There's no bias there at all, from a newspaper owned by a media mogul.

I hope no one lowers themselves to this level with counter arguments!

Yes, let's remember not to debate the issues raised by a national newspaper.

We can clearly promote our cause more effectively by refusing to engage with the media, allowing the minority element to throw concrete through shop windows and attacking workers' co-operatives such as John Lewis.

Yes, disengagement is certainly the way forward.

This leader from The Times seems to suggest that although there is a polarisation of wealth between the developing and developed world that is partially because everyone in countries like the UK is doing really well for themselves.

It says: "faster growth is fundamental to reducing poverty"

Well according to the Inland Revenue wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated among the richest people in the UK (surely a fast-growing economy) and this has got worse under Labour. take a look for youselves on page 10 of the PDF at this link

 http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/stats/distribution2000.pdf

You might think that the leader writer of a national newspaper might take time to at least get a whiff of the facts. After all I hardly think the Inland Revenue are raging anti-capitalists.

The leader also blurs economic globalisation with global technology and communication advances. So we can have the internet and telecommunications but we have to accept low wages and environmental destruction - where is the much vaunted choice here then?

And is choice, as this article suggests, a good thing in itself? Most people in the developed world are confused by all the choices they now have to face. The electricity supplier wants to sell you gas, the gas supplier wants to sell you electricity, the power company wants to sell you a pension. On the railways you now have the choice to pay more to make the same journey on the same track on the same day at different prices, dependent on which company you choose.

We are confronted by so many choices that you have to become an expert on all these services that previously were provided collectively. Has it improved our quality of life or do we just spend more time having to deal with all these things?

But on the other hand the leader is right to say that anti-globalisation movement has no clear idea what to put in its place. The movement ranges from greens to liberals to marxists and anarchists. It does need a clear economic & political agenda. The level of political & economic argument in the anti-gloablisation movement is pretty ropey at times. At least the Left in the form of the Socialist Alliance et al have a clear list of policies.

What is wrong with defining the movement as socialist?

If Globalisation's so good and capitalism such fun, how come every decent citizen in the World is raging against a 'One World' Government? If capitalism works, how come Africa is a billion times worse off now than it was 400 years ago, before any white man ever stood on it's shores?

Rupert Murdoch is shitting himself

The Times states that the demand of higher labour standards in the developing world is "protectionism in disguise". This means that they think that workers in rich countries should have more rights than workers in poor countries.

!!

Look, I don't really see the point in us engaging with this article. It is pure nonsensical propaganda.
We should address any half-decent vaguely intelligent criticism that comes from the mainstream media but arguing with Rupert Murdoch is like arguing with John Townend or David Irving.. or with that bloke from the Flat Earth Society.

'What's wrong with defining the movement as socialist?' That sentence made me jump out of my skin. I'm an old leftie from the 60s and 70s, and I think there's plenty wrong with defining anything as socialist. I'm still recovering from all the disillusionment that I experienced and many of my former 'left' comrades experienced, but one thing is sure - that the left was betrayed again and again, and usually in the name of socialism. I'm still trying to understand how the twentieth century saw so many defeats and betrayals of the left. But I have to say that the post-Seattle movement has inspired me again, and has brought me back to politics. But socialism so often meant the old hierarchies, the old top-down structures, the pomposity, the grimness, that was a kind of weird mirror-image of capitalism. I feel now that we were all Stalinized, and therefore I am grateful to the new movements for getting us away from this. I don't know what the anti-globalization movement's direction or goal should be, but isn't talk of socialism going backwards?

Nice try by the Times, but let's just dwell on those 'mainly African exceptions' for a moment. Do they mean the 1 million 'African exceptions' in Rwanda for whom globalisation meant the UN standing by and watching as they were murdered with hoes and machetes, or do they mean the 3 million 'African exceptions' in the Democratic Republic of Congo who've so far died in the war to control Diamond mines in the east of the country? (No prizes for guessing who's selling weapons to the protagonists...)

Anyone been to the WTO site before? The arguments used there are almost identical to those in the Times article. No thought - pen to paper - write - do not question.

I get the Times every day (well my parents do)and I used to think it was reliable but after all the rubbish they've printed about Mayday I am no longer convinced by ANYTHING they write.

