Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 02:47:22 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: AUT: Comradely reply to Fydd on e mailing and thr-AT-ll



I don't want to start this thread spinning off every
which way again but I just want to reply briefly to
Fydd, since he's a fellow Kiwi who knows me
personally. I respect Fydd's right to his opinion,
agree with some of his criticisms, and appreciate his
saying I'm a nice fella who doesn't collaborate with
Nazis, but I disagree - I would, wouldn't I? - with a
couple of his statements when he writes that

scott via emails can be at times
> self-righteous, aggressive, scurrillous, and a
> smearer > - regardless of his politics

Fydd and I always seem to get arguing on e mail, and I
don't want to get in a big blarney with him here, but
I have personally always tried to avoid using smears
and personal insults in e mail. Many years ago when I
was first getting involved in politics I sent someone
a couple of very nasty private e mails, and ended up
getting into a lot of trouble over it. Since then I've
really tried very hard never to stoop to the personal.


I'm aware, of course, that some political
classifications can seem like insults - indeed, there
can be a fine line - and I think this is what Fydd is
getting at, because at times in the past he has
objected very strongly to some of the classifications
I've (sometimes mistakenly) put on him. Certainly, on
this list, I've described certain people's approaches
to concrete questions (ie revolution in Palestine) as,
for instance, Kautskyist or Stalinist, but I've tried
not to call them Stalinists, and I've tried to provide
evidence for my arguments. (Remember too, Fydd, that
I've retrospectively criticised the views on Palestine
I held a year or so back, and put on nzlibleft, as
Stalinist, so it's not like I'm covering my tracks.)

If anyone looks over this list's archives, they will
be hard pressed to find a single personal insult from
me - and that's despite my having being called brain
dead, a Nazi collaborator, a fascist, a friend of
Uncle Sam and so on. And it's pretty much the same on
all the lists I've been on over the past few years,
including anarchynz, nzlibleft, and antiwaranticapnz
(all yahoogroups which I was on with Fydd). A couple
of times I've gone a little over the top and
apologised, but that's about it.

And it's simply not true to say, as Fydd does, that
I've pissed off numerous people all over the world
with e mail on other lists. Again, this could be
checked by looking at the archives of the groups
listed above. I was actually for a long time the
moderator of antiwaranticapnz, at the request of list
members who saw me as honest and unbiased (I stopped
moderating when I became too closely involved with one
of the groups - I think you can work out who they are
-represented on the list).

I think it's also a little untrue to say I'm a
compulsive emailer who dominates the groups I'm on.
Anthony accused me of this the other day in relation
to Love and Rage, but when I checked the archive I
counted only around a fairly small percentage, around
5 or 7%, of the posts, as mine. Out of around 570
pasts over the past three months, only 30-35 were
mine, and most of these were links or pieces of info,
rather than discussion. This is on the list where
there are only about a dozen regular contributors at
present. 

Last year I went through a period of posting - of
having to post - very, very heavily to the
antiwaranticap list, but this was because we (the AIC)
were using the list - and this was an idiotic idea, in
retrospect - as a place for negotiations about forming
a far left alliance. I got thoroughly burned out after
that, and changed the settings on my computer so that
I didn't get any yahoo list e mails in my inbox. I
didn't know how to do that for autopsy, and that's
partly why I've posted so much more often here. I've
just been checking other lists occasionally, and have
rarely posted more than about once a week or two on
any list except autopsy and perhaps Love and Rage.
I've ended up posting a lot on autopsy for other
reasons, though - because, as Chris intuits, I want to
struggle against my old ideas; because some of the
attitudes on display here are similar to those I'm
studying for my PhD; and because I tend to get into
ping pong debates when I feel my views are being
misrepresented or misunderstood (which, as Fydd points
out, is not surprising on a list which disains their
outward forms, and which lacks information about their
substance). And these last few weeks I've often been
staying up all night slaving away on anti-war work at
the computer, and there's a tendency to see something
on the news and bang it down on e mail and send it out
to lists (which usually means this list). This sort of
overposting, though, can be a nightmare for moderators
of non-news lists (which I forgot autopsy was) and
I've undertaken to knock it on the head.

