h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just to try and get the politics pages going, what does everyone think about the anti-capitalist protestors?

As a lefty, I think that their heart is in the right place, and their basic thesis (capitalism=bad) is right. However, as yet they lack any political vision. This could in fact be a good thing, since it allows for a more diverse movement, but it does damage their credibility somewhat.

However, I'm sure there are plenty of people who will disagree. (Colonel Sellers springs to mind as the obvious example ), so what do you think?

What are these people actually for? I know what they are against - i.e. everything even remotely looking looking like pan-regional political organisation, but what are they for?

The main agenda item seems to be - oh there's a G7 meeting here, or an EU summit there - let's wreck it. Never mind that these international meetings are often there to help build consensus and cooperation among different political units around the globe.

If you want to create a new world order, shouldn't the first step be to develop, define and sell to others what sort of world order you would like first, rather than try to destroy what is there already, and then if (big if) you succeed, scratch your head and figure out where to go next?

CR

Well that's the problem isn't it? As a group, they're not "for" anything, since they're comprised of many different groups of people with very differing ideologies (from the authoritarian, centrally planned economy types to the anarchists) but who are united in their dislike of capitalism. Most of these groups do have a reasonably worked out idea of how the world should be run, but you can't possibly point out a single one of these ideologies and say "this is the ideology of the anti-capitalist movement". My view is that if the anti-capitalist protestors can bring doubt into people's minds about capitalism, then they will have succeeded, even if they have no legislative program. If this were achieved (again, big if) then people would probably settle on one of the myriad anti-capitalist ideologies, but there is no reason to settle down on one specific one right now. I even have some hope for anti-capitalism as a movement, what with growing numbers of protestors, a growing distrust of corporate power, a growing disenchantment with the political process, etc. By the way, they're mostly not against political organisations but economic ones (IMF, WB, ECB, etc.), particularly when they are unaccountable and unelected.

But these anti-capitalist protesters are not accountable or elected either. Have I given them a mandate to try to wreck every economic gathering around the world, to deface war memorials, to strike a blow (for whatever they are for) by looting the odd MacDonalds restaurant? Has anybody? Whatever their agenda is, they want it imposed by violence. They are not that different from the unelected officials they are trying to disrupt.

OK, but that's an argument against any form of protest. I myself, and I imagine most of the protestors too, do not believe we live in a fully functioning democracy and so protest outside of the existing democratic institutions is valid.

Since they are largely protesting against unaccountable and undemocratic institutions, I don't see that you can use their unaccountable and undemocratic nature to criticise them without similarly criticising the institutions they are against. In many respects they are more democratic and accountable than they seem. They have no central authority dictating ideological dogma, their political position is precisely the aggregate of the positions of the protestors. In that sense they are supremely democratic in a way that no institution could be.

Finally, since we live in a militarily advanced society, they will never be able to achieve their aims unless they have overwhelming support from the majority of the population. So they are no threat to the existing democratic order. At worst they can be a slight nuisance, at best they can lay the foundation for a truly democratic society.

Some of your points are well taken, but there is no reason why an anti-capitalist protester cannot stand for election, and there is no reason why their supporters could not vote for them. I don't see anything wrong with a system where the majority of voters get their way. It's better than having a minority of people getting their way and imposing their values and ideals on everybody else. Also if we don't like what those people we elect do, we kick them out.

Ireland just voted no to Nice. That was democratic, that was inside the system and it has probably shaken the EU establishment more than any protest by anti-capitalists.

I'm not arguing against democracy, I'm arguing that our democracy is not sufficiently democratic to make the argument that "protestors should stand for election" valid. In our democracy, you need massive funding to be able to mount a meaningful campaign at an election and this is something that anti-capitalist protestors cannot (by the very nature of their protest) ever hope to get (indeed, some almost anti-capitalist parties did stand at the recent UK elections, for instance the Greens and the Socialist Alliance, but they are woefully underfunded for obvious reasons). See my article "Sham Democracy" (link on my homepage or on the entry above) for my thoughts on this.

I'm afraid I can't comment on the Ireland no vote, I've not really read anything about it. I will say that just because I support protest outside the institutions of our democracy doesn't mean I don't support protest inside the institutions of our democracy as well. In a democracy like ours, both are necessary.

I am sure there are both dangerous idiots and virtuous crusaders among the protesters. Some may not even be sure exactly what they are protesting about.

The bottom line is, however, that the multinational corporations ar becoming more powerful than our governments. No system of voting exists to give them this power - we hand it too them with every dollar we spend.