Also Tony Bleurgh described us as "a spurious political cause" eh? We're anti-privatisation, pro-worker and want to help the poor. Isn't that what Labour is supposed to stand for?

It has been said before, but I feel the need to say it again. More than anything else, this is an information war. We are not going to change anything for the better unless we change peoples consciousness and awareness of the injustices being perpetrated through the current global political/economic system.

This means we need to debate, argue and discuss these issues with _everyone_- not just people on the left who attend rallies and protests, but the people on the streets, our friends, our colleagues, our associates, anyone who will listen.

Information, knowledge and persuasion will win this war, not violence.

The Times article, in it's arrogance and parochialism would love the reader to believe that the Maysay protests were simply a petulant kneejerk from the scions of the wealthy against ill defined and little understood economic and political global currents. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our fight, the voice of sanity appealing to people to actually look with eyes open at capitalism, globalisation and the corporate-military domination of the means and ends of production, is the fight of the South as much s it is of the north. Again and again we of the industrialized world learn volumes from our brothers and sisters who in actuality are at the vanguard of resistance of against the dead monoculture we are being sold.

Did the writer of this poisonous crap pause to consider the protests in Buenos Aires, the workers cooperatives in Brazil, the dam protestors in India, the coca growers of Bolivia, the FARC of Colombia, or the anti-globalisation indigenous movement in Ecuador (to name but a few)? It is essential for the purveyors of misinformation to atomise us, to make a potentially sympathetic public believe that we are alone, that there is no parallel struggle occuring elsewhere.

Why?

Remember Vietnam, remember Lumumba, remember Algeria, remember Cuba, Nicaragua, Allende's Chile. Remember Che in Bolivia, Ghandi's struggle. Then remember what we learned from them, and what we owe them. Without Che, there would have been no cobblestones flying in '68.

We must remember this, understand our position in the march of resistence and protest. We must, because the man will never forget.

FAO Barry
cheers for the response, I agree with a lot of what you say. As a bit of background I've been involved with the anarchist movement for about 10 years but I've grown increasingly convinced that it has no serious future in the UK.
the last couple of May Days might seem like progress, and it is great that the actual day is now being linked to the radical left rather than the old left, but to be honest it is small time stuff even in recent history. what about the anti-poll tax movement & anti-CJA demos at the time I think there was a far more vibrant and politically consistent anarcho scene. now it has slumped into a vaguely anti-capitalist hippy scene.
most anarchists (well the ones worth bothering with) see themselves as part of the socialist movement albeit it as libertarian socialists. is is clear that this interpretation of socialism doesn't need the top-down heirarchical approach you rightly criticise so I don't really see wht the problem is. also most of the public have a clear idea of what socialism is, but have no idea about anarchism. in fact they probaly see it as a very selfish philosophy - no-one can tell me what to do, I won't get a job in the system etc etc.
I have no sympathy with the Stalinist left at all but I am realistic about the libertarian left. in the whole time I've been involved it has refused to talk to ordinary people preferring demos, direct action, animal rights and squats. most people have no empathy with this kind of lifestyle. and there is no serious political work going on to try and build up the movement outside the ghetto.
it is also still (25 years after punk!)unable to shake off the alternative lifestlye/music obsession -how many anarchists do you know that don't look punky/skatey/hippy?
I would rather the movement adopted a clear political program with a clear set of aims than see another crusty interviewed on TV saying that the reason they are protesting is that capitalism is "unfair".
socialism still has resonance with ordinary people in the UK in a way anarchism never has and, I think, never will. much as we (rightly) slag off New Labour to me it has done more for working people in the last couple of years than the anarchist movement has for decades. it brought in the minimum wage, put up state pensions, reformed the welfare system to help working families. these are not things to be taken lightly.
BUT clearly that kind of left is not going to take on big business interests or seriously attempt redistribution of wealth. that is why I think we need a red-green libertarian movement and/or political party (there I've said it) that argues for socialism as a rational, humanist, ecologically-sound and efficient alternative to capitalism and which gets stuck into the real political battles rather than shouting from the sidelines.

on the need for an alternative red-green movement/political party what's wrong with the Green Party? which signs up to the social justice and redistributative aims of socialism without the left movement's baggage. am i wrong in thinking that socialism began with the trade unions based on organised labour. we no longer have mass organised labour with our heavy industry and manufacturing replaced by the rise of casualised/freelance labour and the growth of service industries. that's not too say that it's vital to defend the interests of an exploited workforce working the longest hours in Europe on short term contracts etc. Simply i think a credible (read lots of support) Green Party would be a better starting point than old arguments about unions/militant/Liz Davies etc.

