20 years since political dead-end of "Battle of Seattle"

Anti-WTO protests give social cover to U.S. imperialism  

 

In a letter on the facing page, reader Brian Miller argues that the Militant has taken too critical a stance against the protests surrounding the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) "Although the 'America First' crowd is certainly one of the significant tendencies... they are by no means the only ones" involved, Miller states.

But the 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. Often in the guise of criticizing U.S. corporations and even the U.S. government, their real targets were governments of other countries—mainly nations oppressed by the U.S. capitalist families—and they appealed to Washington to pressure these governments, mostly through the weapon of trade tariffs and sanctions. They ended up prettifying U.S. imperialism as a supposed agent of progress and social enlightenment, rather than targeting it as the number one exploiter and warmonger in the world.

This "solidarity" that portrays working people in the Third World as pitiful victims in need of a benevolent U.S. cop is one they don't need. In today's context of sharpening trade conflicts between the U.S. rulers and their capitalist competitors abroad, all these protests were in the America First camp, giving a social varnish to Washington's big stick. A couple of examples of seemingly progressive demands help illustrate the point.

Many protesters focus on concern over the environment. People for Fair Trade, one of the groups organizing the actions, states on its web page that "corporations [are] favored over environment" by the WTO.

But what were the concrete demands of the environmental protests in Seattle? One of the most prominent was for the restoration of a portion of the U.S. Endangered Species Act that supposedly protects sea turtles—which are in danger of extinction—from being killed in shrimp nets. The central point of this law is to ban the import to the United States of shrimp caught by fishermen in countries where "turtle-safe" nets are not universally used—particularly in the semicolonial world, such as Malaysia and India. Who benefits from this? U.S. capitalists who profit from the protectionist import ban. It is the toll of the capitalist market dominated by U.S. and other imperialists and the drive to reduce costs to compete that makes environmentally friendly equipment of little interest to the bosses.

The campaign over the sea turtles points people toward identifying with the U.S. government. "Don't trade away our sea turtles," declares one piece of literature produced by the Sierra Club, calling on Clinton to fight the WTO for more vigorous enforcement of the shrimp ban. "Our turtles"? That's a dead giveaway of the American nationalist content of this demand and how it pits working people in this country against those in the Philippines, Malaysia, and elsewhere.

Another prominent demand is for "standards against child labor." This is presented as a fight to protect children around the world from being forced to work long hours under hazardous conditions. But the organizers of this campaign again appeal to U.S. imperialism to impose penalties on governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

U.S. president William Clinton, in fact, poses as one of the big defenders of children. At the WTO summit, he demonstratively campaigned for a declaration by the International Labor Organization, a U.S.-dominated body of the United Nations, "banning the worst forms of child labor," falsely presenting the U.S. government as the champion of better standards of working people around the world.

Earlier this year, Clinton issued an executive order that highlights the actual content of such "child labor standards." The measure banned the purchase by the U.S. government of any goods allegedly produced with child labor—targeting particularly imports from countries such as India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Guatemala. This puts a progressive mask over the "buy American" campaigns spearheaded by the U.S. labor officialdom and U.S. businesses, such as textile companies, competing with industries in those nations.

Child labor and low wages are not a result of "bad policies" by governments in the semicolonial world, with U.S. corporations "taking advantage" of them. Rather, these conditions are a result of the normal workings of the imperialist system, with the U.S. government as its top enforcer. The wealthy families that rule the small number of imperialist countries dominate and exploit labor and resources throughout the world. They systematically plunder the semicolonial countries, not only by superexploiting labor in their factories there but through the loan shark squeeze of the Third World debt and through imperialist-dictated unequal terms of trade that are reinforced every day—with or without the WTO.

Class-conscious workers have an obligation to fight first and foremost against the capitalist rulers in their own countries—most of all in the United States. Accepting the arguments of the anti-WTO protests leads you in the opposite direction. You find yourself marching side by side with the "incipient fascists and jingoists of many stripes" who as Miller notes, were part of the Seattle actions. How many protest organizers tried to distance themselves from the pro-war aims of Washington's anti-China campaign? In the name of "human and labor rights" they abetted it.

Working people in the United States should oppose Washington's participation not only in the WTO but all other international forums set up by the imperialist powers to mediate and defend their class interests—from NATO to the United Nations. We're for abolishing all of them. But this is not a slogan to campaign around, and the Militant doesn't.

What this paper has consistently advocated is a campaign around demands that can unite working people internationally in struggle by clearly posing the issues in class terms:

Cancellation of the Third World debt, a demand that can unite workers in the United States with our fellow workers and farmers around the world against our common enemy: the U.S. ruling class;

A shorter workweek with no cut in pay and massive public works to create jobs for all;

Affirmative action programs with quotas, including a substantial raise in the minimum wage, to cut across the racist and sexist divisions the bosses try to impose on working people.

Stop the deportations—equal rights for all immigrants.

These demands point to the only force that can change society—not U.S. government sanctions against other governments and individual companies, but workers and farmers fighting together across national borders against our employers and their governments. They highlight the need to build a mass working-class political party capable of leading millions to take power out of the hands of the exploiters and to join the worldwide struggle for socialism, as working people in Cuba have done through their revolution.

This is what socialist workers and youth presented as they intervened in the swirling discussions that took place in Seattle. They set up literature tables on the streets and spoke up in forums and workshops, looking for those who are attracted to an internationalist working-class perspective. Their results—including the sale of dozens of copies of Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium, a book that presents a clear, working-class alternative to the American nationalism dished up at the WTO protests—are evidence that only a sharp, objective class analysis can have a shot at explaining the working class's divergent interests with the anti-WTO protests and its organizers.

—Naomi Craine