By Nico Rahim

Over the past few years there have been more protests than in any other time since the 1960s.  The US has seen anti-war, pro-choice, and most recently pro-immigrant demonstrations.  France has seen minority up-risings in its neglected banlieuse and large student-worker protests against Villepin’s CPE.  Buenos Aires, Beirut, Haiti, Chiapas, and many other cities have seen citizens express their discontent by taking to the streets.  WTO ministerials from Seattle and Mexico City to Hong Kong have all taken place under heavy protest from with many diverse groups and peoples standing up against globalization.

Unfortunately, most of these protests are like using a bucket to remove water from a sinking ship, fighting manifestations that arise from the same source—the current state of global capitalism.  We need to stop attacking the manifestations and start attacking the source. 

Get passionate.  Get fired up.  Hit the streets.  Newton’s law of inertia holds true for society, an object in motion will stay in motion unless an outside force acts upon it.  We must act upon it, but we must not change its direction, we must bring it to a halt.  Most protests the world has seen in the past few years are uprisings from within the scope of global capitalism.  We must act upon global capitalism with an outside force, with theory and practical measures that are of a new paradigm—that are of Economic Democracy.

Protesting means we are losing.  We must not stop fighting the small battles, but we must recognize that they are small battles within a larger War.  At this point the Left has very little strategy for this War, for we have yet to create a counterproject that is beyond the auspices of global capitalism.  Understand, there is an object outside of global capitalism, if and only if we create it.  We must understand that the Iraq war is necessary for global capitalism to function correctly; that the CPE was necessary for France to stay competitive in a neoliberal global economic climate.

We can do better.