Report back from:  MILAN: PEOPLES GLOBAL ALLIANCE MEETING: WHERE NEXT FOR THE ANTI-CAPITALIS T MOVEMENT

Workers Power Global, Milan

A week after leading the 20,000-strong demonstration and street battle agai nst the IMF, World Bank and OECD in Naples, Ya Basta! hosted the first Euro pean conference of the Peoples Global Alliance in Milan.

Over 300 delegates from across Europe spent last weekend locked in discuss ions in the Leoncavallo social centre. Activists from Slovenia and Greece in the east to Spain in the west, from Finland in the North to Italy in the south gathered to discuss areas of work, collaborate and prepare for the PGAs third world conference in Cochabamba in Bolivia. Individuals from fu rther afield AD Russia, Israel, Bolivia, Colombia and the USA AD also participated.

The main forces included a sub-group from Reclaim the Streets in London and groups inspired in their wake AD such as Global Resistance Movement (MRG) from Spain AD and Ya Basta! and its supporters across Europe.

Alongside these major forces, there were a smattering of autonomous groups that were very localist in their outlook, often based on squats, and someti mes completely opposed to any structure whatsoever as being inherently oppr essive. Most interestingly a few left Stalinist, Trotskyist and anarcho-com munist groups with a serious orientation to the working class were also pre sent.

Ya Basta! AD despite their post-modernist dismissal of the working class AD have, uniquely among the European PGA groups, significant roots in the working class and urban poor.

Unfortunately, this is not true of almost all the other organisations at th e Leoncavallo last weekend; a fact that was reflected in a deeply sectarian attitude towards the working class and its so-called OauthoritarianB9 and OhierarchicalB9 organisations.

The PGA sub-group of Reclaim the Streets (London) in particular wasted two hours of the opening session by leading a witch-hunt against Workers Power, Socialist Workers Party and Globalise Resistance.

Offering no evidence whatsoever of our disruptive, undemocratic or uncomrad ely behaviour AD despite being challenged by Workers Power to do so AD th e RTS sub-group threatened to leave the conference if we were not excluded.

Their reasons? AD we organised on a hierarchical structure internally; we favoured revolution; and we had turned up despite the sub-group of the RTS saying they did not want us to attend.

Workers Power exposed each of these allegations to be a smokescreen for pol itical exclusion. Although we organise in a hierarchical way AD as do the Zapatistas with their 22 sub-commandantes and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers with their full-time officials paid out of the subs of worker membe rs AD we do not impose that on the PGA.

Will the RTS sub-group and their allies seek to exclude the CUPW and denoun ce the EZLN at Cochabamba? No.

Secondly, the fact that the witch-finders explicitly turn their back on rev olution says more about their trajectory than anything else. And finally, w e explained that since no other participant in the PGA had a veto over the inclusion of other groups (in fact Ya Basta! explicitly said they wanted no exclusion orders), it was authoritarian in the extreme for the RTS sub-gro up to seek one. On the strength of these arguments the RTS sub-group relent ed and we agreed to participate but not intervene on internal PGA matters.

With this out of the way, the PGA conference set about its business, in par ticular preparing for the global days of action in Quebec, Saltzburg, Gothe nberg, Barcelona and Genoa, and for the conference in Cochabamba.

Due to language problems, the nature of consensus decision-making (i.e. a t iny minority can prevent a conclusion being reached) and the political div ersity of the participants, the conference did not decide much. Nevertheles s it provided an interesting exchange of ideas and information, and an insi ght into the workings of one of the most influential of the anti-capitalist wings.

The Global Days of Action (GDAs) are not being abandoned AD though there w as a serious discussion on how to link them more effectively to ongoing str uggles AD they are proliferating. But they differ enormously in their purp ose and direction.

The Catalonians and Spanish in the MRG want BarcelonaB9s mobilisation to l ast two months, culminating in a blockade of the World Bank conference on 2 5-27 June. But they do not want anyone else to come to Barcelona! Similarly , the Austrians AD fearing repression AD are planning a very limited prot est action on 1st July against the WEF.

On the other hand the socialist, syndicalist and anarchist Swedes in Global ise from Below and Ya Basta! are clearly trying to involve wider forces AD immigrants and trade unions AD to recreate and even surpass the mass and international mobilisations in Prague and Nice. For this reason, Gothenburg B9s EU counter-summit in June and GenoaB9s G8 blockade in July will be th e main focal points for the European anti-capitalist movement this summer.

Ya Basta! continue to lead the way forward in developing imaginative tactic s. On 19th July they plan to co-ordinate an illegal immigrantsB9 demonstra tion, protected by the Red Cross and NGOs to highlight the plight of those who usually are too repressed to protest. And on the opening day of the sum mit itself,

Ya Basta! has called a Ocitizenship strikeB9 where the unemployed, student s, immigrants and workers organised in unions can all take strike action ag ainst capital and its agents. As a way of putting pressure on mass trade u nions to get stuck into the anti-capitalist movement, the citizenship strik e could become as widely used as the Otute bianchiB9 white overalls moveme nt is already.

But despite these specific advances, the Milan conference exposed the fact that the PGA itself is facing serious questions about the way forward. Thes e were revealed when the activists reported on discussions concerning the w orld convention in Cochabamba.

The PGA organisations from the south include mass movements like the 1.5 mi llion-strong Bangladesh National Garment Workers Confederation and the land less peasantsB9 movement Sem Terra in Brazil.

They do not fetishise the non-hierarchical strutures of the anarchist and p etit-bourgeois activists in the north. Indeed, they know these structures a re impossible to maintain once the masses are engaged in direct action.

By imposing a 70-30 split in favour of delegations from the Third World cou ntries they hope to limit the influence of tiny groups from the major capit alist heartlands who represent no one. After all, if your delegation has be en funded by the subs of teenage girls in sweatshops, you wonB9t want to r eturn reporting a beautiful discussion process but no concrete results.

Secondly, the PGA organisations from the semi-colonial world almost certain ly do not share the same post-modernist vision of anti-capitalism of RTS, M RG and Ya Basta! AD let alone the individual egoists of some squattersB9 collective in Baveria!20

While Sem Terra, the Bangladeshi Garment Workers and Korean trade unionists have signed up to the Oanti-capitalistB9 tag in the PGA, but AD like the Zapatistas themselves AD their anti-capitalism is closer to reform than a bolition. The KRRS, for example, the Indian indigenous peoplesB9 movement which hosted the 2nd PGA conference in Bangalore in 1999, is quite clearly heavily influenced by Stalinism.

In fact, the PGA is in danger of developing an international network which is broadly left Stalinist in Asia, left nationalist in Latin America and anarchist in Europe. Not only is this quite deceitful AD to claim political solidarity from tendencies that do not share your vision in order to boost your own kudos AD it is also very dangerous.

In the coming six to 18 months, the anti-capitalist movement will face a severe test AD a recession in the largest economy in the world, the USA. The reformist NGOs will undoubtedly run a mile from any militant defence of w orkersB9 and democratic rights when push and shoves turns into baton and b ullet.

The socialist far left and anti-capitalist anarchists will, on the basis of the previous 18 months battles, stand firm. The fate of the movement will depend on winning the large mass of people and organisations who fit int o neither of these two categories.

By building an international tendency where the distinction between reform and revolution is blurred and fudged by a populism masquerading as anarchism or anti-capitalism ducks the responsibility of preparing the ground for the coming battles. The LRCI sees in the current situation both the urgent need and the possibility of building a new revolutionary international, democratic in its internal proceedings but centralised around agreed of action

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