The Remaining WTO Question: What's Next?

Opinon by Dick Burton, Free Press Contributor

Lately, I've been having a debate with some friends about what sort of expression we'll use when referring to years. That is, in the year 2009, will we call it "Two Thousand Nine" or "Twenty Oh Nine"? I tend to think the latter, but I'm not sure, and some of my best friends claim it will be the former.

This sort of thing has generally made for a great way to take a break from conversations about the WTO and its aftermath. However, it doesn't usually warrant enough interest to last more than a minute or two before my friends and I are back to talking about the police, the jail, the breakdown in the talks, the gas, Capitol Hill, etc. And such conversations between my friends and I are hardly isolated incidents these days.

A great deal has been said, understandably, about the momentous events surrounding the WTO Ministerial here in Seattle. Corporate-friendly pundits, of course, have done their level best to hide their deep-seated anxieties about having a good, old-fashioned class war on their hands -- either by dismissing the thousands of protesters as ignorant fools, naive protectionists, or bomb-throwing lunatics. Progressives, on the other hand, are generally upbeat about the affair. There have arisen, however, a number of important debates in progressive circles about the WTO events and their significance. One of them surrounds the question of the legitimacy of property destruction. Another involves the role of racism among the protesting throng. A third surrounds the role of organized labor. Many progressives have asked, since the Ministerial talks broke down on December 3, "What next?" I think these three issues provide us good starting points to answer this question.

The conceptual link that ties these issues together is the concept of "democracy." Democracy provides us with a tool which is, at one and the same time, both plausible (i.e., it actually has a realistic chance of gaining the adherence of the mainstream working class) and radical (i.e., it gets at the root of the problem).

"Democracy" is a term that enjoys widespread acceptance and legitimacy among most of the U.S. population today. Unlike political calls for things like "class struggle," "seizing ownership of the means of production," or "overthrowing the institution of private property" -- which are often met with perplexity or even McCarthyite-based rejection on the part of many in mainstream, working class Seattle -- demanding that our institutions be more "democratic" is something that most folks readily understand and can get behind. In short, then, "democracy" is widely understood and supported; it's a term which we progressives can work with. It has "plausibility."

In addition to this plausibility, however, "democracy" also can be interpreted and deployed in a very radical way. That is, rather than conceiving of it as merely "majority rule," (which leaves open the all-too-real prospect of those in the "minority" having their views -- if not their rights -- ignored, belittled, or directly violated) or as merely a celebration of the annual, toothless imprimatur of the two corporate "Republicrat" parties every November, we can and should think of democracy -- of the demand for democracy -- in a far deeper, more radical way than is often considered.

That is, it is worthwhile, I think, to raise the point that our economy, generally, and the so-called Bretton Woods Institutions, (i.e., the International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, and the WTO), are run undemocratically. Despite the thin veneer of inclusion and openness that is cast over contemporary US society and the global political economy, the ugly fact remains that property -- whether in the form of items produced for the purpose of sale at a profit, or in the form of resources for initiating or expanding production -- is owned and controlled by private individuals. As long as this remains the case, it simply cannot plausibly be maintained that ours is an economy guided by democratic principles.

The people who work in offices or schools, in restaurants, shop-rooms or on farms do not have a relevant voice in the very decisions which directly impact on them and their families. A more blatant example of a lack of democracy would be hard to find. Why should the principal shareholders, corporate board members, and global economic trade wonks be the only sanctioned voices when it comes to decisions concerning where capital is to be invested, or what products or services are to be produced or performed? These are decisions that have a direct impact on all of us, yet, only these elite few are privileged to make them.

Abolishing this lack of democracy in our economy would require nothing short of the abolition of capitalist property relations. This is because the primary justification for why these elite few, at present, are the only ones empowered to make these decisions is because "they own it." But what conditions must be satisfied to justify "owning"? And, further, why should "owning," say, a company, justify having exclusive control over it? It is on the basis of this that this demand for democracy is radical: To demand an end to the on-going, long-standing practice of elite, exclusive decision-making is to demand an end to the on-going, long-standing practice of the private ownership and control of our society's collectively-produced wealth.

