References

We won’t pay for your crisis" : as in the rest of italy, in the
universities of Milano the mobilization is uncontrollable by power.
From Mediazione Culturale to Scienze Politiche, ‘Accademia di Brera
and Università Bicocca, from Conservatorio to Politecnico to the State
University of Milano in central Festa del Perdono. Students are
mobilizing to bock the Gelmini Decree (Gelmini, arch-catholic minister
of education rechristened Gelminator by protesters), and to push for a
self-reform for a university of knowledge and research. Together with
postgrads, researchers, university employees and precasious faculty.
The brainworkers of immaterial labor are on the move. Everywhere the
blocks of lessons and the blockades of traffic by students are
multiplying, with spontaneous assemblies in each university,
department, with rectorates and classrooms occupied. An uncontrollable
movement that can win, and  transfprm a university based on deskilled
higher education and academic nepotism and related fiefdoms into a
university as public place of education and self-education linked to
the needs and cultures of the society to be. But where did all this
come from?

Stop Decreto Gelmini. Hands off schools and universities. We won’t pay
for your crisis!

The Berlusconi Gov’t passed the Law Decree n° 112 del 25 June 2008
titles "Urgent provisions for economic dev’t, simplification,
competitiveness, stabilitazion of public finance and tax equalization"

This decree becomes provisional law during the summer holidays, on Aug
5 (Legge 133/2008)

In provincial Italy, the policy response to the mounting global crisis
as put forward by minister of finance Tremonti is drastic cuts to
social spending, starting from public school and universities.

The essential points of the gelmini-tremonti package: return to the
single teacher in elementary schools, segregated classes for "foreign"
kids, severe cuts in financial resources to education, the block of
hirings of teaching and technical personnel, from elementary schools
to universities and research, the reconversion of public universities
in private foundations…

In september schools reopen: all over italy a new movement makes its
frist stems in elementary schools, high schools, universities. The
first mots d’ordre are against the precarization of teachers, against
the single teacher that would enforce a single ideology, agains the
so-called differentiated classes that would violently discriminate
immigrant children with a truly racial provision aiming at
establishing apartheid in italy.

On Oct 3 the autonomous network of high school student collectives
take it to the streets in many cities of Italy.

On Oct 13, the minister Gelmini cancels her appearance at a symposium
in milano for fear of protests.

In october classes start in universities: a university student
movement emerges powerfully: "We won’t pay your crisis!" It’s a loud
and clear message that speaks of the here and now, of precarity,
economic crisis and the last gasps of neoliberalism. "Cut resources to
bankers and war missions, rather than to schools and universities! we
are the coming society! We are not the problem, we are the solution!"

Week by week the mov’t grows: from elementary schools, teachers,
parents, kids are united in denouncing the decree; high school
collectives network their struggles; in universities researchers other
precarious faculty and professors start joining student assemblies and
discussing with student collectives.

"We have started so that we wouldn’t stop" and "We shall never go
back" : university students are against the berlusconi cuts billed as
‘reform’ but do not want to defend public university fallen prey to
clientelist and nepotistic practices, ruled by barons over the
shoulders of precarious junior faculty. The growing movement does not
accept neither old labels nor old forms of representations, it demands
and practices autonomy and freedom from the classic forms of politics,
parties especially. The responsibilities of past centerleft
governments stand clear in weaking the public university system and so
does the inability of the current parliamentary opposition to oppose
mr b’s decrees, which cuts funds to public schools while giving aid to
private schools. The dem party has also imitated berlusconi in calling
for draconian laws in the name of ’security’  fingerpointing dangerous
subjects such as gypsies, immigrants, street sellers, graffiti
writers.

On Oct 17, the national strike called by radical alternative unions
against the berlusconi government turns into the first No Gelmini Day.
In Rome 300,000 people take part in the strike demo. Rome students
take part in the union demo and then break off in the thousands and by
outflanking police manage to reach and block the ministry of
education. In Milano, unions are also on the streets. university and
highschool students decide to cross the whole city paralyzing traffic
as three demos merge: elementary schools, high school students, and
for the first time since the ‘panther’ movement of 1990, a strong
demonstration of university students from many agitating faculties and
academic insititutions. At the end of the demo, precarious teachers of
elementary schools and high school students put the milano education
department under siege, while university students experiment for the
first time with the practice of metropolitan blockades in the rest of
the city.

