The current global rebellion against neoliberal corporate globalism is a turning point in the world's history. The successful blockade of the Seattle WTO meeting on November 30, 1999 is remembered in the North as the first mass demonstration and the beginning of the 'anti-globalization' movement. However, the origins of the movement lie in the post-1989 period, when the fall of state socialism around the world resurrected the New Left type of anti-state, anti-corporate activism that was born in the Counterculture of the 1960s.

The Global Anarchist Rebellion

by Peter Kakol

'We are here. We do not surrender. Zapata is alive, and in spite of everything, the struggle continues.' - Subcomandante Marcos

The current global rebellion against neoliberal corporate globalism is a turning point in the world's history. The successful blockade of the Seattle WTO meeting on November 30, 1999 is remembered in the North as the first mass demonstration and the beginning of the 'anti-globalization' movement. However, the origins of the movement lie in the post-1989 period, when the fall of state socialism around the world resurrected the New Left type of anti-state, anti-corporate activism that was born in the Counterculture of the 1960s. Milestones along the way that were just as important as Seattle are the Zapatista anti-NAFTA uprising in Chiapas (new year's day, 1994) - widely acknowledged as the first Internet-based uprising - which played an important part in constructing the present global movement against neoliberalism (via the international gatherings or 'encuentros' 'For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism' of 1996 and 1997); and the defeat of the Multi-lateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) in 1998 - the movement's first major victory. The biggest demo turnouts before Seattle were in the South - for example, on the first Global Day of Action in May 1998, 500,000 people filled the streets of Hyderabad in India to protest against the WTO, and in Brazil there were 50,000 anti-WTO protestors. The following year's Carnival Against Capitalism (June 18 or 'J18' - the first use of this kind of abbreviation) saw events in about 100 cities in 40 countries. Seattle was simply the first time that this global movement - which began in the South - came, rather belatedly, to the North in the form of a mass movement.

Similarly, the post-Seattle milestones such as Davos, Washington A16, May Day, Melbourne S11, Prague S26, and others are really the Northern tip of the iceberg of an amazing year (2000) of anti-corporate rebellion around the world. For example, on May 10, 200,000 people protested against the World Bank in the streets of South Africa's major cities. In May, 80,000 demonstrated against the IMF in Argentina. And on September 7, under the banner of Cry of the Excluded, all the major cities in Brazil were 'crammed', with 100,000 people in São Paulo alone. Similar events occurred in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, and other countries throughout the South. The inhabitants of Earth are clearly saying 'enough!' to the corporate globalists. But are they listening?

There are signs that some are beginning to listen. A split is emerging in the ranks of the elites. There is no longer a consensus that neoliberalism is the way forward. The Asian crisis of 1997-1998 has caused many neoliberals to question the anti-democratic Reagan-Thatcher doctrine that There Is No Alternative (TINA) to neoliberalism. Some now see that it was not 'crony capitalism' or state-regulated capitalism, but the liberalization of finance, which led to the crisis. Hence, there are growing calls for a return to a Keynesian global economy to regulate finance in order to control speculation and the inflationary bubbles it gives rise to. In other words, they want a return to the welfare state era when governments regulated their economies and participated in a 'Bretton-Woods' system of international financial regulation. Such a system - instituted after the lessons learned from the mayhem caused by the previous round of economic liberalism (two World Wars, the Great Depression, Fascism) - resulted in the great post-war Golden Era in which growth rates were far higher than anything achieved since this system was dismantled in the 1970s by myopic politicians who forgot these lessons and were only interested in containing the 'crisis of democracy' and the 'communist' domino-effect. (Asia was able to maintain high growth rates until the 1990s when they too finally deregulated their financial sector, and entered economic crisis as a consequence.) Other neo-Keynesians also want global regulations to establish minimum labour and environmental standards. This is in keeping with the Keynesian belief that the cause of the crisis in classical liberalism was not just the commodification of money (that is, the liberalization of finance), but also the commodification of labour and land. Following Karl Polanyi, Keynesians believe that the capitalist free market should be restricted to real commodities (that is, trade in goods and services), and should not create 'fictitious commodities' such as money (or finance), labour (or people) and land (or nature). In this way, we would be encouraging truly productive growth, not the non-productive inflationary growth that comes from financial speculation and the exploitation of workers and nature. (However, there is still the question of how this growth should be measured - should it be based on the increase of GDP/GNP alone or on the increase of a whole range of social, environmental and economic indicators?)

But the global rebels of today are not interested in statist alternatives to neoliberalism. What is new in the New Left is that it is as much against the statism of the Old Left as it is against neoliberalism. This is why the 1960s Counterculture occurred at a time when welfare states were still all the rage. For what they were reacting against was statism and the undemocratic conformity that went with it. They wanted a truly participatory democracy that would allow them to regulate the economy themselves, instead of it being regulated for them paternalistically. The statism of the Old Left made it susceptible to being dissipated through co-optation by different corporate statist alternatives to economic liberalism - such as communism, fascism, and welfare capitalism. Such co-optation is now unlikely due to the anti-statism of the New Left. Hence, although there are many similarities between the 1848 'spring of the nations' and the 1968 'summer of love', the difference is that the former gave rise to state socialism which culminated in Stalinism, whereas the latter gave rise to libertarian socialism which is now materializing as a global rebellion against all forms of corporate statism and in favour of participatory democracy and communal economics. What is happening now is something far more radical than a revolution, which replaces one kind of state with another kind of state in a top-down fashion. What is occurring is a rebellion that replaces the State itself - in all its forms - from the bottom-up. This is a time-consuming and difficult process which does not happen overnight and is not based on the all-or-nothing, with-us-or-against-us, Manichean logic of the revolutionary. The rebel is anyone who says 'enough!' to the insatiable and cancerous growth of the Market and to the power-hungry State. Some may want to abolish these altogether and others may want to reduce them to servants of the people, but one thing is certain - all agree that the Market and the State should no longer be gods ruling over the people. There are still some unreconstructed state socialists about, but their numbers are dwindling. Although most of the global rebels would not explicitly identify themselves as 'anarchists', their anarchist nature can nevertheless be seen in their rejection of Market- and State-rule.

