In 1999, in the aftermath of the June 18th global day of action, a pamphlet called Reflections on June 18th was produced by some people in London, as an open-access collection of "contributions on the politics behind the events that occurred in the City of London on June 18, 1999". Contained in this collection was an article called 'Give up Activism' which has generated quite a lot of discussion and debate both in the UK and internationally, being translated into several languages and reproduced in several different publications.[1] Here we republish the article together with a new postscript by the author addressing some comments and criticisms received since the original publication.

Give up Activism
One problem apparent in the June 18th day of action was the adoption of an activist mentality. This problem became particularly obvious with June 18th precisely because the people involved in organising it and the people involved on the day tried to push beyond these limitations. This piece is no criticism of anyone involved - rather an attempt to inspire some thought on the challenges that confront us if we are really serious in our intention of doing away with the capitalist mode of production.

Experts
By 'an activist mentality' what I mean is that people think of themselves primarily as activists and as belonging to some wider community of activists. The activist identifies with what they do and thinks of it as their role in life, like a job or career. In the same way some people will identify with their job as a doctor or a teacher, and instead of it being something they just happen to be doing, it becomes an essential part of their self-image.

The activist is a specialist or an expert in social change. To think of yourself as being an activist means to think of yourself as being somehow privileged or more advanced than others in your appreciation of the need for social change, in the knowledge of how to achieve it and as leading or being in the forefront of the practical struggle to create this change.

Activism, like all expert roles, has its basis in the division of labour - it is a specialised separate task. The division of labour is the foundation of class society, the fundamental division being that between mental and manual labour. The division of labour operates, for example, in medicine or education - instead of healing and bringing up kids being common knowledge and tasks that everyone has a hand in, this knowledge becomes the specialised property of doctors and teachers - experts that we must rely on to do these things for us. Experts jealously guard and mystify the skills they have. This keeps people separated and disempowered and reinforces hierarchical class society.

A division of labour implies that one person takes on a role on behalf of many others who relinquish this responsibility. A separation of tasks means that other people will grow your food and make your clothes and supply your electricity while you get on with achieving social change. The activist, being an expert in social change, assumes that other people aren't doing anything to change their lives and so feels a duty or a responsibility to do it on their behalf. Activists think they are compensating for the lack of activity by others. Defining ourselves as activists means defining our actions as the ones which will bring about social change, thus disregarding the activity of thousands upon thousands of other non-activists. Activism is based on this misconception that it is only activists who do social change - whereas of course class struggle is happening all the time.

Form and Content
The tension between the form of 'activism' in which our political activity appears and its increasingly radical content has only been growing over the last few years. The background of a lot of the people involved in June 18th is of being 'activists' who 'campaign' on an 'issue'. The political progress that has been made in the activist scene over the last few years has resulted in a situation where many people have moved beyond single issue campaigns against specific companies or developments to a rather ill-defined yet nonetheless promising anti-capitalist perspective. Yet although the content of the campaigning activity has altered, the form of activism has not. So instead of taking on Monsanto and going to their headquarters and occupying it, we have now seen beyond the single facet of capital represented by Monsanto and so develop a 'campaign' against capitalism. And where better to go and occupy than what is perceived as being the headquarters of capitalism - the City?

Our methods of operating are still the same as if we were taking on a specific corporation or development, despite the fact that capitalism is not at all the same sort of thing and the ways in which one might bring down a particular company are not at all the same as the ways in which you might bring down capitalism. For example, vigorous campaigning by animal rights activists has succeeded in wrecking both Consort dog breeders and Hillgrove Farm cat breeders. The businesses were ruined and went into receivership. Similarly the campaign waged against arch-vivisectionists Huntingdon Life Sciences succeeded in reducing their share price by 33%, but the company just about managed to survive by running a desperate PR campaign in the City to pick up prices.[2] Activism can very successfully accomplish bringing down a business, yet to bring down capitalism a lot more will be required than to simply extend this sort of activity to every business in every sector. Similarly with the targetting of butcher's shops by animal rights activists, the net result is probably only to aid the supermarkets in closing down all the small butcher's shops, thus assisting the process of competition and the 'natural selection' of the marketplace. Thus activists often succeed in destroying one small business while strengthening capital overall.

A similar thing applies with anti-roads activism. Wide-scale anti-roads protests have created opportunities for a whole new sector of capitalism - security, surveillance, tunnellers, climbers, experts and consultants. We are now one 'market risk' among others to be taken into account when bidding for a roads contract. We may have actually assisted the rule of market forces, by forcing out the companies that are weakest and least able to cope. Protest-bashing consultant Amanda Webster says: "The advent of the protest movement will actually provide market advantages to those contractors who can handle it effectively."[3] Again activism can bring down a business or stop a road but capitalism carries merrily on, if anything stronger than before.

These things are surely an indication, if one were needed, that tackling capitalism will require not only a quantitative change (more actions, more activists) but a qualitative one (we need to discover some more effective form of operating). It seems we have very little idea of what it might actually require to bring down capitalism. As if all it needed was some sort of critical mass of activists occupying offices to be reached and then we'd have a revolution...

The form of activism has been preserved even while the content of this activity has moved beyond the form that contains it. We still think in terms of being 'activists' doing a 'campaign' on an 'issue', and because we are 'direct action' activists we will go and 'do an action' against our target. The method of campaigning against specific developments or single companies has been carried over into this new thing of taking on capitalism. We're attempting to take on capitalism and conceptualising what we're doing in completely inappropriate terms, utilising a method of operating appropriate to liberal reformism. So we have the bizarre spectacle of 'doing an action' against capitalism - an utterly inadequate practice.

Roles
The role of the 'activist' is a role we adopt just like that of policeman, parent or priest - a strange psychological form we use to define ourselves and our relation to others. The 'activist' is a specialist or an expert in social change - yet the harder we cling to this role and notion of what we are, the more we actually impede the change we desire. A real revolution will involve the breaking out of all preconceived roles and the destruction of all specialism - the reclamation of our lives. The seizing control over our own destinies which is the act of revolution will involve the creation of new selves and new forms of interaction and community. 'Experts' in anything can only hinder this.

The Situationist International developed a stringent critique of roles and particularly the role of 'the militant'. Their criticism was mainly directed against leftist and social-democratic ideologies because that was mainly what they encountered. Although these forms of alienation still exist and are plain to be seen, in our particular milieu it is the liberal activist we encounter more often than the leftist militant. Nevertheless, they share many features in common (which of course is not surprising).

The Situationist Raoul Vaneigem defined roles like this: "Stereotypes are the dominant images of a period... The stereotype is the model of the role; the role is a model form of behaviour. The repetition of an attitude creates a role." To play a role is to cultivate an appearance to the neglect of everything authentic: "we succumb to the seduction of borrowed attitudes." As role-players we dwell in inauthenticity - reducing our lives to a string of clichés - "breaking [our] day down into a series of poses chosen more or less unconsciously from the range of dominant stereotypes."[4] This process has been at work since the early days of the anti-roads movement. At Twyford Down after Yellow Wednesday in December 92, press and media coverage focused on the Dongas Tribe and the dreadlocked countercultural aspect of the protests. Initially this was by no means the predominant element - there was a large group of ramblers at the eviction for example.[5] But people attracted to Twyford by the media coverage thought every single person there had dreadlocks. The media coverage had the effect of making 'ordinary' people stay away and more dreadlocked countercultural types turned up - decreasing the diversity of the protests. More recently, a similar thing has happened in the way in which people drawn to protest sites by the coverage of Swampy they had seen on TV began to replicate in their own lives the attitudes presented by the media as characteristic of the role of the 'eco-warrior'.[6]

"Just as the passivity of the consumer is an active passivity, so the passivity of the spectator lies in his ability to assimilate roles and play them according to official norms. The repetition of images and stereotypes offers a set of models from which everyone is supposed to choose a role."[7] The role of the militant or activist is just one of these roles, and therein, despite all the revolutionary rhetoric that goes with the role, lies its ultimate conservatism.

The supposedly revolutionary activity of the activist is a dull and sterile routine - a constant repetition of a few actions with no potential for change. Activists would probably resist change if it came because it would disrupt the easy certainties of their role and the nice little niche they've carved out for themselves. Like union bosses, activists are eternal representatives and mediators. In the same way as union leaders would be against their workers actually succeeding in their struggle because this would put them out of a job, the role of the activist is threatened by change. Indeed revolution, or even any real moves in that direction, would profoundly upset activists by depriving them of their role. If everyone is becoming revolutionary then you're not so special anymore, are you?

So why do we behave like activists? Simply because it's the easy cowards' option? It is easy to fall into playing the activist role because it fits into this society and doesn't challenge it - activism is an accepted form of dissent. Even if as activists we are doing things which are not accepted and are illegal, the form of activism itself - the way it is like a job - means that it fits in with our psychology and our upbringing. It has a certain attraction precisely because it is not revolutionary.

We Don't Need Any More Martyrs
The key to understanding both the role of the militant and the activist is self-sacrifice - the sacrifice of the self to 'the cause' which is seen as being separate from the self. This of course has nothing to do with real revolutionary activity which is the seizing of the self. Revolutionary martyrdom goes together with the identification of some cause separate from one's own life - an action against capitalism which identifies capitalism as 'out there' in the City is fundamentally mistaken - the real power of capital is right here in our everyday lives - we re-create its power every day because capital is not a thing but a social relation between people (and hence classes) mediated by things.

Of course I am not suggesting that everyone who was involved in June 18th shares in the adoption of this role and the self-sacrifice that goes with it to an equal extent. As I said above, the problem of activism was made particularly apparent by June 18th precisely because it was an attempt to break from these roles and our normal ways of operating. Much of what is outlined here is a 'worst case scenario' of what playing the role of an activist can lead to. The extent to which we can recognise this within our own movement will give us an indication of how much work there is still to be done.

The activist makes politics dull and sterile and drives people away from it, but playing the role also fucks up the activist herself. The role of the activist creates a separation between ends and means: self-sacrifice means creating a division between the revolution as love and joy in the future but duty and routine now. The worldview of activism is dominated by guilt and duty because the activist is not fighting for herself but for a separate cause: "All causes are equally inhuman."[8]

As an activist you have to deny your own desires because your political activity is defined such that these things do not count as 'politics'. You put 'politics' in a separate box to the rest of your life - it's like a job... you do 'politics' 9-5 and then go home and do something else. Because it is in this separate box, 'politics' exists unhampered by any real-world practical considerations of effectiveness. The activist feels obliged to keep plugging away at the same old routine unthinkingly, unable to stop or consider, the main thing being that the activist is kept busy and assuages her guilt by banging her head against a brick wall if necessary.

Part of being revolutionary might be knowing when to stop and wait. It might be important to know how and when to strike for maximum effectiveness and also how and when NOT to strike. Activists have this 'We must do something NOW!' attitude that seems fuelled by guilt. This is completely untactical.

The self-sacrifice of the militant or the activist is mirrored in their power over others as an expert - like a religion there is a kind of hierarchy of suffering and self-righteousness. The activist assumes power over others by virtue of her greater degree of suffering ('non-hierarchical' activist groups in fact form a 'dictatorship of the most committed'). The activist uses moral coercion and guilt to wield power over others less experienced in the theology of suffering. Their subordination of themselves goes hand in hand with their subordination of others - all enslaved to 'the cause'. Self-sacrificing politicos stunt their own lives and their own will to live - this generates a bitterness and an antipathy to life which is then turned outwards to wither everything else. They are "great despisers of life... the partisans of absolute self-sacrifice... their lives twisted by their monsterous asceticism."[9] We can see this in our own movement, for example on site, in the antagonism between the desire to sit around and have a good time versus the guilt-tripping build/fortify/barricade work ethic and in the sometimes excessive passion with which 'lunchouts' are denounced. The self-sacrificing martyr is offended and outraged when she sees others that are not sacrificing themselves. Like when the 'honest worker' attacks the scrounger or the layabout with such vitriol, we know it is actually because she hates her job and the martyrdom she has made of her life and therefore hates to see anyone escape this fate, hates to see anyone enjoying themselves while she is suffering - she must drag everyone down into the muck with her - an equality of self-sacrifice.

In the old religious cosmology, the successful martyr went to heaven. In the modern worldview, successful martyrs can look forward to going down in history. The greatest self-sacrifice, the greatest success in creating a role (or even better, in devising a whole new one for people to emulate - e.g. the eco-warrior) wins a reward in history - the bourgeois heaven.

The old left was quite open in its call for heroic sacrifice: "Sacrifice yourselves joyfully, brothers and sisters! For the Cause, for the Established Order, for the Party, for Unity, for Meat and Potatoes!"[10] But these days it is much more veiled: Vaneigem accuses "young leftist radicals" of "enter[ing] the service of a Cause - the 'best' of all Causes. The time they have for creative activity they squander on handing out leaflets, putting up posters, demonstrating or heckling local politicians. They become militants, fetishising action because others are doing their thinking for them."[11]

This resounds with us - particularly the thing about the fetishising of action - in left groups the militants are left free to engage in endless busywork because the group leader or guru has the 'theory' down pat, which is just accepted and lapped up - the 'party line'. With direct action activists it's slightly different - action is fetishised, but more out of an aversion to any theory whatsoever.

Although it is present, that element of the activist role which relies on self-sacrifice and duty was not so significant in June 18th. What is more of an issue for us is the feeling of separateness from 'ordinary people' that activism implies. People identify with some weird sub-culture or clique as being 'us' as opposed to the 'them' of everyone else in the world.

Isolation
The activist role is a self-imposed isolation from all the people we should be connecting to. Taking on the role of an activist separates you from the rest of the human race as someone special and different. People tend to think of their own first person plural (who are you referring to when you say 'we'?) as referring to some community of activists, rather than a class. For example, for some time now in the activist milieu it has been popular to argue for 'no more single issues' and for the importance of 'making links'. However, many people's conception of what this involved was to 'make links' with other activists and other campaign groups. June 18th demonstrated this quite well, the whole idea being to get all the representatives of all the various different causes or issues in one place at one time, voluntarily relegating ourselves to the ghetto of good causes.

Similarly, the various networking forums that have recently sprung up around the country - the Rebel Alliance in Brighton, NASA in Nottingham, Riotous Assembly in Manchester, the London Underground etc. have a similar goal - to get all the activist groups in the area talking to each other. I'm not knocking this - it is an essential pre-requisite for any further action, but it should be recognised for the extremely limited form of 'making links' that it is. It is also interesting in that what the groups attending these meetings have in common is that they are activist groups - what they are actually concerned with seems to be a secondary consideration.

It is not enough merely to seek to link together all the activists in the world, neither is it enough to seek to transform more people into activists. Contrary to what some people may think, we will not be any closer to a revolution if lots and lots of people become activists. Some people seem to have the strange idea that what is needed is for everyone to be somehow persuaded into becoming activists like us and then we'll have a revolution. Vaneigem says: "Revolution is made everyday despite, and in opposition to, the specialists of revolution."[12]

The militant or activist is a specialist in social change or revolution. The specialist recruits others to her own tiny area of specialism in order to increase her own power and thus dispel the realisation of her own powerlessness. "The specialist... enrols himself in order to enrol others."[13] Like a pyramid selling scheme, the hierarchy is self-replicating - you are recruited and in order not to be at the bottom of the pyramid, you have to recruit more people to be under you, who then do exactly the same. The reproduction of the alienated society of roles is accomplished through specialists.

Jacques Camatte in his essay 'On Organization'[14] makes the astute point that political groupings often end up as "gangs" defining themselves by exclusion - the group member's first loyalty becomes to the group rather than to the struggle. His critique applies especially to the myriad of Left sects and groupuscules at which it was directed but it applies also to a lesser extent to the activist mentality.

The political group or party substitutes itself for the proletariat and its own survival and reproduction become paramount - revolutionary activity becomes synonymous with 'building the party' and recruiting members. The group takes itself to have a unique grasp on truth and everyone outside the group is treated like an idiot in need of education by this vanguard. Instead of an equal debate between comrades we get instead the separation of theory and propaganda, where the group has its own theory, which is almost kept secret in the belief that the inherently less mentally able punters must be lured in the organisation with some strategy of populism before the politics are sprung on them by surprise. This dishonest method of dealing with those outside of the group is similar to a religious cult - they will never tell you upfront what they are about.

We can see here some similarities with activism, in the way that the activist milieu acts like a leftist sect. Activism as a whole has some of the characteristics of a "gang". Activist gangs can often end up being cross-class alliances, including all sorts of liberal reformists because they too are 'activists'. People think of themselves primarily as activists and their primary loyalty becomes to the community of activists and not to the struggle as such. The "gang" is illusory community, distracting us from creating a wider community of resistance. The essence of Camatte's critique is an attack on the creation of an interior/exterior division between the group and the class. We come to think of ourselves as being activists and therefore as being separate from and having different interests from the mass of working class people.

Our activity should be the immediate expression of a real struggle, not the affirmation of the separateness and distinctness of a particular group. In Marxist groups the possession of 'theory' is the all-important thing determining power - it's different in the activist milieu, but not that different - the possession of the relevant 'social capital' - knowledge, experience, contacts, equipment etc. is the primary thing determining power.

Activism reproduces the structure of this society in its operations: "When the rebel begins to believe that he is fighting for a higher good, the authoritarian principle gets a fillip."[15] This is no trivial matter, but is at the basis of capitalist social relations. Capital is a social relation between people mediated by things - the basic principle of alienation is that we live our lives in the service of some thing that we ourselves have created. If we reproduce this structure in the name of politics that declares itself anti-capitalist, we have lost before we have begun. You cannot fight alienation by alienated means.

A Modest Proposal
This is a modest proposal that we should develop ways of operating that are adequate to our radical ideas. This task will not be easy and the writer of this short piece has no clearer insight into how we should go about this than anyone else. I am not arguing that June 18th should have been abandoned or attacked, indeed it was a valiant attempt to get beyond our limitations and to create something better than what we have at present. However, in its attempts to break with antique and formulaic ways of doing things it has made clear the ties that still bind us to the past. The criticisms of activism that I have expressed above do not all apply to June 18th. However there is a certain paradigm of activism which at its worst includes all that I have outlined above and June 18th shared in this paradigm to a certain extent. To exactly what extent is for you to decide.

Activism is a form partly forced upon us by weakness. Like the joint action taken by Reclaim the Streets and the Liverpool dockers - we find ourselves in times in which radical politics is often the product of mutual weakness and isolation. If this is the case, it may not even be within our power to break out of the role of activists. It may be that in times of a downturn in struggle, those who continue to work for social revolution become marginalised and come to be seen (and to see themselves) as a special separate group of people. It may be that this is only capable of being corrected by a general upsurge in struggle when we won't be weirdos and freaks any more but will seem simply to be stating what is on everybody's minds. However, to work to escalate the struggle it will be necessary to break with the role of activists to whatever extent is possible - to constantly try to push at the boundaries of our limitations and constraints.

Historically, those movements that have come the closest to de-stabilising or removing or going beyond capitalism have not at all taken the form of activism. Activism is essentially a political form and a method of operating suited to liberal reformism that is being pushed beyond its own limits and used for revolutionary purposes. The activist role in itself must be problematic for those who desire social revolution..

Notes
1) To my knowledge the article has been translated into French and published in Je sais tout (Association des 26-Cantons, 8, rue Lissignol CH-1201 Genève, Suisse) and in Échanges No. 93 (BP 241, 75866 Paris Cedex 18, France). It has been translated into Spanish and published in Ekintza Zuzena (Ediciones E.Z., Apdo. 235, 48080 Bilbo (Bizkaia), Spanish State). It has been republished in America in Collective Action Notes No. 16-17 (CAN, POB 22962, Baltimore, MD 21203, USA) and in the UK in Organise! No. 54 (AF, c/o 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX, UK). It is also available on-line at: http://www.infoshop.org/octo/j18_rts1.html#give_up and http://tierra.ucsd.edu/~acf/online/j18/reflec1.html#GIVE If anyone knows of any other places it has been reproduced or critiqued, I would be grateful to hear of them, via Do or Die.

2) Squaring up to the Square Mile: A Rough Guide to the City of London (J18 Publications (UK), 1999) p.8

3) 'Direct Action: Six Years Down the Road' in Do or Die No. 7, p.3

4) Raoul Vaneigem - The Revolution of Everyday Life, (Left Bank Books/Rebel Press, 1994) - first published 1967, pp.131-3

5) 'The Day they Drove Twyford Down' in Do or Die No. 1, p.11

6) 'Personality Politics: The Spectacularisation of Fairmile' in Do or Die No. 7, p.35

7) Op. Cit. 4, p.128

8) Op. Cit. 4, p.107

9) Op. Cit. 4, p.109

10) Op. Cit. 4, p.108

11) Op. Cit. 4, p.109

12) Op. Cit. 4, p.111

13) Op. Cit. 4, p.143

14) Jacques Camatte - 'On Organization' (1969) in This World We Must Leave and Other Essays (New York, Autonomedia, 1995)

15) Op. Cit. 4, p.110

June 18th in the UK indicated once more that we have yet to realise the impasse contained in a politics of carnival expressed in the form of a street party. Indeed, I am going to suggest that the very concept of the street party is, in its current guise, part of the difficulty, a contributory factor to the spectacularisation of resistance which celebrates an idea of 'party as protest', thereby repeatedly mobilising the same constituency, without appealing beyond a narrow sub-cultural ghetto. Where, in the past, our critique has successfully illuminated the staid and self-disciplined marches of other social movements, the purpose of which appears to all intents and purposes to be the alienation of those participating, I want to suggest that we are now in a similar position, having imposed our own self discipline in what amounts to a carceral continuum of 'protest'. 'Participants' turn up at the meeting point, await instructions, follow their leader(s), have a party, and express their frustration in the inevitable confrontation with the police. Whether at London Wall or Upper Thames Street, we still led, or were led (most peoples experience), to a space which we accidentally liberated through force of numbers, before being invited to trash something symbolic, and then either defend that space with force from the police, or retreat under the threat of state intervention. During all of this it was possible to 'party' if you could get out of the way of charging horses and baton wielding police. Despite having approximately 10,000 people in the City of London, only a handful of occupations took place on the morning of June 18th, and the actions that were taken were generalised in the sense that they were organised in established fashion, CAAT actions involving locking on in banks, Critical Mass, etc. Despite the notable attempts to block London Bridge most peoples involvement was to choose to meet at Liverpool Street and await instructions, rather than to plan their own autonomous actions.

