Discussions on WTO

I'm writing regarding the article on the WTO [World Trade Organization] protest in Seattle in the December 13 Militant under the heading "Socialists mount campaign blitz at WTO events." The sales results detailed in the articles are quite impressive, but as important as the numbers of Capitalism's World Disorder and copies of the Militant sold were the many discussions held at and around those campaign tables with workers and youth that produced the large number of books sold.

It seems to me a real oversight that not a single person was actually quoted in the article.

By way of rectifying this I offer excerpts from two e-mails received from a young activist from Wilmington, North Carolina. As he indicates in the first one, he has ordered Capitalism's World Disorder, along with Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara and the Imperialist Reality and Maoism versus Bolshevism directly from Pathfinder (see below). 
Floyd Fowler 
Atlanta, Georgia 
 

Is China a workers state?

12/5/99–Seattle was definitely intense. I was fortunate to attend an ILO [International Labor Organization] conference on the Saturday before the WTO meetings. There was a broad range of labor folks there, mostly union bosses.

It was a lot of the same liberal stance—that capitalism can somehow be made nicer and one step is putting these labor bosses at the WTO table to push the 'core' labor standards . . . I was largely unimpressed, but a few participants, especially a man who is trying to organize sweatshop workers in the Philippines, were of a socialist stripe. [John] Sweeny spoke there too. Surprisingly (or not, really) no actual workers spoke, and I doubt that few were even present.

I went to the AFL-CIO demonstration in the arena. I spent a lot of time speaking to people from different "socialist" parties in the parking lot. I spoke to some SWP [Socialist Workers Party] folks for quite some time, but one issue I am still confused about is the reference to China and the former "socialist" bloc as "worker's states." I see the terminology all the time in the Militant but if workers truly did wield power in China, then why do they have to battle cops when they are on strike, or why are workers who call for independent labor unions jailed? I don't understand, but I'd like to.

I asked one lady from the party the same question, but I didn't really understand her response. I agree most of all with the SWP stance on the WTO. However, I think that it was important that the protests went on, despite the liberal leadership. When 30,000 workers are shouting anti-free trade slogans, it has to be somewhat significant. I ran out of money and couldn't buy the book (Capitalism's World Disorder), but I ordered it, so I'll get it in a few weeks...."

12/7/99–I do remember one very interesting point made by a lady at the SWP table in Seattle (I don't remember her name). She gave a good comparison between the "labor bosses" here and the Chinese "Communist" bureaucracy—that both essentially want to be capitalists, are capitalist minded, but have their base in the workers, and therefore have to talk (and make policies) out of both sides of their mouths. But does that mean that if Sweeny and James Hoffa held state power in the U.S. that this country would be a workers state?" 
Matt Skiba 
Wilmington, North Carolina 
 

Seattle cops aren't military

I think the article "Cops brutalize thousands during protests in Seattle" (Militant, December 13 issue) is wrong to describe police operations in the WTO protests as military-style tactics. Factually, this is not so. Military tactics involve a much greater use or threat of deadly force than do the police crowd-control tactics employed in Seattle.

Not that such police tactics aren't brutal; they are, as described in the Militant, and in other reports. But I think the article should have pointed out that such brutality (including the rulers' knowledge that some cops will exceed or ignore their instructions) is the norm, and not exceptional. The point could also have been made that such brutality is going to increase—ultimately to include real military force—as the polarization deepens and the rich more and more rely on brute force against real or perceived threats to their rule.

(Farrell Dobbs, communist leader and organizer of the working class combat units in Minneapolis-St. Paul in the 1930s, wrote in the Teamster series that the cops go through a process of becoming more brutal as the capitalists need more brutality to protect their rule. There is an element of this here in Seattle in the resignation of Police Chief Norman Stamper; many cops and businessmen have criticized him for being too timid in dealing with protests.)

Further, although it is not factually incorrect, the describing of the curfew in Seattle as covering a 50-block area could lead a reader to infer that police brutality was general throughout this area. It was not, but was rather confined to a much smaller part of the city. Elsewhere in the curfew area, it was possible to do the usual things people do, such as travel, work, and shop.

That such ruling-class outrages as cop brutality are foreign to Seattle is a commonly-held view here, but it is wrong. I think the Militant should help combat this idea more than this article did. 
George Johnson 
Seattle, Washington 
 

Oppose 'Buy American'

The Militant series analyzing the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle has been excellent. Despite the progressive intent and views of many demonstrators who went to Seattle to protest injustices, the reactionary Buy American character that joined together the trade union officials, Clinton, and Buchanan supporters was loud and clear.

My best discussions were with locked–out Kaiser Aluminum workers, members of the USWA who have been battling for over a year. Their familiarity and support for the Militant newspaper and their purchasing Capitalism's World Disorder was a high point. Several pointed to the USWA officials' greater interest in the Buy American and anti-China campaign than winning the strike against Kaiser, which they pointed out was never mentioned by USWA president George Becker speaking at the Labor organized rally of 25–30,000 on November 30.

Some union officials call for sanctions against countries that don't live up to the progressive positions taken by the U.S. government on the environment, child labor, and sweatshops, is particularly despicable. Do they want sanctions against China, Malaysia, Mexico, etc. like those leveled against Iraq after the brutal U.S. war and bombing campaign that began in 1990 and continues today? Those sanctions have meant devastation of lives and health of workers, farmers, and youth resulting in the deaths of thousands. Is calling for sanctions the way to show labor solidarity to workers in the sanctioned countries as the AFL-CIO officials propose? 
Mark Friedman 
Los Angeles, California 
 

Working-class perspective

In his letter to the Militant of December 13, Brian Miller is concerned that the Militant is alienating its allies who are protesting the WTO. I agree that many of the protesters were sincere in their opposition to the anti-working-class character of the WTO. However, despite the best of intentions, their actions support politics which are objectively anti-working-class, anti-internationalist, and benefit U.S. imperialism. They are on the wrong side of the class barricades.

To participate in actions which aid U.S. imperialism or to capitulate in any way to the demands raised by petit bourgeois misleaders is to do a disservice to the workers and youth who are seeking a way to fight the depredation and exploitation engendered by capitalism. Serious, open-minded protesters are potential allies but need to hear a working-class, internationalist perspective to counter the procapitalist politics of union bureaucrats and misleaders of various stripes who organized the protests in Seattle.

That is why supporters of the SWP and the Young Socialists were in Seattle. Not to be participants but to bring a communist perspective that is available only in the Militant and books published by Pathfinder. Not to alienate our "allies" but to win potential fighters to an internationalist, working-class world view. 
Gary Cohen 
Arlington, Massachusetts 
 
 
 
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