Similar but not the same
From Chicago '68 to Seattle '99
By Fred
Goldstein
The U.S. government has suffered a humiliating defeat with
the collapse of the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle.
The humiliation came on two fronts.
Inside the halls of the convention, the Clinton
administration was unable to cow its imperialist rivals and the
Third World countries into bowing to its agenda.
More importantly, out on the streets thousands of
demonstrators braved pepper gas, plastic bullets, tear gas and
concussion grenades to stand up against multinational corporate
greed, environmental destruction, and the dictatorial arrogance
of the rulers of the WTO.
The conference was in crisis before it ever began because of
the intense antagonisms among the imperialist powers. The
European Union and the Japanese government were trying to make
a bloc against U.S. attempts to cut their agricultural
subsidies. The Japanese and others were demanding that the U.S.
roll back its protectionist "anti-dumping" policies. The U.S.
wanted to eliminate all taxation on Internet services, while
the Japanese denounced Washington for protecting the "Microsoft
economy." And, of course, the U.S. antagonized all the
oppressed countries over so-called "fair labor standards."
All the heads of state, except Clinton, boycotted the
meeting.
At the eleventh hour before the conference, Clinton had made
frantic phone calls to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi of Japan and
the head of the European Union, Romano Prodi, to get a
last-minute agreement. They both turned him down flat.
Once the demonstrations broke out, the whole thing
collapsed.
The Clinton administration and U.S. imperialism have become
drunk with power--and such drunkenness lends itself to
monumental miscalculation. That is what happened in Seattle. It
wasn't the demonstrations alone that shook up the capitalist
authorities. It was the militant determination of the
demonstrators to physically shut down the hated WTO by standing
their ground and defying the police.
The bosses also have to think about the fact that many of
the demonstrators were openly against capitalism, at a moment
when Wall Street is breaking records and the media are touting
the capitalist market as the guiding light of all civilization.
Undercurrents of hatred for the profit system's inhumanity are
spreading to diverse sectors of the movement. In the streets of
Seattle, they converged and broke through to the surface.
These demonstrations showed that global reaction inevitably
breeds resistance, even in the midst of a great capitalist
boom.
1968 and 1999--
similarities and differences
Among the many militant chants of the demonstrators was "the
whole world is watching"--the chant of the demonstrators at the
1968 Chicago Democratic Party Convention. Thousands of youth
opposed to the Vietnam War battled the police after being
attacked outside the convention center.
There are many similarities between the two demonstrations.
But some of the differences are very important.
The 1968 battle in Chicago came after thousands of anti-war
demonstrations. It represented a new high level for a movement
already fully in progress.
The movement that came together in Seattle has also had many
direct-action demonstrations: for the environment, against
sweat-shops and racism, for international solidarity and many
other important causes. But this is its first united
action.
One of the most important differences is that in 1968 the
political movement against the war and the labor movement were
far apart and suspicious of each other. The AFL-CIO head was
George Meany, a super-patriotic reactionary who actually
organized pro-war demonstrations and assaults upon anti-war
demonstrators. Cold War politics still dominated the hierarchy
of the labor movement.
The youth, who were the cutting edge of the anti-war
movement, were oblivious to the exploitation of the working
class because the labor leadership--with the notable exception
of a few unions having progressive leaders--not only refused to
participate in the anti-war struggle but showed open hostility
to it.
Today the strategists of U.S. capitalism have to concern
themselves with the fact that, while the youths were battling
the police in the streets against corporate greed, tens of
thousands of workers were marching under essentially the same
slogans, animated by the same anti-corporate spirit. Many
groups of workers joined the street demonstrations, including
members of the Teamsters, International Longshore and Warehouse
Union, and Steel Workers, among others. The ILWU shut down West
Coast ports from San Diego to Vancouver for two hours as part
of the protest against the WTO--something highly underplayed by
the big business press.
As in Chicago in 1968, many activists, including workers,
got a major lesson in how capitalist democracy works when you
challenge the ruling class.
Seattle was a coming together of a militantly
anti-corporate, and to some extent consciously anti-capitalist,
resistance movement with the workers' movement, forging
solidarity in the streets.
Clinton's demagogy
on labor standards
President Bill Clinton went on television and showed
"sympathy" with most of the demonstrators in order to derail
and co-opt the movement, while of course violence-baiting a
so-called tiny minority. In truth, it was the police who caused
the violence after thousands of demonstrators held firm. In
fact, the worst violence occurred the day Clinton was scheduled
to speak in Seattle.
Even more deceptive were Clinton's statements to the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer and elsewhere demanding "fair labor
standards" and threatening trade sanctions on countries that
allow child labor and prison labor. This is the ultimate in
demagogy.
In the first place, this country has plenty of child
labor--in the sweatshops and in the fields, orchards and
vineyards of agribusiness. U.S. capitalists are subsidized by
low wages, including child labor, prison labor and
super-exploited immigrant labor, from New York's Chinatown to
Los Angeles to Texas and the maquiladoras on the border.
This country has the smallest percentage of unionized
workers in the entire imperialist world. It has just gone
through a 20-year anti-labor offensive. Millions of workers in
government jobs are legally barred from organizing and the
rights of labor are under attack every day. Many states have
anti-strike laws. The Taft-Hartley law limits worker actions
and hinders organizing and strike struggles.
