the future relationship of the ICFTU family with a global justice movement that is now adding to its banner opposition to this neo-liberal war.
Whilst the immediate future of the New Global Solidarity movement, and particularly of labour in relation to such, may be in the balance, it no longer makes sense to discuss this in terms of 'splits'. Networks do not 'split': they grow, shrink, divide (which is different, since it can mean adaptation to new needs), and they change shape. The 'split' – real or asserted – belongs to the period of national-industrial-colonial capitalism, and to the labour movement in the form of a national-industrial-colonial organisation (i.e. one defined by state-national belonging, by the industrial working class, and by union/party position on the international trade unions' own imperial-colonial spectrum). The 'split' also belongs to the ideology of national-industrial-colonial socialism, in which a range of quite specific and institutionalised ideologies competed for and often held the loyalty of parts of the working and popular classes.
The way in which differences within this civil society coalition may be worked out are suggested again by activity on some of the international/ist labour and left websites/lists (or at least the English- and German-language ones). The owners/moderators of these bits/bytes of cyberspace customarily have their own positions on these issues, sometimes expressed frankly and strongly. On the more focussed (or more-positively moderated?) sites, space is provided either for coverage of the varied labour and union news and views but also for open discussion of such. Whilst some of this discussion represents the projection into cyberspace of old ideological/political positions, there may be developing something more like the international dialogue identified proposed above. This debate/discussion/dialogue is taking place primarily in international labour's marginal or autonomous spaces, since the traditional union organisations customarily have no space for discussion – not even for their affiliates, far less for ordinary union members or the wider labour and social movements. (See sites listed below).
In the light of these two major human-rights crimes, it would seem as if the slogan issued by the first World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil, early 2001 needs amendment. Today we need to say not only 'that another world is possible' but 'that it is also necessary and urgent'. How the New Global Solidarity will recover and even grow from this disaster is yet to be seen. Also to be seen is whether the international trade union organisations will continue its rereat into 20th century forms (of isolation and impotence) or join with the new global social movement of the 21st century – and carry the movement into the globalised workplaces of new capitalist order.
In view of this current setback, and my earlier scepticism concerning Zapatista internationalism, let me end with a quote from the first Intergalactic Encounter, held in Chiapas, 1996. We surely need such declarations (made, it should be noted, three years before Seattle, five before the War) if our optimism is to be armed:
[I]t is of great importance to learn from previous international experiences. After the fall of the wall of Berlin, we do not need to fall into the temptation of importing revolutionary models. We do not have to fall into the error of creating new internationals like those of the past, with centralised and institutionalised commands. The international of hope can call for the co-ordination of mobilisations and the deepening of debates that develop in other parts of the world. This international has to be open to all, majorities and minorities, whether political, ideological, cultural, ethnic or sexual, that struggle for the transformation of the world. This international could equally be called a network of international solidarity; less important than the name, or a rigid organisation, is an internationalisation of hope in the exchange of concrete projects with immediate effect and support for other struggles in the world. These networks will have to communicate autonomously and horizontally. We propose an International of Hope, Struggle, Solidarity and Co-operation. Never has it been as difficult for a people to liberate itself, and that is why the international struggle is so important. Nonetheless, the base of the change has to be the struggle of each country, within its own experience and its own culture. (My translation - PW).
I like this appeal for its foresight and also because of its references to - not simply dismissals of - the past of internationalism. Despite the forward-looking nature of most of the paragraph, it ends with an echo of the Communist Manifesto and the national internationalism that followed. Within optimism of the will lies the seed of pessimism; within pessimism of the intellect lies that of optimism. The paragraph is an invitation - or at least a provocation - to a dialogue on the future of internationalism, on the internationalisms of the future. It is also a provocation to research. Who actually drafted, discussed and approved it? And following what process? Chiapaceñ@ smallholders? Armed Zapatistas? Rafael Guillén (aka Subcommandante Marcos) ? Northern solidarity activists…?
Peter Waterman (London, 1936) is a pensioned but not particularly retiring researcher/publicist, resident in The Hague. He is currently contributing to an international/ist research project on 'Reinventing Social Emancipation'. He coordinated the panel on Inter/national/ist Labour Net/Working, at the Global Studies Association, Manchester, July 2001. He also believes that the point is not only to critique networking but to network. Apart from articles and working papers, he has been involved in three more substantial publications in 2001(see Bibliography below).
Ahmed, Eqbal. 1998. 'Terrorism: Theirs and Ours'. Talk at University of Colorado. Boulder, 12.10.98.
Brennan, Timothy. 2001. 'Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism', New Left Review, Series 2, No. 7, pp. 75-84.
Castells, Manuel. 1996-8. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. 3 Vols. Oxford: Blackwell.
Laxer, Gordon. 2001. 'The Movement that Dare Not Speak its Name: The Return of Left Nationalism/Internationalism', Alternatives, Vol. 26, pp. 1-32.
http://groups/yahoo.com/group/GloSoDia.
Karliner, Joel.
'Where Do We Go From Here? Pondering the Future of our Movement,
CorpWatch,
October 11, 2001.
http://groups/yahoo.com/group/GloSoDia.
Waterman, Peter. 'Talking across Difference in an Interconnected World of Labour: The Roundtable of Trade Unions, Social Movements and NGOs on Labour and Globalisation, Bangkok 2001'. 44 pp.
Waterman, Peter (ed). 2001. ‘Labour Rights in the Global Economy’, Working USA (Guest-Edited Special Issue), Vol. 5, No. 1, Summer. Pp. 9-86.
Waterman, Peter. Globalisation, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms. London/Washington: Continuum. 320 pp. (Paperback Edition, New Preface).
Waterman, Peter and Jane Wills (eds). 2001. Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms. Oxford: Blackwell. 300 pp.
Waterman, Peter. 2001. 'First Thoughts on the New York/Washington Outrage 2001: The Vultures Have Come Home to Feed'. 12.9.01. http://groups/yahoo.com/group/GloSoDia.
Waterman, Peter. 2001. 'Aliens "R" Us (Not to Mention U.S.)'. 1.10.01.
http://groups/yahoo.com/group/GloSoDia
Relevant Sites
Global Solidarity Dialogue Group/List: http://groups/yahoo.com/group/GloSoDia
Global Solidarity Dialogue Website: www.antenna.nl/~waterman/
LabourStart: http://www.labourstart.org/
LabourNet Germany: http://www.labournet.de
1 This is an extensively edited and updated version of the preface to the paperback of my Globalisation, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms, Continuum, London, 2001. 2) For further sources, evidence and argument, see http://groups/yahoo.com/group/GloSoDia, 3) One of NLR's predecessors, The New Reasoner, did carry an item on internationalism in its first issue, Vol.1, No.1, 1957. Entitled, Simply 'Internationalism', this piece by an editor of the dissident Polish student magazine, Po Prostu, Roman Zimand, was actually a critique (courageous in the circumstances) of unequal relations between national Communist parties and states. During its 40 years of existence, NLR has carried some 20 articles on nationalism. The first NLR article on internationalism seems to have been that by Timothy Brennan (2001). But this is actually a polemic against 'cosmopolitanism', with token gestures toward an 'internationalism' that draws more from liberal international relations than from socialist theory or labour practice.
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