BY SUE BOLAND 
It is just a little over 12 months since the protests against the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Seattle awoke the world to the
gathering strength of a new anti-corporate movement against neo-liberal
globalisation.
It's not that there hadn't been protests against the WTO, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank before. There had been. Throughout
the Third World for decades the workers, peasants, and urban poor have
been rebelling against poverty and repression, plunder by the multinational
corporations and the enforcing of neo-liberal policies by institutions
such as the IMF and World Bank.
What was significant about the Seattle protests was their size, the
determination of the protesters and the participation of trade unions,
albeit on a nationalist program of defending American jobs against workers
from other countries.
The Seattle protests were also significant because they indicated the
existence of growing opposition within the rich imperialist countries to
attempts to spread neo-liberal policies across the globe.
As the year 2000 progressed, the “Seattle effect” spread. First it was
Washington, then the wave of protests spread through Melbourne, Prague,
Seoul, and finally Nice.
A key task of the Democratic Socialist Party's 19th congress, held January
3-7 near Sydney and attended by 287 delegates and observers, was to assess
the significance of this movement in world and Australian politics, and
to vote on proposals to help develop this movement.
In the congress report on The international political situation:
austerity and war, Green Left Weekly editor and DSP national
executive member Doug Lorimer noted five features of this global anti-corporate
movement:
1) The new movement reflects a growing crisis of popular legitimacy
for the imperialist ruling class's drive to globalise their neo-liberal
policy agenda of rolling back all the economic concessions made to working
people in the developed capitalist countries during the long “boom” from
the late 1940s to the early 1970s.
2) Large numbers of people, especially young people, in the imperialist
countries are deeply concerned at the deepening of poverty in the underdeveloped
countries which has resulted from neo-liberal globalisation.
3) The crisis of legitimacy for neo-liberal globalisation is most immediately
focused on the imperialist-dominated international economic institutions
that are seen as the key vehicles for promoting and imposing neo-liberalism
around the world — the WTO, IMF, World Bank and World Economic Forum 1(WEF).
4) The movement is objectively anti-capitalist in its dynamics because
opposition to the drive to globalise neo-liberal policies runs counter
to the interests of the capitalist rulers in the rich imperialist countries
of North America, western Europe, Japan and Australia.
5) This social movement, like every other, is broadly divided between
two trends — a spontaneously class-struggle trend centred around the radical,
consciously anti-capitalist forces and a consciously class collaborationist
trend headed by the trade union bureaucracy.
The congress made the assessment that this new movement presented revolutionary
Marxists with the opportunity to win large numbers of working people in
the imperialist countries to an anti-capitalist, internationalist consciousness.
Australian activists got a taste of this new anti-corporate movement
at the S11 protests against the WEF in Melbourne last September.
As DSP national executive member Peter Boyle noted in his report on
The Australian political situation and our perspectives after S11,
“Last September thousands of activists from the mass social movements of
the last three decades joined up with younger activists at the three-day
S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum” and it “revitalised the faith
in `peoples' power' in the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands more”.
The 20,000-strong S11 protests indicated that an important radical constituency
exists in Australia. This constituency is primarily young but also includes
veterans from the social movements of a decade or more ago and a significant
number of politically advanced workers and unionists. A common feature
is that these people are concerned about more than a single issue and have
drawn the conclusion that the heart of all these issues is the increasingly
unrestrained pursuit of corporate profits.
Congress delegates made the assessment that the S11 protests represented
a significant break from traditional ALP control of the social movements,
and that the revolutionary left parties, in particular the DSP, played
a decisive leadership role.
One of the most significant victories at S11 was the break from traditional
Labor control of the mass movements. Regardless of whether the Labor Party
is in “opposition” or is the governing party, it has consistently scuttled
campaigns against the neo-liberal policies which are being implemented
in Australia. If the anti-corporate movement remains free of the shackles
of ALP domination, there will be a potential to build mass resistance to
neo-liberal attacks on working people's living standards in this country.
However, the ALP is desperately working to add this movement to its
list of muzzled protest movements.
Another important feature of the S11 protests was the emergence of an
internationalist leadership for the blockade. This leadership argued that
international solidarity between workers in different countries, combined
with militant action in this country, is a more certain way of protecting
jobs than calling on the pro-capitalist governments, whether headed by
Labor or Liberal politicians, to impose protectionist tariffs on exports
from the Third World.
The assessment was made that after Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Seoul,
Prague and Nice, we can be confident that this anti-corporate movement
will remain alive. One reason for this is that the gains of Seattle, the
postponement of the WTO round of trade talks, has not yet been undone,
giving activists a feeling of confidence.
After the success of the S11 protests in Melbourne, the radical left
in Australia had a choice. It could bask in the success of the protests
and move on to other campaigns, or, it could seek to develop the movement
against neo-liberal globalisation by initiating further actions.
The congress delegates voted to keep this movement alive and moving
forward by initiating further actions.