I'm the first to admit that I can be self-righteous,
sarcastic, too inclined to apply wrong labels, and too
pushy in e mail debate. But this is not the same as
being a conscious smearer or scurrillous. Fydd and I
have tended to rub each other up the wrong way by e
mail, and my tendency to jump to conclusions and
mistakenly attribute to him  positions he doesn't
really hold has probably sometimes been the 'spark'
for this, but the fact is that he has been the one who
has tended to get a bit ratty with me over the years.
And, on this list, I thought that Fydd's 'warning,
this guy's a wacky Spart' non-response to Dave's
important paper on Argentina was a very disappointing
tactic, though not an outright smear. It travelled
round the net and  certainly threw what could have
been an interesting debate off-kilter. It made me lose
respect for Fydd. (Now, though, I realise its
negativity may have been a response to negative
aspects of my own e mailing over the years.) 

Fydd only gives one example of my scurrillous and
smearing style, and I have reproduced it at the end of
this e mail. I hope that I am not engaging in personal
abuse in the said article - I hope I am making some
classifications which Fydd resents. People can decide
for themselves. It should be noticed that I begin the
article by expressing my basic solidarity with what
I'm criticising, and give readers a link to the paper
in question so that they can see for themselves
whether I am being fair or not. Those are not norammly
the tactics of the smear artist.

The reason I wrote the article in question is simple:
I was distributing the paper I criticised, and getting
negative feedback about it. I thought of my article as
expressing this feedback, and I hoped it would make an
impact on the editorial practice of Fydd and co. I've
made similar sorts of criticisms, in public, of the
CWG since I became involved with the production of
their paper, Class Struggle. This is how debate within
different political currents should work. In
retrospect, though, it would have been better to
bounce the ideas in the article off Fydd and co first,
before posting it publically. I would very much regret
it if my article stopped anyone reading thr-AT-ll.
The length of the criticism may also have been
overwhelmingly, though this was partly the result of
my trying to be thorough in explaining myself. I
remember getting some favourable comments on the
article from a couple of long-time class struggle
anarchists in NZ. 

Finally, I want to thank Fydd for expressing his views
of my e mailing style because, even if I disagree with
the substance of some of his remarks, the overall
negative perception he has is important, and it's
something that I need to take seriously, and to work
on changing by improving the tone and quality of my e
mails. Maate, I must have hurt you in the past with
some of my comments and I'm sorry about that. 
(Btw, we're collecting for your mangy mates' legal
fees on Sunday at the peace concert. Can you or mark
get in touch with me if you have any details we can
give people about the support group?)


 
Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton-AT-y...> 
Date:  Thu Dec 13, 2001  5:02 pm
Subject:  A Critique of thr-AT-l... #21
 


Hopefully everyone will see this as a constructive
critique...


ANTI-CAPITALISM OR SUBSTITUTIONISM?

A Critique of thr-AT-l... # 21


It's interesting to see that the new issue of thr-AT-l...
(online at www.freespeech.org/thrall/) gives around
half of its 12 pages to reports and discussion of
recent 'anti-capitalist' protests against global
financial and political institutions. Readers of
thr-AT-l... #21 get page-long reports from November's
anti-WTO protests in Christchurch and Wellington, a
short review of a book about 'globalisation', and a
three-page article discussing the role of anarchists
in the string of protests that have disrupted
international financial and political summits in
places like Quebec and Genoa. 

thr-AT-l... #21 carries only four pages of writing
devoted
to the S 11 attacks and the international crisis and
war they have precipitated, no writing at all about
the economic crises and working class offensives
currently creating pre-revolutionary situations in
several Latin American countries, most notably
Argentina, and only one line about the industrial
action which has been taken on numerous occasions over
recent months by New Zealand's nurses and teachers.

I want to argue that the amount of attention thr-AT-l...
#21 gives the protests against global financial and
political bodies is excessive by advancing two basic
claims. In the first place, I want to argue that
thr-AT-l... misunderstands the nature of the
anti-capitalist movement, wrongly identifying it with
any protest against a body like the WTO; in the second
place, I want to argue that protests against the
liberalisation of trade and international capital
flows have no prospect of attracting substantial
working class participation in this country, and
should therefore be deprioritised by radical leftists.
I want to follow these claims with the argument that
thr-AT-l... has misrepresented not only the anti-WTO
protests but also the class nature and orientation of
their participants.

WHAT IS ANTI-CAPITALISM?