In the following week, the social situation escalates, as spontaneous
protests and initiatives spread to further cities large and small. On
Oct 21 in Milano, the General Estates of the University are held in
the aula magna of Milano State University. Just like in Sapienza in
Rome and in Palermo, the assembly is huge: 2000 people that decide at
the end of the assembly to give rise to a an unauthorized demo across
the streets of Milano. The demo marches fast and unpredictably, it
goes back and forth: the city goes tilt. Getting news that in bologna
and other cities university students have occupied railway stations,
the demo arrives at Cadorna train station. Riot cops prevent access to
the station and charge students with batons, who do not disperse and
block the car traffic all around by doing a determined sit-in. In
Florence, 40000 people of all ages from schools and universities
express solidarity to the student movement and fear for the
possibility of repression.

In the subsequent days, mobilizations further develop: in Milano,
Torino and other cities dozens of motions to faculty boards, class
blockades, assemblies, all-night events take place in freed
universities. The first experiments with alternative higher education
occur: academic lectures are held in central public squares before
hundreds of students and curious citizens, wihle students speak of
"free university and free knowledge".

On Oct 22 berlusconi accuses centri sociali (squatted social centers)
to be the maneuverers behind the social mobilizations and warns "I
will send the police against occupations of schools and universities."
THe movement is not intimidated: "We have no fear" is the rallying
cry. Some rectors swear "never police in a university", while some
professors ironize that a bit of university education might be well
needed by the italian police…

On Oct 23 berlusconi now in beijing denies having thought about
sending in the riot copes and accuse the italian press of
misinformation. In Rome, Sapienza students after another huge assemlby
the decided to march toward the parliamente in a demo merging three
streams of people, university students, high school students and the
acitivists of roman centri sociali who are protesting against the
eviction of Horus social center and the will to eradicate all social
spaces expressed by the neofascist new mayor Almeanno.

15000 people are spontaneously taking the streets in the heart of the
city. "Roma libera", "libertà, libertà", in the joy and thrill of the
moment a new cry emerges "un’altra Onda, un altra volta", "siamo i
giovani, siamo l’esercito del surf"  taken from a song of the roman
rapper "Er Piotta" [Another Wave, Once More] [we are the youth, we are
surf’s army] The song is an antiauthoritarian antiwar jibe about being
able to go with the flow and repeat the wave of change; it expresses
the idea of strategic flexibility in the sense of being able to surf
the rough waves and be anywhere and everywhere, and especially to be
where they least expect us.

L’Onda, The Wave, the movement names itself: it’s an anomalous wave, a
social anomaly. While the police protects parliament, the Wave puts
the city center under siege.

On Oct 24 berlusconi denounces the risk of extremist and violent
fringes in demonstrations. That night, 1000 students break onto the
red carpet of the rome film festival, saying "this movie is old". On
Oct 23 and 24 Ottobre piazza Duomo is filled by students and
professors that protest against the cuts and experience the urgency of
horizontal self-reform in higher education: "we shall never go back"

"Let’s occupy the city to be concerned about ourselves":  the
university penetrates the city, the city penetrates the university,
street blocks and spontaneous protests each day block the city, the
outdoor lectures are crowded, everybody is suprised by the scale and
novely of the mobilization: government, police, academic barons, mass
media, it’s an anomalous wave that submerges all.

The mobilization goes on. Fo Nov 29, berlusconi has scheduled the
final approval of the law. And the anomalous wave keeps growing.

[We need traslation of this article please mail us a traslation in
[SPA] | [FRA] | [DEU]->milano@globalproject.info]

Oct 23-24 008 : Protests keep growing, with hundreds of demos and
initiatives in all Italian cities and especially in Pisa, Venice,
Padua, Naplei. In Rome: huge assembly at La Sapienza and spontaneous
demo toward italian parliament. In Milano: official teaching blocked,
public lectures hel in duomo square; assemblies and intramural
protests at Statale, Politecnico, Bicocca and Brera. Berlusconi from
china says "never said I’d send police in schools" and "the italian
press don’t understand my words". Minister of public education Gelmini
says want to "open dialogue with students" and adds "there is an
ongoing terroristic campaign against my reform". High schools are
agitating mightily with most of the schools taken over by students and
a myriad of street protests.

