Why go to Chiapas to discuss politics? Aren't the Zapatistas just another in the procession of liberation movements from Vietnam to Nicaragua, who anti-imperialists in the west have oportunistic zigzagged between depending on their success?
My personal motives for supporting liberation struggles have been various. In the 1970`s it was indignation and anger at theUSA's war on Vietnam, at apartheid and colonialism in Africa. In the 1980`s it was more strategic considerations. Which areas were vital to imperialism? Where would our support have the greatest effect? The Middle East was obvious.The Indians in Chiapas are neither better or worse off than many others in the third world. Strategically the area is of little importance economically or military. The reason for going out to the Laconda jungle is the ideas - the rejuvenation - the Zapatista's represent and which the struggle for radical change desperately needs.
There are other liberation movements: in Kurdistan and Palestine for example. But what sort of society will they create in Kurdistan and Palestine? Is it an Arafat regime similar to Assads in Syria? Will it be an Islamic republic? The Palestinian left wing has had problems since the collapse of the Soviet Union in developing a practise and vision that has a mobilising power. They lack something that can complement the national revolution. And what about ourselves? We also have a need for new thinking.
It is this need to develop new descriptions and analyses of the world, to develop practises that can change the world, and form visions of how we will organise society, that sent me and many others out into the rainforest. The following is my personal reflections on some of the discussions in La Realidad. It differs from the official accounts which were consensus seeking, and maybe therefore not as sharp in the wording. Furthermore I only participated in a fraction of the discussions. Nevertheless I think my summary captures some of the central problems, positions and attitudes on the discussions.
The global perspective was central to the meeting. Just the fact that an Indian movement held an intercontinental meeting in a village in the rainforest is in itself an expression of "globalization". Firstly because it practically was possible. Communication concerning the organisation of the meeting was done through the Internet. The delegates could in the space of a few days transport themselves from all corners of the world to the end of a dirt road in the Lacandona jungle. Secondly the fact that the initiatives and ideas that sprang up in a corner of the fourth world could reach out to and mobilise thousands of people around the world. And thirdly that these ideas in fact deal with global relations and practises.
It's not accidental that I use the term "global" instead of "international". Globalization is different from internationalisation. Globalization is not increased inter-nationalism, but in fact a destruction of the national aspects: economically and politically. The capitalists concerns are more transnational than they are multinational.The economic and political processes are the sum of national economics and politics, but one global process, which cuts through, raises above and liberate it self from the level of the national state. It is primarily the financial system and transnational companies - not state powers - which are the dynamo in the globalization process. National states lag behind and try to construct a relevant political framework and organisations such as EU, NAFTA, G7, and WTO.
Neoliberalism is globalised capitalism. Billions of dollars cross national boundaries everyday. World trade grows quicker than gross national products. Only 14 countries have a larger national product than the biggest transnational companies. The old model of multinational companies with a mother company based in the home country and daughter companies abroad has been replaced in for example motor, electronics and entertainment industries by globalised networks of design, supply, production and distributions locations and structures. Not just movement of capital and goods are globalised. Production it self has been globalised. The various parts of a Ford Fiesta are produced in a dozen different countries, dependent on the conditions where the production of each part is optimal. The profit is not necessarily sent to USA, but to the global finance market. Is Ford then an American company? Are Shell and Phillips Dutch? Is Nestle Swiss? Or are they just global capitalist enterprises?
Globalization has a determining affect for national states and therein how state power can be used. Globalization has greatly limited national states manoeuvrability, economically and socially. Via liberalisation of capital, goods and service mobility, global markets and transnational companies force national states to adopt to marketforces. The national states policy aims are increasingly determined by global economic conditions. Where the state previously tried to regulate and control market forces, the aim now is to facilitate and service capital. The hope is to attract capital to the national workforce which is fixed to the national state, to find an advantageous position in the global division of labour. We will see a state power that increasingly releases control over regulation of the economy, and instead goes over to control and regulation of people. From adapting the economy to the need of the nation, to adapting the population to the need of market. In this scenerio discipline, control, surveillance of people will increase. Especially for the unemployed, refugees, immigrants and marginalised groups. The chaos and social uprising that globalised polarisation of rich and poor leads to, must be controlled and neutralised and this demands increased surveillance and control.
