“Protectionism,” or “Protect Us From This Ism…”

by Joe Auciello

The “Calendar” section of the city newspaper carried an announcement of a Militant Labor Forum sponsored by the local branch of the Socialist Workers Party. Appropriately enough, the topic focused on the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle and the protests there. Unfortunately, it seems the SWP’s main concern was to criticize the demonstrators. For only $4 you could hear “Why Protectionist Protests Are a Trap for the Labor Movement.”

A more tedious and dreary scenario than this forum is difficult to imagine. It’s all too easy to picture how the evening’s lecture would unfold. In the person of some party leader, the self-appointed vanguard wags its finger in the face of workers’ protests, the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. Why? Because that fight-back, involving thousands, included some number of people confused about protectionism, economic nationalism, and America Firstism.

The Militant, newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, even reported in its issue for December 13, 1999,  that SWP members “did bump into three individuals who said they support [ultrarightist Patrick Buchanan].” That’s supposed to be significant.

Never mind that thousands of people, many of them young, chose to join an anti-corporate political demonstration for the first time in their lives. Never mind that labor and its allies finally united for a common cause — defense of workers’ interests in the United States and throughout the world. Never mind that these thousand had to take to the streets because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have championed the demands of their protest. None of this is important to the SWP. If the demonstration did not present the most advanced “communist” slogans, then it was not worth much.

Far from supporting the protests in Seattle, the SWP condemned them. The title of a Militant article (Dec. 13) sums up their position: “Anti-WTO protests give social cover to U.S. imperialism.” According to The Militant’s editor, “[T]he actions, and the participation of the demonstrators — whether unionists or others — had no redeeming value whatever from the point of view of the interests of working people. The protests, regardless of the views of participants, gave social cover to and reinforced the American nationalist framework promoted by Washington and the billionaire families it serves.…They ended up prettifying U.S. imperialism as a supposed agent of progress and social enlightenment.…”

The SWP regarded “the battle in Seattle” just as an opportunity to sell books and pamphlets. (“The socialists will centralize their work by campaigning to sell dozens of copies of “Capitalism’s World Disorder: Working Class Politics at the Millennium…” The Militant, Nov. 29).

That’s how the SWP intended to “intervene politically,” by “explaining the working class’s divergent interests with the anti-WTO protests and its organizers.” Apparently, the SWP really believes that its quarrel with working class and student rebels is “campaigning for communism.”

In fact, it is nothing of the kind. The hostility and arrogance of the SWP is exactly the wrong approach to take to the WTO protestors.

Leon Trotsky, next to Lenin the central leader of the October 1917 revolution in Russia, gave a far more intelligent outline of how Marxists should campaign for their ideas. In the section of “The Transitional Program” titled, “The Struggle Against Imperialism and War,” Trotsky gives revolutionaries an important lesson on how to think and act. His words have a direct bearing on revolutionary political strategy today.

Although Trotsky, in the following quotation, refers to the specific struggle against imperialist war, his general method can also be applied to the struggle against imperialist trade relations and the WTO.

The ruling class, Trotsky says, will try to “deceive the people” by various slogans and political formulas. But socialists will need to look beneath these words to discover

the course of events and the orientation of thought of the masses. In addition, it is necessary to differentiate strictly between the pacifism of the diplomat, professor, journalist, and the pacifism of the carpenter, agricultural worker, and charwoman. In one case pacifism is a screen for imperialism; in the other, it is the confused expression of distrust in imperialism.…In the pacifism and even patriotism of the oppressed, there are elements which reflect on the one hand a hatred of destructive war, and on the other a clinging to what they believe to be their own good — elements which we must know how to seize upon in order to draw the requisite conclusions.

 Using these considerations as its point of departure, the Fourth International supports every, even if insufficient demand, if it can draw the masses to a certain extent into active politics, awaken their criticism and strengthen their control over the machinations of the bourgeoisie.

The SWP publishes “The Transitional Program,” and their leaders have studied it. At one point they even understood it. Too bad that now, when its method needs to be applied in real life, they’ve ignored or forgotten the lessons that Trotsky taught.

Labor militants and socialists should join, build, and spread the protests that occurred in Seattle and other cities in the United States and Europe, as well as the follow-up demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in April in Washington, D.C. A sensible, healthy political response would be, in the first place, to unite with people who are fighting exploitation and oppression. Workers, farmers, students, environmentalists, and members of the religious community are taking to the streets to demand freedom for themselves and for their brothers and sisters throughout the world (freedom not for capitalist trade and investment, but freedom to organize politically, to breathe clean air, to preserve jobs, to provide a decent standard of living for workers and farmers worldwide). These are militant, internationalist protests. Most demonstrators realize what some of the self-appointed vanguard did not: We are all on the same side. As Charles Walker writes elsewhere in this issue, these protest actions showed “the basis for a new social justice movement was evident in Seattle.”

The Boston Globe (Nov. 30) quoted one young activist who spoke for countless others. “‘They’re basically like a New World Order, and that scares me,’ said Michael McKinnon, 20, a first-time protestor who delivers pizza for a living in Eugene, Ore. ‘It’s not thinking about human beings or the environment,’ he said. ‘It’s all about how corporations can make more money.’”

A firefighter and veteran of Vietnam war demonstrations added, “The decisions they make affect every aspect of our lives. It’s a way of controlling us, our food supply, you name it, through transnational corporations.”

In the course of organizing protests, and follow-up actions, a friendly discussion with these activists about the flaws of protectionism could and should take place. That discussion would include articles in labor newsletters and socialist publications.

The one thing you would not do is exactly what the SWP has done, that is, make criticism of the Seattle protest the primary focus of party activity. An approach like that one will leave the SWP members talking to themselves. They’ll deserve it, too.

Organizations that strive to become leaders of mass movements can become frightened when an actual movement arises before them. Accustomed to lecturing workers in general, in the abstract, they show no skill in talking with real people. Some self-styled vanguard organizations are so “advanced” politically that they cannot speak the language of rebellion as it is actually spoken. If that language is different from the dialect of the vanguard, the jargon of the in-group, then so much the worse for those thousands of working-class rebels and fighters. The little so-called vanguard will not condescend to recognize them. That response is not a revolutionary but a conservative one, no matter how much “communist” rhetoric is used to justify it. In this way a once healthy organization shrivels into a sect.

Imagine the scene at that Militant Labor forum. Some lonely SWPer will be sitting in a poorly attended meeting, nervously glancing back and forth, looking for the masses who should be there to take the dose of medicine administered by the local party leader. Alas, no masses. But then, listening to the speaker enumerate the programmatic failures of workers who dared to protest without permission or guidance from the party, the truth will be revealed. The fact that workers are staying away from the forum just goes to show how wrong they are. It’s not only protectionism and “nationalist frameworks.” The workers just don’t know what’s good for them! That’s why the forum is so, so important! The workers need more criticism! Shove more medicine down their throats!

Thus, the sectarian mind sustains and consoles itself, at least for another day. (Remember, stupid socialists, too, have feelings that need consolation.)

If all of the above seems far-fetched, then pick up a copy of The Militant or go to their web site (http://www.themilitant.com) and see for yourself.

For better information, in addition to other articles in this issue, consult Z magazine’s web site at: http://www.zmag.org. (Much of their material is also translated into Spanish, as well as other languages). Also, try the Labornet Newsline at: http://www.labornet.org. These offer eyewitness accounts of the Seattle protests along with well-researched political analysis.