We need militant action against the G8, not a \u201cchoreographed\u201d lobby<\/p>\n
Some 400 activists from across the whole range of currents within the anti-G8 mobilisation met in Rostock between 10 and 12 of November. After an antiracist demonstration against the refugee camp system, deportations and the heightened political and social repression of immigrants, the meeting began with a general discussion.<\/p>\n
On Friday 10 this concentrated mainly on the objectives of the protests. On the morning of Saturday 11 the focus of the plenary discussion was the \u201cchoreography of protest", that is to say the actual course of planned events for next year\u2019s demonstrations and counter-conference.<\/p>\n
As is so often the case in this \u201cformat\u201d of discussion, there was a wide range of contributions. However, because there was no structured agenda, and speakers raised whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, there was no political discussion capable of reaching any conclusions of substance. The meeting did not prepare any political debates to be decided at the conference clarify any strategic and tactical questions and differences. The entire discussion was organised to ensure that political and organisational decisions about the mobilisation were those that had been \u201cchoreographed\u201d beforehand by a small inner grouping. After this discussion on Saturday morning a range of working groups met to discuss planning and \u201cnetworking". This resulted in as many email lists as there were groups, around 20 short reports for the plenary session on Saturday evening and a brief airing of contested points. No doubt some of these workgroups did deliver new information and new contacts for those who took part. They certainly presented a clear picture of the state of mobilisation. Where workgroups, such as the one on \u201cwar and peace", did have more radical discussions and proposed, for example, that the struggle against imperialist war and occupations should play a central role in the whole counter mobilisation, these issues remained within the workgroups and were not taken into the plenary discussions. Even where there were calls for debate about the essential direction of the mobilisation, as in the network on \u201cinternational mobilisation", no decisions were taken, even though many people raised this issue.<\/p>\n
For example, representatives of the \u201cAnti-G8 Alliance for a revolutionary perspective\u201d and from Arbeitermacht (German section of the League for the Fifth International) argued that the international mobilisation should clearly take positions against imperialist war and occupation, against the general offensive of capital in Europe and internationally, against racism and for solidarity with the resistance of the workers and the oppressed, and that this should be central to the actions at the summit.<\/p>\n
Others, such as the representative of the French LCR, took this up and stressed in addition the question of the EU Constitution and the trade unions.<\/p>\n
Even the proposal to develop an international call for a campaign around these points was simply \u201cnoted\u201d and then lost in the general run of discussion over technical and organisational questions. As to political debate over whether the conference as a whole, or its majority, agreed with any particular orientation for the campaign, or the proposals for action, there was none! On the contrary, that was consciously prevented. The action conference was clearly not intended to come to any decisions at all but only to give its blessing to those of the \u201copen\u201d preparatory groups and to take away the \u201c suggestions\u201d from the workgroups. That was particularly clear in the plenary discussion on Saturday 11 on next year\u2019s proposed \u201ccounter summit". It had already become clear in the working group that Attac and the NGOs, as well as the trade union bureaucracy, wanted the counter summit to be nothing more than an opportunity for political lobbying and were not going to shift from this approach. Therefore, Attac leader Peter Wahl insisted that the counter summit must take place on the Wednesday morning of the anti-G8 mobilisation next June, precisely at the time when the main attempt to blockade the G8 summit would have to take place.<\/p>\n
Moreover, he made it clear that the \u201ccounter summit preparatory group\u201d would not abide by conference decisions because \u201ceven a democratic decision by some 400 people could not override organisations such as the engineering union (IG Metall) which has 2.5 million members". Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether anybody had consulted those 2.5 million members, Wahl was also clearly ignoring the decision of the first action conference that the counter summit would not take place in parallel to the actions against the G8 summit.<\/p>\n
In the plenary discussion on this, the NGO\u2019s plans were sharply criticised and a vote on the issue was demanded. On this, Attac came forward with its \u201cmovement face", in the persons of Pedram Shahyar and Sabine Leidig, who explained that the counter summit on Wednesday \u201cnaturally\u201d was not at all an alternative to the blockade and that participation in the summit was also a \u201cform of action\u201d that one should not counterpose to direct action. This debate was also an example of the political role played by the \u201cradical left\u201d from the \u201cInterventionist Left\u201d (IL, an alliance of \u201cautonomous\u201d and antifa groups, but also including parts of Attac) or the greater part of the \u201cDissent\u201d spectrum. Although there was a long debate in the working group and in the plenary session, the chair \u2013 a member of the anti-racist network \u201cNo Camps\u201d (NoLager) and part of Dissent and IL \u2013 decided without any discussion at all, that the question should be taken back to the working group or the compositing commission in order to \u201cfind a compromise". A comrade from the \u201canti-G 8 Alliance for a revolutionary perspective\u201d made clear what this wheeling and dealing really was: a delaying tactic. In the plenary session, a majority had applauded the speakers who proposed that the summit should not take place on the Wednesday morning or in the early afternoon but would begin on Sunday. Several speakers had proposed that it should not take place during the G8 summit at all, but before it. Instead of putting this simple proposal to a vote, the whole thing was brought to an end without any decision. The working group dominated by Attac and the NGOs, with the help of the PDS and the trade union leadership, \u201ctook note\u201d