Globalization doesn't mean that the state shrinks, it just change character. Globalization changes the rules of the game within the national state framework. Capital needs a state to carry out the necessary functions, but not any particular state. It can choose the state that has the best facilities and gives the best service. It can be cheap labour, well educated labour, law and order, good infrastructure etc. If capital doesn't like the style of one state, it can leave the area and optimise it's conditions in another, which gladly offers itself. These changes to the rules has have a determining effect on the old national states. Establishing the optimal conditions for capital accumulation is the determining political priority. But it also means that the labour movement that tries to solve it's problems within the frame of the national state will fall on it's face. It's more difficult through the trade unions as well as the traditional national political channels to press capital. It is long overdue for the trade unions to lay greater weight on global co-operation instead of trying to find a lucrative position for the nation within the global division of labour that secures welfare. This strategy doesn't work in the globalised World.
Destruction of the capitalistic world order and the construction of another must increasingly leave the national state and inter-national arena and, become a global anti-capitalist struggle. Gobalization means the national state is reformed in a way that makes it even less useable as a base to extend democracy and self determination. The globalisation of capital erodes the traditional national democracies. Instead we must develop the local and global as arenas for struggle. We should develop the local and global identity. We must change from being state citizens to fellow citizens and global citizens. Democratic development is today identical with a local and global democratisation that cuts across the national state, and aims at levelling out the global economic and political disparity.
A precondition for this is that, outside the state framework, there is created a more solid form of local and global co-operation and that the two are co-ordinated. The local actions must be thought of, from a global perspective - and the global strategy must be manifested in local actions, because all action in the end is local.
The struggle for an alternative world order is not aimed at improving the present national states or the creation of a world state. It is about establishing another political form apart the capitalist states, with new conditions and links between the local and the global, between central and decentral political organisations.
The meeting in Chiapas was a step towards the formation of a new "internationale" underpined by the idea that the private, local, regional, national and continental is increasingly part of a global process. To organise does not necessarily mean to build an organisation. Organisations have a tendency to become bureaucratic and rigid, incapable of adaptation to changing needs - just think of trade unions. To organise could also be to create a connection between local struggles, and broader movements with the aim of sharing experiences and ideas, doing common and supplementary actions. To create a network of different kinds of struggles, in different locations around the globe.
Revolutionaries have previously tried to create unity via a common ideology, this strategy has run aground. People, ideas, cultures, ways of doing things are extensively different. Attempts to homogenise us have failed. Instead we must try to find a more organic unity of different, but complementary life forms. Revolutionary change is a process, which is made up of many methods, many fronts, various and variable levels of involvement and participation. It is no longer about creating the organisation, the method or the vanguard.
A global revolutionary process doesn't have to happen simultaneously everywhere. It is enough that the struggle constantly intensifies, expands and accelerates. It is necessary that people are not, only aware of what to get rid of, but also what they want to build. One of the positive phenomens is the multitude of alternativs that springs up nowadays. New types of relationships between people, new types of relationships between people and nature. The problem is to liberate these relationships from market forces, which turn every thing into wage labour, and a question of profit, and from state power which either seeks to marginalise or incorporate them. A lot of experiences are taking place globally, which can be connected and whose experience can be shared. It doesn't mean the establishment of a predetermined form of socialism. It doesn't mean either isolated or splited local initiatives. It means the construction of a mosaic of connected, mutually supportive and supplementary alternative practises to destroy the existing world order and the establishment of a world which functions in quit another way
Our old strategy can be briefly summed up as: We must organise us trade unions and political parties. We must grab state power through the ballet box, general strikes, armed struggle or long term popular warfare or whatever. After that we must use state power to change society. Many succeeded in achieving state power such as the social democrats in the west, revolutionaries in Russia and eastern Europe, as well as anti-imperialists in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nicaragua, South Africa. And they succeeded in changing something. Social democracy in the west created better living standards and work conditions within a capitalist framework. But they did not change the world. On the contrary it was a modernisation and consolidation of capitalism in our part of the world. A consolidation that secured capitalism globally. The communists in the East got rid of an out of date feudalism, and sought through state power to create a socialist society. As is known - they failed. What resulted was a desire for capitalism in its modern form. State socialism in the East was rolled back. Socialists took over state power in many places in the third world. They got rid of colonialism - cleaned up an ancient form of capitalism - but in spite of this they did not create the radical new society they and we dreamt of.