June 18th in London whether we liked it or not was essentially an RTS, and was more revealing for being so. Previously the action of blocking roads was in itself politically significant, in rediscovering their potential as streets, the party became a celebration of a world turned upside down, the liberation of enclosed space. However in bringing the same tactic to the City, our challenge was not in the decision to move from the pavement to the street, but from the street in to the closed citadels of capital, and unfortunately many of us were happier to stay in the street, excluded from the real party, that of the owners of capital, rapidly enclosed, and then beaten down, our frustration taken out in unimaginative graffiti - 'bankers=wankers', the breaking of windows, and the entirely bland re-enacting of iconic revolutionary moments of the past. The burning of documents might have had greater resonance, if it wasn't for its ritualised performance by a handful of militants who entertained the crowd with their daring, but ultimately reaffirmed their own separateness from those spectating. This was the theatre of protest married to the spectacle of the party, the unrefined anomic disorder of the dispossessed, frustrated and angry but ultimately controlled, allied to the hedonism of the party scene which often perceives the political as an 'off yer face - out of mind' distraction. This is what I mean by 'party as protest', it inverts Emma Goldman's often quoted affirmation of revolution as a celebration, and replaces it with the conceit that to party is revolutionary. I'm bored in every sense with 'protest', the very notion of a fragmentary objection to some 'thing', and I celebrated the repeated assertion of 'resistance' in June 18 agit-prop, yet everywhere I still hear the same mantra about 'protest', as if it were possible to protest against capitalism, to turn out for one day a year and object to the very relationships within which the rest of our everyday lives are embedded. And, here lies some of the difficulty of the street party, difficulties which have long since bedevilled a politics of carnival. Despite the wonderfully erudite reading of carnival that has peppered RTS agit-prop, much of it derived from Bakhtin, a street party is unlikely ever to become the revolutionary moment, because it contains within it all the aspects of carnival which have been, and continue to be recuperated within the spectacular, participants in the street parties we organise have everything to gain by playing it safe. Nowhere was this more evident than in the City. We have seen commentators lamenting the police actions in breaking up a 'peaceful party', and the police in the City of London, despite our best imaginings, have given us little indication that we are conceived as a serious threat, ultimately they sat back and let us go where we pleased, not because they couldn't stop us, but because we create the conditions of our own confinement. When they wanted they were able to split the crowd, drive us away from the LIFFE building and beat those who tried in vain to hold their ground. Tactics which are reminiscent of the Met's recent handling of RTS events, where they have deployed minimal control during the 'rolling' stage of the party, waiting until we're stopped and then surrounding us. What are often celebrated as temporary autonomous zones, can just as easily be conceived as prisons of our own choosing. The availability of between 5,000 and 10,000 people as a core constituency on any street party in London means that the risk associated with attendance is minimal, minimal risk - maximum attendance, yet there were 7,000 people 3 years ago, and after months of work we can still only attract similar numbers, which is far from a 'critical mass'. Lots of symbolic actions, little meaningful disruption for the City, and to make it worse we then congratulate ourselves through commodifying our resistance, 2 million quid of damage - good demo!

Despite our good intentions party and carnival are not synonymous in the context of the street party. Party here means the 'party scene' and just that, an opportunity to let off steam see your mates, get off your face and go home, bar a few highly distinguished exceptions, the party scene is a semi commercial enterprise run by entrepreneurs marketing a niche in sub-cultural chic - witness the flyers distributed for pay parties and whistles being sold to the crowd outside Liverpool St with little challenge. What I want to know is where are the people that marched with us to Trafalgar Square (accepting the failure of other plans for the day!) on the March for Social Justice, the dockers, the RMT dissidents, disaffected trade unionists, Kurdish workers, pensioners groups, twice the number of people we attracted to the City. People whose tradition and history speak volumes about differing forms of resistance, from whom we might learn differing repertoires of activism and to whom we might teach certain tactical innovations. The Inter Continental Caravan, should have raised many questions for our movement in the UK. Why have we failed to mobilise large swathes of people whose lives are touched everyday by the machinations of the City, whose communities have long traditions of resistance and whom we have worked with in the past. Part of our difficulty is articulating a sustainable form of resistance outside of activist ghettos, finding forms of engagement which enable others to participate and constructing networks which go beyond those already in place. The movement has diversified since the prominent mass actions against road building, and whilst this diversification is healthy in that it opens avenues of access to participation at different levels, with differing emphases, drawing from differing traditions, if we are to have further mass actions aimed at key nodes in the operation of finance capital, part of this process has to be an escape from the well established routine of the street party as it is enacted currently. Let me illustrate the problem through reference to one of the key moments on June 18th in London. I was present outside the LIFFE building when there was an organised attempt to gain access, despite the presence of long term activists, with a significant history of engaging in direct action, many of whom I respect enormously, they were met by other misguided people calling for 'non-violence' who, alongside the obligatory security, managed to physically obstruct their attempts to gain entry, these confrontations opened the way for the crude anarchism often displayed in such situations whose advocates merely seek to smash things up and lob bottles from distances which imperil those at the front, thereby bringing in the riot police, it also encouraged the spectacle of protest, many happy to watch things develop despite being implored to occupy the building. There was little resolve in those present for an occupation, and yet with 100 or more people the building could have easily been occupied and perhaps even barricaded, with greater enthusiasm this could have been achieved with little in the way of violence and would have sent a resounding message around the globe. So why didn't it happen?

Because the crowd gives the illusion of action but is essentially passive, there is a 'peaceful party' to be part of which seeks little in the way of serious engagement, we are stuck between the virtual activism of the party and the dedicated efforts of a far smaller number of activists whose vision is of a revolutionary carnival. We have the ambition but the means we have chosen dissipate our energy and allow our recuperation. Let's not pretend any more that being forced away from the Futures Exchange and smashing the odd Mercedes dealership is some kind of great success, this is merely anomic disorder with little merit or conviction. We might be able to mobilise 10,000 people but how many of them were willing to take instrumental direct action which is aimed at the interference, disruption and symbolic appropriation of key nodes in the operation of informationalised capitalism, we have this capacity, and such as RAND ('Cyberwar is Coming', Arquilla and Rondfelt, 1993) have been theorising our capacity to cause such immense disruption for years, yet still we engage in the same theatre of collective action, tacitly affirming the relations of power to which we are finally subjugated.

Suggestions for further mass actions.

If we are to hold further mass actions against finance capital they should be explicitly targeted against key nodal points in the network of institutions, corporations, and exchanges which facilitate the current globalisation of neo-liberal capitalism, not at its totality which despite our understandings of the 'spectacle', or the 'military/industrial/entertainment complex' remains an abstract proposition for most people. This could involve a call to stop a particular institution working for a day, a wonderfully old fashioned mass picket (call it whatever you want) by the people whose lives are affected in the everyday by its operation. We could explain very clearly how the institution works and why it should be stopped, local groups could research the impact it has in their region and tie it to local pollution, poor working conditions, health and safety etc. Our energies and resources could b e focused on research to uncover every last detail of their operations, it would be easily communicable through our own media and quickly picked up by the external media post June 18. It would be a return to the single issues that politicised so many of us previously, but it would be the single issue of capitalism itself expressed in a less abstract manner. We could target a different institution every six months, explaining and demonstrating the links between them and calling for actions against their offices or buildings globally. We could forget about the secrecy of locations and be overt in our choice of target, those coming to participate would know why they were there and it would be made apparent that the aim was to shut the choice of target down. Tactics could involve occupations (where possible), mass pickets (as carnivalesque as possible), cyber attacks - hacking/fax attacks/e-mail bombs, phone actions, letter writing campaigns, street parties outside Director's houses and wanted posters of them in their own communities, etc etc. Instead of dissipating our energies rallying against something so big it disappears, we would be uniquely focused on the points at which their system is weakest. Inevitably we would be the subject of massive police attention, but besieging such institutions would allow for a clearer articulation of how capital operates and the means of operation upon which it is dependent. Imagine the police defending a sieged building of a major multi-national or financial exchange when for weeks before local groups had distributed information about how it effects the lives of people in their region, before going to take part in the action. The police role as puppets of private capital would be increasingly revealed to a wider constituency of support who could participate in numerous ways, many people in our area would love to participate but haven't reached the point where they can take to the streets, there would be nothing to stop them phoning this or that institution/exchange on the day. Unions could be contacted and sympathetic workers engaged with, allowing for further information and possible internal disruption/sabotage. This broadening of our support base would diminish the range of repressive actions the police could take and might if we exhibited the same organisational capacity as we did during June 18th, lead to them advising our targets to cease work/dealing etc for the day. In the event of violence by the police, the representation of a thin blue line sweeping a rabble from the streets could not be sustained as easily, think of previous struggles such as the miners strike, the printers at Wapping or even the poll tax riot. If we can articulate a strong case why a particular corporation/exchange should be stopped and threaten to lay siege to it, they will be forced at some level to articulate a counter position. Once they engage in a debate they effectively legitimate opposition, two positions are known and people are able to side with one or the other, this strengthens us immensely. The City was able to appear as sanctioning June 18th during its 'peaceful party' phase, before expressing shock at later events which were represented as random and chaotic violence, they had no need to defend their part in global death and destruction because they were never called to do so. Trashing a Mercedes showroom, whilst it has my sympathy, is not going to make others question the logic of capital, it's merely a means of relieving frustration. We all know that stopping the City whilst it sounds wonderful is unlikely to happen whilst we fail to engage those outside our number who won't come for a party. However, stopping London Clearing House or the Metals Exchange or the god forbid the Futures and Options Exchange....

If we could stop them once it could be done again, and if they can be stopped once the utopia of stopping them permanently would appear almost in sight. Imagine 5 years from now when everyone knows how the City operates because they've seen it sieged, exchange after exchange, bank after bank, institution after institution. Imagine it permanently cut off from the rest of London its own need for security strangling its operation, whilst its reputation as a key player in the global network of finance is devastated. Imagine the ripples it would send throughout our networks, the same hope many of us have seen in the audacity and tactical brilliance of the Zapatistas. It's possible but we need to move from a celebration of its possibility to the enactment of its downfall. There is nothing here which is at all innovative, I'm merely suggesting a replication of tactics that have achieved differing degrees of success elsewhere on a smaller scale, think of live animal exports or Hillgrove and EF!'s national campaign against Tarmac. Neither am I calling for the abandonment of RTS events, rather I'm attempting to suggest a way forward from the impasse of challenging finance capital through the 'party as protest' route, which despite its ability to mobilise large numbers, does so at the risk of inducing a political vacuum in the heart of our resistance. As one of the people that occupied Freshfields law firm in the City of London on June 18th, I found their own reporting of our action very telling:

"Freshfields has been stormed by the protesters waving banners and playing bongo drums! The dancing is pretty dreadful but it's made for an exciting morning' (Squall Web Site). The time of us dancing to their tune should be over, I'm not interested in making their work exciting - but stopping it. At the same time as our occupation and again over the weekend, other activists from within the Lancaster J-18 group launched a cyber attack against Freshfields which disabled their e-mail system, whilst others still occupied Acordis Acetate's plant in Lancaster, leading a critical mass there and storming the building. Acordis pump carcinogens in to the air over Lancaster, and Freshfields are the lawyers that facilitated them doing so. So when we danced in Freshfields it wasn't because we considered that in itself was enough, but to celebrate the storm that was coming their way. If we are to use the metaphor of carnival to frame our politics, let's not have another carnival against capitalism, but turn capital in to the carnival, juxtaposing its grotesque greed and excess, its viciousness and inequity to our world of chaotic order and beautiful anarchy.

Much love from Lancaster.

G. Lancaster J-18 Collective.

Oh what a lovely day for smashing up the city. June 18th; Well yes I came along too and found myself pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Several thousand carried off a big loud aggressive "carnival against capital" in the city of london. Buildings invaded, roads blocked, stock exchange temporarily besieged, cars munched, big swanky bank plate glass windows crunched, police van looted!... such excitement and entertainment we haven’t seen for a long time. Plenty of running around with cops at various points, quite a few injuries, but no instant mass arrest on the day. What with this being the end of the nineties inside the city’s ring of security this sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen any more under the post riotous consensus end of politics and history and such. It brought back fond memories of stop the city, or the days of the poll tax. And it was all simultaneously coordinated with demos in a whole load of cities around the world. With a score like that at the end of the day it was easy to get quite distracted by the adrenalin rush and the euphoria of the occasion and lose all perspective of what the politics was supposed to be about and what had really been achieved. The riot was a case of "enjoy" (SPGB leaflet) and it made us feel big and powerful for the day. But unfortunately let’s face it, we are not big and powerful, we are still small and weak, and if we are honest about it the "success" of the riot was more of a fluke than anything else. We got away with making the demo/carnival/riot happen because in effect the authorities allowed it to happen that day. Tube managers had already shut down the circle line all of a sudden that morning creating commuter chaos while other parts of the tube were disrupted as well. Also charing cross station had been shut. The police operation was bungled with police commanders losing control, while police on the ground, part of the time, were just standing aside either for fear of obstructing city workers or through laziness. I witnessed several occasions when seriously naughty things were committed in full view of nearby tooled up police who had the strength to intervene but just stood there watching and did nothing. The rest of the time the police whipped up chaos with their usual viciousness, clubbing people, injuring people, running people over etc. If you lived in a part of the world where street fighting was a daily occurrence you’d soon find that the novelty wears off. It becomes a routine, a daily listing of arrests, injuries,... not so thrilling or glamorous, it bogs down your community in a rut, saps its energy and ability to do much else. It has always been a mistake to fetishise street rioting and streetfighting and constantly try to read something social revolutionary into it. A mistake I’ve been guilty of myself over the years.

But nowadays, in this part of the world "riots", when they still occur, are often either the product of bureaucratic screw ups or sometimes pre-arranged police and journalist set-ups. Increasingly rare events here, street riots, like prison riots, tend to happen because the authorities have wilfully or negligently allowed them to happen. This could be because of simple bureaucratic and managerial inefficiency and wrangles (maybe they’re deliberately dragging their feet because they want to be paid more, or they’re just bored with their jobs, or they’re arguing with eachother and their communications have broken down), maybe it’s sinister machiavellian intrigue by the secret police to create more work for unemployed glaziers.

Usually it is the first kind of reason. Smashing windows is smashing windows, piling up rubbish in the street is piling up rubbish in the street, throwing things at police is throwing things at police, a buzz yes, but none of these things automatically imply the refusal of capitalist wage labour and commodities, the creation of common wealth and the building of world human community. The social revolutionary process we desire will sometimes involve a riot or two on its periphery, but a street riot does not a social revolution make. Nor does proletarian bargaining power come primarily from streetfighting. Proletarian bargaining power comes from collective withdrawal of labour, organising solidarity, sharing free goods in the community,...

It is not as if on june 18th some group of workers in the city like secretaries or cleaners were in dispute and called on other workers and unemployed to join in with them in picketing out the city. Nor is it a question of some big industrial struggle or social struggle elsewhere giving rise to a flying picket going to the city to create a diversion and open up some sort of a "second front". There is certainly an element of proles and lumpenproles who are struggling informally or in diffuse small groups around work/dole/housing/community who express their alienation and frustration by turning up and coalescing at events like june 18th and this is a positive development. At the moment they cross over with these events but they don’t lead them. It is still a professional/semi-professional protest activist sub-culture which leads them. it is the predominantly white, majority middle-class, protest fashion scene putting on the style. Some of them are seriously bourgeois, megarich, or in high powered professional career paths.

So the class composition of an event like june 18th is heavily confused and contradictory, leading to confusion and contradictions in the politics and tactics. It is funny how politicians are expected to declare their personal economic and financial interests but political activists can conceal theirs. Not even Class War would introduce the means test for membership, it might be too embarrassing for them in what it would reveal. R.T.S.; a good way of getting laid, shame about the class composition. Meanwhile the city folk have a clever line of argument they use half seriously half jokingly: Why if it wasn’t for the city hustling and dealing generating money and bringing in revenue from around the world there would be much less money for the nation to spend on social security and welfare handouts. The government wouldn’t be able to pay giros to dole scrounging squatters and anarchists and scruffy anti-roads protesters and the like. Indeed if it wasn’t for the city generating the money to subsidise it there wouldn’t be hordes of drongo greens and anarchists blocking the streets and grumbling about the trees and GM crops. The stereotypical (in their view) grungy doleite anarchist who every few years gathers in the city to breathe bad breath on poor office workers and moan and whinge about world capitalism is in fact protesting against the very thing that pays for them to exist. The protesters are just the dropout sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie while it is they, the ordinary boys and girls turned city whizzkids who are the real rebellious working class, so they love to tease. There is a danger of just turning some of this upside down and taking the reverse line of argument in order to reply to them. Why if it wasn’t for anarchists and half the population cashing their giros or getting their pay out of the bank and spending it as good individual consumers in the off license then there wouldn’t be so much money for big companies. It is the money we spend as consumers, buying products produced by the multinational corporations, that gives rise to their profits and helps make the mean and nasty city institutions rich and powerful so they can rule the world like Dr. Evil. Better then that we spend our money on alternative products in the wholefood shop. Of course both lines of argument are silly, neither explains what is really going on in the capitalist economy or where the wealth really comes from, but there are plenty of people who would take one or other argument quite seriously.

The city of london and other financial districts around the world are just one particular part of a much wider global financial system. The global financial system is itself just one part of capitalism as a whole, it is a reflection of the whole capitalist industrial production process, everywhere built upon wage labour. This includes the local flower shop on the corner as well as the big corporation and the chemical plant. Big global capital is not more nasty than little local capital. Today one is an expression of the other and vice-versa. Big horrible banks in the city are simply an expression of all the big and small businesses that put their money in them. Small capitalists will grow into big capitalists. The financial districts are not the real "centres" of capital. If it means anything at all to talk about "centres" of capital then from our point of view as dispossessed proletarians ("The proletariat is the industrialisation of the third estate, a class now amounting to almost half the population of the world", Two Hundred Pharoes... Manifesto, Box 100, 178 Whitechapel Rd, E1 1BJ) the real "centres" of capital are not the financial districts but....

1. Working in a job in order to live (wage labour)

2. Housework, washing the dishes, changing baby’s nappies, queuing in the supermarket, running for the bus, when one has no real choice (reproductive labour).

These are the real "centres" of capital for us. These are the two points where we come up against capital as a social relation that exploits us in our own lives. And it is these two points where we as proletarians might have any direct or indirect bargaining power to pull the plug on the system and start collectively transforming things. "Capitalism" is not an external "thing" to protest against. It is an exploitative social relationship which has come only in recent history to dominate virtually everything and in this part of the globe everyone is involved or trapped in it to a greater or lesser extent. None of us, not even nutters like Green Anarchist shouting "direct action" while holding a loaf of bread impaled on a stick, are outside capitalism. The June 18th carnival was certainly not devoid of proletarian subjectivity but this tended to be contained and something you had to feel apologetic about, or again something external to be "linked up" with as a separated thing in a cringy way("support the such and such workers"). Despite the day’s spontaneous happenings (and many of the crowd also missed the more hardcore stuff as they were in other parts of the city), the event remained in part a somewhat alienated exercise protesting against the evil corporations and the immoral things they do. It wasn’t based primarily on confronting one’s own role within the system and as a result it continued to obscure our potential subjective bargaining power as proletarians against capital, whether revolting at the point of wage labour or reproductive labour. Some individuals managed to successfully sneak off work to get to the demo but to what extent might this have influenced or involved their colleagues? Attacking capitalism means revolting against one’s own life not just going for a day out in the city to have a go at other people about their lives. That is too easy and safe. Not everything bad in the world can be blamed on "yuppies" and anyway there are thousands who work in the city who are neither yuppies nor bosses. Many of those present on the day were conscious of this but at the same time there is still a big lazy minded element who just want to "bash the thing", whatever the "thing" to blame everything on happens to be that day; the car, the office window, the police officer’s hat, the person wearing a suit.

