Dear Trevor Ngwane, Martin Leggasick, and other respondents to Trevor or myself:

This is a long-delayed reply to an exchange on Debate which I only now discover, happily, has been also carried by AMANDLA. Part of my happiness is due to having lost some months of my Debate email, including that exchange. Which is why my subject line actually refers to that of the hopefully on-going one on AMANDLA.

I am addressing this to all the above, and to other Debate/AMANDLA readers so as to surpass the polemical tone of my exchange with Martin and to try to address myself to the issues concerned. If I nonetheless refer primarily to Martin (directly or indirectly) this will be because I consider it representative of much Left thinking of the Marxist-Leninist tradition and has been the most substantial response to my position.3

First of all an unconditional apology to Martin for having indeed engaged in caricature in my response to him. I permitted myself to be provoked by his unargued dismissal of my Globalisation, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms book. If anything, I should have simply pointed out that it WAS unargued or even have asked him to spell out his criticism.

Class, party, state, revolution, working-class power, working-class internationalism

Despite Martin’s occasional concessions or qualifications on one or more of the above terms, he is still working within the discourse of Marx and Lenin, as laid down earlier phases of capitalism, 100-180 years ago. He is right in complaining of my failure to specify on the state. Let me do so, at least briefly.

For global social emancipation today the problem is not only with the capitalist state but with the state as /alienated, concentrated and reified power/. Despite moments or periods or instances of working-class or popular power immediately following revolutions (including, impressively, workers councils following the Iranian Revolution), Marxist-Leninist led or inspired revolutions have rather resulted in vastly expanded, bureaucratised, militarised, inefficient and conservative party-states SUBSTITUTING for the working class and people. These have in no way surpassed capitalism but, rather, existed alongside them, sometimes competing with them, often imitating them, sometimes reproducing pre-capitalist features.

Posing some imagined or asserted REAL working-class power, over and against ‘reformist’, ‘bureaucratised’ or other errors or distortions, still leaves us dependent on traditional M-L assumptions about the class, the party, revolution, etc.

I – and many others of the Marxist tradition – argue that we need, rather, to start to fight against the state/state-ism now, in all its emanations (schools, law, health services, military, police, education), and to recognise that this is a struggle of all the differentially alienated (women, sexual minorities, discriminated ethnicities, maginalised regions or localities). The working class(es) certainly have a crucial role, in their particular area within the capitalist political-economy, but they have no pre-ordained leading role.

Any assumptions about a REALLY revolutionary party, about a REALLY correct ideology leading a REALLY socialist revolution have to be discarded or, rather, surpassed. This is argued for by reflection on the history of such ‘revolutionary’, ‘correct’, ‘socialist’ efforts. As well as by critique of the 19th-20th century theory underlying such beliefs. And consideration of the alternative theories and activities of organisations/networks, theorists and social movements of the late-20th and early-21st centuries.

It occurs to me that much, if not all, of such rethinking as has taken place amongst those of the Marxist tradition has come through the ideas and actions of the feminist, pacifist, minority-ethnic/indigenous/ecological/human-rights/anti-state and other such movements. It is true that these have commonly ignored, dismissed or sidelined the organised working class. This has been in reaction to the working class being perceived as conservative/narrow/self-interested, or to claims (on its behalf by unions, parties or ideologues) that it is the privileged social or socialist actor.

Over the last 25 years or so the Left – or emancipatory – movement has been remade by the so-called new social movements and thinkers inspired by such, not – with exceptions – by the working-class movements or socialists. This is much to my regret, given my life-long engagement with the national and international labour movement. Because I continue to be convinced that WITHOUT a working-class identity, strategy and activity, any general movement for social emancipation cannot succeed. However, the working-class(es) make and re-make themselves, in and against the particular stage of capitalism they find themselves in. They have been radically re-made over the last 20 years or so and much original writing about this is now appearing about this.