I agree with a lot of what Tom had to say. I too come from an anarchist tradition with a strong suspicion of any “state” socialism. However, perhaps due to raving capitalists now claiming to be the real libertarians (see all the anti-state rhetoric of the American right-wing), I have been refining my opinions, especially through reading Marx and arguing with a collection of Marxists of wildly different hues. There is plenty in the worker’s movement, Marxist or otherwise (especially anarcho-syndicalist, as well as the co-operative movement) that we shouldn’t forget, both in terms of successes and failures.
In particular the aim of a society where the means of production are held by the workers themselves, through their democratic association (i.e. socialism strictly defined) is the only serious and substantial aim we can set ourselves. Without wresting power over work/production from the capitalists, how can we talk of anti-capitalism ?
There is clearly an awful lot of cobweb-clearing to be done in Leninist organisations like the SWP, but there is also a serious consideration of the Marxist tradition to be done by the libertarian left, that would go beyond the superficial. I think this debate can be terribly fertile in years to come, that it can revitalise the trade-unions, and thereby help awaken the half knocked out giant that is the proletariat, that is most of us.
At the same time, and it is in no way contradictory, we should start from what good there is in the present system, and push for more, starting with the elections (down with first-past the post, right of recall, imperative mandates), labour rights (asking for more and more control over the workplace), civil liberties etc.
Do we need a political party ? I am not so sure : there are three things a party does :
- Provide a place for debate, but we have that already
- Publish and disseminate information, but we do that already
- Vie for power, but don’t we want the power to be taken by the people ? Can freedom be given from above ? Won’t any party once in power want to preserve its own power ? Can we encourage passivity by saying “vote for us, we’ll take care of things” ? Thess last questions are ones I’m still struggling with.

You're right. Elections and voting do just encourage passivity. They persuade people they don't need to change things themselves and can look to politicians to change things for them.

Last year the SWP were campaigning for Ken Livingstone, this year they will be trying to persuade us that revolutionary Marxism is something to do with voting for the Socialist Alliance in the General Election. The problem with this is not just that their manifesto is a list of extremely uninspiring reforms such as an increased minimum wage and re-nationalisation of the railways. The problem is the whole idea that letting anyone reform capitalism will somehow improve anything for anyone.

Capitalism isn't a government policy or an institution like the IMF or WTO. Capitalism is a social relation between people that controls every single aspect of all our lives - for instance forcing us to work in pointless jobs just to earn money to survive. Consequently it can only be changed by the majority of people, the working class, coming together and changing every aspect of our lives.

The founders of the first Communist Party in Britain, such as ex-suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, realised this back in the 1920s. They refused to stand for parliament and, along with other left communists, were very critical of the trade unions. Unfortunately, as the revolutionary wave after World War One waned, the communist movement became increasingly reformist and just took its orders from Moscow. Revolutionaries everywhere joined governments, even the anarchists in Spain did so, and the results were everywhere disastrous.

Now, at last we are beginning to build a genuine anti-capitalist movement with few illusions in electoral politics - let's keep it that way!

For an excellent collection of articles on genuine communism and marxism see the the 'John Gray - For Communism' web-site at: www.geocities.com/~johngray/

*******************

On the issues of Globalisation raised in the Times Editorial, this article from 'Do or Die' is brilliant:
( www.freespeech.org/mayday2k/readings.htm)

Here's the correct link for the the 'Globalisation' article:

Sorry, but Mayday has been well and truly hijacked by empty-headed glasto types who wouldn't know stalinism if it consigned them to the gulag archipeligo. Nobody seemed to know what was being protested and the police were too well aware of the plans for the day. We were suckered. Next year, lets leave planning till the last minute and then a few hundred people can shut down a stretch of the M25 with a street party rather than several thousand flooding into the centre of London as the police will no doubt expect and be training for. The art of surprise. Think like Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur war. Israel sure as hell wasn't expecting that.