This is far too often an excuse for a cover-up: a refusal to talk about oneself, one’s history, one’s own daily life, and the power one might have within the class struggle to revolt against that. This cover up and the refusal to talk about themselves and their own interests and desires is a recurrent theme amongst the "protest against the thing" protest activist scene. This sometimes leads to a kamikaze-martyr small group mindless direct actionism as a substitute for a self-critique locating one’s own struggle in the wider society of which one is a part. This in turn can lead to an elitist activist meritocracy, sneering at the majority of working class who "don’t do anything", i.e. don’t spend all their waking hours engaged in alienated activist "protest against the thing" kind of petty guerrilla actionism.

We are living in a part of the world , particularly britain, where capitalism is very strong and the state very entrenched. The infrastructure and machinery is very much developed and working well. Much of the traditional industrial bargaining power that once existed has been defeated and shifted to other parts of the world since the seventies. Reproductive labour has become a lot more atomised and individualised. So for the time being class struggle here is bound to be sluggish, weak, only partially visible, but it does go on (electricians’ strike, waterloo building wildcat strike, council worker grumbles, still some successful domestic squatting,...). The déclassé protest activist scene appears hot and lively and glamorous in comparison. But this is a bit of a seductive illusion. The problem we face isn’t just the media or consumerism, it is the successful redevelopment of fixed capital. Nowadays the architecture changes shape a lot faster than it used to. town centres, roads, housing estates, prisons, transport systems, leisure complexes, warehouses and industrial areas, all these can be completely redesigned and rebuilt in a matter of months. They keep building and rebuilding everything at a faster rate. Add computer technology and it gets more awesome by the day. As the infrastructure has been redeveloped since the seventies and early eighties on such a vast scale and at such a dizzying speed it has left proletarians feeling trapped and unable to move. In the face of a formidable infrastructure, constantly changing shape, they feel physically powerless.

This feeling of physical powerlessness expresses itself as a conspicuous proletarian silence. A lot of politicos and activists usually mistake this silence as "apathy", full of notions of their own specialised importance it suits them to do so. But this silence is not apathy at all. They may not speak it out loud but in the back of their minds millions of proletarians are deeply aware and anxious about their own situation. They have also learnt the hard way over two decades not to get dragged into every limited partial struggle, particularly in cases where there is no chance of winning. Their refusal to get dragged into this issue or that issue is often a sign of collective intelligence rather than indifference. Like a submarine gone to ground at the bottom of the sea maintaining radio silence while the battleship capitalist restructuring circles above we face a difficult waiting game, waiting for that window of opportunity to finally move and attack. There is no easy solution to this.

But back to the surface, sunshine and june 18th: One comrade did point out to me that despite its shortcomings it was de facto the most revolutionary demo that had happened in london in many years, in the sense that it was a loud aggressive manifestation of several thousand in the city, simultaneous to demos coordinated by internet worldwide, demanding nothing less than the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of global commonwealth amongst its leading slogans. How many other demos in london have that as slogans! And as we said above proletarian subjectivity was not lacking, nor will it be next time.

paulp. 1999

[email protected]

In order to be able to resist more effectively it would be useful to have as clear a picture as possible of the lines of advance taken by capitalism and conversely its weakpoints. A number of the terms most often used to describe the present situation don’t meet this need and possibly even go so far as to actively obscure the most essential aspects of capitalist society, thereby only making it harder to understand how it lives and dies. 'Globalisation' and the perceived dual need to oppose it and provide alternatives is rapidly becoming one of the most dominant themes across a wide range of oppositional groupings and milieus (as well as within other mainstream political groups and parties). Virtually every group involved in left/green or direct-action politics has at the very least stated their opposition to 'globalisation' or gone a step further and declared it to be the most serious problem facing us today - "The final act of enclosure" (RTS ‘global street party’ agitprop). Yet despite this wave of 'enthusiasm' any analysis of the content of this supposed devastating change seems to have been largely confined to the repetition of a limited range of ideological positions which are at best superficial and at worst reactionary. The mere fact that the terms like 'Globalisation' and ‘Neo-Liberalism’ are applied uncritically to describe any and every change taking place within the global economy suggests a lack of thought and analysis.

Over the past twenty years globalisation has moved from being a term utilised by academia1 into everyday usage - it has become common currency amongst politicians, commentators and theorists across the political spectrum. Words are not neutral abstractions, they signify real material content or potentiality. The most fundamentally antagonistic and corrosive concepts (such as ‘freedom’ or ‘community’) are twisted and turned upside down, emptied of their content and put into hard labour by the ruling order to maintain our present misery. Globalisation, on the other hand is universally accepted on the same basis by virtually the whole of the political spectrum. The point in the instance is not whether it is considered to be a positive or negative phenomenon but the acceptance of the world view upon which it is based. Both its advocates and the majority of its critics utilise the dominant ideological categories and assumptions within capitalist society; meaning that they are limited to repeating the banalities of conventional wisdom as propagated in a variety of forms by academics, leaders and self-proclaimed 'experts'. Amongst western activists at least, works by left/liberal authors such as David Korten (When Corporations rule the World) and Gerry Mander (The Case Against the Global Economy) provide the (mostly unacknowledged) theoretical basis for much of their propaganda and in a less direct way for the forms and focuses of activity and direct -action campaigns. Theoretical understanding and criticism is not 'just a matter of words' or in this case producing ideas which aren’t connected to a particular situation or movement; discussion and attempts to mutually understand new lines of attack taken by capitalism are important and useful because global resistance and perhaps solidarity is growing after years of relative stagnation and retreat. Every form of activity has to find its theory and vice versa, theory and practice have to be interdependent; inadequacies in either area lead to weaknesses in the whole project - the gaps through which ideology and recuperation are able to immediately penetrate. Globalisation and Neo-Liberalism are not simply descriptive terms which have objective meanings. Like all ideologies on one level they do refer to actual processes of change, but obscure far more about both the form and content of the capitalist system than they actually reveal. They don’t exist as things in themselves but rather as theories, strategies and tendencies within the overall context of capitalism. To situate both your activities and theories in opposition to them implies that we should be attempting to force those in positions of power to simply adopt different and hopefully nicer ways of exploiting us - for example a global ‘neo-Keynesianism’ or perhaps an end to ‘corporate rule’ and a return to some grossly idealised pre-globalisation democratic nation state. This is unlikely to happen, although even it did ‘victory’ would hardly be the word that would immediately spring to mind. Focusing on opposing the most recent manifestations of capitalism (e.g. restructuring, the global market, free trade organisations, the power wielded by multinational corporations) means that an attack on the real heart of the capitalist system has been either forgotten or ignored. Capitalism is not a place (‘financial centres’) or a thing (‘multinational corporations’), it is a social relationship dependent upon wage-labour and commodity exchange where profit is derived from capital’s theft of unpaid labour. Being "against Globalisation" suggests that we would be better off under some form of national capitalism. Such an outlook is an open invitation to local activists in each country to join ranks with nationalistic and protectionist elements among the middle and (in some cases) ruling classes who are also opposed to ‘free trade’ and the penetration of ‘international capital’. This is evidenced in this country by repeated references in activist publications which by their lack of critical qualification appear to bemoan ‘loss of national sovereignty’ or ‘democracy’ and governments’ inability to restrict foreign investment under the terms of the MAI.

In other countries the process appears to have gone much further; two of the most vigorous opponents of globalisation in France and the US are respectively Le Pen and Pat Buchanan. Le Pen is the leader of the National Front in France and Pat Buchanan is on the right of the Republican Party. It can only be a matter of time before globalisation arouses ‘little Englander’ sentiments amongst right wingers in Britain. This is not to say that all of those who oppose globalisation are right-wing or ultra-nationalists or even in danger of becoming so, the point is that defending the nation state and national or local capital even in terms of the loss of ‘democratic accountability’ or ‘local culture’ is possibly more insidious than outright nationalism, it also allows for points of commonality with those who would normally be beyond the political pale, e.g. the late and mostly unlamented James Goldsmith erstwhile financier, founder of the Referendum Party and "mad, fascist crook" has a piece in the book The Case Against The Global Economy.

By limiting ourselves to being "against Globalisation/Neo-Liberalism" local exploiters be they land owners, factory owners managers of state enterprises or for that matter any ‘local business’ may be considered to be on our side! It can only be a mark of capitalism’s present strength that even to talk about it is seen as outmoded and passé. Globalisation/Neo-Liberalism are no less problematic than capitalism is perceived to be by some. The Zapatistas for example seem to studiously avoid using the word capitalism, preferring ‘Neo-Liberalism’. Whilst some have interpreted this as a tactically astute refusal to be burdened by the past; the end result is merely confusion as to whether the struggle or in Marcos’ words the "Fourth World War" is between the rich and the poor or between globalising Neo-Liberalism and ‘national sovereignty’.

S

• 1Since the beginning of 'the capitalist crisis of accumulation' in the late 1960s, a range of terms such as post-modernism, post-industrialism, risk society, post-Fordism and of course globalisation have been introduced ostensibly in an attempt to provide an adequate understanding of contemporary changes in the global economy. (Bonefeld 1997) Whilst some of these have remained largely confined to academia, others such as Globalisation and post-modernism have entered into common usage.

After identifying capitalism or the "global capitalist system" as "the root of our common social and ecological problems", many of those who took action on June 18th are now running headlong into the next "big day", November the 30th -N30 - for action against the WTO (World Trade Organisation) and free trade.

Is this the same enemy? Many would argue that the WTO is just another incarnation of the global capitalist system and therefore a worthy target. But this thinking reproduces some of the flaws of the thinking behind J18, in that it fetishes the institutions which manage global capital (J18 fetishised the abstract side of capital - finance capital - as opposed to the material side - production or industrial capital). The institutions of capital are targetted instead of capitalist social relations, with the added problem that the majority of opposition to the WTO invokes that lofty bourgeois ideal - democracy - in complaining about the lack of democratic accountability in these institutions. The system of wage labour (the basis of capitalist social relations) is not attacked, instead darts are thrown at fetishes. PGA (full name: Peoples’ Global Action Against Free Trade and the World Trade Organisation) calls for the abolition of the WTO because it is inherently "undemocratic" and incapable of reform, implying that what is needed is some type of genuinely democratic institution (presumably like the World Peoples’ Parliament that someone on the J18 discussion list keeps on proposing).

Worse still, opposition to free trade is effectively an appeal to protectionism on the part of ("democratically elected governments" of) nation-states. Undoubtedly the strategy of global capital has been to attempt to guarantee continued accumulation by imposing further attacks on the international proletariat by what has been described as the "race to the bottom" ie competition between sections of the working class in different nation-states (the threat of relocation etc), and the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) and its WTO-sponsored successor represents an attempt to remove the regulations which stand in the way of this competition (by enabling corporations to sue governments for labour and environmental law etc)

While resistance to these attacks is to be encouraged, it would be foolhardy to see the question as one of defending the nation-state against the power of the transnational corporations - as the Do or Die (No. 8) article "Globalisation: Origins-History-Analysis-Resistance" points out, these are false opposites (capital and state are not in opposition, rather the state is a tool in the hands of capital). Surely the challenge is for the international proletariat to defend its common class interests against both the nation-state and global capital...

To target the WTO rather than, say, the system of wage labour upon which capital depends, is to blur the question, and inevitably leads to the formation of dodgy or even reactionary alliances (many Far Right groups, such as the Front National in France and One Nation in Australia, as well as parts of the Left have opposed globalisation and free trade from a nationalist perspective). Some activists have taken sides in the WTO bananas dispute, defending Caribbean producers against North American interests, often arguing in favour of "local economies threatened by free trade". So small, "local" capitalists are good, and big, global corporations are bad (especially if they are American)... This naive kind of thinking enables the battle lines to be drawn between nation-states (or even between "North and South", as if there were no Northern proletariat and no Southern capitalists) rather than between classes (international proletariat vs global capital).

Undoubtedly some people are opposing the WTO on an anti-capitalist basis, but is this the best strategy for consciousness-raising struggle?

Rudolf The Red

The Dutch antiracist organisation "De Fabel van de illegaal" (The myth of illegality) and other left-wing organisations involved in the international campaigns against free-trade agreements like the MAI, regularly get compliments from the extreme right. Although unwanted, these compliments are not accidental. The critique of free trade has long been a speciality of the extreme right, and has proven to easily turn anti-Semitic. We will all become "slaves" to the "international capitalists living on the Riviera", the Dutch National-Socialist Party (NSB) ideologist Hylkema said in 1934. Free trade would bring the Dutch factories and farms down. Dutch goods would be pushed off the domestic market by cheap imports, he feared.

The only chance for survival was a fascist economy, he wrote. "We should control our national household in such a way that our people will not perish, when this group of people without a fatherland starts flooding us with imports. We don't want our factories to close down because Eastern coolies work for a few dimes a day." Hylkema called for resistance against "the trade and bank world, which still speaks of the principle of the open door. But the farmers feel that if things go on like this, the end is near."

"But don't think that the import trade capital and trust capital will save us then. They are extremely mobile. In one aeroplane they can bring billions in paper money across the border in just a few hours. Holland can then be bought by international speculators for a couple of guilders and we will become a poor and dependent people", the angry fascist wrote. If Hylkema, half a century later, had been able to surf the Internet, he probably would have been pleasantly surprised looking at some of the anti-MAI homepages. Hylkema's present-day successor Rüter certainly is very enthusiastic about them. Rüter is the main ideologist of the Dutch new-right think tank Voorpost. He advised his readers to check the Internet pages of "MAI niet gezien?!" (MAI, didn't see it / MAI, don't want it), the Dutch anti-MAI campaign. The new-right Dutch Student Organisation even linked their homepage to that of the anti-MAI campaign. The Dutch fascists are not the only ones interested. The German Republicans and the French Front National also turned against the MAI. In some countries the New Right even popped up at left-wing campaign meetings. The state against globalisation? For some time now extreme-right intellectuals have been working on renewing fascist thinking. The ideas and concepts of the current campaigns against free trade seem to be of good use. These are not specifically left-wing and even seem to be easily integrated into the traditional extreme-right worldview. For instance, take a look at the very fashionable concept of "globalisation of the economy", which is very central to the international campaigns against the MAI. This concept implies that capitalism is originally a local system, and has only recently begun to spread its tentacles around the world. But in fact capitalism has from the start been a global system, and has been able to evolve only because of the plunder of the southern parts of the globe.

By pointing to this so-called globalisation as our main problem, the anti-MAI activists prepare our thinking for the corresponding logical consequence - the struggle for "our own" local economy, and as a consequence also for "our own" state and culture. Some movements in the South that also fight against free trade draw exactly that conclusion. Taking their situation into account, it may be understandable, but it is certainly not emancipatory. In the rich countries, promoting a struggle against globalisation could create a fertile ground for the extreme right to grow. Fascists have always valued a self-sufficient economy. "No imports of things that our own people can produce, are happy to produce, are able to produce very well. Because there is no better worker than the Dutch worker", Hylkema thought already. Sixty years later, new-right Voorpost ideologists write about the "globalisation of American capitalism" and call for "a large-scale people's capitalism and small-scale worker participation", because that would offer the best "guarantees for the safeguard of our own industries." In it's first pamphlets "MAI niet gezien?!" wrote that the agreement "would put up enormous barriers" for states to "direct their own economies". But according to new-right ideologist Rüter, "the political elite doesn't even want to guide or decide any more - they gave up their power, only to serve an economic system that, because of its hegemony, doesn't need the specification 'capitalism' anymore".

Notice that both the anti-MAI activists and the new-right ideologists think the state and the capitalist economy are separate entities. In reality they are completely interconnected. The modern state and capitalism developed at the same time and pre-suppose each other. They are symbiotic twins. States create the social and physical circumstances for the continually changing capitalism and that is precisely why they are working on agreements like the MAI, together with the companies. The anti-MAI activists with their resistance against the "globalisation of the economy" run the risk of ending up calling for a strong state. Already, some of them are speaking in positive terms of the Malaysian state, which is supposedly curbing the free circulation of capital. But Malaysia is close to being the prime example of a modern fascist state. Productive versus speculative capital? Traditionally, left-wing thinkers have pointed out the dividing line between capital and workers as the main political economic conflict. However, when activists start using concepts like globalisation, they tend to start thinking in terms of a conflict between "local capital" and "international capital", in terms of good "productive capital" and bad "trading and speculative capital". But production and trade are inseparable parts of capitalism. And both parts of capital grow by stealing from the labourers (both paid and unpaid) and by plundering nature. Regularly, the international anti-MAI campaigns have used the image of the small local company being destroyed by a large foreign, if possible American, multinational. Many activists call for investment in regional companies or in social projects that would bring jobs and positive prospects. Such investment is also believed to bring more economic stability than the "casino capitalism" that is held responsible for the recent large economic crises.

This way of thinking perfectly resembles traditional extreme-right thought. To Hylkema only one real economic duality existed, the one between the "national, creative and productive capital" and "reprehensible international big capital". The extreme right never principally opposed capitalism and even denies any difference in interest between the "national capital" and the workers. "The owner, the staff and the workers together share only one central goal - a flourishing company", Hylkema explained. For him the main thing was to reduce "class hatred" and to strengthen the unity of "the people" as a whole. For that reason it is very convenient for the extreme right to have a common enemy, one that can be held responsible for the economic problems, crises and insecurities that will always accompany capitalism. "International capital" can fulfil that role perfectly. Modern nazi-ideologists also understand this principle very well. "Solidarity within the nation gets replaced by some sort of universal solidarity between the rich, the managers, the industrials: on many an international congress they secretly decide on their strategies", according to new-right Voorpost.

Capital without a fatherland

Once ideologically separated from the rest of capitalism, the "reprehensible international capital" can easily be associated with "the enemy" - some other state or a certain well-defined group of people. Following this line of thought, a critique of the system as such can gradually turn into the crazy idea that a small group of hostile people completely controls our lives. Such thinking is historically very closely linked to anti-Semitism. In the deeply rooted and mostly European anti-Semitic tradition there's always this connection made between "the international capital", America and "the Jews". This tradition holds that the "international speculative capital" is in the hands of Jews who conspire to rule the world. This "Jewish capital" supposedly operates from New York. For centuries right-extremist and nationalist movements have repeatedly revived this anti-Semitic way of thinking. Usually by saying that "the fatherland" or "Europe" is being threatened by - and this depends on the audience - "international capital", American multinationals or "the Jews". It's all the same to the ideology behind it. Of course, criticising free trade doesn't have to lead to anti-Semitism, but the two combine surprisingly easily. Hylkema's fascist party NSB, for instance, was not anti-Semitic in the beginning of the thirties. But, by its constant propaganda against "international capital" it did lay a strong foundation for its later turn to anti-Semitism. In the beginning of the forties it was just a small step for the party to start inserting the word "Jewish" in front of the phrase "international capital" in their propaganda pamphlets. Anti-MAI activists putting "international capital" apart ideologically, are not by definition anti-Semites, but the analysis behind their reasoning surely is potentially anti-Semitic. History shows how easily the one can lead to the other.

The New Right also loves this type of anti-Semitism. In a recent article on globalisation, Rüter for instance wrote that "whoever arranges and controls the loans, also controls the economic cycle and economic development." It is most certainly no coincidence that he throws in a quote of Amschel Meyer van Rothschild, a Jew who, according to Rüter, once said: "Give me control over the currencies, and I don't care anymore who makes the laws."

At the start of the international campaigns, autumn 1997, the anti-MAI activists strongly emphasised that the talks on the agreement were secret, and their attention swiftly turned to the individual decision-makers. "MAI niet gezien?!" wrote about a "multinational coup" and a "silent taking over of power". Actually, the talks were partly secret, but not as totally as the activists suggested. Forced by an assistant leaking official documents, the talks quickly became more open. Many contemporary "conspiracy fans" were drawn towards the anti-MAI campaign. The campaign office received frequent calls from these nuts, probably alerted by the long article on the MAI published in their favourite magazine Nexus. This article was written by a left-wing organisation that is central to the international anti-MAI campaigns. Until the beginning of the nineties the Australian-based Nexus was openly anti-Semitic, but after that it backed down a bit. However, the stories remained essentially the same. In recent issues, articles on the political power of "Jewish capital" popped up again.

Conspiracy fans also visited anti-MAI meetings. On such a meeting in Geneva in August 1998, titled "Globalisation and Resistance", one participant wanted to publicly read excerpts from the books written by Jan van Helping, a hideous German anti-Semite. Around about the same time, "conspiracy expert" Kohl’s came into contact with the Dutch campaign. For several weeks he was able to spread his anti-Semitic poison in anarchist circles before being unmasked.

Liberalism replaces capitalism

The central concept of globalisation has recently filled the analytical gap that was left when some 10 years ago the critique of capitalism went out of fashion. In the middle of the nineties left-wing circles first turned to the concept of "neoliberalism". Especially the popular Zapatista uprising in Mexico stimulated its use. But neoliberalism is not the same as capitalism. It is rather the ideology that gets delivered together with the changes of capitalism that have been imposed from above since the mid-seventies. Among these changes are the flexibilisation of the workforce, the privatisation of government services and the development of new computer and biotechnology industries. Also part of these developments is the trend towards an increased international division of labour. By the end of the nineties this latest trend became central to left-wing analysis, especially when activists started campaigning against the MAI and WTO. This change in analysis and focus of attention undoubtedly is a result of the overall political swing to the right that we have all witnessed this last decade. This raises the question of what might still constitute a left-wing analysis, and what makes a political line right wing. Political discussions are getting scarce, especially in the Netherlands, which poses great problems to campaigns like those against the MAI. Knowledge of the history of left-wing politics is also scarce.