* Patrick Bond * To: debate: SA discussion list , money crisis list * Subject: [money_banks_crisis] A presentation on precursors to crisis * Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:23:32 -0430 by Patrick Bond University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies and Centre for Civil Society (http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs) Presented to the World Forum for Alternatives and Network of Artists and Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity Working Group on the World Economic Order Caracas, Venezuela - 15 October 2008 1. Introduction The forces in Washington that support economic neoliberalism (the World Bank, IMF, US Treasury, US Federal Reserve and associated thinktanks) and political neoconservatism (the White House, Pentagon, State Department and thinktanks) are both suffering major legitimacy problems. These have built up not only in the economic sphere, as is now so obvious, but also over a three-decade long geopolitical process. The purpose of these remarks, as requested by WFA chair Samir Amin, is to provide the background context for discussions on today’s world economic order. 2. Geopolitical realignment, neoliberal ascendancy and economic volatility A catalogue of geopolitical changes since the 1970s would emphasise at least four major developments: • the 1975 US defeat by the Vietnamese guerrilla army, which reduced the US public’s willingness to use its own troops to maintain overseas interests; • the demise of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s, as a result of economic paralysis, foreign debt, bureaucratic illegitimacy and burgeoning democracy movements; • Middle East wars throughout the period, with Israel generally dominant as a regional power from the 1973 war with Egypt (notwithstanding its 2006 defeat in Lebanon); and • the rise of China as a potent competitor to the West (in political as well as economic terms) during the 1990s-2000s. These were merely the highest-profile of crucial political developments, leaving a sole superpower in their wake, yet one with much lower levels of legitimacy, dubious military and cultural dominance, slower economic growth, higher poverty and inequality, and vastly reduced financial stability over the past third of a century. One critical aspect of the struggle between classes associated with these developments was the waning of the Third World nationalist project and a dramatic shift in class power, away from working-class movements that had peaked during the late 1960s, towards capital and the upper classes. Chronologically, other crucial ‘moments’ that helped define the splintered, polarised political sphere since the 1970s included the following: • formal democratization arrived in large parts of the world - Southern Europe during the mid-1970s, the Cone of Latin America during the 1980s and the rest of Latin America during the 1990s, and many areas of Eastern Europe, East Asia and Africa during the early 1990s - partly through human/civil rights and mass democratic struggles and partly through top-down reform - yet because this occurred against a backdrop of economic crisis in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Philippines and Indonesia, the subsequent period was often characterised by instability, in which ‘dictators passed debt to democrats’ (as the Jubilee South movement termed the problem) who were compelled to impose austerity on their subjects, leading to persistent unrest; • the ebbing of Third World revolutionary movements - in the wake of transformations in Nicaragua, Iran and Zimbabwe in 1979-80 - was hastened by the US government’s explicit attacks during the 1980s on Granada, Nicaragua, Angola and Mozambique (sometimes directly but often by proxy), as well as on liberation movements in El Salvador, Palestine (via Israel) and Colombia, as well as former CIA client regimes in Panama and Iraq, hence sending signals to Third World governments and their citizenries not to stray from Washington’s mandates; • after Vietnam, the US’s subsequent ground force losses in Lebanon during the early 1980s and in Somalia during the early 1990s (followed by Afghanistan and Iraq in the mid-late 2000s) shifted the tactical emphasis of the Pentagon and NATO to high-altitude bombing, which proved momentarily effective in situations such as the 1991 Gulf War (decisively won by the US in the wake of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait), the Balkans during the late 1990s, the overthrow of Afganistan’s Taliban regime in 2001 and the initial ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003; • the 1989-90 demise of the Soviet Union had major consequences for global power relations and North-South processes, as Western aid payments to Africa, for example, quickly dropped by 40 percent given the evaporation of formerly Cold War patronage competition (until the resurgence of Chinese interest in Latin America and Africa during the 2000s); • the consolidation of European political unity followed corporate centralization within the European Economic Community, as the 1992 Maastricht treaty ensured a common currency (excepting the British pound which was battered by speculators prior to joining the euro zone), and as subsequent agreements established stronger political interrelationships, at a time most European social democratic parties turned neoliberal in orientation and voters swung between conservative and centre-right rule, in the context of slow growth, high unemployment and rising reflections of citizen dissatisfaction; • persistent 1990s conflicts in ‘Fourth World’ failed states gave rise to Western ‘humanitarian interventions’ with varying degrees of success, in Somalia (early 1990s), the Balkans (1990s), Haiti (1994), Sierra Leone (2000), Cote d’Ivoire (2002) and Liberia (2003), although other sites in central Africa - Rwanda in 1994 and since then Burundi, northern Uganda, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur region - have witnessed several million deaths, with only (rather ineffectual) regional not Western interventions; • the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington (followed by attacks in Indonesia, Madrid and London) signalled an increase in conflict between Western powers and Islamic extremists, and followed earlier bombings of US targets in Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen which in turn received US reprisals against Islamic targets in Sudan (actually, a medicines factory) and Afghanistan in 1998 and Yemen in 2002; and • the early-mid 2000s rise of left political parties in Latin America included major swings in Venezuela (1999), Bolivia (2004) and Ecuador (2006), as well as turns away from