In the recent provincial election on British Colombia in Canada, the Green Party did rather well -12.4% of the popular vote. This however did not translate into any seats. They are now beginning a campaign to introduce a system of proportional representation.

(For the record, the other results were Liberal 58.5%, NDP 21.5%, Marijuana Party 3.5%, others 4.1%. Note: NDP is similar to labour. others include Conservatives, Alliance and Independants.)

176645

BTW Thanks, Dogster, for this forum. I hope I can find time in the near future the read more here and follow up on your links.

176645, glad you like the forum. Try and spread the word a bit and we'll see if we can get more people on board (adverts on your userspace, mentions in conversations, and so on).

I agree with pretty much everything you said above. I'm pleased and surprised to see that the Marijuana Party gets so many votes.

The Green Party and the Socialist Alliance didn't do very well in the UK unfortunately. I'm not sure of the figures (probably a couple of percent of the votes) but they didn't get any seats. The third largest party here (Liberal Democrats) is also campaigning for the introduction of PR. Hopefully the Labour Party will introduce it as soon as they fear they won't be re-elected without it. Unfortunately, this looks like it might be a long time coming, since they won by a massive majority at the recent elections.

Me too, me too!
~jwf~

176645, yes we hand multinationals power with every dollar we spend, but you've ignored the corollary: we can take it away with every dollar we spend somewhere else.

Mycroft - It would be nice if we had the option of spending our dollars elsewhere but, increasingly, I find, there is not that option for essentials.

Most everyday items are produced and distributed by a handful of companies. Alternatives may be available but they are very expensive and only available in large centres.

176645

It depends what you consider to be an everyday item, but I don't see why cost has anything to do with it. Amongst other reasons multinationals are successful because they're cheap and they're cheap because they derive economies from being a multinational. If you don't like what they're doing then you might as well start paying extra now: multinationals will have to raise their prices too if they stop doing the stuff you don't like.

Actually I don't think they are as cheap as they could be.

Some costs cannot be avoided and the cost is controlled internationally. Oil for one - the cost of heating oil has doubled where I am in the past two years.

However, my main point is that our elected governments do not have much control of our economies. Individual politicians may start out with ideas of reform or improvement but when in office there is not much they can do about anything.

176645

Yes, it's true that oil isn't cheap and that's because its price is fixed by a cartel. However, OPEC's prices aren't fixed by multinationals, they're fixed by governments each of which is vying to maximize the benefit to its own country, so the issue of corporations running the world is somewhat moot in this instance.

Now you've got into the area of economics that I can never quite understand. Prices are set by OPEC which consists of the major oil producing countries. The lesser oil producing countries just follow those prices. The oil is actually extracted by large companies and not the countries. Have I got this right so far?

The reason given for the price increase here was a shortage of oil. As far I can tell there is currently no shortage - I think the increase in price occurred in the distribution locally.

Has this kind of increase occurred everywhere else? I am in Eastern Canada and my impression has been that our neighbours to the south have not suffered the same increase.

176645

protest should be non-violent

Well, technically OPEC don't actually set the prices, they just specify how many barrels of oil will get produced, and based on this output they have a pretty good idea of what the price will end up being - currently their target is $25 per barrel of crude. The oil is extracted by large companies in some parts of the world, but in many countries the oil producers are nationalized industries.

There may well be a local issue where you are which compounds the problem, but there has been a general upward trend in the cost of all fuels. Just think yourself lucky you're not in California .

I attended an event last week at the Edinburgh Book Festival, 'Naomi Klein in conversation with Will Hutton'. She said something very interesting. These protesters we see on our television, that we are encouraged to refer to as 'they', are not 'they'. They're us. They are our children (not literally in my case, but you get my point).

She also made the very valid point that the violence could be an attempt to drive the movement to the margins. Nobody *wants* to get beaten up by the police, not even for a very good cause. The violence that occurs during these protests will encourage many people to think twice before they set off.

Exactly. There seems to be some evidence that the police have planted agent provacateurs amonst the protestors to ensure violence. Other police actions which (intentionally or otherwise) exacerbate the violence are statements given to the press which suggest that violent groups are planning terrible things (stories like "they're going to throw packets of HIV infected blood" and the like, pure imagination), using people who are untrained in dealing with riots as police (this happened at Genoa quite a lot), etc.

According to a friend of mine who went to Genoa, getting teargassed isn't actually very bad though.