Earlier campaigns and discussions on international solidarity seem to have been almost completely and collectively forgotten. Most left-wing groups joined the anti-MAI campaigns without giving it much thought, upset as they were by apocalyptic stories about a new secret "world constitution". And they kept on going without a thorough discussion that could have lead them to a radical change in their political direction. This last decade has seen non-governmental organisations (NGOs) taking on a more central role in campaigns, unhindered by the rapidly shrinking left-wing movement. Especially in the realm of international campaigns this can be clearly seen. For the left it is problematic that the NGOs' criticism usually does not see beyond neo-liberalism and free trade. They do not consider capitalism as such as a problem. That is of course not in their interest. They are too much a part of the system themselves, and have a lot of jobs to lose as well. Too much leftist talk doesn't pay. NGOs therefore don't like political discussions. The professional NGO campaigners rather spend most of their time flooding their fellow activists with details on free trade from every corner of the world. The activist who does not have access to Internet or e-mail will easily get the impression that he or she is not able to seriously participate in the campaigns. An extra problem with this NGO-provided information is that it usually has a top-down focus. Information from a grassroots point of view is getting very rare. And because of the information overload, even the most experienced activist in the end starts to overlook the difference between the two.

Nowadays left-wing groups are most often not powerful enough to get an international campaign off the ground without the help of NGOs. The choice of limiting criticism to free trade so as not to endanger the help of the NGOs is apparently easily made. With the result that left-wing groups are spreading an ideology that offers the New Right, rather than the left, bright opportunities for future growth.

Eric Krebbers

Merijn Schoenmaker

De Fabel van de illegaal, July 1999

I've been trying to write something for the J18 "critique" publication for some time now, but I have been finding it difficult after being swept up in Friday's events in London, and the subsequent media fall-out. Originally, I wanted to write a piece about the ups and downs of electronic discussion groups, the challenges of global networking, etc., but I find myself unable to. I should have done it before Friday! Now I have seen so much vitriol written about the "violence" at the carnival, that I feel compelled to write a more sympathetic account. However, before I do that I want to consider some lessons that our movement can learn from the organisation and execution of this global protest against capitalism. Given the police and the media response, I think it would be fair to say that we have hit capital, and we have hit it hard. At times like this, I always worry about state reprisals. My thoughts go out to comrades who have been arrested, and to those who have faced house searches or intimidation from the police following the demo. And then there's those lying in hospital beds, or nursing wounds at home following the bloody police repression on the day. As the police sift through video evidence and photos, many more may face knocks on the door in the days and nights to come. However, I have faith that our movement will support all of those who face difficulties at this time. The media have made much of the use of the "Internet" in J18, and I believe that we must now expect increased monitoring of our electronic activities (I know that not everybody has computer access), and further repressive legislation against free speech on the internet. Such moves on the part of the state (perhaps in concert with the multinationals that now provide much of the internet's "structure") must be resisted at all costs. We do not yet know how sophisticated state monitoring of our electronic networks is, if it exists at all. At this time, the police seem to be playing "catch up", but we should not assume that they will be so naive in the future. Further attention must be paid to the use of secure web and e-mail servers controlled by ourselves, and to the use of strong encryption software for increased security in individual-individual communications. On the other hand, J18 demonstrated that open and un-moderated discussion lists are an excellent way for us to network across continents. More importantly, they provide a useful interface between activists and non-activists. This sort of contact with others, be they sympathisers or detractors, can only strengthen our movement, and is a useful means of ensuring that our movement does not become "ghettoised" and that we maintain contact with others outside of the activist milieux. Of course, we must remember the class nature of the internet, and help to realise the goal of free internet access for all, perhaps through info-shops or libraries.

I think the other big success of the events was the media work. Although I would normally be one who is suspicious of any contact with mainstream media at all, we have shown that by careful use of press releases, we can partly influence what is written about us. All of the mainstream June 18 news reports that I have seen mentioned that the events were happening in many countries, were timed to coincide with the G8 summit in Koln, and were constituted by an amalgam of many different groups. Most importantly, the London events were billed as an "anti-capitalist" demonstration. They can't write us off as "anti-car" protestors any longer. Plus, the J18 web site team did an excellent job presenting our own media and our own voices on the day.

The planning and organisation of the days events was incredible. I have never known such networking, and all done autonomously, with groups and individuals in charge of themselves and their own actions. In my opinion, the whole day stands as a tribute to anarchist methods of organisation, and shows how far commitment and careful planning can get you. On the day itself, seeing all those autonomous groups in action was incredible. Within the so-called "riot" lay the seeds of an alternative society, an alternative reality. Our reality.

Before getting into the thorny subject of violence, I want to drop in the following passage lifted from the Australian publication, "Anarchist Age Weekly Review," No. 355:

"Violence? So Kim Beazley the leader of the opposition was blessed with a pie in the face over the weekend. Listening to the media's response to this little episode you'd think that protesting about the Group of Seven's activities promoted violence. The corporate media conveniently forgets that the G8's success is due to their ability to be able to mobilise the dogs of war. Violence is an integral component of the G8 group of countries. These countries have a political and economic system that promotes inequality. The G8's power is reliant on their ability to mobilise weapons of mass destruction. Their economic and social infrastructure promotes hunger, poverty and inequality. Violence is the main instrument that cements their hegemony over their empire. A few thousand protestors throwing a few rocks or a single protester pieing a leading politician can by no stretch of the imagination be considered violent behaviour. The real violence occurs as a consequence of the power of the G8. The poverty that is endemic in so many nation states and many of the pointless wars which exist, occur as a consequence of the power of the G8. The concentration of power and wealth that occurs in the world's G8 economies is real sustained violence. The response to this institutionalised violence is essentially self defence not pre-mediated violence. Every time the media describes the skirmishes that occur between the G8 group of nation states and protestors as violence, it reinforces the idea that the state and the corporate sector have a God given right to use violence to defend their interests. In their eyes anybody who protests against the concentration of power and wealth which exists in the G8 nation states is guilty of violent behaviour, irrespective of how tame or peaceful their demonstrations are."

We must be very clear that the media concentration on the "violence" on Friday is a deliberate attempt to discredit our movement and to try to divide us along the lines of whether we agree that (always carefully targetted please) "violence" is a legitimate tactic or not. I do not like to see members of our supposedly diverse movement condemn people for smashing windows or fighting with the police. One activist wrote a message to an internet news group saying that he wished that those people who smashed down the entrance to the LIFFE building or those who were throwing bottles at the riot cops had been arrested so that the rest of us could get on with our "peaceful demo". First they came for the violent activists, and I did not speak out because I am not a violent activist. Then they came for me, and there was noone left to speak out for me. Through the whole planning stage of the June 18 events in London, there was always a concern that the whole thing would turn into a (really massive) riot, or that the cops would simply nick everyone when they turned up. One way or another, this demonstration was always going to have the potential to be a bit "heavy". Furthermore, many people felt that the purpose of our actions, to disrupt the epi-center of global capitalism, demanded radical action in the extreme. In the circumstances, I believe it is to the credit of both the organisers and some of the street fighters that more people were not hurt or arrested on that day. Although there were some drunken bottle-throwers who chucked stuff anywhere (as others have reported), people have not reported the "positive" aspects of the way that autonomous groups of militants defended the demonstration from police repression on the day. In contrast to what others have said, for me one of the highlights of the day was when the entrance to LIFFE building was trashed. I think that these symbolic "breaches" are important. This was a modern day Storming of the Bastille (well, almost) and there was nothing that the cops could do about it. With their security guards, all their cops and their "ring of steel" they could not prevent the mob, the voices of the victims of capitalism worldwide, from bursting their way into one of their temples. This is the stuff that dreams are made of.

But, yes, people got hurt. The police went absolutely fucking crazy (of course). Amongst their first victims were activists who had been trying to calm the situation down between the blue line and the Carnival. After they had beaten the crowd away from the LIFFE, calm returned for a while, and I believe that it would have been possible to prevent further violence at this point. But it was not to be. Oh, as an aside, when the fighting started with the riot cops outside the LIFFE, I saw a bonehead with a t-shirt with a bulldog, union jack and "England" written on it join the crowd to fight with the police. I appreciate that everything is not always as it seems in a Carnival. Most people don't like crazed drunks who lob bottles at the police. However, once a largely peaceful crowd is being indiscriminately attacked by riot cops, you are grateful for those people to defend the mass from brutality. I must say that it was at this point that the standard of the street fighting improved dramatically. I saw teams of activists forming lines of their own to repel police charges. When the police tried to use horses against this section of the crowd, the crowd charged back at the horses. This happened a second time and a couple of coppers were pulled off their mounts. The horses were not used against this section of the crowd again. In the main, missiles were transported to the front line before being discharged at the cops. Behind the front lines, the carnival continued! As the cops pushed us up the road, militants smashed bank windows. Although the destruction sometimes seemed arbitrary, e.g. people dismantling traffic lights, in the main it was "targeted" (again, the media used this phrase a lot, which I think is a success on our part as we managed to get this over) at bank windows, McDonalds and posh cars. An awful lot of people sustained injuries on Friday. By no means all of them were behaving "violently". I saw some really horrific injuries, most of which seemed to be head injuries. I heard that a couple of people (at least) got run over by police vans. I hope everyone is recovering.

Okay, so what lessons should we learn from all of this? Firstly, I think that although we have achieved some successes this time around, we should certainly not rest on our laurels. Although we seem to have caught the cops off guard this time, we should not expect to be so lucky next time. However, we have shown the benefits of anarchist or autonomous methods of organisation in our struggles and we need to continue with these methods. On this occasion, the police chose to behave with extreme aggression towards the crowd. Although this seems to be a "new" tactic, there is no guarantee that they will do the same next time. Although many people clearly trained in methods of self-defense for the event, and there were definitely many tactical successes, we need to learn lessons for the future from this event. In particular, we need to think more carefully about how to defuse violent confrontations. We need effective ways of dealing with possible agent provocateurs who may provoke violence at our events. We need to educate people in our own movements about the time and place for violence. Violence should always be used sparingly, and should be dictated by the nature of the struggle. Violence should primarily be used against capitalist infrastructure and for self defence against riot cops and over-zealous security guards. Once everything has "kicked off", we need trained and experienced street fighters who can respond tactically to different situations. However, at the end of the day, it's perhaps a mistake to look for "order" in "chaos". Seeing all those bleeding heads on Friday, I can't help but feel that we should have the same protection that the riot cops have - notably crash helmets, shields and padded clothing. I seem to remember that their used to be a tradition amongst Amsterdam squatters and German radicals for wearing motorbike helmets at demos.

I began this piece by saying that I didn't like the media concentration on violence, and then all I've done in this piece is talk about it myself. Violence was only a miniscule portion of the global J18 project and most J18 manifestations passed off peacefully. I am glad about that. Solidarity to all June 18ers,

Amusing Pseudonym

(Article written before June 18th)

Why bother theorising1 ? As we rush headlong into another action (the June the 18th international day of action – J18), what's the need for theory? After all, for many people theory is just a load of "intellectual wank" or pointless "navel-gazing". (There is a scene in a Woody Allen film – possibly Annie Hall, where the character played by Allen is at a party surrounded by literati types, and he says "Did you hear that the Nazis are going to march in New Jersey"; pretentious party-goer replies "Oh yes I read the most devastating critique in the New York Times Review" "Review? What? We should be going down there with baseball bats or something!").

However many others are also frustrated by the tendency of the "direct action movement" to lurch from action to action without any discussion on what is being done and why. As an older friend in the Valencian squatters' movement used to say, a movement which is incapable of creating its own theory will never get anywhere. (Arguably, the Valencian squatters' movement never got very far). This is the critical thing, it implies revolutionary theory must be created as a result of action, as well as being a precondition for it. "So what is to be done? For a start we can look for opportunities to intervene in radical situations to try and speed up the revolutionary process. To identify the real demand – the demand for real life: the one demand the Spectacle cannot meet…. The only way to develop a revolutionary theory is try and put it into practice" Theory which is divorced from practice degenerates into ideology, dogma: "We must start to build the world we want now – in our relationships, our interactions and interventions and in the way we conduct ourselves in our daily lives. Revolutionary theory is developed on the basis of lived experience. Its goal is the total supercession of the commodity spectacle. A revolutionary movement based on the development of a revolutionary theory is participatory. A movement based on an ideology is about as participatory as a painting-by-numbers kit. Revolutionary ideology is a mausoleum. We need to develop a living revolutionary theory. We start with our dreams and desires and try to put them into practice and to develop our theory, which in turn instructs our practice and we progress." (From a 56a Infoshop leaflet "Situationist Theory For Beginners")

So why the rejection of theory? Because all too often it is divorced from reality, is reduced to mechanical ranting or a points-scoring exercise without any suggestion as to how intervene practically: "People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth."

Comite Enrages – Internationale Situationniste

(Asda looting cartoon)

The "direct action movement", something loosely referring to activists campaigning on a whole host of single issues including road protesters and other environmentalists, some peace activists, anti GMO activists, Reclaim The Streets, anti-oil campaigners etc etc, has not created a whole lot of its own theory (perhaps the odd article in a coffee-table book or Do or Die). Some innovation has been shown in the organisation of conferences (such as Earth First! gatherings and the direct action conferences in Brighton, where a mixture of small and large group formats have enabled some interesting discussions), but it's debatable whether the 'movement' has a much better understanding of itself and the problem of revolutionary change as a result. In recent times the slogan has often been heard "No Issue Is Single", and as the "direct action movement" gropes its way out of the fog of New Age mystification2 ("it's a battle for hearts and minds in the struggle between good and evil, between us and the forces of darkness") and Deep Ecology towards developing a critique of capitalism (the J18 action proposal identifies global capitalism as being at the root of our common social and ecological problems), the lack of debate is a serious handicap. A few RTS activists bemoan the lack of critical debate at RTS meetings, which are ostensibly given over to organising actions (and yet insiders will tell you that the real organising happens outside the meetings). And one of the problems at gatherings and conferences is that they can appear unfocused, probably because in a way they are removed from action; the challenge then is to unite theory and action, or better said to create theory from action and for theory to inform action, so that the two react on eachother (to develop a praxis). This challenge for the groups involved in J18 will involve creating theories to make sense of their actions and interventions against global capitalism; questions such as what is capitalism? (and what is finance capital, which is described as the heart of the global economy in the J18 leaflets?), what is the relationship between the different movements involved? (eg some of the organising groups around the world are trade unions – so what role do trade unions play within capitalism?; some of the groups campaign for human rights and foreign debt reduction – what is the relationship between reform and revolution?); is the problem of capitalism one of class society? If not, what is it?

Nick X

• 1It has been pointed out to me that the use of the word "theory" in this context is maybe not quite accurate, as when we reflect on and discuss our actions we are not developing new theory, but using an existing theoretical framework. Theory is one level further removed, like reflection on reflection.
• 2I'm sorry, I've been told I'm slipping into caricature here, slap on the wrist!

It is only now, after the dust has settled and the smoke cleared away, that I think I am beginning to understand some of the wider implications of June 18. Initial euphoria, which turned to paranoia following the state and media backlash, has given way to a more sober reflection. What was it all about? Why did I get involved? What has it meant for the movement? I feel the need to write from a personal perspective rather than an intellectual analytical one, because there has already been enough rhetoric written about June 18 - some of it, I admit, by me. Now though, it's time for some honesty.

It's safe to say - whatever the opinion of the police and right-wing media - that the organisers of the day did not set out to plan and encourage a riot. Perhaps, given the targets selected (the LIFFE building by the Reclaim the Streets' Carnival Against Capital), and the societal polarisation that they represent, it is not surprising that widespread violence occurred. But that definitively was not the intention, stated or otherwise. A complication here is one's definition of the word 'violence'. In the narrowest eco-anarchist tradition, which seems widely accepted within the movement, violence means damage to living things. So while chopping down a tree is violence, burning a digger is not. However, there is a different meaning to the term - and one which is closer to how the word is understood within mainstream society. This 'violence' is any action which could endanger the security of human beings, and includes intimidation or threats - broadly speaking, it means the use of force.

By either definition, the Carnival Against Capital in the City of London on June 18 was violent. Objects were thrown at police which were clearly designed to cause injury (and in some cases did - to both sides). Fist-fights with LIFFE traders also more than adequately meet the first definition. Setting cars alight and causing damage to buildings meets the second definition, as does intimidating people stuck in cars or trapped in offices. Of course, the police were more violent than we were - but that's their job. And two wrongs don't make a right. So do we seek to justify this violence, or at least to explain why we condone it? Or should we ignore the fact that it occurred and seek instead to emphasise the exciting and diverse global movement which seemed to coalesce on June 18? It is easy to accuse the media of exaggerating the scale of the riot. Too easy in fact. Because it did happen, and the ethical issues it raised do need to be dealt with. I worry that one day people in the mainstream of society are going to wake up to the fact that the direct action movement is not in any way accountable to them. We often behave as if we have a direct line to moral superiority, when in fact we pretty much do exactly as we please. What's to stop the enemy from occupying our offices, and how would react if they did?

The anarchist purists who dominate the belief systems of the movement have helped us all construct a convenient ideology to get around this unsettling issue. As far as I can make out, we see ourselves as a vanguard, acting on behalf of the biosphere and wider human society including unborn generations) against exploitation and oppression. To quote some old RTS agit-prop: "It's about reclaiming the streets as public inclusive space from the private exclusive use of the car. But we believe in this as a broader principle, taking back those things that have been enclosed within capitalist circulation and returning them to collective use as a commons." Stirring stuff - and protecting the commons has been an enduring theme of working class resistance to oppression throughout British history. The most obvious examples are the agrarian risings against the Enclosure Acts, and also the eighteenth century Luddite movement against the destruction of autonomous cottage industry and its replacement by wage slavery in factories. But unlike the Luddites, we are not a popular movement. Nor are we working class people seeking to protect our livelihoods from the encroachments of capitalism. We are a vanguard, acting on behalf of what we assume to be the wider interests of society and the planet, but not subject to any governance by them. This was a concept (minus the planet bit) taken to an extreme by Lenin's Bolsheviks, who claimed to be acting on behalf of an ignorant peasantry by setting up a dictatorship of the proletariat. This was of course total nonsense. The Bolsheviks represented no-one but themselves, and ended up setting up a system unparalleled anywhere except in the Third Reich for its savagery and genocidal brutality.

Don't worry - I'm not about to accuse the UK direct action movement of being on this track. But it does illustrate the dangers of acting on behalf of a group of people whilst at the same time not caring about what they think. There are times - such as in the campaign against genetics and in the later stages of the anti-roads movement - when by happy co-incidence we attract genuine popular support. This is bolstered by events which are both radical and genuinely inclusive - such as the rally at Watlington and the crop-trashing that followed it. It is then, and only then, that our battles are won. But the campaign against capitalism is not popular. There is some case for saying that in targeting financial institutions - those who oil the wheels of an increasingly destructive and globalised economy - we are acting on behalf of the billions of people in the Third World who are denied their basic rights. But who asked them? There is perhaps some small mechanism of accountability through the People's Global Action network - but it's very tenuous. The basic issue is one of who makes the decisions - and the targets in the City on June 18 were decided in London, not Lusaka. Perhaps it was worth stopping trading in LIFFE even for just one day - after all, it lost them millions. Millions which would otherwise have been poured straight into the system that we all oppose. More importantly still, the self-image of the City as an impregnable bastion was badly shaken. And any wider investigation of the word 'capitalism' can only be a good thing. However, all this will be for nothing unless it can engage with the sympathies and the interests of a wider social base in Britain and beyond. We're drunk with our own power, titillated and ego-tripped by all the notoriety and media attention. Everyone wants a repeat of June 18, where we can cost the capitalists millions and all feel empowered at the same time. But what about everyone else? What about all those who either out of dignity or necessity feel they must work for a living, and that they have some stake in the system that we're setting out to destroy? For me this is the crux of the issue. Take the perennial media debate. For anarchistic ideological reasons almost everyone involved refused to participate in any attempt to project a positive image of June 18 through the mainstream media. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to grumble when we're slagged off. (I'm trying not to be naive about the nature of the corporate media here. It's always going to be difficult to communicate a moral case for bricking in McDonalds' windows in a 20-second soundbite. I know because I've tried.

The reality though is that 99% of people will have heard about the day through the images constructed in the mainstream media - which we apparently should make no effort to influence.) Ultimately this kind of purism is surely counter-productive. Like a cult, it is alienating to all but the strongest of believers, and undermines diversity in its push for total obedience. It condemns us to the margins of political influence when we should be pushing at the mainstream. And when tried in countless collectives, squats and autonomous zones, it doesn't even work.

Our heroes the Zapatistas are way ahead of us. They have faced up to the responsibilities that their success has forced upon them. They have called meetings and referendums. They have spent days and weeks consulting with the widest possible sections of mainstream Mexican society. There is legitimacy in their claim to be fighting alongside all those who are marginalised by the naked violence of semi-feudal landlordism and free trade. Of this legitimacy, we have none. This, then, is surely the most critical meaning of June 18. And the key message is not to the capitalists, it is to us. It says this: 'If you have pretensions towards being a truly revolutionary movement, you must work with the people. You must listen, and not assume that you know best. Then, and only then, must you act.'