pure neoliberal economic policies in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, and were joined during the mid-2000s in Europe by left coalitions in Norway and, momentarily, in Italy. This list of seminal political moments should not obscure other important trends that seem to have accompanied them: • social and cultural change, including postmodernism, the ‘network society’, demographic polarizations and family restructurings; • new technologies brought about by the transport, communication and computing revolutions; • major environmental stresses including climate change, natural disasters, depletion of fisheries and worsening water scarcity; and • health epidemics, such as AIDS, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, anthrax, drug-resistant tuberculosis and malaria, severe acute respiratory syndrome and avian flu. Although these are topics beyond the scope of the current paper, in the realm of ideology the importance of these polarising events and processes cannot be overstated. Moreover, given the rise of neoliberal and neoconservative philosophies (formerly ‘modernization’ and colonialism), there have been sometimes spectacular counterreactions ranging from Islamic fundamentalism and resurgent Third World Nationalism, to Post-Washington Consensus and ‘global governance’ reform proposals, to global justice movement protests. 3. Economic explosions prior to 2008 Meanwhile, in the sphere of economics, a variety of key moments mark the rise and then decline of neoliberal policy influences across the world: • in 1973, the Bretton Woods agreement on Western countries’ fixed exchange rates - by which from 1944-71, an ounce of gold was valued at US$35 and served to anchor other major currencies - disintegrated when the US unilaterally ended its payment obligations, representing a default of approximately $80 billion, leading the price of gold to rise to $850/ounce within a decade; • also in 1973, several Arab countries led the formation of the Oil Producing Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, which raised the price of petroleum dramatically and in the process transferred and centralized inflows from world oil consumers to their New York bank accounts (‘petrodollars’); • from 1973, ‘los Chicago Boys’ of Milton Friedman - the young Chilean bureaucrats with doctorates in economics from the University of Chicago - began to reshape Chile in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s coup against the democratically-elected Salvador Allende, representing the birth pangs of neoliberalism; • in 1976, the International Monetary Fund signalled its growing power by forcing austerity on Britain at a point where the ruling Labour Party was desperate for a loan, even prior to Margaret Thatcher’s ascent to power in 1979; • in 1979 the US Federal Reserve addressed the dollar’s decline and US inflation by dramatically raising interest rates, in turn catalyzing a severe recession and the Third World debt crisis, especially in Mexico and Poland in 1982, Argentina in 1984, South Africa in 1985 and Brazil in 1987 (in the latter case leading to a default that lasted only six months due to intense pressure on the Sarnoy government to repay); • at the same time, the World Bank shifted from project funding to the imposition of structural adjustment and sectoral adjustment (supported by the IMF and the ‘Paris Club’ cartel of donors), in order to assure surpluses would be drawn for the purpose of debt repayment, and in the name of making countries more competitive and efficient; • the overvaluation of the US dollar associated with the Fed’s high real interest rates was addressed by formal agreements between five leading governments that devalued the dollar in 1985 (Louvre Accord), but with a 51 percent fall against the yen, required a revaluation in 1987 (Plaza Accord); • once the Japanese economy overheated during the late 1980s, a stock market crash of 40 percent and a serious real estate downturn followed from 1990, and indeed not even negative real interest rates could shake Japan from a longterm series of recessions; • during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Washington adopted a series of financial crisis-management techniques - such as the US Treasury’s Baker and Brady Plans - so as to write off (with tax breaks) part of the $1.3 trillion in potentially dangerous Third World debt due to the New York, London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Tokyo banks which were exposed in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe (although notwithstanding the socialization of the banks’ losses, debt relief was denied the borrowers); • in late 1987, crashes in the New York and Chicago financial markets (unprecedented since 1929) were immediately averted with a promise of unlimited liquidity by Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve, a philosophy which in turn allowed the bailout of the Savings and Loan industry and various large commercial banks (including Citibank) in the late 1980s notwithstanding a recession and serious real estate crash during the early 1990s; • likewise in 1998, when a New York hedge fund - Long Term Capital Management (founded by Nobel Prize-winning financial economists) - was losing billions in bad investments in Russia, the New York Fed arranged a bailout, on grounds the world’s financial system was potentially at high risk; • starting with Mexico in late 1994, the US Treasury’s management of the midand late 1990s ‘emerging markets’ crises again imposed austerity on the Third World while offering further bailouts for investment bankers exposed in various regions and countries - Eastern Europe (1996), Thailand (1997), Indonesia (1997), Malaysia (1997), Korea (1998), Russia (1998), South Africa (1998, 2001), Brazil (1999), Turkey (2001) and Argentina (2001) - whose hard currency reserves were suddenly emptied by runs; and • in addition to a vastly overinflated US economy (with record trade, capital and budget deficits) whose various excesses have occasionally unravelled - as with the dot.com stock market (2000) and real estate (2007) bubbles - the two largest Asian societies, China and India, picked up the slack in global materials and consumer demand during the 2000s, but not without extreme stresses and contradictions that in coming years threaten world finances, geopolitical arrangements and environmental sustainability. This, then, is a list of major events that reflect tensions and occasional eruptions, but never genuine resolutions to the growing overall problems of volatility that have wracked world politics and economics, until the moment of September-October 2008, the ‘Great Crash of 2008’ as it will be known.

