Anti-capitalist movement: what does the black bloc stand for?
Workers Power Global, London

Interwoven with the history of the anti-capitalist movement is the history of the black bloc. The black bloc first came to international prominence on 30 November 1999 at the protest against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, USA, though its appearance on demonstrations earlier than then should be recognised.

According to the black bloc's own website: "A black bloc is a collection of anarchists and anarchist affinity groups that get together for a particular protest action. The flavour of the black bloc changes from action to action, but the main goals are to provide solidarity in the face of a repressive police state and to convey an anarchist critique of whatever is being protested that day. Some people are under the mistaken impression that one can join the 'black bloc organisation'. There is no standing black bloc organisation between protests ... You can think of the black bloc as just a temporary collection of anarchists that represent a contingent in a protest march."

The black bloc's distinctiveness is that all the participants dress in black and mask up to conceal their identity from the police and to facilitate attacks on the police lines and property - usually banks, McDonalds, Starbucks and Nike.

The black bloc never participates in wider organising or mobilising committees. It wasn't involved in INPEG for the Prague S26 action, nor in the Gothenburg Globalisation from Below collective last summer, nor in the Genoa Social Forum. By absenting itself from these wider forums, it retains the freedom to do exactly what it wants, without being accountable to any wider campaigns or forces.

For 18 months after Seattle the capitalists and their international organisations like the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Federation and the WTO felt under siege. They could not meet or conclude their gatherings without being attacked. The Seattle meeting of the WTO was abandoned, the World Bank/IMF meeting in Prague, September 2000 was also cut short. Fear led to cancellations of or massive fences being erected around the meetings of rich and powerful.

The media presented all of this as the result of the black bloc. This was wide of the mark, though clearly the black bloc played an important role in these battles. But the coverage meant that the black bloc attracted some of the most militant anti-capitalist youth. As an anonymous contributor to On Fire, a recent publication of eyewitness accounts from Genoa, many of which are written by members of the black bloc, says:

"One of the best things had been simply spending five days in Genoa living politics, meeting people, Discussing ideas, just being there, smelling the tear-gas, feeling the adrenalin, watching the banks burn, being part of a militant and huge gathering ... and lastly a feeling that we are at the centre of what is rising, not at the fringe of what is dying."

Of course, not only those in the black bloc have felt these emotions. Nor was the black bloc alone in inspiring fear among the capitalists, taking on the police and attacking palaces where the globalisers gathered. Many thousands of reds (trade unionists, socialists, Trotskyists and communists), whites (Ya Basta, Wombles) and pinks (Reclaim the Streets, Peoples Global Action) have also heroically fought the police, torn down fences and liberated fellow protesters.

At two of the most successful offensive demonstrations against global capitalism the black bloc were largely absent. In Melbourne, September 2000, two days of vicious street fighting led by the organised ranks of militant trade unionists led to the successful surrounding of the WTF's conference centre - only a third of the delegates got in, and they had to use helicopters!

And in Naples in March 2001, the white overalls successfully engaged the police in a mass confrontation. Nevertheless, the capitalist media and police have chosen to present the black bloc as the "dangerous" wing of the anti-capitalist movement, and the black bloc has grown as a result of this notoriety.

The price for its success has been that the state has wised up. Sometime early last year an international meeting of police forces met to hammer out a counter-strategy for the anti-capitalist movement. Aiming to drive a wedge between the reformist, "respectable" wing of the movement (ATTAC in Europe, Global Exchange in the USA) and its more militant activists, the state upped the ante with increased repression.

Looking back at the major anti-capitalist demonstrations of last year from May Day, through Gothenburg to Genoa, a pattern emerges.

First, each event is preceded by ever more fanciful and blood-curdling descriptions of what a hard-core minority of the anti-capitalist movement is preparing to do. This is designed to frighten many people off the streets and soften up the public for severe repression.

Next, convergence centres are busted up, demonstrators surrounded for hours using the notorious Section 60 law in Britain and its equivalents abroad. Then tear gas and bullets are used - in Gothenburg at least three protesters were shot by the Swedish police, and in Genoa Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by Carabinieri officers.

Part of this strategy has also been police infiltration of the black bloc. Both in Gothenburg and Genoa people dressed as black bloc members were seen planning tactics with the police and later arresting protesters.

All this has forced the black bloc to debate the way forward. Indeed, it was noticeable in Brussels last month that the black bloc did not attack the police nor destroy property on a significant scale. What is at the root of the black bloc's dilemma?