Sorry, but Mayday has been well and truly hijacked by empty-headed glasto types who wouldn't know stalinism if it consigned them to the gulag archipeligo. Nobody seemed to know what was being protested and the police were too well aware of the plans for the day. We were suckered. Next year, lets leave planning till the last minute and then a few hundred people can shut down a stretch of the M25 with a street party rather than several thousand flooding into the centre of London as the police will no doubt expect and be training for. The art of surprise. Think like Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur war. Israel sure as hell wasn't expecting that.

In answer to your last questions on whether a political party is necessary -

'don’t we want the power to be taken by the people ? Can freedom be given from above ? Won’t any party once in power want to preserve its own power ? Can we encourage passivity by saying “vote for us, we’ll take care of things” ?'

These are the key questions. In every great workers movement of the 20th century - Russia 1905&1917, Spain 1936, Hungary 1956, Poland&Iran 1980 etc... The workers have formed their own committees to run the factory and distribute resources in their local areas, these are a natural development of the strike committee. They are always run in the most democratic way imaginable. Instant recall of anyone elected to a post. No perks. The direct participation of workers in every decision. To misuse a phrase 'this is what democrary looks like'. As the committees spread they become an alternative source of power to that of the established state.

Now comes the crunch and in my opinion the point of having a socialist political party.

Do these new forms of wonderful democracy-

1. ignore the established state,
2. disband to allow the established state recover, or
3. knock over the established state.

Tragically the workers committees have repeatedly gone for options 1 and 2, and have then been crushed with the utmost cruelty. The only exception being Russia in 1917.

The purpose of a socialist party is to argue that the workers committees should replace the established state, and a socialist would argue that it is the workers committees that organise the overthrow.

Have you read 'State and Revolution' by Lenin?

Yes, I have read “State and Revolution” and found it gave a very bad answer to these questions : that the bourgeois state should be “smashed” or whatever and replaced by a proletarian state, sure, why not ? But where Lenin is dishonest is where he equates the dictatorship of the proletariat with that of “its most vanguard elements”, “the party of the proletariat” which in the final analysis turned out to mean the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party, and of Lenin himself inside that party, while crushing the free election of the soviets, the right to form trade unions, to protest and have a free press. See the repression of Kronstadt and the ban on factions inside the Bolshevik party for a final apocalyptic collapse of the Bolshevik claim to working towards democratic socialism.
Of the three possibilities you invoke for the workers’ committees, which fundamentally should be the basis of socialism, I think in a revolutionary situation they should definitely ignore the established state if it’s at all possible, for a state ignored is a state which has died, or defending themselves against it as the case commands. This is the only way for worker democracy to effectively knocking the state : giving the job over to this or that vanguard would only lead to paradox, and eventually the defeat of the revolution, as has happened in the Soviet Union.
But let me also say a word for reformism : it is not to be excluded that the conjunction of a workers’ movement and electoral pressure lead to a government ready to further workers’ democracy. To a certain extent this is what happened everywhere trade unions have been recognised, and where workers have a say in the running of business, of which there are examples here and there (Germany, Scandinavia…). We shouldn’t ignore what advances have already been made through those means.
There is a lot that we can use in the present situation, and knocking trade unions and elections means depriving ourselves of our most powerful tools so far. The possibility of tube strikes scares the City much more than Mayday.
The reality is that the main obstacle on the road to socialism is the awareness of the workers themselves, the awareness of their power and of what is possible. It starts with people on shit pay and with a bullying boss thinking they’re not “working-class” because they work in an office, it carries on with saying “but without shareholders, there would be no investements”, etc. For this reason I am right behind the person on this board stressing the importance of personal contact, because it’s through personal contact, bypassing bureaucracies, that workers’ awareness can be built. For this reason also I see trade unions as a great place for workers to discuss what they can do, and elections to do it. Yes, it won’t be overnight socialism, but “a great journey starts with a single step” as somebody once said.