In his report, Lorimer made the point that “if the movement is to build
on its successes in de-legitimising” the world economic institutions, “it
needs to demonstrate to the rest of the population that these institutions'
newly found concern for Third World poverty is nothing more than hollow
rhetoric”.
To do this, “the movement needs to retain its public visibility by staging
mass street protests that disrupt the normal functioning of corporate capitalism's
most publicly visible institutions”.
To maintain momentum, Lorimer argued that the movement will also need
begin raising demands on the corporate rulers to immediately implement
measures which could lessen Third World poverty. Such demands could include:
* Immediate and unconditional cancellation of the entire debt owed by
all Third World countries to the imperialist countries.
* Abolition of the IMF, World Bank and the WTO.
* Abolition of the wall of non-tariff barriers imposed by the imperialist
countries on the agricultural and manufactured exports of the Third World.
* Restoration of the Basic Commodities Agreements and other defence
schemes designed to compensate poor countries from unequal exchange.
* Abolition of all restrictions, including patent and intellectual property
fees, for Third World countries' importation of advanced technology from
the imperialist countries.
As it is unusual for meetings of the world economic institutions to
be held in Australia, the delegates decided that we can't wait for such
meetings to occur here in order to organise demonstrations.
Instead, a proposal was endorsed that the next major focus of the movement
against corporate tyranny in Australia would be an anti-corporate strike
and blockade of all stock exchanges on May 1, 2001.
In arguing for the proposal, Boyle said “To get the mass anti-corporate
constituency on the streets again, we need the appropriate sort of action
— one that would capture the imagination of the wide range of people who
oppose corporate tyranny and are prepared to do something radical about
it. Just another march and rally would not do. Many of the people who turned
out at S11 would not have bothered if it was just another rally addressed
by trade union officials or ALP politicians who are not interested in changing
society. This proposal expresses the strong desire in this movement to
break out from the `normal channels' of dissent.
“A successful mass civil disobedience depends on the principle `When
injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty'. A blockade of the stock
exchanges will force the corporate ruling class and its governments to
try and defend the morally indefensible. They simply could not defend the
WTO at Seattle, the IMF and the World Bank at Washington and Prague, and
the WEF in Melbourne because these institutions had been widely exposed
as instruments of corporate exploitation.”
Certainly, the stock exchange is symbolic of exploitation under capitalism.
Don't get fooled by US President Bill Clinton's or Prime Minister John
Howard's claims that we live in a “shareholder democracy”.
The top 5% of stockholders in the US hold 94.5% of all publicly traded
stock and they are raking in the money. The share of after-tax corporate
profits paid out to their rentier owners as dividends has increased from
an average of 44% between the end of the 1960s to 70% in the period 1990-1997.
Considering that company profits have also increased significantly, the
rentier owners' snouts are well and truly in the trough.
“The prospect of disrupting `normal business' in the heart of the business
districts of major cities around the world on May 1 is the kind of militant
action that can convince individual workers and students, regardless of
what their union officials or student representative councils say, to strike
against corporate tyranny on that day in order to join a mass reclaiming
of a part of the city that the corporate elite consider their own”, said
Boyle.
Melbourne's S11 Alliance supports this project and has renamed itself
the M1 Alliance. M1 coalitions have also been established in Sydney, Adelaide,
Hobart and Perth. In addition to strikes by workers and university students,
the socialist youth organisation Resistance is planning to call a high
school walk-out on the day
However, this focus on the global movement against neo-liberal policies
does not mean that the DSP is dropping its other campaigns.
The reports and proposals adopted by the congress reaffirmed that the
DSP will maintain its current campaign perspectives to build a militant
current in defence of workers rights in the trade union movement, rebuild
an activist student movement, build a campaign for refugees to be released
from detention and granted permanent residency and maintain involvement
in the women's liberation movement. However, these movements and campaigns
should not be isolated from each other or from the anti-corporate movement.
The other major area of work involving DSP members is its long-term
international solidarity work with struggles in Indonesia, East Timor,
Latin America and Palestine.
As was pointed out in a report on political developments in Indonesia
by DSP national executive member and ASIET (Action in Solidarity with Indonesia
and East Timor) national chairperson Max Lane: “It is vital that revolutionary
activists in Australia continue to expose Australia's imperialist policies
in the Asia and Pacific regions. Maintaining our solidarity with the comrades
in the People's Democratic Party in Indonesia and the Socialist Party of
Timor is one way in which we can do this.”
Delegates endorsed a proposal in Lane's report for a day of action on
February 21 against the Australian government's attempt to retain control
of oil reserves in the Timor Sea which rightfully belong to East Timor.
Other highlights of the DSP congress included the adoption of a resolution
outlining Australia's imperialist role in the Asia-Pacific region and a
new resolution on the Cuban Revolution.
Visit the Democratic Socialist Party's web site at http://www.dsp.org.au.
