It might sound flippant, but it isn't. The movement that is fighting against neo-liberal globalisation in its various aspects needs to consider the question: how will we know if we win? Or, to put the same question another way: what would victory consist of?
The importance of the question is illustrated by recent experience. Several years ago, there was considerable opposition to the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). This was an attempt by the governments of the richest countries to enforce "free trade" on terms most favourable to their multinational corporations.
The MAI, aptly described as "a bill of rights for transnationals", was blocked, at least for a time, by the opposition of governments in the Third World, whose interests would have been most damaged, supported by anti-globalisation organisations in the developed countries.
Clearly, blocking MAI was a win, an important one. But it was not a decisive victory because MAI isn't dead.
The name MAI isn't used much any more, but the same multinationals and their governments are still promoting the specific measures that MAI consisted of. For example, the MAI overruling of environmental restrictions on business is one of the measures that big capital is now trying to implement through the World Trade Organisation. If there is a new round of WTO negotiations, its chief features will be an effort to force agreement on the MAI agenda.
Big capital isn't going to give up on its globalisation program just because it suffers a setback on a specific proposal. If we block it in one area, it doubles its attacks in another.
In fact, the MAI itself was an outgrowth of an earlier setback for imperialism. In 1994, the US, Japan and Europe tried to push through the World Trade Organisation a similar plan to give capital exporters a free hand. This was strongly resisted by many Third World governments, and the multinationals had to settle for an agreement on "trade-related investment measures", TRIMs, which didn't give them everything they wanted. They then turned to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to pursue their goals, and it started discussion on the MAI in mid-1995.
What's the goal?
This doesn't mean that opposing the corporate agenda is pointless. But it does mean that we need to do more than oppose particular corporate grabs for more wealth or power: if that's all we do, then our wins will be temporary at best.
Big business won't change its nature because it suffers a few setbacks. If we are not to be forced to fight the same sort of battles over and over again, we need a way to make our wins permanent. The only way to do that is to take away the corporations' power to renew the struggle.
The corporations rule the world by means of their political control of governments and their wealth. Stopping them means taking away both their political and economic power.
Nobody has ever found an instrument to do that other than a revolutionary government that consciously works to abolish capitalism by converting the property of capitalists into the property of the whole society. The alternative to corporate rule is socialism.
More than a few anti-corporate activists baulk at the idea of socialist revolution as a goal. They prefer to attack things that are wrong in the present system without putting forward a positive alternative.
The problem with that approach is that it can't win in the long term. It leaves the corporations in charge of the agenda. If we don't set ourselves the goal of disempowering big capital, then we leave it free to continue and expand its World Banks and WTOs and IMFs and WEFs. And it will do so.
How can we get there?
Big capital, with the wealth to buy and sell governments, can sometimes look all-powerful. But it has a fatal weakness. Capitalists are a tiny minority.
Conversely, the people exploited, cheated, abused, poisoned and murdered by capitalism — the people who have a direct interest in its overthrow — are the big majority of the world's people. Our strength is in our numbers.
The difficulty, of course, is to get the majority to act together to enforce its interests. Even among people who turn out for events like the September 11 (S11) protests against the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, there will be many who are not yet aware that capitalism as such is the problem.
But in the course of fighting around particular issues, they can come to understand the need to change the whole system. This is why the capitalists use every conceivable method to make us too divided or busy or fearful or confused to unite in action.
In Seattle, they pretended that demonstrators were trying to prevent poor countries from exporting their products, because capitalists need division between their enemies at home and their enemies in the Third World. Watch the distortions about S11 in the Australian media and think about their effects: they will be to divide the movement from potential allies both here and in other countries.
This puts a great responsibility on organisers of events like S11. The movement needs always to keep in mind the need to link up with broader layers — ultimately with the big majority of society. That requires always presenting our ideas and aims as clearly as possible, in actions as well as words. It means explaining to people who aren't yet convinced why capital is their enemy and we are on their side.
The need to unite more and more people in action also dictates that we not make the mistake of confusing unity with a lack of diversity. People will fight against corporate globalisation in many different ways; as long as those different methods really strike at the enemy, that is another source of strength for our side.
What kind of tools?
Capitalism tries to keep its subjects — us — atomised because unity is what gives us the strength to overthrow it. Big demonstrations lift the spirits of participants partly because they give a feeling for the power we have to change things through united action.
But mass actions such as demonstrations can't take place every day. Unity, if it's to last, to be effective on a day-to-day basis, requires organisation. Organisation is a means of uniting people in struggle and of increasing the number involved.
This is why workers form unions: to give their unity against the boss a concrete expression that is (or should be) present all the time, whenever it might be needed. It's why people who want to protect a forest or abolish the IMF form committees or coalitions or associations.
The kind of organisation that's needed depends on the tasks it is to accomplish.
To organise an event like the S11 protests, activists have found that an open coalition or committee is nearly always the most effective tool; such groups usually dissolve once the action they are organising has passed. People campaigning for more distant or ongoing goals generally form a membership organisation to coordinate their efforts and institutionalise their successes.
If the goal is to replace the capitalists' government with one that aims to abolish capitalism, then the form of organisation has to be appropriate to that. To unite the greatest possible number of oppressed people to create a government in which they are in charge requires a mass revolutionary political party.
We are still a long way from having created such a party in Australia. But to succeed in the struggle against globalisation, the S11 activists will have to play their part in building one.
BY ALLEN MYERS