How can we define the anti-capitalist movement?
Despite the large amount of coverage it gives to the
movement calling itself 'anti-capitalist', thr-AT-l...
seems never to have contemplated this question. 
I think that 'anti-capitalist' tends to be used in two
different and differently unsatisfactory senses. There
are those who use it as a catch-all phrase to describe
every leftist protest and event since the late 90s -
for these people, 'anti-capitalist' is simply a
synonym for 'contemporary leftist'. The problem with
this definition is that it is too broad - it includes,
for instance, the sort of traditional, meat and veges
marches organised by union leaders in many countries
last Mayday, as well as the very different 'M1' events
organised independently on the same day by the
younger, post-Seattle left. Surely the term
'anti-capitalist' ought to be able to distinguish
events like these? 

The second definition is too narrow, making
'anti-capitalist' into a synonym for 'protest directed
against a global trade and financial institution'.
This definition excludes phenomena that should surely
fall under the label 'anti-capitalist' - excludes,
for instance, the revolt in Bolivia against water
privatisation, and the struggle against austerity
measures being waged by the piqueteros in Argentina.
Campaigns like these make 'traditional', economic
demands and take main aim at capital's representatives
in the nation state, not in international bodies like
the WTO. 

The second definition of 'anti-capitalist' seems in
some ways too broad as well as too narrow, because it
does not distinguish between different parts of the
movement against global trade and financial
institutions. Ya Basta! and the Methodist Church both
took part in the Genoa protests, but would anyone want
to claim that the latter was 'anti-capitalist'? The
Green Party has taken part in protests against the WTO
here, but would anyone want to claim them as
'anti-capitalists'?

What is needed is a materialist understanding of
anti-capitalism, an understanding which dives below
surface appearances and places the phenomenon in a
historical context, relating it to wider, apparently
unrelated contemporary social phenomena and patterns.
I think that we have to see anti-capitalism as a
*moment in class struggle* related essentially to the
virtues and vices, successes and failures of the class
struggles that preceded its appearance. 

Anti-capitalism is most importantly a response to the
destruction of 'traditional' forms of leftist practice
which accompanied the destruction of the social
contract welfare state by neoliberalism in the 1980s
and 90s. (The neoliberal onslaught can itself only be
understood as a response to profit-squeezing successes
enjoyed by the working class and allied groups in the
late 1960s and 1970s.) The anti-capitalist movement
was based in the streets and not the worksite because
workplace organisation was shot. The affinity
group model for organisation gained popularity because
the old, mass hierarchical models pushed by reformist
unions, mass social democratic parties and mass
Stalinised Communist Parties had been smashed. Direct
action gained popularity because the politics of
mediation - of national awards, pay rounds,
parliamentary representation for mass social
democratic and Stalinised Communist parties, and the
rest of the heritage of the Keynesian 'social
contract' society - seemed unable to deliver rewards.
Casual workers and declassed youth - the piqueteros in
Argentina as well as the 'anarchists' in Seattle -
took the lead because the industrial working class had
had its guts kicked out. 

With its tactics and organisational forms, then, the
anti-capitalist movement attempted to turn the
disadvantages the defeats of the 80s and early 90s had
forced on the left into strengths. It was a move
towards the negation of the neoliberal offensive by
the same casualised, declassed, and unemployed people
that neoliberalism had created. To say all this is not
to say for a moment that anti-capitalism has achieved
some kind of defeat for the class that imposed
neo-liberalism in the 1980s and 90s. Not every
counter-offensive routs the enemy.

The view I have sketched seems to avoid the pitfalls
of the definitions criticised earlier. It separates
the new movement from the relics of an old left which
yearns to reinvent social contract politics and mass
social democratic parties. It counters the tendency of
some to fetishise 'anti-capitalism' by identifying it
with some of the targets its most famous actions have
attacked. With its reference to the new type of
demands the movement has raised it counters a similar
fetishising tendency which would claim as the essence
of the movement its methods of organisation.

ANTI-WTO: WHY DON'T KIWIS CARE?

I believe that thr-AT-l... lacks a materialist
understanding of anti-capitalism, and has a tendency
to fetishise anti-capitalism as action against a
particular set of targets - namely, against global
trade institutions like the WTO. How else can the
extensive coverage they give to the tiny anti-WTO
demonstrations in Wellington and Christchurch be
explained? thr-AT-l... seems to see these demonstrations
as
the local representatives of anti-capitalism, and to
believe that they have a good chance of increasing in
size. 'If it happened in Genoa, surely it's important
that it's happening here, and surely it can become
important here', they seem to reason. 