Although the black bloc does not have a unifying ideology and is made up of disparate forces, they all agree that violence against capitalist property and the state is key to changing the world.

John Zerzan, the leader of the Eugene anarchists based in Oregon, USA, is one of the most extreme proponents of "trashing". He believes that technology inevitably, and regardless of the social system under which it is used, is the cause of alienation. Therefore the destruction of all property - even workers' personal property - is necessary for human liberation. Only a return to hunter-and-gatherer society can restore humanity to a state where it is at one with itself and the natural world.

This reactionary theory would of course mean the (voluntary?) reduction of the world's population to, at most, several million and lay humans open to the ravages of nature and the idiocy of isolated existence.

However, Zerzan represents only a tiny minority of opinion within the black bloc even in America, let alone Europe. More representative is the view articulated by the ACME Collective who organised for the Seattle demonstrations:

"When we smash a window, we aim to destroy the thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds property rights. At the same time, we exorcise that set of violent and destructive social relationships which has been imbued in almost everything around us. By 'destroying' private property, we convert its limited exchange value into an expanded use value ... After N30 [Seattle 1999], many people will not see a shop window or a hammer in the same way again. The potential uses of an entire cityscape have increased a thousand-fold. The number of broken windows pales in comparison to the number of broken spells - spells cast by a corporate hegemony to lull us into forgetfulness of all the violence committed in the name of private property rights and of all of the potential of a society without them. Broken windows can be boarded up (with yet more waste of our forests) and eventually replaced, but the shattering of assumptions will hopefully persist for some time to come." (December 1999)

The problem with this analysis is that it assumes that the capitalist state will do no more than mend broken windows and it assumes that the "spell" of broken windows will rouse the masses to action. Neither is the case.

The state will launch a propaganda offensive against the demonstrators, it will increase its surveillance and repression, infiltrate, disorganise and divide the movement and incarcerate its leading activists.

As for the masses they will remain at best indifferent and at worse hostile, to bouts of rioting that bring them no material gains whatsoever. Broken windows cast no spells. Magic is not a revolutionary weapon!

The state can get away with repression against a minority that is isolated from the masses and in the case of the black bloc keeps itself isolated in a sectarian fashion from the masses for and indeed from any campaign or united front because time and again it works!

The Black Panthers inspired several generations of class fighters to challenge the capitalist state, but their movement was isolated and then crushed mercilessly. The same fate has befallen many would-be self selected elites committed to violence as a strategy.

In certain situations rioting can lead to a real paralysis of the capitalist state and an empowering of thousands and millions of people. The recent events in Argentina have revealed that. But these situations are when the masses of people are taking to the streets, refusing to accept the rule of the bosses and demanding real and immediate changes; when the capitalists are divided among themselves and unable to carry on with yesterday's methods of ruling and fooling the people.

Rioting, in the context of revolutionary situations, forms part of a generalised struggle against the ruling class. Outside of such a context it has no magical ability to bring down the bosses and their state. It is not a strategy for making the revolution, as the black bloc think.

The black bloc believe they can, by their own actions alone, create such situations. They think they can shock the masses into seeing beyond the surface and breaking the "thin veneer of legitimacy that surrounds private property rights".

But capitalism is not reliant on a thin veneer. It has survived because it is remarkably adept at dividing the oppressed, at providing enough crumbs from the bosses' table to keep key sections of the working class content, at changing its method of accumulation so as to prolong its regime of profit.

The masses cannot be shocked or stirred into revolution by the actions of a handful of trashers. Worse, they will frequently regard such people as their enemies, especially if every demonstration is seen as and turned into an occasion for violence. And they would be right. For there is nothing inherently wrong about a peaceful demonstration as the recent mass anti-war demos in Italy and Britain showed. Violence is not the only - and is often not the best - way to mobilise people to fight for change.

That is why revolutionary politics involves a series of tactics aimed at winning reformist workers to revolutionary action: the united front with reformist organisations, organising rank and file trade unionists against their leaders, building picket and demonstration defence guards, fighting for workers' control over the means of production and, crucially, constructing a new international party of workers' revolution.

So long as the black bloc reject this range of tactics they will be ever more isolated, their actions ever less effective and they will slump from short-lived fame to relative obscurity.

Homepage | Feedback

Site search

Read more



What is imperialism?

Capitalism and the state

Visit these websites:

Destroy IMF 

WTO (or not!)

They rule
[A bit slow and needs Flash, but interesting nonetheless]