Anon. from Oxford

There seems to be a lot of informal debate going on about June 18th tactics. I’ve written this in the hope of encouraging people to respect each other’s angles on the day, and keep the debate positive rather than damaging.

What was it all about? Last year, I went to one of the very early J18 meetings. Something that came out very clearly then was the following idea:”This is not another street party. We will even try and avoid using the words ‘street party’.Rather, we will be taking the fight against destruction and exploitation directly to the place where much of it is controlled. We will be targeting the Square Mile.” Though a Carnival did end up being part of the day, I feel the “targeting the Mile” line was carried right through in all the J18 publicity and planning. I personally was well aware of the kind of things that might - and did - happen, in the way of such buildings as the Futures Exchange & banks being damaged and occupied, and accepted - okay, hoped! - that this would just as much part of the day as dancing, boys in sexy frocks, sound systems, and running into old friends. I knew that I would be at risk perhaps of being arrested, or hurt (anywhere there are police that is a possibility), or - yes, of course - caught up in things that I personally would not wish to support. But I knew that the overall message of the day, resisting global capitalism globally, as a hugely diverse group of people, was absolutely, totally, worth these risks, no matter what happened, and that it was vitally important for me to go and take the action that I personally felt was right.

Media

After many years of campaigning, I have learnt that the mainstream media have, and work to, their own agenda. I do not any longer believe that our agenda influences theirs. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, our agendas coincide a little - an example of this being the anti-capitalist message getting through somewhat - it was clearly a weird enough concept for the papers to include it! I am not unduly affected by the way the mainstream media presented the events of June 18th because I believe we had no control over this. I think we knew beforehand that the sections of the media that wished to, would present it as a violent event; that those who wished to take the oh-so-worn-out “peaceful rally hijacked by drunken anarchists” line would, and that the liberal papers would include some political comment and maybe some half-decent comparisons to the Rebecca riots & other examples of the “tradition of British resistance” - as indeed they did. We should know very well by now the role we are placed in by the media - regardless of what we actually do. If everybody at J18 had done nothing but dance, we still would have been “eco-terrorists obstructing mums & kids needing to get to schools & hospitals” - and hell, I reckon the tabloids would have gone out and staged their own bottle-throwing photo-shoots. (Did you notice how so many of those photos were the same few scenarios just taken from different angles?) Remember the Reclaim The Future march? When the police arranged for the headline on every single news report to be “protester held for attempted murder in violent protest condemned by Dockers” - a complete lie?

As well as putting effort into using our own alternative media, I am still trying to learn what we can do with the mainstream lot. But I will not credit them with telling the truth, and I will not let their predictable lines affect what I do, and I will communicate to as many people as possible the way they work - something a vast number of ordinary people know anyway. And I will certainly not let the media affect my memory of my real experience of the day, or our own legitimate debate, as if they are something we are, or can be, responsible for.

What really happened?

Let’s not lose track of what in fact did occur. Thousands of people had a party. Hundreds of people occupied, prevented work in, or damaged buildings where a lot of outrageous stuff goes on. Hundreds of people resisted/fought tooled-up riot police who wanted us out of the space we chose to occupy. And, as at any crowd event, a small number of people got drunk or tanked up on excitement, and went for seemingly random, meaningless acts of destruction & intimidation.

AND NO-ONE HAD ANY CONTROL OVER ANYBODY ELSE’S CHOICES FOR THE DAY.

Now, frankly, from a personal point of view, I was kind of frustrated at the number of people who moved off with the sound system out of the square mile quite early in the evening due to police presence - although for some it was an attempt to move to a different part of the mile, apparently, this didn’t work and the majority of people shifted to Trafalgar Square. From a personal point of view, I wasn’t into fighting with the police (you don’t always have a choice, but where I was, for a long time there were enough of us to hold the space simply by holding our ground physically) but I do recognise that those who were doing so were making it a lot easier for the rest of us to stay where we were. From a personal point of view, I was pissed off with the nutters who were off their faces and intimidating random members of the public, and I felt strongly enough about this to try a) reasoning with a few (which didn’t work!) and b) physically getting in the way/away. Of course it’s easy to say “that had nothing to do with politics anyway”, but the point has been made to me that it does - the politics of alienation, poverty, discrimination, frustration. From a personal point of view I am totally chuffed by what happened to the Futures Building & other such places - it will be a cheerful memory for a long time. From a personal point of view, I thought the sight of a carnival in the centre of London, with little kids and everything, was very cool. But that’s just me. And not everyone felt the same as me about tactics and what they wanted to do. And I think that’s absolutely fine, because the people resisting the domination of global capital are hugely diverse, rightly so, and will only become more so as more people wake up to what’s going on.

But what will people think? That depends on a lot of different things. For a start, how much information they have. If they believe the media tell the truth, they’ll have a ridiculously inaccurate angle on the day - but as I’ve said, I feel we have little or no control over that. I would imagine a large proportion of the population take what they read in the papers with a lot of pinches of salt, and they’ll get some of the message, possibly, and perhaps think a bit themselves about the day and what it was about. Maybe. Maybe some will try to find out more. And those who get alternative media will have more of the truth & issues, and those who can be independent thinkers or have access to information or who already find out about issues for themselves will know more, etc etc etc. That’s the way everything works. Would the world be in the state it’s in if people normally had access to the truth? But my feeling all the way along was that the main point of June 18 wasn’t about “changing people’s minds”. It was simply about - in solidarity with folks all round the world, some of whom get shot when they try to resist the way we do - targeting the places that are fucking us all over. And shutting them down, just for a day. And we did. Changing hearts and minds? Communicating with as many people as possible? Building creative alternatives? OF COURSE. That is what we do the other 364 days of the year! All in our own ways, once again. And, having gone right back to doing that myself, I’ve been mentioning June 18 a lot, to a quite large variety of people. These are questions about tactics, but I answer these by going straight to the main issues. As in “do you know why people felt strongly enough to take such actions? Because in those buildings, they take decisions, and do deals, that are about destroying the very earth we live on, and murdering those who resist.” And I’m personally finding that people see the point. Some of them even say “I wish I could have gone.” Many say “don’t underestimate how much people are aware of what goes on.” And despite varying views on what they think is appropriate or effective, none of the “ordinary” people I’ve talked to have said much about personally feeling one kind of resistance invalidates another - they have been more into talking about the idea of resisting capitalism, and what it means. If “what will people think” is what you base your actions on, how far back do you go? Do you refuse to break the laws that make peaceful protest illegal, because people won’t take your message seriously if you’re a “criminal”? Do you move away when someone is being beaten up, because the police tell you to, and respectable people obey them? Do you pay taxes, despite knowing they go on bombing whoever Britain’s bombing currently, because “what will people think?” There are too many people out there, with too many different views, based often on too much erroneous information, to measure our actions this way. Our first duty is to ourselves, to do what we feel is right.

And when I remember the views I held a few years back, and wonder what I’ll be thinking in a few years time, I think “thank god no-one tried to cater to what they thought I could handle, what they thought wouldn’t turn me off. That’s not having respect for me, and I would have no respect for them. How would I learn anything without challenges?”

Respect

I guess that’s what I’m asking for us to hang on to. I am concerned that there has already been some “attacking” each other about what happened, from various different angles. How dare we intimidate eachother for being where we’re at? I have my own feelings about the tactics of the day, and I realise many people may disagree with me. That’s okay; a few years ago, I would have disagreed with me. And I think the debate that goes on about tactics, means & ends, etc, is healthy. But at the same time., let’s accept our diversity. Assume that people have carefully considered what they do and how they do it, and are making what they feel are the right choices for themselves at that time. I refuse to narrow my vision of where we are going collectively to exclude anyone who works differently from me. Yes, it would be easier to do that, and I‘ve had to work hard not to make that mistake myself with different methods of campaigning. But frankly, if all of you I have tactics arguments with, aren’t there with me, it’s not my revolution. I’m not going to sign this, for the simple reason that there will be some state follow-up to J18, and a signed paper feels a bit too much like evidence. I’ll be having discussions with lots of people hopefully anyway.

J18, according to the propaganda, was coordinated by a wide range of groups. It is probably fair comment to say that in fact most of the groups involved are part of what is sometimes called the “direct action movement” or the “activist movement” (ie Earth First!, Reclaim The Streets!, genetics groups, animal liberation groups etc). The J18 proposal identified global capitalism, based on the exploitation of people and planet for the profit of a few, as the root of our common social and ecological problems...this could be seen as a consequence of the growing politicisation of the direct action movement over the years. This trend could be noticed in the movement away from single-issue politics (hence the commonly heard slogan “no issue is single”), the much vaunted link-up between “direct action activists” and striking workers (eg Reclaim The Streets! and the Liverpool dockers, and Critical Mass/RTS and the Tubeworkers..)…

On one level this apparent trend of increasing anti-capitalism within the direct action movement is very encouraging. However it often seems that many people within the movement are not too clear about what capitalism is (is it money? Banks? Transnational Corporations?), and so having put a name to the problem, are still not too sure about what it is. And this can lead to confusion when deciding what to do, how to take effective action to move towards that (maybe not so) distant objective of dismantling global capitalism. The purpose of this limited discussion paper is to briefly attempt to clarify a few concepts relating to capitalism, whilst recognising that no-one has all the answers..

Capitalism is often equated with money, so that you often hear people talking about the need to abolish money to achieve a “fair society”. Sometimes LETS schemes are proposed as an alternative. Similarly banks and other financial institutions are often regarded as the essence of capitalism (and this explains why the proponents of the June 18th international day of action are targetting financial centres across the globe). Alternatively the problem is seen as the expansion of the global market and free trade, (with globalisation and neo-liberalism the buzz-words) and accordingly the World Trade Organisation (WTO) (which polices free trade agreements) is seen as enemy number one. This is particularly the opinion of Peoples’ Global Action (PGA), the international network founded as a result of the Encuentros (the international gatherings catalysed by the Zapatistas) – indeed the full name of PGA is People’s Global Action against free trade and the WTO. A related view situates multi-national corporations (or, increasingly, trans-national corporations, TNC’s) at the root of the problem, with corporate dominance blamed for “disempowering local communities” (the local is often emphasised as an alternative to big, centralised, “undemocratic” corporations and institutions). What none of these views seem to bring out or emphasise is the essential relation within capitalism, the relation without which capitalism couldn’t exist. (Instead they focus on physical manifestations). Money, banks, financial institutions, markets, TNC’s, the WTO are all features of the capitalist system, but THE defining capitalist social relation is the relation between capital and labour. For it is wage labour, alienated labour (ie production not for the direct benefit of the producers, but appropiated by capitalists) which is the life-blood of capitalism. Capitalism depends on wage-labour for its existence; if the working population didn’t have to sell themselves for money each day (ie if we could produce for our daily needs) who would want to work for a capitalist or for the state? But we don’t own the means of production, capitalists do... and this is the way the capital-labour relation reproduces itself (by continually forcing people to work for a wage). The capital-labour relation is the relation between classes (this question of class is especially something which tends to dismay many in the direct action movement, perhaps unnecessarily1 .

This question is vitally important for anybody seriously considering strategies for attacking capitalism. For if we recognise that it is capitalism, which by appropriating the process of production and by extension taking control of nearly all forms of human activity and subjugating them to its own need for constant expansion and accumulation, which is responsible for the exploitation of people AND the destruction of the environment, then the target of our attack should be the capital-labour relation itself. In this sense we can understand why ultimately the only way to “reverse the forces of environmental destruction” (Earth First!’s avowed aim) is to attack wage labour. Hence the importance of link-ups with groups of workers in struggle, such as the Magnet strikers, the Hillingdon Hospital workers, the Tubeworkers, the electrical engineers on the Jubilee line, etc. Many in the direct action movement are reluctant to get involved in these struggles, seeing a contradiction in being against work and yet fighting to get workers their jobs back. And it is true that these struggles are at present about the conditions of the exploitation of labour, rather than putting in question the exploitation of labour itself.. the challenge is to push beyond these boundaries through the intensification of struggle to the point where wage-labour, hence capital is threatened. One of the prerequisites for this intensification of struggle (and also a result of it) is an increased level of consciousness.. the point was made in the pamphlet on dole autonomy2 that many in the direct action movement depend on dole cheques for their survival, but paradoxically are mostly unwilling to get involved in anti-New Deal struggles, perhaps not seeing it as a sexy enough issue. Yet this “issue” is part of the ongoing offensive of capital against labour (yes, that’s you and me when they hassle us off the dole or onto the New Deal or into some crap job). The New Deal is intended to create a more disciplined workforce and to force workers to accept worse conditions and pay and more profits for capitalists. And as we all know, more capital accumulation means more environmental destruction (so anti-JSA actions are not just another “single issue”). This is not to say that all we should be doing is opposing the JSA, or supporting striking workers (or going on strike ourselves when we are forced to work). It is true that work-place/dole struggles are not the only way of attacking the capital-labour relation; another example is housing struggles. It is interesting that whereas the 80’s class struggle anarcho movement was sometimes criticised for focusing too much on the point of production (“workerism”) to the exclusion of eg gender issues, reproduction, the environment etc, the 90’s activist scene can be criticised for failing to recognise the importance of class. We can only realise our revolutionary potential when we break out of our isolation, and uniting with other workers/shirkers in struggle, overturn both wage slavery and dole slavery. Only by taking control of our human creativity and activity ourselves can we decide what kind of life we want to lead, what conditions do we want to live in, and what relationship with / impact on the environment we will have.

Nick X

• 1), and it is this relation which must be abolished if capitalism is to be dismantled. So we see that by focusing on money, or on the financial institutions, or corporations, or regulatory bodies such as the WTO, we are missing the point if we do not attack the underlying social relationthe tendency to understand capitalism not as a social relation but as a thing (eg money, banks etc) can be called reification (literally, turning a phenomenon into a thing), and to become obsessed with the thing rather than the relation can be called fetishisation (as in the fetishes or idols worshipped in religions, whereby an object is seen as possessing supernatural powers, or the force of the universe etc)
• 2Aufheben pamphlet “Dole autonomy versus the re-imposition of work”

On June 18th, leading politicians of the eight biggest economies will gather in Cologne (Germany) to talk about the future of the world economy and as almost always, this will be the target of protests. A world-wide alliance is forming which is according to the bulletin of the British activists' driven by the "recognition that the global capitalist system is at the root of our social and ecological troubles." But what sounds like a point of departure for a critical analysis is unfortunately all the campaign has to say about its position. Instead of going beyond this kind of commonplace, it simply states that "a global movement of resistance is rising", and reading the few propaganda leaflets produced so far one soon realizes that it is all about quantities. We are thus told that there were lots of people on the streets at last year's economic summit ("...2oo,ooo people in India..."), lots of agit-prop material has been produced ("20,000 lovely little folding leaflets..."), lots of different groups are involved (incl. trade unions, peace groups, church against poverty, national union of students - to name but a few) and, last but not least, the campaign bursts of fantastic ideas for action: "giving out free food...lots more custard pies...laughing all the way to the bank...sound system in balloon floating above the City!".

Them and us

"We are more possible than they can powerfully imagine" the campaign trumpets - but this them-versus-us-logic is odd on several counts. Not only has global capitalism - the alleged target - nothing to do with a simple "them". What is more, the collective "us" that is being invoked is utterly vague - "a growing alliance of social and environmental movements". The only thing all the different groups have in common is that in one way or the other they are affected by global capitalism - but that, again, is merely a commonplace, insufficient as a basis for collective resistance beyond the symbolism of raving a couple of hours against the gathering of some character masks in Cologne. But far from being a minor mistake of the June 18th campaign, this indifference towards the social content of movements is its very essence. In their own words: "The longer the list, the more effective the action." Following the requirements of media representation, it seeks to bring together masses. The result is pure mystification. On the one side, we have the apocalyptic scenario - "economic crisis, the millennium bug, environmental crisis, war famine, poverty" - which then is countered by the celebrated diversity of countless movements all around the world. The assumption is that anyone suffering from the present social order is by his very nature for its overthrow. Yet the vast majority of the groups and movements listed is directed against specific consequences and aspects of capitalism. The secondary weaving together of all the single-issue-movements leads not to a rejection of the totality of society - quite the reverse, it is simply an incoherent patch-work of people who, at least for a day, come together and party - or throw some custard pies in somebody's face.

"Global Capitalism"...

Preoccupied with listing groups and original ideas for actions, the campaign has dispensed with critical analysis. This is an immediate consequence of the aim to be as broad as possible: Any clarification of the political objectives of the June 18th campaign would reveal the lack of a political consent between e.g. the Zapatistas and the NUS, the trade unions and autonomist groups. This kind of short-sighted campaigning is based on the very absence of a clear critique of "global capitalism" in order to suit virtually everybody. What remains of the proclaimed anti-capitalism is but a bunch of slogans. However, while radical critique of capital is obviously out even amongst those who pretend to practically oppose it, various resentments against certain aspects of the present-day situation are rather growing, with "globalization" being buzz-word number one. The talk of "global capitalism" the campaign displays without any clarification is perfectly well in harmony with the present media hype about globalization. This consists mainly of bemoaning the fact that, confronted with an apparently unlimited fluidity of global capital, the power of the nation state is vanishing . Virtually everyone has a dislike for "globalization": Left-wingers are concerned about the future of democracy - since the politicians who are now allegedly rendered powerless were at least democratically elected whereas citizens have no say in the decisions that the vicious executives of multinational corporations take. Subcommandante Marcos, spokesman of everybody's darling, the Zapatistas in Mexico, sees the organic cultures of peoples being threatened by the evil forces of globalized finance capital. The French fascists of the Front National reject it as an attack on the sovereignty of the nation state and a threat to national culture. The recent campaign against the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investments), in many regards similar to the present June 18th campaign, drew exactly upon this ideology: As the MAI sought to give foreign capital a better position against national legislation, the opposition against it displayed a sometimes extreme nationalism and was practically propaganda for the state. A common response to globalization is thus the call for a re-regulation of the economy by the state. Neo-liberalism, another buzz-word used basically synonymously, is often countered with the demand for a Keynesian policy, popular especially among traditional lefty social democrats and trade-unionists. Keynes acknowledged that in order to prevent crises, the state has to intervene actively into the market by directly creating jobs (which, according to Keynes, could practically mean to make people dig holes and fill them afterwards) and generally raising demand (to compensate capital's tendency to over-production). It is not at all surprising that in the present situation lefty intellectuals like Eric Hobsbawm proclaim "the end of neo-liberalism" and beg New Labour to adopt a more Keynesian strategy of taxation and redistribution. In general, there are hopes that the current hegemony of social democratic governments in Europe could clear the way for an alternative to "neo-liberalism". While the June 18th campaign does not rally for social democracy, the vague opposition to "global capitalism" it spreads is totally compatible with addressing the state as a supposed counter-pole to the market. And in fact, many of the movements the campaign is glad to have on board work along these lines.

"The heart of the economy"

The uncritical concept of capitalism the campaign seems to subscribe to is illustrated by the concentration on the financial sector of capital: the global actions will take place in the financial districts, understood as the "heart of the global economy". While production appears to be merely a technical process in which useful things are made, money and financial institutions are regarded as the essence of capitalism. Yet although capitalism cannot dispense with a developed banking system, it essentially depends on the production of surplus-value through the exploitation of wage-labour. The vast sums of value circulating in the banking districts represent the successful result of this process - and if they don't, the next crash is imminent. Therefore it would rather make sense to occupy some factories - if there is such a thing as "the heart of the economy" it lies there and not at Barclay's Bank. This may sound like an irrelevant footnote. But one has to keep in mind that especially the recent crises in the financial sector many have nurtured resentment against finance capital and prompted calls for a re-regulation of the world economy. The Times stated last summer that "the IMF's reputation has sunk to its lowest since the body was set up in 1944", and social reformists come up with proposals about taxation on "unproductive" speculative capital (so the state can redistribute money for the benefit of all and create jobs...). The campaign's concentration on the financial institutions fails to distinguish itself from these productivist and populist tendencies. This misleading fixation on finance capital seems to be corrected by the second target of the campaign, the multinational corporations. But why privilege multinationals? Are national corporations less capitalist? Are small enterprises any better than "big business"? Significant parts of the campaign seem to stick to these notions: community-based cornershop versus Somerfield's, small peasants versus agro-capital and so on. "Small is beautiful" was after all a fairly popular slogan among eco-activists. This perspective on capital gets professionalised by groups like Corporate Watch and the many initiatives busily cataloguing the many sins and crimes of individual corporations, which practically means most of the time to launch boycotts and thus spread the idea of "consumer's power". Thus, the opposition to Shell is based on their involvement in Nigeria, we are supposed not to eat certain chocolate bars because Nestle does this and that and so on. The critique of the fundamental logic of capital is replaced with a positivistic and moralistic approach. All this neglects the insight that capital in all its forms deserves abolition - and the family owned sweat-shop is by no means any less annoying as a workplace than AT&T.