If we see anti-capitalism as a moment in class
struggle, a set of tactics and demands made advisable
by our place in the history of class struggle, then we
can see the foolishness of the assumption that
protests against global trade and financial
institutions are bound to be anti-capitalist. We can
see that anti-capitalism can manifest itself in many
different forms, *inside working class struggles*. It
may appear in traditional, anti-austerity struggles
like those in Latin America, or in the protests
against new adversaries seen in places like Quebec
City. The one necessary condition for the appearance
of anti-capitalism is mass action by the working
class. It is precisely this condition which was
lacking in the anti-WTO protests, and which is likely
to remain absent from protests organised against
global trade and financial institutions here. 

The argument that the recent anti-WTO actions did not
attract mass working class participation will probably
not be disputed by thr-AT-l... The paper itself admits
that the protests were small, smaller even than last
year's, and were burdened with petty bourgeois
pro-capitalist groups like the Green Party and ARENA.
What might be more controversial is the argument that
events like the anti-WTO actions have a very low
chance of ever attracting mass working class
participation in New Zealand, and are therefore a
waste of time for class struggle anarchists and
Marxists. How can this argument be made, when Quebec
City and Seattle are still fresh in the mind?

There are objective and subjective factors which make
it unlikely that the issue of trade liberalisation
could ever mobilise large numbers of working class New
Zealanders. The historic dependence of the country's
economy on the export of primary products means that
the working class here has always benefited materially
from the openness of foreign markets to New Zealand
capitalists. At the same time, this dependence creates
a vulnerability - fluctuating prices for important
exports can lead easily to the sort of economic
destabilisation that workers tend ultimately to pay
for. For a long time the response to these
circumstances was a sort of economic nationalism which
would have New Zealand keeping its own markets under
lock and key at the same time as it pursued open
access to foreign markets. Thus Muldoon, the ultimate
economic nationalist and unacknowledged Godfather of
ARENA and the Alliance, demanded better access to
Britain and the EU for New Zealand butter at the same
time as he maintained sky-high tariffs on goods lucky
enough to gain entry to New Zealand. 

The contradictions in the arguments of economic
nationalists made them easy game for the Rogernomes
who slashed tariffs in the later 80s and 90s, and make
it very difficult today to put an argument for
opposition to trade liberalisation to workers with
anything short of revolutionary consciousness without
invoking the negative, national chauvinist aspects of
social contract protectionist New Zealand. This
subjective barrier is the reason why the politics of
economic nationalism are in decay in this country, and
why Murray Horton has to resort to horrible,
reactionary talk about foreigners 'whooshing' away
'our' money. To say all this is not to praise the WTO
or the agenda it pursues, just to argue that an
anti-WTO movement is unlikely to take root in New
Zealand in the forseeable future. 

FROM THE FRINGES TO THE HEARTLAND

What, then, should thr-AT-l... be writing about? If
anti-WTO protests are not viable in New Zealand, what
should those sympathetic to anti-capitalism be doing?
Anti-capitalism, I have argued, equals post-social
contract forms of organisation and demands in working
class-oriented struggles. So far anti-capitalism has
mostly been confined to the periphery of the working
class - it has attracted casual workers, the
unemployed, and declassed youth. (Of course, actions
in places in places like Genoa and Seattle have
attracted a lot of other types of people - farmers and
organised labour under bureaucratic leadership, for
instance - but, as I have just explained, these
actions are not identical with the anti-capitalist
movement.) Anti-capitalism can only achieve real
successes if it spreads from the periphery to the
heart of the working class. There have been glimpses
of such a movement - at Quebec City, for instance,
thousands of auto workers broke with their union
leaders' 'peaceful march' and joined with the black
bloc in direct action - but they have been few and far
between, in the First World at least.

Anti-capitalism will not spread to the heart of the
working class unless its proponents orientate towards
the heart of the working class. In South America,
where there is economic turmoil and heated class
struggle, this is a relatively easy task. In New
Zealand, where seventeen years of defeats have bred
rampant depoliticisation, it is a far harder task.
Given the conditions we face in New Zealand, it would
be ridiculous to suggest that thr-AT-l... should be
aiming
now at a huge readership across the working class.
Nevertheless, thr-AT-l... should be aiming to add more of
the militant layers of the working class to its
present readership. It should be reaching out, in
particular, to workers engaged in struggle. At
present, thousands of nurses and teachers fall into
this category. It is unrealistic to expect all of the
contents of a publication like thr-AT-l... to appeal
immediately to all of these people, but it is
nevertheless worth trying to make sure that the
language, references and subject matter of a good part
of the paper are at least accessible to them.