That the rebellion is anarchist in character, if not in name, can be seen in its organization. It is a non-hierarchical and centre-less network made up of 'coalitions of coalitions', consisting of a variety of different groups such as human rights activists, NGOs, labour unions, feminists, environmentalists, and students. Just like the Internet, which has made this global rebellion possible, the movement consists of a network of 'hubs' - the various convergence events - and 'spokes' - the various 'affinity groups', each of which elects delegates for regular 'spokescouncil' meetings. This 'coordinated decentralization', as Naomi Klein calls it, makes it unnecessary for there to be leaders and this actually contributes to the success of the movement's campaigns. As Starhawk, writing about the Seattle protest in which she participated, says: 'No centralized leader could have co-ordinated the scene in the midst of the chaos, and none was needed - the organic, autonomous organization we had proved far more powerful and effective.' Even Canadian intelligence, in its report on the movement, makes the same point: 'Like the Internet itself, the anti-globalist movement is a body that manages to survive and even thrive without a head.' It adds that the movement's organization and methods are 'very similar to that advocated by anarchists of the libertarian socialist philosophy.'

In The Rebel, the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus says that rebellion begins with an individual's reaction to the absurdity of the status quo. This leads to solidarity with other rebels: 'I rebel, therefore we exist.' To this is added the 'and we are alone' of the metaphysical rebel, who does not believe in a God, moral law, or principles that transcend the intersubjective 'we'. But for rebellion to be complete, we also need a historical rebellion which rejects the historicist claim that we are puppets of historical processes - a Hegelian claim that has taken Marxist, Fascist, and neoliberal forms. In response to the historicist claim that 'there is no alternative', the historical rebel says that 'we are self-creative.' Nietzsche called this power of creativity that is in all of us, the 'will to power.' But this will to power can take two different forms: the coercive will to power-over and the democratic will to power-with. What we are seeing today is a global rebellion that is completing the Left's unfinished historical rebellion by rejecting the Old Left's revolutionary theory, which held (in its Marxist form) that economic/productive forces (namely, technology) select the economic relations that stabilize and reproduce those forces, which in turn select the political relations that best help to stabilize and reproduce the economic relations. But what ever happened to the political forces (the will to power)? Surely it makes more sense to say, as the anarchist does, that political forces (real human actors exercising their will to power) select the economic forces/relations and political relations which help maintain and defend those political forces, than to say that the kind of economic and political relations we get are determined by technological developments. Accordingly, the anarchist cannot accept the Marxist view that the State can be captured and used to effect a transition to a socialist society because coercive political forces (will to power-over) will always select a coercive State that helps to maintain their power by selecting exploitative economic relations that create a surplus that can fund this self-defense-mechanism that is the State. What is needed is a completely new non-State society that arises from, and helps to stabilize and reproduce, non-coercive political forces (will to power-with). Such democratic power-with must displace hierarchical power-over in all the spheres where it manifests itself, such as the political, economic, cultural, social, sexual, ethnic, ecological, and so on.

The use of creativity (in the form of power-over) to control and suppress creativity (in the form of power-with) is fundamentally self-contradictory and thus unstable. The inherent unpredictability of creativity means that it will undermine all attempts to control it. But the answer in not to reverse the relation of control between these two types of power (such as in the 'tyranny of the proletariat'), because this too is self-contradictory and also because power-with defeats itself by becoming power-over. The simple expression of power-with (in creative work and creative play) is enough to overwhelm and dissipate the relatively weaker power-over. The intimidating and ubiquitous appearance of the Market-State complex is a PR-manufactured façade - behind the pin-striped business suits there is only smoke and mirrors. This fact is re-discovered every time the people exercise their power-with. This fact was re-discovered by the people of Eastern Europe during the anti-communist rebellion of 1989. And it was re-discovered again at the successful blockade of the IMF/WB meeting in Prague September 26, 2000, where one of the protestors, an anonymous German woman, was heard saying: 'What the hell. It turned out to be so easy!' History has brought us to a period of crisis in the capitalist world-system - the Asian crisis, the oil crisis, the imminent crash or recession - but we must now exercise our rebellious creativity and prevent the transition to a neo-Keynesian welfare capitalism. The time is ripe for the global rebellion. Whether it will lead to a post-capitalist society of the people's choosing or not is up to the people. The fact that anti-statists cannot be co-opted is an indicator that this time around the people's will to power will prevail.

Sources
A-Infos News Service. 'The History of This Movement.' .
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Camus, Albert. The Rebel. London: Penguin Books, 1971.
Canadian Security Intelligence Service. 'Anti-Globalization: A Spreading Phenomenon.' Perspectives (August 2000).
Carter, Alan. 'Analytical Anarchism: Some Conceptual Foundations.' Political Theory 28 (2000): 230-53.
Klein, Naomi. 'Were the DC and Seattle Protests Unfocused, or Are Critics Missing the Point?' The Nation (July 10, 2000).
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.
Starhawk. 'How We Really Shut Down the WTO.' .
Woodroffe, Jessica and Mark Ellis-Jones. 'States of Unrest: Map of Protests.' World Development Movement Report (September 2000).