Confusion and pseudo-practice

All this is not to say that the June 18th campaign would be in favour of sweat shops and state regulation, nationalism or social democracy. It is none of this, but at the same time shows no interest in analysing the dead-ends in which the articulation of social discontent runs today. Instead it employs a naive strategy of immediacy: the imaginative hippy-individual that "takes his desire for reality" is depicted as the ultimate response to global capitalism which essentially is comprised of banks and corporations, run by "them", the evil inhuman managers and yuppies. Everything is supposed to be so clear-cut and self-evident that any further reflection can be dispensed with - hence the ignorance of the many ideological and practical ways in which opposition gets neutralized (if it is not complicit with capital right from the beginning, as probably most of the groups on thecampaign's list are anyways). The call for mass action amounts to confusion about the social objectives of the alleged "global resistance" and ultimately leads to mere pseudo-practice, i.e. much ado about nothing that gives those involved the illusion to lay the ground "for huge social and political changes".

Critiques of the June 18th action, it's aims, organisation and general relevance, are important and to be welcomed. Theory, critical or otherwise, is too often rejected in favour of action when we need to combine theory and action, fostering, articulating and inhabiting the tension between them. Lest this response be taken as saying all is fine with the aims and focus of the action let me emphasise it isn’t. There are fault line running through it - many of which the critique from Uniundercurrent identifies. If the critique helps to bring out and transcend the problems and contradictions of the June 18th action then it will have been worthwhile but if it elevates one position while parodying all others then it amounts to little more then theoretical point scoring

The long list campaign against the economic summit The lack of theoretical flesh on the bones of the June 18th action has been pointed out by the Sussex University zine 'Uniundercurrent'. In an article entitled "The longer the list, the better the action" they argue that, on the strength of the first few propaganda leaflets, the organisers of June 18th are more interested in numbers then analysis; in how many groups they can get involved then in the commonality between them; and that this in turn leads to lowest common denominator theory and a spectacular practice. Such criticisms are well-placed and ultimately helpful, food for thought for those involved, but the article repeatedly falls more into caricature then critique - tending, in turn, to critique it's own caricature rather then what the leaflets said or what might actually be happening. The quote the article takes for it's title - "the longer the list, the better the action,” is part of a sentence from a leaflet encouraging involvement in the June 18th action. True enough, it' s not true - a list that included the likes of, to use their example, the French Front National, would make for a longer list but a scarily incoherent action. To use this snippet though, as the writer does, to confirm the "campaigns" "essence" as "indifference towards the social content of movements" and to suggest that June 18th is all about masses and quantities is indicative of the writers disingenuous selective reading. The first part of the sentence reads: "We will only realise our collective visions by taking action together" then lists some likely suspect sectors - unwaged, students, workers, etc, before finishing "the longer...”. You could be forgiven for assuming this meant that the listees should share some collective content but, fair enough, the ‘visions’ referred to could do with some focus. With the articles subheading though, "the campaign against the economic summit" we are immediately in the realms of caricature. Nowhere in the leaflets produced or organising meetings held has it been suggested that June 18th is a campaign against the economic summit. The June 18th action can at most be called a co-ordination, not a campaign, and is, at best, precisely the rejection of the totality of the present social order that the article calls for, not an event opposing economic summits. From this unpromising start the article goes on to contend that "the campaign" posits a incoherent, vague, them and us logic; has dispensed with any critique of capital and critical analysis generally; is fixated on financial institutions and multinationals; has a positivistic and moralistic approach; all amounting to confusion and mere pseudo-practise. Such insight after reading a "few propaganda leaflets" is surely commendable but leaves little room to practise what you preach and do more than scratch the surface of a subject. To expect critical analysis from an A5 leaflet is possibly asking too much. While to conclude the rejection of radical critique (read as our radical critique) from such a leaflet is going too far. Tell the many people on the J18 email discussion list an international forum for interested groups and individuals set up at the start - that, “further reflection has been dispensed with.” They have been analysing and reflecting on capital, state, resistance and the like, for some time now. There are also groups around the UK organising meetings to discuss the plan where no doubt, some reflection may slip in occasionally. Then there is the London networks ‘What is Capitalism?’ conference - organised precisely for “further reflection.” The writer of the article may not have known all this but then if “the essence” of “the campaign” has already been revealed there is no need to find out.

In fact the lack of a critical analysis of capitalism in the direct action movement and its almost complete mystification in social life generally, is part of the point of organising the action. If a “recognition that the global capitalist system is at the root of our social and ecological troubles” was “commonplace” we might be in more encouraging times. The commonplace, in this instance, is for most people an obscurity.

Us and them

Juxtapositions for the sake of a propaganda leaflet such as, “We are more possible then they can powerfully imagine” are hardly to be taken as conclusive evidence of something’s “logic” or “essence”. Propaganda at least that which aims to get people active - often involves simplifications of a subject. By definition it aims to persuade or convince people and, yes, those working on J18 would like people to get involved and may initially be less concerned to ask to see the groups theoretical credentials; or to check whether or not they are “complicit with capital.” Furthermore the assumptions made in the text that our/their collective resistance is basically “raving for a few hours” or “throw(ing) some custard pies” might ring hollow for participants in ‘the south’ where doing either is not exactly top of the agenda. Far from positing a crude them and us the claim is that our problems are systemic, inherent within the socio-economic order. Interpretations as to the fundamentals of this order may differ, as may the methods for its disposal, but the need to act collectively is clear. Who knows, action may even affect their/our interpretations. Maybe even, a way into an understanding of capitalism is through the ‘globalisation’ debate that the article sneers at.. To denounce those who haven’t reached your understanding yet is akin to the vegans who attack potential vegetarians for not going far enough thus sending them straight back to the meat counter. That there are, within the June 18th network, conflicting views, simplifications, confusions and hopes of getting a diversity of groups involved, is undeniable. Such are the concerns of practise. The luxury of everyone acceding to your understanding or agreeing with your ideas and practises is often unavailable in small unified groups let alone large diverse movements. This is, of course, where analysis, argument, dialogue and discussion comes in.

The heart of the global capitalist economy

If June 18th is just a few leaflets then a few thousand people occupying the City for a day then it might well be exhilarating reason enough maybe - but it wont add up to abolishing capitalism. That will require a more consistent praxis. Then again, to be so sure of where a “weaving together of all the single issue movements” leads, that it is “simply an incoherent patchwork ”, is to forget that the outcomes that result from a practise are not always the ones intended. That the secondary effects may be wholly unexpected. This of course cuts both ways and is no reason to dispense with analysis or intention but just maybe, looking for the potential and possibilities of a situation is as useful as dismissing it in advance The coinciding of J18 with the G8 summit is not to put pressure on bad corporations via nation-states but to show the collusion between state and capital and the necessity to overthrow both; to contend that exploitation is also a political matter not just an economic one. That this is not bluntly said and arguably it should be - owes more to a desire to open a debate before concluding it, and to the perceived role of a propaganda leaflet, then any rejection of critical analysis. Starting from a recognition of the multiplicity of positions and interests irreducible to a single analysis and tentatively endorsing this divergence, the unity is then aimed at precisely the recognition of exploitation by capital from different but complementary experiences. It doesn’t presuppose that unity but attempts to open a space for critique that is available to all. To claim, as the writer does, that “if there is such a thing as “the heart of the global economy”” it “would rather make sense to occupy some factories” - makes no sense at all. Besides the literalism of its interpretation of a slogan, the autonomist insight that all of social life under capitalism tends to become a factory for the exploitation of surplus value not only wage-labour but the free work of students and housewives etc means that June 18th is an occupation of “some factories”: the social factories of the city streets and squares. And while June 18th may well be “in many regards similar” to the campaign against the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investments) - although the similarities are unspecified - there is at least one huge difference. The campaign against the MAI was mainly a lobbyist, letter writing opposition to one re-regulatory element of capital, the June 18th co-ordination is rooted in a direct actionist opposition to capitalism, full stop.

Practising pseudo-confusion

A call for mass action might indeed “amount to confusion”, if that was what was being called for. It isn’t. On the contrary, autonomous actions co-ordinated and focused - are being called for. Hopefully by those who have thought about what they are doing and why. One of the main organising principles of J18 is autonomy for the groups and movements involved. Meaning in practise encouraging self-activity and being less quick to dismiss other approaches. Not to build "a mass" but to make connections, encourage debate, open dialogues. Whether such confusing activity is leading “ultimately (to) mere pseudo-practise” is to be decided by those who know the true practise presumably we await their instructions…

The article ends with a summation of “the campaigns” strategy as naïve, using a slogan from the leaflet as illustration, but while “imagine taking your desires for reality” is on the leaflet it is hardly "depicted as the ultimate response to global capitalism” . The June 18th action may well be naïve but it is not just a “strategy of immediacy” by “hippy-individuals” against the evil “them”. That this is just clear-cut misrepresentation is self-evident. There are other “slogans” on the leaflet, which the writer does not mention, such as “imagine a society based on mutual aid, sharing and respect for nature” and “imagine a world where people have control of their lives and communities”. A less condemnatory reading may have suggested that those involved do feel creating a different world will require thought, collective action and an ongoing process and have presented some constructive ideas to pepper the criticisms. If the June 18th action is not the activity of a "significant movement that at least claims to be revolutionary" it is at least significant for revolutionaries; and if its participants, like the theorists at 'Uniundercurrent', are "remote from advancing a coherent line of argumentation" they are, at least, advancing arguments. As an attempt to put capitalism back on the agenda of resistance at a time when its logic is further cloaked in mystification; as a contribution to the rebuilding of international solidarity at a time of rekindled nationalism and as a forwarding of informed imagination at a time when radical visions are seen as withering away, the June 18th action deserves, not caricatures, but the sharpest of critical engagements.

While claiming that critique of J18 is much needed, the author to the reply dismissed ours as a caricature. We would be the last ones to deny that there has been a lot of caricaturing going on. But the only reason why our text might give that impression, is that its object - the information we have about J18 - is itself caricaturing the world of capital. Our critique of J18 consisted of a number of related points: the fixation on finance capital and evil multinational corporations, the participation in the hype about “globalisation”, accompanied by a problematic localism, to name but the most important ones. The response evades these issues and instead repeatedly claims that the meagre basis on which we wrote our critique led us to distort the issue. However, we criticised precisely that there is nothing further than this “meagre basis” - that is a few leaflets - on which the J18 campaign/co-ordination (whatever difference that makes) is based. It is not our fault that a few small leaflets are so far all the co-ordination has published - it is the very problem. Fair enough, there have been e-mail and other discussion groups, but they are very private discussions. It is the publications made publicly available that represent a certain underlying consensus, and as such are to be taken as expressing the gist of a campaign. Otherwise, what would their purpose be? That to the present day not a single pamphlet bringing together “the multiplicity of positions and interests” has been put out underscores our claim that crucial questions are being neglected in order to keep up a superficial unity of action. Instead of engaging with our critique, the writer explains to us the thorny path of bringing together the various movements around the globe. This obviously requires not asking for “groups’ theoretical credentials”. Yet while it is apparently too arrogant “to check whether or not groups are complicit with capital”, this political indifference does not prevent the writer from claiming that ”June 18th...is rooted in a direct actionist opposition to capitalism.” This contradiction remains a mystery to us, but our main point was something else: that a mobilisation of this type avoids a critical theory of capital and consequently reproduces ideology.

Of course, we are not in any way questioning the necessity of practice and we consider many of the actions planned for the day worthwhile. However, the reply to our previous article, as well as J18 generally, considers theory at most a secondary issue. The main focus is in the ‘action’, and any critical reflection is postponed indefinitely. Even more flagrantly, the author bets on the idea that “the outcomes that result from a practice are not always the ones intended” and that “the secondary effects may be wholly unexpected”... In other words, never mind if we reproduce social-democratic ideology, it might accidentally still end in a social revolution. Not only do we find in the response to our article no refutation of the points we make, but unfortunately they seem more relevant now than before: the latest agit-leaflet is worth quoting at length to illustrate this. It claims: “Our planet is actually run by the financial markets - a giant video game in which people buy and sell blips on electronic screens, trading life for money in their search for higher profits. Yet the consequences of this frenzied game are very real: human lives, ecosystems, jobs and even entire economies [!!sic!!] are at the mercy of this reckless global system”. In reality the world is, of course, not run by the financial markets. Capital is a system of relations of production of which the financial markets are but a (necessary) offspring. To fixate the attack on them is to turn the world upon its head, resulting in such absurdities as complaining about the damages made to “jobs” and even “entire economies” which are apparently just as innocent as “ecosystems and human lives”. Since of course these “entire economies” are capitalist, this J18 statement affirms what it pretends to attack1. This feels like stating the obvious. Although no one can deny the importance of financial markets, this passage simply reasserts a view of capitalism we tried to refute in the last article. Is this the further reflection resulting from the “what is capitalism?” conference?

This misconception of finance capital was one of the points we tried to raise, and not, as the writer claims, that nothing matters except the factories. We mentioned the factories in order to attack J18’s fixation on the financial centres; a fixation that is an obstacle for a critique of production. Of course, capital forms all of social life and not just production in the factories, and reclaiming the streets is one adequate response to this. The J18 co-ordination is undeniably one between many different groups with radically opposing views. This on the one hand shows a serious lack of consensus, and a blurry amalgam of groups that don’t even necessarily have the same basic aims. On the other hand, and paradoxically, it is also the expression of a consensus: anything will do, as long as it fits with the vague anti-globalisation attitude. That, as we noted, this resentment can also be found on the political Right, e.g. the French Front National, does not seem to bother the author - instead, he claims that we suggested that J18 would like to include the Front National in its long list. Obviously, we never did, but the co-ordination is already, even without any Fascists, “scarily incoherent”. Since the author dismissed our article as mere caricature and did not engage with the points we raised, there is nothing new we can say. Except maybe that “Economies versus Financial Markets” - this latest caricature of anti-capitalism - is even worse than the stuff we had referred to in the last undercurrent. It seems our critique was not a caricature, but an understatement.

P.S. We refuse to be compared to vegans (see ‘Hitler was a Vegetarian’, uniundercurrent #6)

(1) For an analysis of how capital presents itself in such a way as to facilitate the emergence of an “anti-capitalism” that is a one-sided attack on the abstract side of capital (e.g. finance capital) while affirming the “concreteness” of labour and production, and how furthermore this “anti-capitalism” relates to anti-Semitism, see Moishe Postone, ‘Anti-Semitism and National Socialism’, in Germans and Jews since the Holocaust: the changing situation in West Germany, ed. Anson Rabinach/Jack Zipes, New York and London 1986. We do not, however, want to suggest that J18 is anti-Semitic.

J18 has managed to attract an amazing network of activists to work together, but I feel that a we need to clarify what we are trying to challenge. It is not enough to simply say we are opposing just capitalism or globalisation, the groups who have been working on J18 in the UK and many elsewhere are opposed to nationalism, war, centralisation, government, bureaucracy, sexism and a lot more. For a large part J18 identify with anarchism or radical ecology. For future proposals we need to debate more on how we strike a good balance between clarifying our radical politics and having a proposal that is simple, straight forward and inspiring for people outside our small political ghetto. We need to work on strengthening our radical diversity without falling into the trap of using vague liberal friendly language. In our efforts to build a huge anti-capitalist network we have attracted a lot of groups and it sounds impressive but unfortunately too many of them are liberal or are open to authoritarian or conservative elements. This is partly because of phrases like ' the longer the list, the better the action ! ' used in some early leaflets would have turned me of the entire event, if I didn't know the good reputation of the groups putting it forward. I guess you're never happy with a leaflet or proposal unless you've written it yourself.

- Decentralising, strengthen and expand our network/s ? By the time we are ready to start thinking about opposition to the start of next years G8 summit, I don't know if I will be interested in repeating the strategy of targeting the financial centres. Perhaps to encourage greater local organising we should break from having a lot of the organising happening in London, instead taking actions where we live all on the same day. Thirty actions against different parts of the structure across the country and replicated across the world, linking local concerns to the global system, might have more impact then focussing on the financial centres. Perhaps it is not as empower as having thousands and thousands in the streets in one place, but in terms of building our local networks it may be a better strategy.

- Keeping up the momentum built by j18 ? Focussing all our other actions or energies towards one big day seems to have caused many people to get burnt out. Personally it will be a long time before I can focus on helping organise an international campaign. I think I will tend to focus on smaller actions. J18 I think has neglected local manifestations of capitalism which effect us everyday in favour of the financial targets. While it is true that uniting against the big corporations and the symbols of the capitalist system is a good way to bring people together to show what we are fighting against, it is another to challenge capitalism and the state where we live and work. Easier said than done I know, but by doing isolated actions we loose sight of the bigger picture and often paint ourselves into single issue corners. Brighton has a monthly gathering of anti-authoritarian groups monthly under the name of the ' Rebel Alliance. ' Another suggestion made was that similar groups organising all over the country would be a good idea. Perhaps working towards a couple of nationally co-ordinated actions, some smaller international actions and a big international action once a year (or more !)

- When should tasks be made accountable to other parts of the network ? When should groups be left to their own and not be accountable to others in their network ? Obviously this is not for me to dictate but it is an issue we should be constantly questioned. In the past I have had experience of groups where raising consensus is a painful process where it has takes so long to make a decision that things take forever to gets done. My experience however with various meetings and responsibilities in J18 groups has been that sometimes there is not enough consultation between different groups. There can be a slight ' tyranny of structurelessness ', due partly to deadlines and because the demands we make of ourselves are really huge. Sometime information is being held in too few hands because of perceived security (and sometime legitimate ) concerns, but sometimes I have felt it is just an unacknowledged clique or desire for control, intentional or otherwise. When information is held in a few hands it is easier for infiltrators to fuck us up than if no one really had control of it. Having never been involved in something so big its hard to criticise when so many people have been working so hard, but it is worse not to act on it when it does happen. In the run up to a couple of big actions, and to a smaller extent J18, we have dedicated discussion time at meetings to banner slogans, posters other agit-prop etc only for the people who have been producing them not to receive that information, or to ignore it and do their own thing, sometimes with good results and sometimes bad, either way they end up deciding the message, that represents others. On one hand I wonder if I've any right to criticise when I am not there to produce the banner, flier, or other propaganda, from the original ideas to the finished article, particularly when there are many people dedicating more of their time to the actions than myself. However when propaganda is widely circulation and designed to represent or inform about the actions of a group, they should reflect the thoughts of the ' members ' of the group. Sometimes I have felt that individuals doing the work hide behind the words 'autonomously organised' when they are just pushing their own angle, intentionally or not in effect creating a hegemony on information and an ideological hierarchy. This always needs to be challenged, by bringing in new people and not overusing perceived security risks to close out people so that cliques are broken before they develop. This is not a not an original idea, unfortunately it is not put into practice enough, due to oversight or because some people have specialised skills which make them a valuable member of certain groups all the time. We need more skills training and outreach.

- Grassroots radical diversity. J18 as I understand it is an attempt to create a network of diverse grassroots radical groups to fight capitalism ( and the rest ), unfortunately we have attracted some liberals. I think we have attracted liberals internationally because we put out the message stressing a coming together of a diversity of struggles without making it clear enough what we mean, ( or perhaps being liberals they are just stupid ! ) These liberals if they continue to become part of a hopefully growing post –j18 network, will actually rob it of its radicalism and diversity; and fall apart because of all the liberal hacks. The point I am trying to make is we need to be a bit clearer to keep J18 and whatever groups we try and build after, radical and diverse. Centralised decision making structures and reform platform acts to oppose diversity. As well as being autonomously organised internationally, groups should be decentralised locally also. It seems that some groups abroad do not organise like this, I said earlier that I haven't had been enough consultation with people in different groups to have formed a definite answer, although the names of many of the groups and occasional comments of individuals in them give me some idea. Centralisation whether within Non-Government-Organisation (NGO) reform environment groups, in the form of union leaders, liberal or totalitarian states or within a fringe political party etc always enforces uniformity or 'mono-culture'. What is passed of as diversity by liberals pale in comparison to the radical diversity of grassroots autonomous ' communities of resistance. ' I am fine with J18 groups like Chikoko ( the grassroots indigenous resistance to Oil in Nigeria Delta ), groups like the Industrial Workers of the World, Earth-first!, Reclaim the streets from what I know of them as they encourage diversity and have a flexible vision of a world in which individuals have as much control of decision that effect them as is possible.