The recognition that the ‘Marxist’ working class (industrial, urban, male, Western, unionised or unionisable) is only one category of a re-conceptualised world working class, or set of such, has fundamental implications for emancipatory theory. As does the recognition that only 10 percent of even the wage-earning working class is unionised. It means that any emancipatory statement concerning working-class consciousness, community, interest, ideology or strategy now depends on a recognition of significant differences and a dialogue between and about such. Without privileging one section, in one world area, above the others. Without dismissing one part as ‘labour aristocrats’, ‘semi-proletarianised peasants’ or ‘lumpen’.

My own contribution to the re-understanding and re-making of the international working class movement has been in the international debates, discussions and dialogues around ‘social movement unionism’ and ‘the new labour internationalism’. Both have been subject to lively discussion (the first, so far, more successfully than the second). My latest intervention has been a ‘Global Labour Charter Movement’, which I will feed in here as a hopefully fresh (to AMANDLA at least) and provocative contribution on Left strategies. Criticism and alternatives would be more than welcome.

*

NEEDED: A GLOBAL LABOUR CHARTER MOVEMENT

Peter Waterman[1]

Preamble

The idea of a Global Labour Charter Movement comes out of both desperation and hope. The desperation is due to seeing the labour movement, in North, South, East or West, /still/ on the defensive due to (despite?) the severe, multiple and continuing attacks delivered by contemporary capitalism. Not only has the union movement largely forgotten its early emancipatory inspiration and utopian hopes. Even the old adage that ‘the best means of defence is attack’ seems unfamiliar to labour’s international leadership.

The desperation/ /is due – more specifically – to the international unions’ continued attempt to /get back/ to a mythologised utopia of social harmony (the reality of which is surely responsible for labour’s current predicament). This /backward-looking /utopianism is represented in the current ‘Decent Work’ campaign http://www.decentwork.org/. DW promotes the archaic West-European paradise of ‘social partnership’ between Labour, Capital and State. It has simply hoisted this to the global level. Revealingly, DW is no sense a /union/ or /labour movement /project: it has been adopted, lock, stock and two smoking barrels, from the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation. And this is an /inter-state/ body – castigated by a former insider (Standing 2008) for /its/ multiple incapacities in the face of globalisation! DW, finally, reproduces a traditional imperial relationship, since it is being promoted by the West to the Rest. Its sponsors and funders are West European social-reformist unions and NGOs…plus the /neo-liberal/ European Union!

Hope comes from seeing new energy and vision within the global justice and solidarity movement (GJ&SM), for example in the international rural labour movement, Via Campesina. Despite all the imaginable difficulties confronting the self-organisation of rural labour, this body has developed a holistic vision of its social position, of its enemies, of an alternative future. It has demonstrated assertive global strategies and sophisticated relational practices (internal and external) that have made it a leading actor in the GJ&SM and led to widespread public recognition and support (Desmarais 2007). Hope also comes from signs of assertion and innovation closer to the traditional labour movement, and from new thinking within and about such (Fletcher Jr and Gapasin 2008, Gallin 2003, Huws 2008, Ince 2007, Bieler, Lindberg and Pillay 2008, Webster, Lambert and Bezuidenhout 2008). As well as from efforts to specify a necessary and desirable post-capitalist utopia – and how it might be reached. (Networked Politics 2008, Adamovsky 2005, 2007, Dwyer-Witheford 2007, Sousa Santos 2006-7, Spannos 2008).

Propositions

1. The *idea *of a GLCM is to develop a charter, declaration or manifesto on labour, relevant to /all/ working people, under the conditions of a radically transformed and highly aggressive capitalism, neo-liberalised, networked and globalised.

2. The proposing of such a charter has, however, been *provoked *by a couple of other international labour declarations (Bamako Appeal 2006, Labour Platform for the Americas 2006). A common limitation of these otherwise very different documents is that they were initially produced and issued for acceptance or/ /endorsement, by union leaderships or intellectual elites, without previous discussion by union members, shopfloor or community activists themselves. The GLC project is, however, also inspired by a women’s one, the Women’s Global Charter for Humanity (2004), produced after worldwide discussion by one of the newest mobilising social movements. (Verdière 2006, Conway 2007).

