by SIMON HARDY
Yes, it’s kicking off everywhere.
Over the last 18 months we have seen a sea change in resistance and popular consciousness. The Arab Spring has put revolution back on the agenda of global politics.
In Britain, we’ve seen the occupation of Millbank and student revolt, the huge TUC March and now the massive N30 strike.
I write as an activist who first came into radical politics in the early 2000s during the last wave of radical, anticapitalist mobilisation that put G8 summits under the siege of popular protest.
The anticapitalist and subsequent anti war mobilisations of those times were electrifying. But they did not create a new mass anticapitalist organisation that could challenge the power of the warmongers nor did they stop the wars by mass action.
Whilst the new spirit of revolt is certainly exciting for the possibilities that it opens up for radical shift to the left across Britain, it would be a missed opportunity if we simply participated in the new movements without exploring new avenues for unity, new forms of organisation, that might help us finally overcome years of decline and division.
The fear that many of us have is that without transforming the militancy and energy into a lasting political organisation we won’t realise the promise of the hour.
And the threat posed by this government and the Labour party is very real – within a couple of years the NHS will be privatised, pensions slashed, benefits dramatically reduced, structural unemployment will return to the economy and the clock on civil liberties is being turned generations.
For the radical left the challenge of this moment is enormous.
Here are ten reasons why I believe we need to form a new anticapitalist organisation in Britain.
1. To challenge Capitalist Realism
Mark Fisher has called it Capitalist Realism: “the widespread belief that there is no alternative to capitalism”, a logic that resides “in the institutional practices of workplaces and the media as well as… the heads of individuals”.
Even in the face of the biggest capitalist crisis for generations sometimes the most radical movements get caught in the logic of merely promoting reform or taming the system’s worst excesses.
The world recession has opened the possibility to renew an alternative vision of the left, but it is only a possibility. Defeats can cause demoralisation and pessimism just as victories embolden and broaden horizons. Everything rests on the ability of the left to articulate not just what kind of resistance we need, but what kind of society can come after the IMF and Goldman Sachs are overthrown, and –crucially – how to connect the one to the other, to create a realistic challenge to the existing order from the protests and resistance movements of today.
2. From a culture of resistance, to a challenge to capitalism
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