The End

signed: anonymous and paranoid

The following text is made up of extracts of the article "Friday June 18th 1999: Confronting Capital And Smashing The State" Do or Die #8. (c/o 6 Tilbury Place, Brighton, East Sussex, BN2 2GY) The author would like to point out that this represents just one voice, of an RTS'er in London

The June 18th (J18) international day of action in financial and banking districts across the world, was probably the largest and most diverse day of action against global capital in recent history1 . Hundreds of actions took place ranging from a "Carnival of the Oppressed" in Nigeria, with 10,000 Ogoni, Ijaw and other tribes closing down Port Harcourt , to a spoof trade fair in Montevideo, Uruguay - from Barcelona where a piece of squatted land was turned into an urban oasis overnight , complete with vegetables, medicinal herbs and a lake to the City of London where a "Carnival against Capitalism" attended by thousands, radically transformed Europe's largest financial centre, and included attempts to occupy and electronically hack into the Futures Exchange - from an anti nuclear demonstration in Gujerat, Pakistan by trade Unionists , to actions against child labour in Senegal - from Street Parties across the United States to domestic and garment workers demonstrating against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Dhaka, Bangladesh ... all "in recognition that the global capitalist system is based on the exploitation of people and the planet for the profit of a few and is at the very root of our social and ecological troubles." But where did this extraordinary show of international solidarity spring from ? And how and why are such diverse groups building global networks of struggle to counter the globalisation2 of misery under capitalism ? As the economy has become increasingly transnational, so too has the resistance to its devastating social and ecological consequences. But until recently this world-wide resistance to the effects of globalisation has been little-recognised. June the 18th didn't come from nowhere. There is a fascinating history and process which led up to the day. This is a story that needs telling. (For the full story see the Do or Die article mentioned above - ed)

The useful contradictions of globalisation International solidarity and global protest is nothing new, from the European revolutions of 1848, the upheavals of 1917-18 following the Russian Revolution or the lighting flashes nearly everywhere in 1968, struggle has been able to communicate globally. But what is perhaps unique to our times is the speed and ease with which we can communicate between struggles and the fact that globalisation has meant that many people living in very different cultures across the world now share a common enemy. An enemy that is increasingly becoming less subtle and more excessive - "capitalism with its gloves off " - and therefore easier to see, understand and ultimately dismantle.3

Common enemy

The irony is that before the onslaught of globalisation , "the system" was sometimes hard to recognise in its diverse manifestations and policies. Abstract critical theory was confronting an abstract multifaceted system. But the reduction of diversity in the corporate landscape and the concentration of power within international Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) , the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the financial markets has clarified things and offered a focal point for protest and opposition. It is a lot easier to oppose concentrated uniform power than diverse and flexible forms.4 As power heads further and further in this direction, those opposing it seem to becoming more and more diverse and fluid. Hence much harder to diffuse and undermine. As the elite, their transnational corporations and their puppets the IMF and WTO , impose "free market" policies on every country on the planet, they are unwittingly creating a situation where diverse movements are able to recognise each others struggles as related and are beginning to work together on an unprecedented scale. The global "race to the bottom" in which workers , communities and whole countries are forced to compete by lowering wages, working conditions, environmental protections, and social spending, to facilitate maximum profit for corporations, is stimulating resistance all over the world. People everywhere are realising that this resistance is pointless if they are resisting in isolation. For example - say your community manages, after years of tireless campaigning, to shut down your local toxic waste dump, what does the Transnational Company that owns the dump do ? They simply move it to wherever their costs are less and the resistance weaker - probably somewhere in the Third World or Eastern Europe. Under this system, communities have a stark choice; either compete fiercely with each other or, co-operate in resisting the destruction of your lives, land and livelihoods by rampaging capital.

Diversity v Uniformity

To accelerate profit and create economies of scale global capital imposes monoculture on the world. Making everywhere look and feel like everywhere else. The same restaurants, the same hotels, the same supermarkets filled with the same musak. Sumner Redstone the multibillionaire owner of MTV summed up this denial of diversity when he said: "Just as teenagers are the same all over the world, children are the same all over the world" - on his business trips he obviously forgets to stop of and visit the slums of Delhi or the impoverished rural villages of Africa - In New York, London and Berlin, kids may have succumbed to his spell of sameness, as they sit prisoners of their own homes, their dull eyes glued to the screen. But the majority of the worlds children would rather have clean water than Jamiroquai. Herbert Read in "The Philosophy of Anarchism" wrote, "Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society". The president of the Nabisco Corporation would obviously disagree, he is "looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latins and Scandinavians will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate."5 Progress in the present system is measured by economic growth, which inevitably means monoculture. Just because more money is changing hands doesn't mean that life is getting any better, it is quite the opposite for the majority of the world. But by embracing diversity, social movements are proposing powerful challenges to capitals addiction to uniformity. Capital's loudest message in the 90's was that there is no alternative to the status quo, and that humanity had reached its highest level. The end of history had arrived. In the 1920's and 50's this same message was proclaimed by the elites - and the decades that followed, the radical upheavals of the 30s and the 60's - showed them that as soon as the end of history is declared it is time for radical changes.

Space for Utopias

Capital was only able to become truly global after the fall of the Berlin wall and the break up of the Eastern Block. The fall of communism not only opened up the space for capital to be unrestrained, but also gave a new lease of life to radical movements . For more than 70 years, Soviet Socialism was seen as the main model of revolutionary society, and of course it was a total social and ecological disaster; but its shadow lingered over most radical movements. Those who wished to discredit any forms of revolutionary thinking simply pointed to the Soviet model to prove the inevitable failures of any utopian project. Now that the Soviet Union has ceased to exist, it has become a lot easier for those of us working in radical movements to conceive of different societies without having to refer to a failed model. Ideas of utopia can return un-hindered. The space has been cleared and the power of radical imagination is back at the centre of revolutionary struggle. Not only has the imagination been freed, it has also become more diverse and fluid than it was able to be under the shadow of the strict monolithic ideology of soviet socialism. There is no longer any need for universal rules, there is not just one way, one utopia to apply globally, because that is exactly what the "free marketers" are trying to do. The radical social movements that are increasingly coming together don't want to seize power but to dissolve it. They are not vanguards but catalysts in the revolutionary process. They are dreaming up many autonomous alternative forms of social organisation. They are celebrating variety and rejoicing in autonomy.

The Ecology of Struggle

Murray Bookchin , in Post Scarcity Anarchism wrote that "in almost every period since the Renaissance the development of revolutionary thought has been heavily influenced by a branch of science"6 . He gives the examples of mathematics and mechanics for the Enlightenment and Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology for the 19th Century. Ecology has influenced many movements today and that is perhaps why their model of organisation and co-ordination resembles an ecological model, why it works like an ecosystem. Highly interconnected - it thrives on diversity, works best when imbedded in its own locality and context and develops most creatively at the edges, the overlap points, the in-between spaces. Those spaces where different cultures meet, such as the coming together of the American Earth First! and Logging Unions or London Tube Workers and Reclaim the Streets. The societies that they dream of creating will also be like ecosystems, diversified, balanced and harmonious.

The ecological crisis changes the way many of these movements think and act. KirkPatrick Sale illustrates the scale of the biological meltdown- "More goods and services have been consumed by the generation alive between 1950 and 1990, measured in constant dollars and on a global scale, than by all the generations in all of human history before."7 The level of ecological destruction is mind blowing and the present generation of activists feel an incredible urgency about the future. The know mere reform is useless, because it is clear that the whole basis of the present system is profoundly anti ecological, and there is no longer any use waiting for the right historical conditions for revolution, time is rapidly running out. Radically creative and subversive change must happen now, because there is no time left for anything else. During the May '68 insurrection in Paris, a message was scrawled on the walls of the Theatre de L'Odeon "Dare to go where none has gone before you. Dare to think what none has ever thought. " Despite capital's rapacious ability to enclose and recuperate everything, the space has now been opened up and we can pay attention to that message.

Transnational Resistance

On New years day 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect, two thousand indigenous peoples from several groups came out from the mountains and forests of the Chiapas, the most Southern state of Mexico. Masked, armed and calling themselves Zapatistas, their battle cry was "Ya Basta" "Enough is Enough". An extraordinary popular uprising, which was to change the landscape of global resistance forever, had begun. Five towns were occupied and 12 days of fighting followed. This was not an isolated local act of rebellion, through the Zapatistas imaginative use of the internet which could not be censored by the Mexican state, people all over the world soon heard of the uprising. These masked rebels, from poverty stricken communities, were not only demanding that their own land and lives be given back, neither were they just asking for international support and solidarity; but they were talking about neoliberalism, about the "death sentence" that NAFTA and other Free trade agreements would impose on indigenous people. They were demanding the dissolution of power and the development of "civil society" and they were encouraging others all over the world to take on the fight against the enclosure of our lives by capital . Public sympathy in Mexico and abroad was overwhelming, on the day of the cease-fire, celebratory demonstrations took place in numerous countries, and in Mexico City 100,000 marched together , Shouting "First World HaHAHA". Phenomenal poetic communiqués came out of Chiapas ,and were rapidly circulated around the internet. There was a new sense of possibility, the Zapatistas and their supporters were weaving an electronic fabric of struggle to carry revolution around the world. Now resistance really could be as transnational as capital.8

Peoples' Global Action

In 1996, the Zapatistas , with trepidation as they thought no-one might come, put out a call for a gathering, called an "encuentro" ( encounter) , of international activists and intellectuals to meet in Chiapas and discuss common tactics, problems and solutions. 6000 people attended, and spent days talking and sharing their stories of struggle against the " common enemy": capitalism. This was followed a year later by a gathering in Spain, where the idea of a more concrete global campaign, named Peoples Global Action (PGA), was hatched by a group made up of ten of the largest and most innovative social movements, including the Movimento Sem Terra, the Brazilian Landless Peasants Movement and the Karnataka State Farmers Union , radical Indian Farmers (KRRS) . Four "hallmarks" were proposed by this group (who became the PGA convenors committee, a role which would rotate every year) in an attempt to get people to rally around shared principles. These were: "A very clear rejection of the institutions that multinationals and speculators have built to take power away from people like the WTO, and other trade liberalisation agreements (like APEC, the EU NAFTA, etc.)"

"A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such a biased and undemocratic organisations in which transnational capital is the only real policy- maker".

"A call for non-violent civil disobedience and the construction of local alternatives by local people, as answers to the actions of governments and corporations."

"An organisational philosophy based on decentralisation and autonomy."

In February 1998, Peoples Global Action was born, for the first time ever the worlds grassroots movements were beginning to talk and share experiences without the mediation of Non Governmental Organisations (NGO's), and the first gathering of the PGA was held in Geneva - home of the much hated WTO. More than 300 delegates from 71 countries came to Geneva to share their anger over corporate rule. From the Uwa peoples, to Canadian Postal Workers, to Reclaim the Streets, to anti-nuclear campaigners, to French farmers, to Maori and Ogoni activist, to Korean Trade Unionists, to the Indigenous Women's Network of North America, to Ukrainian environmentalists, all were there to form, "a global instrument for communication and co-ordination for all those fighting against the destruction of humanity and the planet by the global market, while building up local alternatives and people power."

One of the participants spoke of this inspiring event : "It is difficult to describe the warmth and the depth of the encounters we had here. The global enemy is relatively well known, but the global resistance that it meets rarely passes through the filter of the media. And here we met the people who had shut down whole cities in Canada with general strikes, risked their lives to seize lands in Latin America, destroyed the seat of Cargill in India or Novartis's transgenic maize in France. The discussions, the concrete planning for action, the stories of struggle, the personalities, the enthusiastic hospitality of the Genevan squatters, the impassioned accents of the women and men facing the police outside the WTO building, all sealed an alliance between us. Scattered around the world again, we will not forget. We remain together. This is our common struggle."

One of the concrete aims of this gathering was to co-ordinate actions against two events of global importance that were coming up in May of that year, the G8 meeting (an annual event) of the leaders of the eight most industrialised nations , which was to take place in Birmingham and the second ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation which was being held a day later in Geneva. For 4 consecutive days in May 1998, acts of resistance echoed around the planet. In Hyderabad India, 200,000 peasant farmers called for the death of the WTO, in Brasilia landless peasants and unemployed workers joined forces and 50,000 of them took to the streets, over 30 Reclaim the Streets parties took place in many countries, ranging from Finland, to Sydney, San Francisco to Toronto, Lyon to Berlin. In Prague, the biggest single mobilisation, since the Velvet Revolution in '89, brought thousands into the streets for a mobile street party which ended the with several Mc Donalds being "redesigned" and running battles with the police. Meanwhile in the UK 5,000 people were paralysing central Birmingham as the G8 leaders fled the city to a local manor, to continue their meeting in a more tranquil location . The following day the streets of Geneva exploded. The G8 plus many more world leaders had congregated there for the WTO ministerial, and to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GAAT) the forerunner of the WTO. Over 15,000 people from all over Europe and many from other continents demonstrated against the tyranny of the WTO, banks had their windows smashed, the WTO Director General's Mercedes was turned over and three days of the heaviest rioting ever seen in Geneva followed. The dust settled, the world leaders stuck in their glass bunker, beside lake Geneva, made a statement saying that they wanted the WTO to become "more transparent"! As if that was going to make the blind bit of difference.

June the 18th: keep on building

It was clear that things were really moving, and we had to keep the momentum going and build on the success of the May actions. But how? Then came an idea, why not go for the jugular this time. Why not aim at the heart of the beast, the pulsating core of the global economy , the financial and banking districts, the engine room of all ecological and social devastation. This time we could make it bigger, better and even more diverse.(...) the desire to do something in this small square mile of land right, on our doorsteps, Europe's leading Financial centre, and one of capitals oldest and most powerful sites, proved too strong. Having a tendency to believe in the reality of our desires, we couldn't let this one go.

Then during a hot summers day in June 1998 a conversation occurred between a Reclaim the Streets (RTS) activist and someone from London Greenpeace, (LGP - the anarchist collective not linked to Greenpeace International) who had been involved in the Stop the City demonstrations during the 80's. It turned out that they had been thinking similar thoughts about having a City event this year, to bring all the single issue campaigns together around the common enemy of capital, and a date had already been set for a public meeting. LGP felt that the time was right to take on such an audacious target. The Stop the City's in the 80's had come out of the momentum of the peace movement. In the last few year the ecological direct action movement had been getting stronger, there seemed to be an upsurge in workplace action - the Jubilee line wildcat strikes, and the Tameside care workers being two examples , Street Parties had sprouted up across the country with thousands taking direct action and there was a sense that there was enough momentum to take on such an ambitious and cheeky action. The idea was taken back to RTS's weekly public meeting and to LGPs . In mid August the first of many public meetings about June the 18th was held in a community centre in central London. As well as RTS and LGP, several groups were present, ranging from Mexico Support Group, London Animal Action, to McLibel, to Class War. A date was decided, June the 18th, which coincided with this year's G8 summit and was a Friday - therefore a work day in the City.

(....)

Learning Together

There has been a tendency in the UK direct action movement to concentrate on action at the expense of more conscious thinking and ideological clarity. The positive side of this, is that it has enabled wildly imaginative actions and strategies to take place. It has also helped avoid the ideological factionalisation and bickering of much traditional politics. The downside of this however, is that if we want to build "organised popular movements which think things through, which debate, which act, which experiment, which try alternatives, which develop seeds of the future in the present society" then we have to get a lot better at thinking, talking and educating ourselves and others. June the 18th once again acted as a focusing agent, it brought together diverse activist some from different single issue campaigns, and got them to think about one question, the question of capital.

Few activists seriously understand economics and even fewer understand the complexities of the arcane currency, futures and options markets that lie at the heart of the worlds economy. There are very few places which will tell you about such things in clear and simple language. It is in the interest of the elites to make these things inaccessible, "difficult" to understand for the average citizen. In many ways it resembles the hold on power that has gone on for millennia within religious societies. The high priesthood would often hold arcane ceremonies in temples hidden from the populace; and for over a thousand years mass was held in Latin, which excluded the majority of the population from understanding it. Now in their towering glass temples of Mammon, the elite, the bankers, traders and financiers are still waking up at dawn and engaging in secret rituals. Aloof and isolated from the devastating effects of their magic, they sit safely in front of their screens playing with numbers and abstract mathematical equations, knowing that most people will never make a connection between these arcane games and the misery of their everyday life. As "a first step towards unlocking the City's mystique" and to help educate ourselves on the issues of contemporary capital and financial markets, Corporate Watch and Reclaim the Streets produced a clear and concise 32 page illustrated booklet entitled; Squaring Up to The Square Mile - A rough Guide to the City of London. 4000 copies of this excellent activist tool were distributed to groups preparing for J18, to alternative book shops and conferences. A version was also put up on the Web. Tucked inside the booklet was a full colour map of potential targets in the City ; banks, exchanges, corporate HQ's, Investment houses etc., to help activist plane their autonomous actions. A wonderful way of showing that theory without action is useless..

(...)

Meanwhile NATO is bombing Serbia back to the stone age, in order that Western Capital can enclose this last enclave of the Eastern Block. We asked ourselves - who is going to rebuild the bridges, oil refineries, roads, schools, hospitals and power stations and who is going to replace the millions of pounds worth of weapons used every day ? Could it possibly be Western oil companies, engineering, construction and arms companies. Many of us felt compelled to do something, to take action, but the timing was dreadful, and we were are all overworked with June 18 preparations, there was no way we could organise anything else. Would the war still be going on, on June 18th? The issues were clearly identical, but how could we successfully integrate it into the action?

(....)

A year on, from that hot summers day conversation, everything is set to go. Hundreds of groups in 43 countries have said they are going to do something on the day and the City of London Police estimate 10,000 people will turn up for the actions in the Square Mile. But despite all the endless meetings, careful preparations and military precision planning we know that only one thing will enable the day to succeed: spontaneity. The active spontaneous actions of the participants. Spontaneity is one more vital tool of resistance to join fluidity and diversity; it is the freedom to play beyond want and external compulsion, its the play of life itself, the very opposite of work, orders and hierarchy.

Revolutionary epochs are periods of convergence, apparently separate processes collect to form a socially explosive crisis -(...). A critical mass is building - every year, every month, every day it gets bigger and stronger - reports of strikes, of direct actions, of protest and occupations from across the world flow along the same lines of communication that carry the trillions of pounds involved in the reckless unsustainable money game of transnational capital. Soon there is going to be an explosion, an explosion which will be so different from any other revolutionary upsurge that those in power won't even realise it is about to transform their world for ever. There is much work to be done, but the hope and possibility expressed during June the 18th brought us one step close to this wondrous moment.

Judy

• 1See the June 18th web site for a complete list of actions www.j18.org
• 2Globalisation has become a buzz word and can be a confusing term. I prefer the term Neoliberalism, used in Europe and Latin America, but will use the more common English term. My understanding of Globalisation is best summed up in this section of Reclaim the Streets Agitprop "Capital has always been global. From the slave trade of earlier centuries to the imperial colonisation of lands and cultures across the world, its boundless drive for expansion - for short term financial gain - has recognised no limits. Backed up by state power, capitalist accumulation has created widespread social and ecological devastation where ever it extended. But now, capitalism is attempting a new strategy to reassert and intensify its dominance over us. Its name is economic globalisation, and it consists of the dismantling of national limitations to trade and to the free movement of capital. It enables companies, driven by the demands of the rapacious gambling of money markets, to ransack the entire globe in search for ever higher profits, lowering wages and environmental standards in their wake. Globalisation is arguably the most fundamental redesign of the planet's political and economic arrangements since the Industrial Revolution." Global Street Party agitprop - May 16th 1998.
• 3Ironically this was one of the central weaknesses of the Soviet-Style state. Uniformity undermines diversity and the capacity to diffuse opposition.
• 4The engines of capital, the financial markets, may be "anarchic", flexible, and fluid - but they are still governed by one unbreakable law - profit.
• 5Quoted in Trilaterism, edited by Holly Sklar, 1980 - quoted in The Case Against the Global Economy, and for a turn toward the local. Ed. Mander and Goldsmith , Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1996.
• 6Murray Bookchin, Post Scarcity Anarchism- Black Rose Books, Montreal, 1971.
• 7Kirkpatrick Sale - rebels Against the Future - Lessons for the computer age. Quartet Books. 1996
• 8See the excellent writings of US academic Harry Cleaver about the Zapatistas and computer linked social movements - available on the web at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/hmchtmlpapers.html

The following extracts are from an article in Freedom Press at the beginning of the summer (written by Nick S)....

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The left, though, whatever their rhetoric (and this goes for many anarchists too) conduct their politics entirely at the level of the moral and through entirely symbolic means. They don't live in the communities they purport to address and they have nothing practical to offer those communities to improve their everyday lives. The left (and again, this has to include much of the anarchist movement) has believed it can win by ideology alone......... On 18th June, in what purports to be an exercise in freeing ourselves from the shackles of capitalism, a good many of us will converge on the City of London, to take part in "an international day of protest, action and carnival aimed at the heart of the global economy, the banking and financial centres". If proof were needed of our movement's resort to entirely symbolic activity, none better could be found. Most people who suffer at the hands of capital don't do so in the heart of the City, they suffer through paying high rents on run down estates while local resources go to service local authority debts to the City, they suffer through hospital waiting list increases as bed capacities and staff numbers are lost due to health authority private finance deals. They suffer through exploitation at work, through higher prices and lower wages, through the increased cost of entertainment - football season ticket costs, club door prices, etc. Their quality of life is diminished through the actions of capital, but a demonstration in the City will do nothing to alleviate the conditions of exploitation. Hence, none of those most in need of liberation from the "roar of profit" (Reclaim the Streets leaflet) will go near such an event, because the "sounds of rhythms of party, carnival and pleasure" are a poor substitute for money in your hand and decent accommodation, and will take us no closer to their realisation.........

Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin has suggested that the anarchist movement could learn much from the methods of the Black Panther Party, of which he was a member. Specifically he has referred to the Panther's attempts to establish a survival economy for poor black communities, with the Panthers organising survival programmes to move towards community self-determination. Panther groups organised breakfast programmes for poor families, set up and ran medical centres in poor neighbourhoods, organised free transport for prison visits and established armed self-defence units to monitor and prevent police brutality. "Panthers established a network of community service projects designed to improve the life chances of African American people........

As Huey P. Newton, one of the Party's founders, noted: "In their quest for freedom [people] have to see first some basic accomplishments in order to realise that major successes are possible"........