3. In so far as the GLC project is addressed to *the emancipation of life from work* (work here meaning labour for capital and state, empire and patriarchy), it implies /articulating/ (both joining and expressing) labour struggles with those of other oppressed and exploited social categories, people and peoples – particularly those previously unrecognised workers, women and peasants/farmers. The existence of the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement (GJ&SM), best known through the World Social Forum (WSF) process, makes such articulation increasingly possible.

4. Its title could be the *‘Global Labour Charter Movement’* (or GLCM21). ‘Charter’ reminds us of one of the earliest radical-democratic labour-popular movements of industrial capitalism, the British Chartists (Thompson 1984) ‘Movement’ reminds us that the development of such a declaration is a process and requires the self-mobilisation of workers.

5. Such a process needs to reveal its* origins and debts*. These are not only to early labour history. They are also to the new forms of labour self-organisation (by, within and beyond unions), to the shopfloor, urban and rural labour networks (local, national, international), to the pro-labour NGOs (labour service organisations), and to a growing wave of labour education, to (electronic) communication and to research responding to the global crisis of the labour movement.

6. The novel principle of such a charter should be its conception as a *virtuous spiral* – that it be thought of not as a single, correct, final declaration, which workers, peoples and other people simply /endorse/ (though endorsement could be part of the process), as for its processal, dialogical and developing nature. This notion would allow for it to be begun, paused and joined at any point. Such a process would require at least the following elements: information/communication, education, dialogue, (re-) formulation, action, evaluation.

7. It is the existence of *cyberspace* (the internet, the web, online audio-visuals) that makes such a Global Labour Charter for the first time conceivable. We have here not simply a new communications technology but the possibility for developing non-hierarchical, dialogical, equal relations worldwide. The process will be computer-based because of the web’s built-in characteristics of feedback, its worldwide reach, its low and decreasing cost. An increasing number of workers and activists are in computerised work, are familiar with information and communication technology and have web skills. Given, however, uneven worker computer access, such a process must also be intensely local, imply and empower outreach, using the communication methods appropriate to particular kinds of labour and each specific locale. (See: Networked Politics 2008).

8. * Networking* can and must ensure that any initiators or coordinators do not become permanent leaders or controllers. There is a growing international body of fulltime organisers and volunteer activists, both within and beyond the traditional inter/national unions, experienced in the GJ&SM, who could provide the initial nodes in such a network. Networking also, however, allows for there to be various such labour charters, in dialogue with each other. Such dialogue should be considered a normal and even necessary part of the process and avoid the authority, dependency or passivity associated with traditional manifestos. (See, again, Networked Politics).

9. If this proposal assumes the *crisis* of the traditional trade unions, it should be clear that it simultaneously represents an *opportunity* for them. This is for a reinvention of the /form/ of labour ‘self-articulation’, as has occurred more than once in the history of capitalism (from guilds to craft unions, from craft to inter/national industrial unions). By abandoning what is an increasingly imaginary power, centrality or privilege, unions could simultaneously reinvent themselves and become a necessary and significant part of a movement for social emancipation worldwide. The form or forms of such a reinvention will emerge precisely out of a continuing dialogue, the dialectic between organisational and networking activities.

10. Starting with the first edition(s) of any GLC, there could develop globally-agreed demands and campaigns, with these having *emancipatory implications* (arguably subversive, empowering, socially transformatory) for those involved. Rather than increasing their dependence on capital, state, nation, patriarchy, empire, any GLC must increase their solidarity with other popular and radically-democratic sectors/movements.