No Time to Lose! Confronting Global Inflation Through the Construction of Autonomous Relations of (re)Production, Exchange and Livelihood

“The evidence tells us that we are living in the late stages of a very long price-revolution, perhaps in its critical stage. It also tells us that these are global processes. Our destiny is now closely linked to the condition of all humanity. The patterns of the past also suggest that what will happen in the future depends in no small degree on the choices that we make…We can use this power wisely or foolishly. Our choices will make a difference for our children and grandchildren, and for generations yet unborn.” (Hackett Fischer 1996: 251)

“For the working class in particular, inflation has the direct effect of reducing the one commodity that class has to sell: its labor-power. For the capitalist class it is the reverse. Since they own the commodities whose prices are rising, their wealth embodied in those commodities, tends to rise with the prices, and, therefore, so does their income derived from the sale of those commodities. Other factors assumed to be equal, inflation tends to reduce the income of the working class and increase that of capital – causing a shift of value from one class to the other.” (Cleaver 1979: 87)

“The price hikes themselves have taken on the character of a natural disaster…Far from being natural, this dependence has been constructed step-by-step, policy-by-policy against the criticism of anti-globalization scholars and a long series of oppositional demonstrations, general strikes, and rebellions throughout the world.” (Caffentzis 2008)

“Millions are now calculating that unless they obstruct the “normal” circuit of capitalist reproduction by taking to the streets they will face starvation” (Caffentzis 2008)

“Historic  systemic failures of governments and international institutions are responsible… For these reasons, they have lost legitimacy and confidence of the world’s peoples …We call on the Human Rights Council and the International Court of Justice to investigate the contribution of agribusiness, including grain traders and commodity speculators, to violations of the right to food and to the food emergency…The oligopolies and speculators, who operate throughout the food chain, must be investigated and suspected criminal behaviour must be brought to justice.” (IPC 2008)

We are in the early stages of what may be a prolonged period of global inflation in food, land, energy, key raw materials (e.g. steel and copper) and other basic goods. Without suitable, and rapid, responses from global anti-capitalist networks, there will be devastating effects on people’s lives throughout the world for many years to come, as well as on our collective abilities to struggle. In little over a decade these networks have proved excellent at organizing large global meetings, global days of action, emergency global responses in support of local struggles, as well circulating information and news throughout the world. Now these networks face the urgent task of building on this success in order to go beyond protest and actually construct long term alternative relations of production, exchange and livelihoods that go beyond the nation state, world-market, money and wage relations. In a period of rising inflation, this is not just an ethical imperative, but rather an urgent material demand, the difference between life and death. Time is limited. The task is huge. Nonetheless, movements are in a strong position to confront the situation in an optimistic manner.

Historical Lessons

In the 13th Century prices in Europe rose sky high. A chaotic and traumatic century of war, pestilence, social unrest, and famine followed, resulting in the breakdown of feudal relations. In 18th Century France, the price of grain and bread skyrocketed. Chaos ensued and the French revolution followed quickly behind. In Weimar Germany prices skyrocketed. Chaos ensued and the Nazis came to power. In the 1970s energy and food prices skyrocketed and famine and the neo-liberal counter-revolution took shape…

Hackett Fischer asserts,

“most inflation in the past eight centuries has happened in four great waves of rising prices. The first wave continued from the late twelfth century to the early fourteenth century. The second…began in the fifteenth century and ended in the mid-seventeenth. The third wave started circa 1930, and reached its climax in the age of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The fourth wave commenced in the year 1896 and has continued since, with a short intermission in some nations during the 1920s and early 1930s (Hackett Fischer 1996: 3-5)… [despite important differences] all great waves had important qualities in common. They all shared the same wave-structure. They tended to have the same sequence of development, the same pattern of price-relatives, similar movements of wages, rent, interest-rates; and the same dangerous volatility in the later stages. All major price revolutions in modern history began in periods of prosperity. Each ended in shattering world-crises and were followed by periods of recovery and comparative equilibrium.” (Hackett Fischer 1996: 9)

While history never repeats itself, and cumulative changes have occurred with each successive wave, a number of regularities are highlighted. Each wave has entailed a long term redistribution of wealth and income (both monetarized and non-monetarized), with polarization and concentration occurring along class lines. Middling layers of wealth have simply disappeared. Responses to inflation have repeatedly included government instigated price controls, as well as the speculation and panic buying, often fuelled by an injection of increasing amounts of devalued currency into the financial system. Price instability and rapid inflation has also entailed the break down of markets, public indebtedness and bankruptcy. Consequently, it has also provoked breakdown of established political structures, at local, regional and national levels, as well as internationally, frequently involving increased social unrest and also interstate military conflict. On the other hand, periods of price stability have been periods of comparative political and cultural flourishing, economic growth, reduced inequality and democratization. One major cumulative change that has been observed over time is that successive waves have been less destructive, but have provoked more organized and coherent social and political resistance from those most negatively effected by the inflation.