As far as radical change goes, we have not attained very much in our 150 year old struggle. I don't think that it is due to personal treachery or corruption. Communists and socialists wanted radical change. On the one hand I think that it is due to an underestimate of capitalism's ability to change and develop. An underestimate of it's ability to saturate our lives, our norms and our way of thinking. Neoliberalism is not just economics, exploitation, repression and poverty, but it is also an ideology: Individualism and consumerism. That we must be self responsible, and that we have no responsibility for others.On the other hand an overestimate of possibilities to change the world radically - country for country and through state power. To sum up. We have not been able to get rid of capitalism through state power, onlyreform it. State power grows from and is located within a global network of market, social and cultural relations which defines it's character. This reformism is not to be looked down on. Without the struggle for living standards here and now, we would not be capable of fighting for radical change. But without the struggle for radical changes, we will be in a pretty sorry state in 25-50 years. Neoliberalism will create a social and ecological chaos.
The new conditions and the collapse of old strategies demands a new strategy - which can be called "global anti-capitalism". The objective conditions to mobilise around such a strategy are good, which can be understood as, the need for change is much needed. Capitalistic hegemony will not be peace and quiet. People are confused, angry, fearful and frustrated. The feeling that something is wrong and that something must be done is strong, as is the feeling that the traditional ideas of what must be done are not workable. It was primarily this that gathered the participants in Chiapas.The subjective conditions though are more difficult. The backlash of the anti-imperialist struggle and the fiasco of socialism in Eastern Europe made it difficult to shape alternatives and strategies which have a mobilising power. We must change the current feeling of despondency and frustration to resistance. The globalised neo-liberalism has made the old national state strategy to change the world antiquated, but it leaves as well a concrete common enemy - the globalised capitalism.
Neoliberalism's epoch is characterised by a strengthening of market forces against the tradition of national political life, but on the other hand there is a global rising demand for democracy on all levels. It is in that fundamental contradiction we will find the energy to change the world. It is in the movements of repressed, exploited, and marginalised people in their struggle against an economic world order, that impoverishes them and state powers that repress them and leaves no space for democracy and self determination, that we will find the actors. The struggles are often locally based and issue orientated. But their consciousness about the global connection is growing. All this was expressed at the meeting in Chiapas. The global perspective is more important than ever. Our opponent - capitalism - is already globally organised. If we don't think globally in the local strategy - but only act out of a national view point, then they will play us against each other and split us. The national arena is falling apart as an economic and political framework. The political activity to change the world is effective on a local and global level, but it is limited by what can be done via the national state.
Globalisation has not only weakened the state's economic and political manoeuvrability, but has the question of whether the world can be changed at all through state power. State power is not unimportant, but is not in itself the source of power. It is purhaps more the form that power takes at the top of societies pyramid, where all local power strategies and tactics melt together. The source of power lies in the base. I forms a capillar network that runs through society. The source of power are in the day to day relationships between people - in micro power techniques. In the disciplining and norms of a marriage, families, day nurseries, kindergartens, schools, churches, social offices, work places, supermarkets etc. The disciplining that rules our bodies and normalises our souls. They tell us, in discourses, what is right and wrong, perverse and normal. In the media they tell us what is good and evil, science tells us what is true and false. All these strategies and concrete acts of power support and supplement each other and unite in institutions: State, transnational companies etc. The power of the transnational companies lies in disciplining and surveillance techniques in production and consumption. They survey the market situation of capital, raw materials and sale. There are disciplinary techniques and surveillance of the production itself. The norms are that we must get up, have waged labour and profit are good. We fit into the laws of the market. It also means selling high and buying cheap without consideration of how the goods are produced socially or ecologically. Adverts define our needs. Our identity is created through private consumerism - we have a lifestyle.
This conception of power as deconcentrated relations can be difficult to handle politically. How can we confront this "diffuse" power with a counter power? Who and where should one fight against? Is it not state power, civil servants and transnational companies who are in power ? But on the other hand this conception of power prevents the illusion that you can liberate yourself from power by conquering the state and changing the officials. We must understand power on two levels. Partly as micro-relations and partly more traditionally as acts carried out by specific persons (ministers, directors, policemen) and institutions (state apparatus, transnational companies). But behind these people, institutions and organisations we must be aware of the network of micro-relationships, which are the threadhwork of society and the way power is concretely practised. We must constantly alternate between the two levels. Counter power must of necessity be focused against persons who execise the power and institutions in which they are organised, but with a comprehension that power is not "theirs", but a "relationship" between them and us - and between us. In this way the focus and character of counter powers must constantly change between conceptions of power, in a constant process.