of the proposals and then the \u201clobbyist caravan\u201d drove on. The eventual compromise will see a big \u201copening session\u201d on the Sunday, the counter summit will take place on the Wednesday morning but some of the prominent speakers will also attend the blockade to present their speeches. Of course a vote would not have put an end to the manoeuvring by Attac and company; it could not have committed IG Metall, but it would at least have made known the decision of a conference of 400 activists and representatives of various alliances and organisations which are mobilising against the G8. Attac and the other NGOs would at least have had to ask themselves whether they were prepared to openly ignore such a decision. But that was not to be. By refusing to push this question to a vote and, thus, supporting the right of the majority, the \u201cradical left\u201d allowed itself to be walked all over by Attac, PDS and the other reformists. Unfortunately, this is by no means the exception but almost the trademark of many of the \u201c lefts". What underlies this is the illusion that by continually making compromises to them, the reformists and the NGOs will also be forced to make \u201ccompromises". In this respect the Rostock conference gave us an insight into the current political makeup of the anti-G8 protest.<\/p>\n
The lessons of Rostock<\/p>\n
The \u201copen preparation\u201d and coordination is anything but \u201copen". A bloc between the political and trade union reformists (PDS, left trade union bureaucracy) the churches, the NGOs and Attac dominate it. The importance of Attac is that it can hide behind the facade of being \u201ca movement organisation", it also participates in the \u201cIL", and it is neither a party nor a trade union and can therefore present itself as more \u201cleft", \u201ccritical\u201d and \u201copen\u201d than the other reformists. As a result, Attac has the \u201cadvantage\u201d that it can serve as a forum within which various reformists and bourgeois groups can negotiate their different positions and come to decisions. Also represented in this block is the \u201cIL\u201d which doesn\u2019t have any clear line of its own and doesn\u2019t present any political opposition to the leading block and is therefore allowed to \u201cco-control\u201d some aspects of the mobilisation such as pickets and the day of action against migration. Linksruck (IST) and the ISL (Fourth International) play a similar role. The Dissent grouping doesn\u2019t play any independent role at all. One section is in the IL and takes the same line as the rest. Others, including some individual members of IL, do want to limit the dominance of Attac and reformists but refuse to do this by forcing political decisions. Here, the appalling \u201cconsensus principle\u201d becomes a direct political weapon of the reformists who, together with the forces from Dissent, can block any vote, prevent any majority decisions, with the cynical excuse of being against the \u201cundemocratic domination\u201d of the majority. In this way they make sure that no \u201cwrong decisions\u201d might be taken which would stand in the way of the already well-known orientation of Attac, the PDS, and the NGOs. These political mechanisms hold together a common neo-reformist ideology stretching from Attac, the NGOs and representatives of the PDS such as Katja Kipping, to groups such as \u201cNo Camps". They see the struggle for \u201cglobal social rights\u201d (a global minimum income, global freedom of movement) as the real political objective of the movement and also the only way out of the dead end of competition for investment by the trade unions. They want to use the anti-G8 campaign to create a \u201chistoric bloc\u201d (Kipping) or a \u201ccivilising project\u201d (Wahl) around these demands, a block which will counterpose to capitalist globalisation and imperialist barbarism not the struggle for liberation, resistance and socialist revolution but a new reformism and the taming of the existing forces. The Rostock action conference gives an accurate picture of the current political landscape and the dominating political block that exists in the social movements and the social forum in Germany and, in a modified form, also internationally. It is necessary for the class struggle, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and internationalist forces to organise a block against this obstruction, to fight it politically and to assemble forces sufficient to break its stranglehold on the movement. This is no pipe dream either, for whenever the time comes for militant action the bulk of the rank and file militants of the unions and reformist parties as well as the masses of young people, reject the limitation to lobbying and the talking shop strategy. The task now is to provide a political lead to these mass forces and a method of establishing a decision-making democracy within the movement.<\/p>\n
Naturally, that does not exclude unity in action today for common goals and actions with the PDS, trade unions, with Attac, with any NGO activists willing or able to do so. Indeed, it is essential to demand such joint mobilisations against the capitalists and the governments. However it is vital to mobilise independently whenever the \u201cleaders\u201d hold back or block the road to action.<\/p>\n
One important and central step towards that would be to build a joint campaign for action against the G 8 summit with those forces which have formed the \u201canti-imperialist network\u201d of the European Social Forum and those who, in Germany, are mobilising in the \u201cAnti-G 8 Alliance for a revolutionary perspective\u201d or other anti-imperialist alliances. The aim should be to organise a joint internationalist, anti-imperialist and anticapitalist bloc on the main demonstration against the G8 summit and to organise our own space within the camp and sessions at the counter summit.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We need militant action against the G8, not a \u201cchoreographed\u201d lobby Some 400 activists from across the whole range of currents within the anti-G8 mobilisation met in Rostock between 10 and 12 of November. After an antiracist demonstration against the refugee camp system, deportations and the heightened political and social repression of immigrants, the meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[104,142],"class_list":["post-4359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-uncategorized","tag-archive","tag-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6168,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions\/6168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}