WORKERISM, OR A WORKING CLASS ORIENTATION?

thr-AT-l...'s writers clearly recognise the importance of
the working class and of class struggle, but their
efforts to 'reach out' to the class often seem to take
the form of an ultra-left version of workerism.
Reacting to the solipsism of the declassed 'lifestyle
left' and the nasty, anti-working class politics of
parts of the middle class 'liberal left', too many of
thr-AT-l...'s writers seem to want to identify themselves
and their ideas completely with the working class as
it exists today - to become overnight 'superproles'.
Such an approach can only lead to tragicomic
confusion. Let us consider, as an example of such
confusion, the report from Wellington's anti-WTO
protest reproduced in thr-AT-l... #21. This report is
signed 'Proletarians Against the Machine' and ends
with the words 'FOR THE TOTAL ABOLITION OF CAPITAL AND
THE STATE. FOR THE WORLD HUMAN COMMUNITY'. My guess is
that any striking teachers or nurses who laid eyes on
those words would be more likely to feel bemusement
than any sense of solidarity with anti-WTO protests.
The word 'Proletarians' would surely be particularly
puzzling to workers in New Zealand, where it is seldom
used by anyone except postgraduate students in the
social sciences. It is one thing to challenge the low
horizons fifty years of social democracy has
bequeathed New Zealand workers, but quite another to
shout at them in a language as exotic as Navaho. 

The superproles' superleft slogans are in any case
betrayed by the content of the report they conclude.
Consider the following sentences:

"GE is a big issue in Aotearoa, with mass protests up
and down the country against the attempt by
capitalists to control and patent our food and life
itself"

"We spit in the face of those (like the Council of
Trade Unions or the Green Party) who wish to represent
us"

The first sentence gives uncritical support to the
anti-GE movement, suggesting that it is an
uncomplicated exercise in fighting capitalism. In
reality, of course, the anti-GE campaign is dominated
by Green MPs and 'green' businesses, has a strong
orientation towards the middle class, and is stirring
up all sorts of reactionary opinion about science and
technology. To give uncritical support to such a
movement is to give uncritical support to the
rottenest of popular fronts.

The second sentence provides another telling example
of the authors' confusion about real class divisions
in New Zealand today. The Green Party does not want to
represent 'proletarians' - it is a party that
orientates towards the petty bourgeoisie and the
middle class. The CTU, on the other hand, is by its
very nature an organisation of the working class. (Of
course, an organisation of the working class is not
necessarily an organisation *for* the working class.)
It is correct to criticise the way that the CTU
leadership (mis)represents its rank and file, but
'spitting in the face' of the CTU in general is
unacceptable, when thousands of its members are
practising what thr-AT-l... can only preach. The
superproles' inability to draw simple class lines
across the anti-GE campaign, between the Greens and
the CTU, and between the leadership and the rank and
file of the CTU makes a mockery of their
super-revolutionary slogans.

Instead of substituting themselves for a real working
class movement, the authors of the Wellington report
should develop a *working class orientation*. Such an
orientation is based on a recognition of the gulf that
exists between revolutionary ideas and popular ideas
in New Zealand today, a gulf reflected in the fact
that many anti-capitalists are not members of the
working class. Rather than pretend to be something
they are not, non-working class anti-capitalists
should develop a theoretical and historical
understanding of the centrality of class struggle, and
recognise the necessity of the leadership (in the
best, least authoritarian sense of the word) of the
working class members of the anti-capitalist movement.


Ultra-left workerism lets declassed, middle class,
student and petty bourgeois readers of thr-AT-l... off
the
hook - instead of examining their place in the
society, these people can become 'instant proles' by
echoing the ultra-left (and, not coincidentally,
completely impractical) slogans provided in articles
like the report from Wellington.

In conclusion, I have argued that the writers of the
21st issue of thr-AT-l... have substituted the small
anti-WTO protests seen recently in New Zealand for a
real anti-capitalist movement, mistaking the
participants in these protests for the force which
must take pride of place in a real anti-capitalist
movement.

Cheers
Scott 

 



 


===="Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

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