We have had a too simple and state oriented analysis of power. A belief that it was only necessary to conquer state power and thereby change society. State power is important, but power has had a much more complex foundation than just the police and the army. All power does not come from the barrel of a gun. Power has many different forms and places. It is founded in norms, habits and ideology - in our relationships to each other. It has many techniques at hand. It is carried out in many places - amongst them, where we are. It has many people carry it out - amongst them ourselves. But it also means that resistance has a complex foundation. That resistance has many tools to choose from and many points to attack - amongst them where we are, and many who can resist - amongst them ourselves.
It is necessary, with this comprehension of power on two levels, to fight two struggles simultaneously. One in the here and now, a struggle life standards. State power is a vital factor here. And partly a struggle for radical change. State power will be an entrenched opponent here, which we must defend ourselves against and possibly neutralise, but it is not a means to change, at most a condition. Radical changes can be created here, there and everywhere, where there are human relationships. It requires mobilisation in local and global levels involving greatly different practises. It is not so much about conquering power over someone or something, but creating power to something, creating possibilities, resisting and liberating ourselves from the dominant power techniques, which define what is right, true and normal. This means challenging and changing practises and discourses which legitimate and support the existing world order. "It is not necessary to conquer the world, .... it is enough to create a new".
This means creating alternative ways of living here and now. Alternative ways of housing, of educating our self, different ways of production, distribution and consumption. Market forces are not a law of nature that we must obey like gravity, but a relationship between people that we can change - also from below and now. In the same way that there is an increasing awareness about production's ecological context, we can create an awareness of it's social context. We will only have goods that are produced under decent social relationships and a consumerism that is an expression of global solidarity. It is the building up of alternatives, practises and organisations within the old world order. The alternatives form a base, break down the old order and show the new possibilities. "The bourgeois state power won't allow it" can already be heard from Marxist-Leninists. But if you follow the logic in a globalised world, it won't help you win state power, because we liveunder global capitalist economic and political power relationships. A relationship, our experiences clearly show. The only way is to hollow out the system from within and from below, from where we stand, and from a global perspective. To create new definitions of what are truths, what is right and wrong.
In spite of the neoliberal clichÈs about limiting state power's meddling and giving the individual freedom, the state power has under neo-liberalism intensified it's role in the form of surveillance and control. We must fight the state's repression and control of the people. We must advance democracy, that is people's influence on their own situation, in all the contexts we are in, as a contrast and alternative to the formal democracy which is increasingly hollow and elitist. It is necessary to break down the division between politics and our day to day lives, thereby rewinning politics as a tool to determine our own lives. To create a physical and spiritual space outside of state power and market forces, space for information, to enable a voice which can't be heard, a space where protest can be organised, a space that gives the possibility to be a laboratory for ideas and actions, where new ways of creating politics can be developed. The form of struggle can vary dependent on different conditions in different places and time. There, where illegal organisations and armed struggle is a necessity to survive and defend ourselves, it is difficult to practise radical democratic forms, a problem that we must be very aware of and seek solutions for.
These local forms of radical democracy should, of course, not isolate themselves, but open themselves towards global democracy. Global ecological problems, the north-south divide cannot be solved on a local level alone. It will be a vital task to build global democratic structures and spread ecomic power and political competence. In the same way that micropower strategies of the existing society support each other and gather in power apparatus, the counter powers many forms and strategies support each other and gather together in a revolutionary process, which can create radical change when the conditions are there. When the old norms break down, when people no longer believe in the discourses of what is good and bad, true and false, when they have had enough of the existing order, when they express there "ya basta" - as they say in Chiapas.
If there was anyone who hoped to go to Chiapas and find the recipe, they were probably disappointed. Maybe the recipe is that there are many recipes, many ways and methods, which don't exclude and conflict, but supplement and support each other. Anyway, it was good to ascertain that the desire for radical change still lives everywhere on the planet. That there are still people looking for new ways and that history in not finished.
Torkil Lauesen, Global aktion c/o IF Griffenfeldsgade 35, 2200. Copenhagen N. Denmark.