11. Any such campaigns must, however, be seen as not carved in stone but as collective experiments, to be collectively evaluated. They should therefore be dependent on collective self-activity, implying global solidarity, as with the international 19th century campaign (never universally implemented) for the eight-hour day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day. There is *a *wide range of* imaginable issues* (of which the following are hypothetical examples, in no necessary order of priority):

• A Six-Hour Day, A Five-Day Week, A 48-Week Year, thus distributing available work more widely, reducing overwork (see http://www.swt.org/).
• Global Labour Rights, including the right to strike and inter/national solidarity action, but first /consulting/ workers – including migrants, precarious workers, unpaid carers (‘housewives’), the self-employed, the unemployed – on their priorities; and secondly by prioritising collective struggles and creative activity over leadership lobbying. http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/ international_labor_right/2006 11/about_this_blog.html .
• A Global Basic Income Grant, independent of any obligation to work, and asserting the right to life over the obligation to work http://www.basicincome.org bien/aboutbasicincome.html.
• A Centennial Reinvention of the ILO in 2019, raising labour representation from 25 to 50 percent, and simultaneously sharing the raised percentage with non-unionised workers (Standing 2008);
• A Global Campaign for Useful Work, reaching beyond conditions of, or at work (‘Decent Work’) to deal with useful production, socially-responsible consumption, environmental sustainability/restoration (Morris 2008, http://libcom.org/history/1976-the-fight-for-useful-work-at-lucas-aerospace.
• All in Common, a campaign for the defence and extension of forms of common ownership and control (thus challenging both the privatisation process and capitalist ownership in general), http://turbulence.org.uk/ turbulence-1/commonism/ , ;
• A reinvention of Mayday as a Global Labour and Social Movements Solidarity Day (consider the innovations introduced by precarious workers in Europe and by immigrant labour in the USA) http://www.euromayday.org/about.php, http://www.mayday2007.org/;
• Support to the principle of Solidarity Economics and the practice of the Solidarity Economy, i.e. production, distribution, exchange that surpasses the competitive, divisory, hierarchical, growth-fixated, wasteful, polluting, destructive principles of    capitalism. (Miller 2006, Mance 2007)
• A Global Emancipation of Labour Forum, as part of, or complementing, the World Social Forum, an assembly open to all working people, organizations, intellectuals/artists and movements, organised autonomously from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and the Global Unions. If not in a geographical place then in cyberspace. (Reese and Chase-Dunn 2008.
• A website/portal coordinating information and ideas oriented toward the emancipation of labour, covering research, education, audio-visuals, and other resources; to have such a title as ‘The Global Labour Charter’, ‘The Global Emancipation of Labour’,    ‘Moving Labour Globally’; to be open to sponsorship but autonomous of all organisations and ideologies; open on equal footing to all; to have a preferential option for globally marginalised workers and regions; to have a transformatory purpose and be open in governance and operation. (Compare here: Choike, Global Labour Strategies, New Unionism, E-Library for Social Transformation, Union Renewal, Rebelión, etc).
• * · [Fill at will. Or propose your own Global Labour Charter!]

12. This proposal is clearly marked by its origin, in terms of its author’s ‘subject position’, place of birth/residence, age, language, etc. It is, however, issued under the principle of CopyLeft. It can therefore be adapted, replaced, challenged, rejected and, obviously, ignored. Its only requirement (or hope) is that it be discussed.

REFERENCES/RESOURCES

Adamovsky, Ezequiel. 2005. ‘Diez diferencias entre la Izquierda tradicional y el nuevo anticapitalismo’ (Ten Differences between the Traditional Left and the New Anti-capitalism), in /Anticapitalismo para principiantes: La nueva generación de movimientos emancipatorios/. Buenos Aires: Era Naciente.

Bamako Appeal. 2006. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bamako.html

Bieler, Andreas, Ingemar Lindberg and Devan Pillay (eds). 2008. /Labour and the Challenges of Globalization : What Prospects for International Solidarity/. London: Pluto.

Choike – Global Labour Rights: http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1872.html

Conway, Janet. 2007. ‘Transnational Feminisms and the World Social Forum: Encounters and Transformations in Anti-Globalisation Spaces’. /Journal of International Women//’//s Studies/ Vol. 8 No. 3. Pp. ????.

Desmarais, Annette. 2007. /La Via Campesina: Globalisation and the Power of Peasants/. London: Pluto Press. http://www.openspaceforum.net/twiki/tiki-read_article. php?articleId=440 , http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Waterman% 20 international %20labour.pdf .