The Euro elections should have made it clear to all of us; if we allow our politics to be reduced to the 'theatre of pseudo resistance', we will be as irrelevant to most people as New Labour and the Socialist Labour Party are seen to be. If anarchism is committed to bringing about the autonomous organisation of working class communities its time for us to prove it in practice, and prove it where it matters most.........

----- Nick S / Freedom Press

For me, what happened on June 18th was both inspiring and disappointing. I was inspired by the sheer numbers of people there, as it's always good to be among huge numbers every once in a while. It was particularly inspiring to see that this time, lots of people weren't just happy with having a party but wanted to take direct physical action against capitalist institutions. I was disappointed that more people didn't want to take this action, disappointed that more autonomous actions in the morning didn't materialise, and above all, disappointed that J18 didn't broaden out to include a wider diversity of groups and people, and that at the Carnival it was mainly just the usual RTS crowd. (I'm also disappointed that we're not now living in post revolutionary utopia, but hey ho….)

While I feel that the most crucial discussion for us to be having is where do we go from here, and what worked and what didn't. However, in my town, the criminal damage and fighting the police has yet again raised massive divisions, to the point where a significant number of activists have said that they'd never go on a demo like J18 again. We may be following the state's agenda to be even discussing the 'violence' issue, but where I live, it essential that we explain our stances and have understanding for others in order that we don't make ourselves so much smaller than we already are. I'm not going to defend the random meaningless acts of vandalism or untargeted insults physical threats or attacks. What I aim to do is put forward a defence of the economic damage caused by the trashing of LIFFE, of Mercedes Benz, of McDonalds, and any other capitalist institutions. For people who disagree with me, this issue appears to divide into two aspects - was this justifiable and was it effective.

Justifiable

I'm an anarchist, and the way I see it, anarchism is fundamentally opposed to violence. One of the main aims of anarchy in my eyes is to remove violence from all human relationships. However, up to the point where we live in an anarchist society, we remain living in a system which is founded on violence. For two sides to live in peace, both must want peace. If one side insists on using force to make the other obey them, and work for them, then the other, if they want to retain their dignity and not be reduced to slavery, must resist force with adequate means, despite their love of peace.

I don't think it's difficult to prove that the state and the capitalist system is founded on violence - requires constant force or threat of force to maintain the existing order. Government needs laws to maintain inequalities and their order, and therefore needs police and armaments to back it up and force people to obey. Otherwise only people who wanted to obey would do so. The state has used violence throughout its history to rob the poor of their land initially, and then to maintain their monopoly on power. They are then the side that does not want peace freedom or equality, that relies on violence to exist - not the anarchists.

So I believe that violence is entirely justifiable in defending yourself from the onslaught of violence coming from the state. But I don't just mean it is justified against direct sudden physical attack (as in defending yourself from being beaten by police truncheon, which in my mind is quite clearly justified and doesn't need to be explained), but against a much more insidious attack. Using force against all those institutions which use violence, be it physical or mental to keep people in a state of oppression, is totally justified.

"The slave is always in a state of legitimate defence and consequently his violence against the boss, against the oppressor is always morally justifiable" (Malatesta)

Some people would say that excusing individual acts of violence leads naturally to an excuse of any violence and so excuses the arms trade etc. I do not accept that self-defence by the people against its government, or against a section of the community which maintains its power and privileges by underpinning it with force, has any affinity with the self - defence justification used by states to stockpile weapons. "The violence of the oppressed is defensive, unorganised and individual and usually unarmed. The violence of the state is massive, systematic, aggressive, and frequently involves the use of sophisticated weapons." There is no moral equivalence between the oppressor and the oppressed.

Some would go further to say not only is violence in self-defence justified, but that it is our duty to protect others in this way. And I don't extend this to war e.g. in Kosova - when the state usually forces its citizens to war, to fight rival nationalist powers, and where the state controls and organises the means of destruction.

To bring this back to June 18. Here, it is clearly the City that is the oppressor - it's veneer of respectability is underpinned by the laws and institutions of the state, and so by force. The deals that are done there cause ecological destruction, loss of livelihoods, debt, and death, on a massive scale. Everyone who opposes this in any way is acting not just in self-defence but in defence of oppressed people everywhere. Some people who argue for principled non-violence say that they would not criticise those in the third world for rising up and taking violent action, but that we in this country are not faced with such blatant oppression, we are not fighting for our lives in the same direct sense. We have a choice and we should avoid violence which only will lead to more violence.

Of course those in the Third World are on the sharp end of capitalism, but capitalism has a base in our country, at its heart is the City. I know we're relatively okay with our dole cheques at the moment, and we can get away with more protests without getting killed, but do we not feel any solidarity with those fighting in say Mexico or Nigeria to join with them and target the root of their ills with a similar sense of urgency and desperation? If people could see in front of them, the results of what goes on in those glossy buildings in the city, the deaths and misery it causes, I think most people would feel they would be justified in doing everything in their power to stop it happening immediately. And there is no being fooled that we live in a nice liberal democracy where we would never be as oppressed as activists in other countries. As soon as we begin really threatening the foundations of capitalism, you can be sure we will be repressed with practically as much force and violence as anywhere else.

On June 18th, people saw the opportunity to take physical and very direct action to try and stop some of the destructive things that happened inside those buildings, and in my mind there is no question that this is entirely justifiable as a defensive act. I also believe that fighting with the police who come in using violence to prevent us from challenging and stopping the destruction of the City, is a defensive act, and is justified. Whether it is particularly effective, or whether the people involved really understood the politics behind their defensive violence is another matter.

Effective

So is it effective to smash up property, or fight the police. Is it an effective strategy, use of energy, efforts, possible prison sentences, sentences, and bearing in mind it may lead to increased surveillance and repression. Also others would say it alienates lots of people from our cause, and even puts off lots of activists. Well, I want real permanent change, and won't be happy with small reforms. I want a revolution, and I want a non-violent revolution - as I've said, I'm not a lover of violence, and I'd struggle to eliminate violence from society. I think that for a revolution to occur and to be permanent, it'd have to be largely (I'll qualify this later) nonviolent - as its success would depend on most people wanting it, and knowing what it was they wanted to achieve by it.

But to those who extrapolate this argument to say that therefore our actions must convince the majority of people, and that using violence achieves the opposite effect of putting people off, I say that this is not our role. Our 'network' is never going to create a mass movement, nor should we try to. I for one am not trying to recruit people to our cause (well, maybe a bit), nor do I think we're a vanguard bringing lots of people to our side to sweep forward with a revolution. I'm fighting for my own life to improve, for my own right to be able to make decisions which affect my life, and fighting for a situation where everyone can run their own lives. In doing so, I hope that this will positively affect everyone else, but they have to make their own decisions and choices. I view our network as political agitators, stirring things up, forcing things into the open, onto the agenda, forcing people to think, informing people about alternatives, and crucially, inspiring people to believe that we can fight the system. You can smash the property of the rich and get away with it. You can fight back.

As a minority of people, who don't have the informed support of the masses, due to their forced ignorance of alternatives to the system, we should seek to curb the excesses. We know what's going on, and we should take action to stop it. We shouldn't allow our radicalness to be watered down in order to appease public opinion, a public opinion which is largely formed by media and state influences such as education. And in any case, I don't think people are as put off by this sort of J18 action as the state would have us believe. Many are inspired by what we achieved. What is so ineffective about trying to curb the excesses with counter-violence, and what alternative is there without having the support of the majority.

To return briefly to what I said about a 'largely' nonviolent revolution. Despite my desire for peace, I don't believe that things can truly be changed without using defensive force, as the state is built on a premise of violence to maintain the status quo. They won't hand their power away without a fight. They've been more than ready to kill, hurt, or imprison any resisters in the past, be they peaceful or not, if they threaten their hold on power. Even if the vast majority wanted change, the minority are the ruling class and they control the weapons. The numbers of people killed in insurrections or revolutions can never equal the numbers of people living in permanent slavery or dying in their thousands in the third world due to the sort of thing which goes on in the City. It's horrific that we may have to use force, but its more horrific if we fail because we refuse to do so. I find it odd that we don't hear many condemnations of the peasants revolt, of the loombreakers, or the Zapatistas, or of the Poll tax riots, all of which encompassed elements of violence. What is so different to J18?

"The state likes to present riots, revolts, and rebellions as isolated incidents and this helps deny their legitimacy, has reduced our recognition of their positive impact and has drawn attention away from the continual and consistent threat of state violence"

I also think it can be said to be effective because of the economic damage we caused to the city, we presented a very real threat to their institutions and profits, we engaged in real agitation, forced capitalism as a 'bad thing' onto the agenda, it allowed us to say why LIFFE is not in fact respectable and why it deserves the trashing, and above all, allows us to say who the real perpetrators of violence are in our society. It allowed us to remove the respectable veneer the city basks in. Finally, I hope that even if people disagree with the above, that they would not condemn the informed choices and actions of people on that day. For one, people don't tend to publicly condemn people for being peaceful. But mainly it is following the state's agenda - it merely deflects criticism away from the original issue and away from the state as the real evil savages.

This is adapted from an oral introduction at the beginning of a discussion on J18 (which took place in Manchester? -ed)

A PROPOSAL FOR:
A day of protest, action, and carnival in financial centres across the globe on 18th June 1999.

....Wherever there is oppression there is resistance.....

A proposal has been made by various groups and movements of activists from England to hold an international day of action aimed at the heart of the global economy: the financial centres, banking districts and multinational corporation power bases. The suggested date is the 18th June 1999. Movements involved include Reclaim the Streets (RTS, a popular movement seeking the liberation of city streets and public spaces using direct action, and now Western European Conveners of Peoples' Global Action Against 'Free' Trade and the World Trade Organisation), and London Greenpeace (a group independent of Greenpeace International, recently involved in a large successful battle with McDonald's). This proposal is made in the spirit of strengthening our international networks and follows from the success of co-ordinated global action during May 16-20th 1998. These days saw actions, protests and demonstrations on all continents, for example over 30 'Reclaim the Streets parties' in over 20 countries - a combination of illegal carnival, protest and direct action, catalysed by RTS in London. In Brasilia 50,000 unemployed and landless peasants were on the streets, while in Hyderabad, India, 200,000 were protesting. These events coincided with the 'G8' meeting in Birmingham, Great Britain, and the third ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland. The 'G8' consists of the leaders of the eight most industrialised countries and exists solely to promote economic globalisation, 'free' trade and corporate dominance.

Next year between the 18th-20th June the G8 will meet in Koln, Germany. The idea is to take action around the globe to coincide with this meeting. This also links with the proposed tour of Indian farmers/activists in Europe to campaign against the World Trade Organisation and multinational corporations. The proposal is to encourage as many movements and groups as possible to organise their own autonomous protests or actions, on the same day (June 18th), in the same geographical locations (financial/corporate/banking/business districts) around the world. Events could take place at relevant sites, e.g. multinational company offices, local banks, stock exchanges. Each event would be organised autonomously and co-ordinated in each city or financial district by a variety of movements and groups. It is hoped that a whole range of different groups will take part, including workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, women, students, the landless, environmentalists, unwaged/unemployed and others....everyone who recognises that the global capitalist system, based on the exploitation of people and the planet for the profit of a few, is at the root of our social and ecological troubles.

The proposal has already been discussed by movements and groups on all continents, for example the Karnataka State Farmers (KRRS, India), the Rainbow Keepers (ecologists from ex-USSR states), Proceso de Comunidades Negras (Colombian Black communities movement), Friends of the Earth, Uruguay (Environmentalists), CTERA (Argentinean teachers Union), Reclaim the Streets (New York, USA; Prague, Czech Republic; Sydney, Australia), COMUTRAS (textile workers union, El Salvador), peasant movements in Mozambique and many more. Plans are already well advanced in London, and Koln, Germany.

Ideas are flowing and enthusiasm is growing. We'd very much like to hear what you think.

There is an email discussion list. To subscribe, send an email to [email protected] with the following request:

subscribe J18DISCUSSION Your e-mail address

then messages sent to [email protected] will automatically go to other interested groups around the world to facilitate wider discussion of this proposal. Or write to 'June 18th', PO Box 9656, London, N4 4JY, Great Britain.

OUR RESISTANCE WILL BE AS TRANSNATIONAL AS CAPITAL!

for more information on Peoples' Global Action visit http://www.agp.org

for more information on Reclaim the Streets visit http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/

for more information on London Greenpeace / McLibel visit

http://www.mcspotlight.org

June 18th web-site: http://www.gn.apc.org/june18

PLEASE PASS THIS PROPOSAL ON TO OTHERS.

BLACK LEAFLET TEXT

June18th 1999 International day of action aimed at the heart of the global economy: The financial & banking districts

"The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to IMAGINE than the continuation of the current regime." George Soros, speculator and high priest of the markets

IMAGINE

Financial districts across the world filled not with profit and plunder but with the sounds and rhythms of party and pleasure.

IMAGINE

A world where people have control of their own lives and communities

IMAGINE

A society based on mutual aid, sharing and the respect of nature.

IMAGINE

Taking your desires for reality

IMAGINE

The resistance will be as transnational as the capital June 18th 1999 On the eve of the 21st century the list of woes facing us seems greater than ever - economic meltdown, the millennium bug, environmental crisis, war, famine, poverty - all unconnected, we are told by the experts - to be solved only by more 'growth' and 'free' trade. The global market economy however, which had come to be seen as unquestionable dogma, is crumbling. As usual talk of reform is in the air, but a system based on the 'survival of the fittest' and 'growth' can only continue to cause human misery while destroying the ecology of the planet. A new world is possible. A global movement of resistance is rising - people are reclaiming control of their lives. Across the world, social and ecological movements are coming together, talking, taking direct action and enacting radical alternatives to 'globalisation'. In May 1998 their voices were raised during meetings of the G8 world leaders and the World Trade Organisation, when many local actions and demonstrations took place - autonomously organised, yet globally co-ordinated. These ranged from 50,000 landless peasants on the streets of Brasilia, to 30 simultaneous street parties across the globe, to 200,000 people on the streets of Hyderabad in India. Next year the G8 will meet in Koln, Germany, between June 18th-20th. Groups are already organising for actions to happen simultaneously on Friday June 18th in the financial districts, markets and institutions around the world. 'The City' of London is one of the key hubs of the global economy and this will be the main target of UK actions on June 18th. We will only realise our collective visions by taking action together, so June 18th will only work if a whole range of different movements and groups get involved; environmental, workers' women's, unwaged/unemployed, students, trade unionists, peace, pensioners, gay, anti-deportation… the longer the list, the more effective the action.

Involve yourself

Dream up amazing action

Organise local planning meetings or come to the monthly London meeting.

Choose your favourite Transnational Company, Bank or Investment Fund, find out as much as possible about them - location of HQ etc and prepare fun and games.

Spread the word - print leaflets - talk to people - network.

Take a day off work or go sick on 18/6/99

WHAT?

demonstrations, protests, actions, pickets, stunts, shut-downs, sabotage, leafleting, blockades, games, hacktivism, parties & more Simultaneously transforming the city of London and other financial centres across the world

WHY?

IN recognition that the global capitalist system is at the root of our social & ecological troubles

WHEN?

18/6/99 - To Coincide with the annual meeting of the G8 leaders

WHO?

A growing alliance of social and environmental movements "We are more possible than they can powerfully IMAGINE."

Shouted from the top of a crane during an occupation of a building sit, No M11 Link Rd campaign, London, 1994

INTERNATIONAL LEAFLET TEXT

JUNE 18th 1999

A day of international protest, action and carnival aimed at the heart of the global economy, the financial and banking centres across the globe. Activists from diverse groups and movements around the world are discussing, networking and organising for an international day of action aimed at the heart of the global economy: the financial centres, banking districts and multinational corporate power bases. Environmentalists, workers, the unemployed, indigenous peoples, trade unionists, peasants groups, women's networks, the landless, students, peace activists and many more are working together in recognition that the global capitalist system, based on the exploitation of people and the planet for the profit of a few, is at the very root of our social and ecological troubles. The June 18th occupation and transformation of financial districts, simultaneously across the globe, will be a contribution to and practical example of the process of making connections and building alternatives to the present social order. The action is timed to coincide with the first day of the Group of Seven (or G7) summit of the leaders of the richest nation-states - in Koeln, Germany - when again we will be told by the economic and political elites that the promotion of economic globalisation, 'free' trade and corporate dominance is the only way.

This proposal is made in the spirit of strengthening our international networks and follows from the success of co-ordinated global action during May 16-20th 1998. These days saw actions, protests and demonstrations on all continents, for example over 30 'Reclaim the Streets parties' in over 20 countries - a combination of illegal carnival, protest and direct action, catalysed by RECLAIM THE STREETS in London. In Brasilia 50,000 unemployed and landless peasants were on the streets, while in Hyderabad, India, 200,000 were protesting. These events coincided with the 'G8' meeting in Birmingham, Great Britain, and the third ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland. 1999 will see these coordinations increase. Alongside the June 18th global action, there will also be a tour of Indian farmers/activists around Europe to campaign against the World Trade Organisation, banks and multinational corporations. In the spirit of strengthening international networks for equality, freedom and ecological sustainability we encourage all sympathetic movements and groups to organise their own autonomous protests or actions, on the same day - June 18th - in the same locations - financial districts - around the world. Each event would be organised autonomously; could be co-ordinated in each city by a variety of movements and groups; while linked globally by post, telephone, fax, email and international meetings. Strikes, protests, pickets, actions, occupations, street parties, demonstrations, blockades, shutdowns - a unity of diverse events are being planned by a growing network of individuals, groups, movements and alliances. Your participation - no matter how small - is crucial; meetings need to be organised, events planned, leaflets printed and distributed, funds raised, laughter and conversation shared. If we cooperate and co-ordinate we can realise a different world; has it ever been so necessary and so possible?

"By taking direct action, people make connections, they talk and communicate with each other, they break down the isolation and fragmentation of this alienated society. These connections are now spreading across the globe as people realise that their particular local struggles are part of a wider problem - the global economy."

For international planning & discussion, subscribe to the J18 email list -

send an email to: [email protected]

with the following request -Subscribe J18DISCUSSION your email address.

If your group is organizing an EVENT OR ACTION for June 18th PLEASE send your group OR MOVEMENTS contact details to [email protected]

This will allow a global list of groups taking part to be built up. This will be an invaluable resource for everyone taking part to show the quantity and diversity of groups doing actions on June 18th. This information will be put on the web-site and on the j18discussion list.

"the collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to IMAGINE than the continuation of the present regime." George Soros financial speculator, predator and profiteer.

IMAGINE financial districts across the world filled not with profit and plunder but with the sounds and rhythms of party and pleasure

IMAGINE replacing the existing social order with a free and ecological society based upon mutual aid and voluntary cooperation

IMAGINE taking your desires for reality "If you say the organisation of society and its domination by unaccountable tyrannies, which is what it is, is improper and unjust.. you have to consider what the alternatives are and how you move towards the alternatives... And those are not trivial matters; they require organised popular movements which think things through, which debate, which act, which experiment, which try alternatives, which develop the seeds of the future in the present society"

GOLD LEAFLET TEXT

Game Over

Liverpool St. Station >< City of London, Noon

On June 18th the leaders of the eight most powerful nations will meet for the G8 summit in Cologne, Germany. Their agenda will be the intensification of economic growth, "free" trade and more power for corporations as the only way towards a bright future. But these 'leaders' are not in control... Our planet is actually run by the financial market - a giant video game in which people buy and sell blips on electronic screens, trading life for money in their search for ever-higher profits. Yet the consequences of this frenzied game are very real: human lives, ecosystems, jobs and even entire economies are at the mercy of this reckless global system.

As the economy becomes increasingly global and interdependent those resisting its devastating social and ecological consequences are joining forces. Around the world, the movement grows - from Mexico's Zapatistas, to France's unemployed, to India's small farmers, to those fighting road building in the UK, to anti-oil activists in Nigeria - people are taking direct action and reclaiming their lives from the insane game of the markets. Resistance will converge on June 18th as hundreds of groups simultaneously occupy and transform banking and financial centres across the globe.

If you act like there is no possibility of change for the better, you guarantee that there will be no change for the better.

The choice is ours.

Carn'ival n. 1. An explosion of freedom involving laughter, mockery, dancing, masquerade and revelry. 2. Occupation of the streets in which the symbols and ideals of authority are subverted. 3. When the marginalised take over the centre and create a world turned upside down. 4. You cannot watch carnival, you take part. 5. An unexpected carnival is revolutionary.

Cap'italism n. 1. A system by which the few profit from the exploitation of the many. 2. A mindset addicted to profit, work and debt which values money more than life. 3. An unsustainable ideology obsessed by growth despite our finite planet. 4. The cause of the global, social and ecological crisis. 5. A social system overthrown at the end of the 20th century...

A massive carnival in the world's biggest financial centre - the city of London - will be Reclaim The Streets' part of the day. Let's replace the roar of profit and plunder with the sounds and rhythms of party, carnival and pleasure!

Friday June 18th - An international day of protest, action and carnival aimed at the heart of the global economy: the banking and financial centres.

Reclaim The Streets

Meet 12 noon, Liverpool Street Station, London EC1

Bring a radio and disguise yourself to blend into the City. Office worker or bike courier costumes work best!

Don't play their game, call in sick on Friday June the 18th

Do not underestimate the power of global resistance.