From Seattle to Genoa, the movement has led to the emergence of a multiplicity of oppressed and exploited subjects who, for the most "different" (but in reality converging) and perfectly good reasons, cannot and are beginning not to want to live with global capitalism any longer, and have already had their first experience of the common ground of struggle. Wehave already seen why they are called upon to give themselves a single objective and a united organisation that is centralised worldwide. We have also mentioned the fact that both can be achieved if the many "anti-globalisation" struggles find a common horizon of liberation and that, for us, this can be nothing other than socialism.
And, what is socialism? It is the integral restitution to working humanity of the currently expropriated fruits of human production activities (in the broadest sense) in such a way as to allow the enrichment and liberation of each and every one from the constraints of "necessity" (Marx speaks of the liberation of the individual in the sense of an individual human member of the humen collectivity).
The magnificent world of the G8The polarisation of wealth between the North and South of the world In the five years from 1994 to 1998, "the net worth of the 200 richest people in the world has increased from 440 to 1,000 billion dollars, which is the equivalent of the income of 41% of the world’s population: i.e. 2.6 billion human beings. Each of them has the equivalent what is owned by 12 million of the rest. As far as the three richest people in the world are concerned, their net worth is more than the gross product of the world’s 48 poorest countries put together [back translated from an Italian translation]..." Source: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1992. Crime: global capital’s leading industry and profit’s final frontier In terms of turnover, what is the leading business of the turbine of globalised capital? The oil industry? The car industry? Electronics? Biotechnology? Wrong- the leading business is organised crime, the latest rage of capitalist accumulation because it is the source of stupendous profits. According to data coming from the European Council and the IMF, it has an annual turn-over of something like 1,000 billion dollars (the GDP of Italy and five times more than the GDP of the whole of Africa) and all of it is due to to a series of activities that are highly beneficial for the entire human race: the production and distribution of drugs (there are currently 180 million drug addicts in the world, and cities such as Baltimore in which 10% of the population are addicted); the smuggling of arms and toxic and nuclear waste; prostitution and pornography; miscellaneous rackets (including the kidnapping of children for their organs)… |
This collective (and therefore international) reappropriation of social "wealth" will at last correspond to the social and universal nature of the work that has produced it. It has to be understood that this cannot be isolated from the differences (created by capitalism) nor prevaricate upon the "self-characteristics" of each and any "community" insofar as it rebels against the dominion of globalised capitalism beginning with itself, but will start precisely with the valorisation and liberation of individual historical and cultural realities. However, any authentic human socialisation must in any case aim at collecting, controlling and directing the overall forces of the work socialised (by capitalism itself), and this can only be done by destroying the existing social and international division of labour, not by means of its impossible "more equitable" transformation. It is only on the basis of these presuppositions that it is possible to ensure true respect for all historico-cultural realities: i.e. a respect that is not dissociated from their development towards full participation in the socialisation of all social "wealth". What is today sold as "respect for other cultures" aims at keeping them eternally separate in their "otherness", and thus does nothing other than further crystallise the existing situation of private (not collective) and differentiated appropriation of the product of human labour in a world that is not "plural" but only capitalistically combined and unequal.
This is neither a dream nor a novelty. The class antagonism of the international proletariat already has a history of steps made in this direction. During the course of this history, it has scientifically examined its adversary -capitalism- and even created an organisation (consistent with this science) and real liberation. We are now living at a time in which speculation concerning the collapse of "real socialism" is triumphant and seeks to bury this together with socialism itself: i.e. it wants to cancel the fact that, ever since the time of the immature utopian socialism of Babeuf, socialism has concretely opposed capitalism by producing real forces for the emancipation of the masses.
A first example was the Comune, despite the absence of the material prerequisites for a real transition to socialism. The internationalism of the undegenerate 2nd International anticipated the current issue: the globalisation of the proletarian struggle against the capitalist globalisation (the imperialist phase of capitalism) that led the world to disaster (the "socialism or barbarianism" of Rosa Luxemburg). This effort was made vain by the degeneration that transformed the International into the first form of "real socialism", which inevitably subjected itself to real capitalism, decreting the dissolution of its internationalism with the call to arms of "its own" states during the First World War.
The Russian revolution was a reaction that restored the communist spirit of the proletarian movement. The fact that the fire did not spread beyond Russia and that Lenin’s attempt came to nothing was not due to who knows what deficiency of socialism itself, but because of the inadequacy of the forces it managed to gather and direct, particularly in the imperialistically dominant countries.
As we communists expected, the so-called "construction of socialism in Russia" (a single country) led to the capitalist resubjection of what was no longer revolutionary Russia. But the current collapse of "real socialism" does not mark the fall of the socialist perspective, but only the lies about it that served cover its overthrow. The "anti-globalisation" movement certainly has every right to distance itself from "real socialism", but this needs to be done in the way that genuine communists have always fought for. In order to be self-consistent, it must recognise that, as Lenin said and we say, the current problem is that of establishing a truly international and internationalist anti-capitalist struggle, and that this means re-triggering and not denying the genuine programme of socialism. The right of being against "real socialism" only exists to the extent that it is interpreted as the triumph of real capitalism.
Internationalism, anti-mercantilism, protagonism and the self-organisation of the masses: this is the programme that has been interrupted as a result of our own weaknesses and the strength of capitalism, but it is also the programme that needs to fully restored.