BY PETER BOYLE
As more and more of the S11 activist groups around the country decide to make May 1 their next major mobilisation, the discussion now shifts to what kind of action should be organised for the day. The idea of a global strike against corporate tyranny on May 1 has won strong support, but how is the new movement going to get the strike to come off?
One, almost automatic, response is: get the unions involved. But the problem is that the trade union movement in this country is dominated by the Australian Labor Party (ALP), a party that strongly supports neoliberal globalisation. Only a few trade union leaderships supported the S11 blockade and most union leaderships will not willingly support another S11-type mass action.
We should seek to win more union leaderships to become part of the M1 events, but even the militant union leaderships cannot, on their own, mobilise the thousands of people who came to the September 11-13 blockade of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Melbourne. We cannot rely on the trade unions to make the M1 strike happen.
On the other hand, the S11 activists organised in the various M1 alliances cannot call out this constituency simply by declaring a strike, distributing leaflets, putting up posters and making internet announcements. Some activists tried to stage hasty sequels to S11 over the last month but each of these actions at best attracted a couple of hundred participants.
To get the mass anti-corporate constituency that revealed itself at S11 out in the streets again we need the appropriate sort of action — one that captures the imagination of the wide range of people who oppose corporate tyranny and are prepared to do something radical about it. Just another march and rally — or worse, a replication of the dreary official trade union ritual that most May Day marches have become in Australia — will not do this.
Mass civil disobedience
Learning from Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Prague and Seoul, M1 needs a well-planned act of mass civil disobedience to make it work. This expresses the strong desire in this movement to break out from the "normal channels" of dissent. Many of the people who turned out at S11 would not have bothered if it was just another rally addressed by trade union officials or ALP politicians, neither of whom are interested in changing society very much at all.
The M1 action should be focussed on a major institution of corporate tyranny so that the capitalist rulers, their media and politicians are forced to try to defend the morally indefensible. They simply could not defend the legitimacy of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Seattle last November, or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank April 16 and September 26 meetings in Washington and Prague, the WEF in Melbourne and the Asia-Europe Meeting of parliamentarians (ASEM) in Seoul on October 20 as instruments of corporate exploitation. The desperate attempts by Steve Bracks, John Howard, Peter Costello and the media moguls' hacks to present the WEF as anything but a gathering of the corporate chiefs to plan the further intensification of global exploitation failed miserably. The suggestion that the WEF was trying to "help the world's poor" only provoked ridicule.
At the political heart of this new global movement is the fact that capitalism has developed to a point that many of its major institutions cannot be publicly legitimised. They are widely perceived by the substantial sections of the public as being instruments of exploitation and gross social and ecological harm.
'Global' target
On May 1 we cannot rely on the ready-made target provided by a WEF, IMF or World Bank meeting coming to town. Indeed, part of its attraction is the prospect of showing that this new movement can act simultaneously around the world. So we need a corporate target that is a "global" expression of corporate tyranny over the world's working and poor people.
Some supporters of the idea of the M1 global strike argue that it should target a major transnational corporation such as McDonald's or Nike. But while McDonald's or Nike stores might be present in every major city around the world, narrowing the focus to a single corporation has its disadvantages.
Most activists in the new movement realise that the problem of corporate tyranny and globalisation goes far beyond the "bad corporate citizenship" of particular businesses. They are not going to get excited about an M1 strike focussed on a McDonald's or a Nike store. If we want M1 to be a few hundred people at demonstrations in a few cities, then this sort of target will do. But if we want a true sequel to S11, we've got to pick another target.
Some left activists, particularly those in the International Socialist Organisation, have been arguing that the federal Liberal-National Coalition government should be the next major target of the anti-corporate globalisation movement in this country. But this will not bring out an S11 constituency which knows that replacing the Howard government with a Labor government will not worry the corporate chiefs that really run the world.
Making a blockade of the stock exchanges the focus of M1 has the advantage of targeting a global (at least in every capitalist country) and morally indefensible institution of corporate tyranny. Let the corporate media try to defend the greed and speculative vandalism that is the driving force of the stock markets around the world.
The prospect of disrupting "normal business" in the heart of the business districts of major cities around the world on May 1 is the kind of militant action that can convince individual workers and students — regardless of what their union officials say — to strike against corporate tyranny. It will provide an opportunity for the victims of corporate tyranny to join in a mass reclaiming of streets in the city that the corporate elite consider their private preserve.
This sort of action could involve the diverse range of political and cultural expressions — that marvellous "festival of the oppressed" character of S11 — in a colourful and spirited expression of "people power". The floats, the banners, flags, bands and dancers can all help get the message across that there is an alternative to global corporate tyranny.
[Peter Boyle is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party. He can be contacted on <peterb@dsp.org.au>.