The sorts of changes in the existing social order that would be necessary to implement this sort of radical democracy, of course, would be nothing short of revolutionary. And, I believe, in many ways, the events in Seattle are an important step toward this goal. However, if something like this radical vision of a democratically run political economy is, indeed, our goal, then three important implications follow:

Implication One:
The question of the broken windows

Fact: a revolution of the sort necessary to carry out this radical democratic vision will not succeed without a significant majority of middle America behind it.

Fact: at the very most, 40,000 residents of Seattle and the greater Seattle area participated in the WTO protests.

Fact: there are close to 2 million people who live in Seattle and the greater Seattle area.

What did the other 1,960,000 Seattle and greater Seattle residents think about the WTO protests? How many were supportive? How many will be with us, next time? Importantly, how many were attracted by blowing out the windows of Niketown and how many were turned off?

This is an important question: The cost to repair a few broken windows for Nike or Starbucks is chump change; what matters is whether hitting these places was convincing or not to the vast majority of the region (or, for that matter, the country) who watched or heard about the events and thought about them. I don't know the answer to this question, but I suspect that most viewed it negatively. Getting clear about the purpose and place for property destruction is one answer to the question: "What next?"

Implication Two:
The question of racism

Fact: nearly every effort to enact significant social change in the history of the US has been about fighting racism, or has drawn much of its ideological inspiration or tactics from movements which were about fighting racism.

Fact: people of color, today, continue disproportionately to be subjected to lower income and wealth brackets, higher arrest, conviction, sentencing, and execution rates, shorter life-spans, higher infant mortality rates, lower admissions/employment/contract chances, etc.

Fact: among the more significant issues currently confronting communities of color today -- e.g., attacks on affirmative action, welfare, immigrants and immigration, the "war on drugs," police brutality, English-only laws, "zero tolerance" policies, AIDS, environmental racism, the rise of the prison-industrial complex (for starters) -- many can be explained, in part, by the increasing control of corporations and "free market" principles over our lives.

Why were so few resources devoted to promulgating the role of corporate power in these issues in the build-up to the WTO? Why were there so few resources devoted to supporting the outreach efforts of progressive people and organizations of color? Why did one of the white leaders of the organizing effort indicate a conciliatory stance toward Patrick J. Buchanan? A movement for radical democracy must work immediately to investigate and eliminate these and other related things if it is to be worthy of the name. Engaging in this work is a second answer to the question: "What next?"

Implication Three:
The question of organized labor

Fact: many in the top-levels of AFL-CIO leadership were dragged kicking and screaming to Seattle; many didn't want to cross the Democrats and Gore.

Fact: the marshals for the labor march, on Nov. 30, as had been planned, turned marchers away from the direct action activities and directed them back to the Seattle Center.

Fact: many labor leaders and rank and file activists disagreed vehemently with these decisions and actions and supported and/or joined the direct action activists on Tuesday and throughout the week.

Fact: aside from organizations of faith, labor is the only institution in the US with both (1) the money and (2) the potential to cultivate the general respect of significant percentages of people to support and help lead a movement which can fight for radical democracy.

How can we support those in labor who took the more militant stands? How can we protect them from attacks from more conservative unionists? How can we build a more militant labor movement in this country? How can we reach out to and learn from the experience of labor activists in other countries with powerful labor movements? How can we make alliances with such movements? What roles can concerned progressives play in organizing their workplaces and mobilizing more people toward the cause of opposing corporate, capitalist power? Striving to answer these questions with concerted action is a third answer to the question: "What next?"

The desperate ideological flailings by the corporate media and political bureaucrats to ridicule or dismiss the anti-WTO protesters represent the theory, and the brutal attacks by state security forces on the anti-WTO demonstrators represent the practice of a political-economic leadership which is very much afraid. Most fundamentally, they are afraid of a worldwide people's movement, coordinating itself and educating thousands, gaining increasing momentum, becoming increasingly radicalized, becoming increasingly uncompromising and self-critical, becoming increasingly able to feel, understand, and birth institutions based on solidarity and authentic concern. They are afraid of a movement for radical democracy. They are afraid of what we'll do next. What will we call the year 2009? Let's call it revolution.