If Clinton wants to concern himself with workers' rights, he
has plenty to start with right here.
Bloc between Sweeney and Clinton
Even more problematical for the workers' movement is that
the AFL-CIO leadership, headed by John Sweeney, has been
pressing for the WTO to adopt standards tying trade to labor
conditions and pressing for sanctions. He is in a bloc with
Clinton on this question.
Has he forgotten that Clinton was the point man in pushing
through NAFTA? That Clinton, as leader of the New Democrats,
shunned the labor movement and turned to the right?
Clinton's demagogy is meant to hold the AFL-CIO leadership
on board for Al Gore's election and create a new weapon against
the oppressed countries. It has the effect of throwing sand in
the eyes of workers.
All workers and progressive people are opposed to child
labor and low wages. That goes without saying. But what Clinton
and Sweeney are telling the workers is that they are losing
their jobs because of low wages abroad. They are saying that
the only way to get job security is to shut out goods produced
by low-wage workers in other countries.
This formulation is wrong and deadly. True labor leaders
tell it like it is: workers are losing their jobs not because
of other workers but because of how the bosses set workers
against one another, putting profits above all else. That is
the reason, pure and simple.
If a boss lays off workers, saying he cannot compete with
low-priced goods produced by low-wage labor abroad, the answer
is to fight against layoffs and for the right to a job. Workers
in Japan or Brazil or India need jobs, too. Instead of taking
the side of the bosses in the U.S. against their competitors
overseas, whether it's in steel, textiles, autos or whatever,
workers here must make "a job is a right" into a fighting
slogan of the labor movement.
How to fight layoffs
The bosses are the ones responsible for laying us off, not
workers in other countries. The labor movement must use all the
power of mass mobilization to defend jobs, regardless of the
problems the capitalists may be having with competition. That
is their problem, not the problem of the workers who made them
rich in the first place.
Do not call on the anti-working-class robbers who run the
WTO from Wall Street, London, Paris, Bonn, Rome and Tokyo to
stick up for workers. They have no intention of doing any such
thing. To even imply they would is an ideological assault upon
the working class. Without an independent working-class
struggle, we will forever be fighting each other while the
bosses laugh all the way to the bank.
But most importantly, to apply uniform global standards for
wages and environmental protection is to play into the
protectionist hands of the bosses and alienate the populations
in the oppressed countries.
It cannot be repeated too often that we live in a world
dominated by imperialism--there are oppressed countries and
oppressor countries. The problem of low wages in Brazil or
India or Thailand is the end result of an entire historical
process. The general level of wages in any country or the
ability of a country to cope with environmental hazards is
determined by the economic development of that country as a
whole.
While the particular conditions can be altered by the class
struggle inside a country, no country can transcend the ceiling
set by the limitations of economic underdevelopment, even under
the best of circumstances. Socialist countries, for example,
can change the general distribution of goods and services
vastly in favor of the masses once the capitalists are
overthrown, but even they are constrained in wage levels and
many other things by their economic base.
To demand that an oppressed country live up to the economic
standards of the imperialist countries, without offering
economic development that underlies the ability to meet those
standards, is sheer demagogy.
Start by canceling the debt!
If Clinton wants to raise the living standards in the
oppressed world, he could start by demanding a cancellation of
the $26 trillion debt that keeps a big part of the wealth of
the Third World flowing steadily into the banks of imperialism.
But Clinton's program has allowed the IMF to milk the oppressed
countries and batter down all possibilities of national
development.
If Clinton wants to clean up the environment, he can start
right here. Then he could arrange for a transfer of the
necessary technology and funding to get it done in the Third
World. What really is needed is reparations to all the
oppressed countries for hundreds of years of colonial
underdevelopment--the root cause of low wages.
Of course, Marxists are for prosecuting the class struggle
to the hilt in the oppressed countries. The decadent exploiting
bourgeoisies in India, Brazil and elsewhere should be fought
toot and nail--not only to abolish child labor but to abolish
capitalism. This is the true road to national independence and
development.
Marxists are opposed to all forms of exploitation,
particularly the most brutal forms like child labor. And the
working class movements in the oppressed countries must fight
relentlessly against their own national bourgeoisies and
landlords, especially those who act as agents of imperialism.
Labor leaders in the oppressor countries such as the U.S.
should do all that is possible to assist in this effort.
Imagine if the labor movement here helped organize a world
summit of labor for international solidarity to coordinate the
global struggle against capital. The AFL-CIO leaders could
consult and strategize with the many progressive unions and
their activist allies from Asia, Africa and Latin America over
how to approach the question of labor standards, child labor,
etc. Such methods are the surest way to build the necessary
solidarity to fight against low wages abroad.
The activists on the streets of Seattle were driven by
internationalist motives of solidarity. But international
solidarity cannot be achieved by narrow protectionist methods,
which ultimately are regarded as chauvinism in the oppressed
countries. This breaks down solidarity, playing into the hands
of the bosses.
The labor movement should expose this vicious, divisive
maneuver, rather than lobby for it. The struggle has to be
carried out in the larger context of the struggle of oppressed
countries against imperialist domination and for
self-determination, national development and sovereignty. This
is precisely what the WTO was set up to destroy.
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