Dwyer-Witheford, Nick. 2007. ‘Commonism’, /Turbulence: Ideas for Movement/, No. 1. http://turbulence.org.uk/turb_june2007.htmlexternal link

E-Library for Social Transformation: http://www.openelibrary.info/main.php

Fletcher, Bill Jr. and Fernando Gapasin. 2008. /Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organised Labour and a New Path Toward Social Justice/. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gallin, Dan. 2003. ‘Note on the International Sex Workers’ Movement’. _http://www. globallabour.info/en/2007/09/note_on_the_international_sex.html._

Global Labour Strategies. 2008. ‘Labour’s Dead: Long Live Labour! _http://labor strategies.blogs.com/global_labor_strategies/2008/08/it-has-been-dec.html#more. _

Global Labour Strategies: http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/

Huws, Ursula (ed). 2008. /Break or Weld? Trade Union Responses to Global Value Chain Restructuring./ London: Merlin Press. __

Ince, Anthony. 2007. ‘Beyond ‘Social Movement Unionism’? Understanding and Assessing New Wave Labour Movement Organising’, http://uin.org.uk/ content/view/244/125/

Labour’s Platform for the Americas. 2006. http://www.gpn.org/research/ orit2005/index.html .

Linden, Marcel van der. 2008. /Workers of the World: Essays toward a Global Labor History/. Leiden: Brill.

Mance, Euclides André. 2007. ‘Solidarity Economics’. http://turbulence. org.uk/turbulence-1/solidarity-economics/.

Miller, Ethan. 2006. ‘Other Economies are Possible!’, http://www.zmag.org/znet/view Article/3239

Networked Politics. 2008. ‘A Contribution to the WSF Strategy Consultation from the Discussions of ‘Networked Politics. Review on the Networked Politics Discussions in the Light of the reflection on the WSF strategy. Contribution to the Debate on WSF Future at the International Council of the WSF (March 2008). http://www.networked-politics.info/where-we-are/.

New Unionism: http://www.newunionism.net/

Rebelión: http://www.rebelion.org/

Reese, Ellen. and Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 2008. ‘Labor Activists and the World Social Forum: Challenging Neoliberalism, Building International Labor Solidarity, and Strengthening Labor-Community Alliances’. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA’s 49th Annual Convention, Bridging Multiple Divides, Hilton San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA, http://www.allacademic.com/ meta/p251059_index.html .

Sousa Santos, Boaventura de. (Ed). 2006-7. /Reinventing Social Emancipation: Towards New Manifestos/. London: Verso. 4 Volumes. http://www.versobooks.com/books/ cdef/d-titles/de_sousa_production.shtml

Spannos, Chris (Ed). 2008. /Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century/. Chicago: AK Press.

Standing, Guy. ‘The ILO: An Agency for Globalisation?’, /Development and Change/, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 355-84.

Thompson, Dorothy. 1984. The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution. New York: Pantheon.

Union Renewal: http://unionrenewal.blogspot.com/

Verdière, Brigitte. 2006. ‘Elaboration of the [Women’s Global] Charter’ (Personal Communication, May 15).

Webster, Eddie, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout. 2008. /Grounding Globalisation: Labour in the Age of Insecurity/. Oxford: Blackwell.

Women’s Global Charter for Humanity. 2004. http://www.worldmarch ofwomen.org/qui_nous_sommes/charte/en

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[1] Peter Waterman (London 1936), worked for the international Communist movement in the 1950s and ‘60s. Through the 1970s-90s, he was a left academic-activist on labour and social movements. In the late-1980s he initiated the international debate on ‘social movement unionism’. Now retired, he writes on international labour, the WSF and the global justice and solidarity movement. He is published widely, in English and other languages, in print and on the web. This Charter was first floated in 2005. It has been published in labour publications in South Africa and Colombia as well as on websites in Europe and the US. The present version has been updated and provided with an extensive list of references and resources.