Contemporary Inflation in Food, Energy and Land

Against the backdrop of Global War on Terror, massive US debts, financial crisis and a collapsing dollar,  food, oil and land prices are again rising. Between May 2007 and May 2008, the price of corn rose 46%, wheat 80%, and soybeans 72%. The price of rice increased by 75% in 2008 over its average 2007 price. Meanwhile, as this article is being completed, the price of oil has reached a new high of $146 a barrel, a rise of 55% since January. Having crept up gradually (and relatively invisibly) for many years, prices are reaching new heights and the rate of inflation is accelerating rapidly, provoking a daily stream of dramatic media headlines.
 
Prices represent a balance of power between buyers and sellers. They are political, not natural. And, of course, it goes without saying (though Marx famously said it) that the division of the world’s population into buyers and sellers is also not a natural division. Rising prices do not hit everyone equally, but translate into a negative redistribution of both power and wealth. While the Food and Agriculture Organization reports a 50 million increase in the number of hungry people in the world in 2007, the agri-multinational, Monsanto made record profits. Net sales in the first nine months of fiscal year 2008 were $9.5bn, 35% higher than the same period last year. Net income was up 83%. The Financial Times cites grain giant Cargill having a 69% rise in profits over last years figures.

Food inflation is the result of years of intentional structural adjustment, trade liberalization in agriculture, privatization of land (both to agribusiness and other industrial spheres), the dismantling of food subsidies, price control mechanisms and marketing boards, and the destruction of national food reserves. These changes have been pushed by multilateral agencies such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, regional (and more recently bilateral) free trade agreements, such as NAFTA, and with support from agricultural multinationals, national governments and economic elites as part of the process of constructing a world-market. The recent drive towards agro-fuels has exacerbated these trends, bringing fuel and food crops into direct competition over land,  and pushing up the price of both food and land due to speculation.

Many factors contribute to oil inflation including: military conflict in oil rich areas; the perception of imminent scarcity (“peak oil”); and the falling dollar. On the other hand, demand for oil is also rapidly rising (in addition to the much touted rise of Chinese and Indian demand, US consumption is also continually increasing). Finally, as with food, there is also the element of speculation. The US  House of Representatives has just passed a motion condemning speculation in oil, and the UK House of Commons are in the process of initiating an investigation on the theme.

Oil, food and land are key commodities, basic to both capitalist production (and exchange), and also the reproduction of life, and hence labor power. If the prices of these basics go up, struggles are unleashed as to who shall pay? Will labor suffer austerity, or will capital pay?

This is provoking a massive and rapid loss of legitimacy as existing national, regional and multilateral political, economic and financial institutions fail to deal with the problem and/or make it worse. The first half of 2008 saw a world-wide eruption of food and fuel protests/riots. Fuel protests have occurred in: Bulgaria, Burma, Chile, France, Greece, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Nepal, Nicaragua, Portugal, Spain, USA, Thailand and UK. Food protests have occurred in Bangladesh, Egypt, Haiti, and Pakistan. In Haiti, a government has fallen due to riots. The majority of this unrest has emerged “spontaneously”, apparently not organized by existing grassroots “political” or “ activist”  organizations.  

It is very likely that the legitimacy of official existing power structures will continue to crumble further and faster in the near future as prices continue to rise. This presents emancipatory movements with enormous opportunities but also with big dangers. While opening up space for massive numbers of people to participate in the long term process of collectively constructing new, and hopefully, liberatory social relations at the global level, it also opens up space for ideas and practices based on a coercive politics of fear, divisions and scapegoating. Should organized emancipatory movements fail to adequately respond, there will be very far reaching effects, not least resulting in these movements becoming irrelevant. Of particular importance here are global anti-capitalist networks.

