In early June of 2007 (06-08.06 to be precise), the leaders of the G8 nations will meet in Heiligendamm, Germany. Behind an 12 kilometer long fence and protected by thousands upon thousands of soldiers and police officers, they will intend to provide an image of transparency and accountability to the current social, political, and economic world model.
The farce inside the summit will prompt an equally sad farce on the outside. A veritable sea of NGOs, trade unions, parties, personalities, and reformist organizations will gather outside and decry the lack of transparency. They will talk about debt relief for the third world, about building a European social alternative to the “bad” neo-liberal vision of capitalism. But above all, they will demand a “seat at the table,” in order to better manage misery and exploitation. In short, to build “capitalism with a smiling face.”
Yet we, anti-statists and revolutionaries of all stripes, will be converging in Northern Germany for a different reason...
We are not interested in a place at the table of capitalism, or in providing a human face for what we know to be an inherently flawed system. We know that there can be no “better life” in a nightmarish reality. Our vision is different. It is one of a society based on mutual aid and solidarity, where people are not robbed of the fruits of their labor, and where decisions that affect the whole of society are made by the whole of society, rather than by a select few. We are interested in nothing less than the destruction of the “table of capitalism”.
Global events such as the G8 summit, while purely symbolic in their nature, are our chance to show that we will not sit idly by as capitalism wages a constant war on all of us. The insurrectional moments that marked the mobilizations in Amsterdam, Prague, Seattle, Napoli, Quebec City, Genoa, or Thessaloniki are only icons of the constant clashes that constitute the global social and class war. When the suburbs of the French metropoles burn, when around the world entire neighborhoods become ungovernable, is when the contradictions of this system expose themselves in the form of social ruptures. It is the role of leftists and anti-authoritarians to intervene in these scenarios, attempting to give them a progressive and revolutionary character. Day in and day out, this struggle is given concrete shape, be it in the form of demonstrations, militant actions, or other forms of expression.
In North America with the burnt properties of those who seek to destroy the earth for their own benefit; in workers and students uprisings in Santiago, Buenos Aires, and La Paz; or in Northern Europe where youths revolt in the streets of Copenhagen to preserve their right to envision a different existence.
It is the same war waged inside and outside of the prisons, against the extermination programs for political prisoners (the white cells of Turkey, the FIES regime in the Spanish State) and for the liberation of RAF and Action Directe prisoners; of hunger striking imprisoned anarchists comrades in Greece; of Indigenous and Black liberation prisoners in the USA; of all imprisoned anarchists and revolutionaries...It is the war that rages in the modern metropoles from Paris to Athens, between those excluded and those incorporated, between youth and police. It is not always fought as we envisioned it, but it is nonetheless the sign of the coming social rupture. The job of the revolutionary left is to always expose and widen the rupture!
The G8 summit is indeed only a symbol, a personified image for the abstract social and economic model. In short, it is a theatrical message. Yet a message is precisely what we plan to give them! We come from different political and social backgrounds, with different experiences and perspectives as well as tactical outlooks. Yet this summit is a chance to band together with comrades from far away, build contacts and networks, and in the process, make good use of another opportunity to show the G8 leaders and the world the force of class anger. We are truly the ungovernable force, and no fence can stop us!
No Other World is Possible with Capitalism!
Make Capitalism History!
Block the G8 Summit, By Any Means Necessary!
[http://fight-g8.de.vu]