We are Everywhere - the irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism, edited by Notes from Nowhere (Verso, £10.99)
This book looks and feels good: like a thin brick, which fits nicely into the palm of a hand. It's glossy, trendy, decked out with lots of photos from ten years of anti-capitalist protests. I suspect the editors would like it if after the book has been read it is thrown at a figure of authority.
The book is an anarchist tract. A sophisticated, thoroughgoing anarchist work, worth reading.
When the editors claim to be presenting a "collision of subjectivities", rather than "one dominant political voice, one dogma, one party line" - they are doing their readers a disservice by assuming we are simple and can't tell it has a political line. At the same time, they are, ironically, acting a bit their idea of the "Leninist" people they dislike. Every one of the many short articles has been carefully selected and edited. These "subjectivities" seem generally rather similar.
The brand of anarchism here is "Zapatista", dating the emergence of global anti-capitalism from which the Zapatista rising began in an underdeveloped region of Mexico, Chiapas, on 1 January 1994. The editors' aim is to advocate the taking of "liberated, autonomous space" and the "realisation of the village republic". Power should be "built without being taken". In other words: build a "space" apart from capitalist society, lampoon and condemn the capitalists, but leave them in overall power.
The photos match the text: pulling down fences, confronting coppers, riots, peasant movements. We are told here that the squatters, refugees and young drop-outs in the west have found something in common with the movements of indigenous peoples and landless peasants of the Third World. What these people have in common is hatred of the state - for these groups the state is a more important enemy than the factory bosses. That fact shapes their politics.
This anarchism celebrates "the intimacy, subjectivity and diversity" of the recent anti-capitalist gatherings and campaigns. It advocates direct action, "not [by] a homogenised band of the revolutionary proletariat, but [by] a diverse band of marginal people: vagabonds, sweatshop workers, indigenous peoples, illegal immigrants, squatters, intellectuals, factory workers, tree-sitters, and peasants."
But where is the voice of trade unionists, factory and sweatshop workers? The absence of that voice radically affects the meaning of the text. It slants the picture of particular mobilisations. For example, in the pieces dealing with Seattle blockade of the WTO in late 1999 there is no sense that the protests were partly a result of AFL-CIO union mobilisations.
In addition, whole chapters of struggle are ignored. If we are to date the new anti-capitalism from the start of 1994 then the important mass union-led strikes in France, at the end of 1995, which (for a while) stopped the right-wing's "Juppé plan" of budget cuts must be part of the picture. They were one of the most important events of the 1990s. But they do not figure here because the face of trade union militancy doesn't fit the collective view. The same is true of all electoral struggles. And there is not a proper sense of what we are fighting for inside our "autonomous spaces".
There's no room for the voice of "traditional" trade unionists and socialists - a number of the articles contain little asides directed at "stinking splinter factions". No-one is to be allowed to "collide" with their "subjectivities". While Naomi Klein is right, in her introduction, to say that this book "captures the exuberant activity" in the new protest movements, it should be understood that this is only one strand in the new anti-capitalism. And one which, seemingly, doesn't want to critically engage with the others, or even acknowledge our presence.
That said, this strand of the anti-capitalist mobilisations (there is no real global movement yet) is important. The "mood" expressed in this book (this political "tendency" or leaning) should be understood, related to and learnt from.
Many of the short stories here are funny, interesting and thought-provoking. The story of the taxi drivers' strike in Seattle is useful - I didn't know how it came about. The comments of a middle class student anti-sweatshop activist are genuinely interesting. The Reclaim the Streets occupation of the M41 motorway is exciting and very impressive. To take 3,000 people and occupy a motorway under the noses of the riot police before stopping the traffic and holding a rave, is quite something. The Yes Men's story of giving spoof lectures to unsuspecting audiences of top capitalists is witty.
The humour, activity and energy of this movement bursts out of the book. It is an antidote to cynicism. It is something to lift us all: get up! do it! I agree with the spirit of the book and I rather enjoyed it.
Score: 6/10
Reviewer: Dan Katz