Contemporary Global Anti-capitalist Networks
 
In the last 10 years, decentralized processes of global communication and coordination between struggles in different parts of the world have played a crucial role in throwing global capitalist institutions such as the World Bank, World Trade Organization, and, more recently, the War on Terror into a crisis of legitimacy. As this article is being completed, big protests are underway in Japan against the G8 summit. The lasting importance of these networks can be seen in the following. The World Trade Organization negotiations are virtually dead, as is the Free Trade Area of the Americas. The EU Constitution died an unglamorous death, and it appears that its successor may go down a similar road, and (perhaps the crowning, but scarcely known achievement) the World Bank/International Monetary Fund are on the verge of bankruptcy. In particular, the following organizational processes have played an important part in this world-wide circulation of struggles: Peoples’ Global Action, World Social Forum, Indymedia, Via Campésina, and various global initiatives around the Zapatista Intergalactic Encuentros. This level of coordination, communication, circulation, as well as sheer inspirational power, amongst struggles worldwide was simply unimaginable scarcely 15 years ago. International networking of struggles are strong processes, very strong.

Rather than going into a detailed history of the emergence of these movements in the last decade and a half,  let us instead remember that global anti-capitalist resistance is far from a new phenomenon. We are standing on the shoulders of an abundant history of international struggle. From the pirates, slaves and sailors of the Atlantic world in construction, to the waves of revolution in the USA, Haiti and France in the late 18th Century; to the European revolutions of 1848 (also the year of the first major women’s rights meeting in the US);  to the simultaneous calls for an 8-hour work day in Europe and the USA in 1864, to the cluster of revolutions which swept the world after World War One and the Russian revolution. From the linking of Black American struggles in Detroit to resistance against Mussolini’s invasion of  Ethiopia, to the internationalism of the Spanish revolutionary civil war. From Pan-African anti-imperialism to the anti-nuclear struggles that helped bringing down the Cold War. From the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Internationals to the Non-aligned Movement, the Tri-continental and the Cuban revolution’s solidarity with African liberation struggles. From the distribution of  Joe Hill’s ashes at an international workers’ gathering after his execution in 1915, to the international campaign to save the Scottsborough Boys from racist lynching in the 1930s. From the 1919 Baku Congress of Peoples of the East, to the exile of Robert Williams in Cuba and China, following his use of armed self defense against the Ku Klux Klan…The circulation of struggles continues today…and these histories will continue to give much inspiration and many lessons to the tough struggles of the future.

Yet, while acknowledging the great strength and novelty of today’s processes, it seems they may also be reaching the limits of their efficacy. The February 15th anti-war actions showed high levels of organizational capacity for globally coordinated protest. They also revealed the inability to go beyond protest. A number of bottlenecks exist in global resistance processes that hinder such a move. These include the fact that organizational process still often center on individuals, the fact that direct South-South communication and exchange is prohibitively expensive and often still functions via Northern intermediaries, uneven distribution of resources such as computer infrastructures, and the fact that the creation of alternative relations that go beyond information and communication flows really requires substantial material resources that are beyond the current capacity of movements to mobilize. Furthermore, key areas of the world are unequally included in global networks, especially Arab countries, as well as (to a lesser degree) Eastern Europe and Africa.  

Beyond Protest: Building New Relations of (re)production, Exchange and Livelihoods

Global networks are, nonetheless, in a very good position to go beyond the limits of protest and denunciation, by collectively redefining processes of revolutionary transformation rooted in the construction of decentralized and autonomous local alternatives. In many parts of the world, including Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, parts of India, etc, such processes are already underway at the local or national level. The global networks mentioned above, and others which may emerge in the coming period, can play an important role in ensuring that such local struggles have the maximum transformatory effect possible on the world-economy as a whole and that their effects are felt beyond specific locations. This is important, since, in an increasingly globalized world, now more than ever the idea of Socialism in One Country, or any modern day reincarnation of this, seems a highly unlikely possibility. Illustrative of this are the difficulties and limitations which the important national transformation that have taken place in both Bolivia and Chiapas are currently facing (especially due to repression and a resurgent right wing agenda), local manifestations of a crisis of viability at the global level. It is world-revolution or nothing.

Global networks have always emphasized the importance of simultaneously resisting structures of domination and creating alternatives from below, and the local struggles that comprise of the networks are firmly rooted in struggles to do precisely this. An important debate, and range of practice, has emerged in this context, especially around the question as to whether the nation state is a vehicle for emancipatory change or whether it is an obstacle to these processes, itself being simply another form of domination. At the local level, this is exemplified most clearly in the different organizational and strategic approaches taken by the Zapatista revolution in Chiapas, the Bolivarian revolution of Chavez in Venezuela, and the Movement Towards Socialism led by Evo Morales in Bolivia. At the worldwide level, these two approaches are best exemplified in the two nascent, but important, movement building statements issued in the last couple years: the (non-state centric) Zapatista 6th Declaration, and the (state-centric) Bamako Appeal, which was issued by and is supported by certain sectors within the World Social Forum process.

In times of inflation, it becomes harder to survive on wages. The key challenges to human well being are how will people sustain themselves in the future? How will global inequalities be addressed? Where do rights come from?

There can only be one appropriate struggle in the face of inflation: resisting commodification at the point of production and consumption, especially in food, land and energy, three areas which are basic to the reproduction of human life. While certain gains may be made through lobbying governments for price freezes or wage rises, and it will also be crucial to resist austerity measures on public and welfare oriented services, results will only be limited as long as the social relations which keep people dependent on the commodity form in the first place continue to exist. In other words, there is an urgent need to break this set of social relation. This entails overcoming the forced separation that exists between people and their means of subsistence, which forces people to be dependent on the wage (and its associated and subordinate forms of unwaged labor). This means creating relations of (re)production, exchange and livelihoods that satisfy human needs rather than the profit needs of the market, money and waged labor. In other words, there is an urgent need to struggle for far reaching land reform, commonly owned means of (re)production, and non-profit food, land and energy and the decommodification of these sectors. Rioting and looting are indisputably a part of this process.

Possible Moments in an Ongoing Conversation of Resistance

I will close this article by pointing to three contemporary global initiatives that may be useful moments to collectively deepen this discussion and prepare actions based on these long term perspectives. These are a) the Zapatista 6th Declaration and the Intergalactica process it proposes, b) the statement issued by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) 2008 Civil Society Statement on the World Food Emergency: No More “Failures-as Usual”! and c) the upcoming grassroots mobilizations which will take place during the  UN climate change talks, COP 15, which will take place in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Zapatista 6th Declaration, issued in 2005, is a far reaching invitation for people to participate in a collective process of constructing new material relations between people throughout the world, seeking to go beyond the nation state and world-market. It is a call from Below and to the Left. The process, while slow in developing, has already had an important global resonance. In Chiapas the Zapatistas have already hosted three meetings of the Zapatista Peoples With the Peoples of the World (the last one an all women’s meeting), as well as an Indigenous Peoples of the Americas gathering.  While no date or location has been set for the fabled Intergalactica meeting called for in the Declaration, and while the Zapatistas are facing an intensification of state repression against them, the global process set forth is nonetheless a potentially very powerful vehicle for launching a long term process of constructing new world-wide social relations.  

The IPC statement calls for the prosecution of food speculators at the International Court of Justice. Though appealing to the goodwill of existing power structures to implement benign reforms (a process that has limited chances of success), the demand is nonetheless a confrontational one and highlights the crucial question of justice for speculators in times of inflation. And, though gentler in tone, the proposal is reminiscent of revolutionary ghosts of the past. For better or worse, after the Russian Revolution food speculators, the predecessors of today’s corporate agri-business criminals, were unceremoniously shot in the early days of the revolution. A grim reminder of the issues at stake…

Finally, to Copenhagen. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is expected result in a replacement for the Kyoto protocol and set the global framework to fight climate change. It will be one of the highest-profile global media shows ever, by which the governments will try to convince us that they are doing something about the multiple crises facing us. It will also be a moment in which the future energy system of the world is up for discussion, or at least being discussed. Energy is a key means of production and reproduction, both for capitalist relations and for non-capitalist relations. As such, there is a key struggle for who controls it. If a transition to renewable energy is about to occur, this means that much of the world’s productive infrastructure will be replaced in the coming years. The struggle for control of this process is an open process, since it hasn’t happened yet. The struggle hasn’t yet been lost, since the infrastructure hasn’t yet been built and appropriated. Hence, Copenhagen can offer an important moment for positing the theme of non-commodified and commonly owned energy infrastructures, services and resources and for generating debate on this theme, both amongst anti-capitalist activists and also within the renewable energy sector itself.

And so, as prices of life’s basic needs go up each day, the clock is ticking. Are we ready or not ?

References cited
Caffentzis, George 2008 Starvation Politics: From Ancient Egypt to the Present in Turbulence 2 (forthcoming, August 2008)

Cleaver, Harry 1977 Food, Famine and International Crisis in Zerowork 2.
Available at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/357Lcleaverfood.pdf

Cleaver, Harry 1979 Reading Capital Politically Harvester Press, Brighton
Available at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/357krcp.html

Hackett Fischer, David 1996 The Great Wave: Price Revolutions, and the Rhythm of History Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York

Mattick, Paul 1978 Economics, Politics, and the Age of Inflation Merlin Press, London

Midnight Notes 1979 Strange Victories: The Anti-nuclear Movement in the US and Europe Volume 1, Number 1

International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) 2008 Civil Society Statement on the World Food Emergency: No More “Failures-as Usual”! Available at: http://www.nyeleni.eu/foodemergency/CSOdraftStatement-English.pdf

Ramirez, Bruno (1975) Self-reduction of Prices in Italy reprinted in Midnight Notes 1992 Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War, 1973-1992 (Autonomedia, New York)