In 2008, Obama largely defined himself in contrast to Bush, especially in terms of foreign policy. While the latter remained under the spell of the Project for a New American Century’s neocons, Obama seemed to want to nurture the dispersed, de-centred forms of power Hardt and Negri had described in Empire, embrace America’s role in the world as one-pole-among-many, while trying to stem the steady decline in its hegemony.

This year, in contrast, revealed little distance between Obama and Romney’s foreign policy proposals. Distinction was mainly to be found in their economic ideas. Romney and his vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan – an Ayn Rand devotee – were committed de-regulators, willing only to invest in austerity. They offered few specifics, but famously promised to cull Big Bird. (Sesame Street is produced by the Public Broadcasting Service). Obama, in contrast, has proven himself more open to deficit spending – although Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz argue he needs to go much further. (While this distinction holds, it is worth noting Obama has his own plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years.)

Of course, globalisation and the nature of the current crisis pose a challenge for traditional Keynesian solutions. Yet it is hard to imagine even a short-term alleviation in the crisis without boosting aggregate demand and dealing with the over-accumulation produced by decades of deregulation and financialisation. Romney/Ryan’s rejection of anything even leaning in this direction surely secured Obama his endorsement from the FT and the Economist, as well as support from many poor voters.

November 6, however, was an unambiguous victory for progressives, liberals and the left mainly for reasons beyond the presidential election. Firstly, it saw the misogyny of many Republican congressional campaigns roundly rejected. Senate candidate Todd Aiken had justified opposition to all abortion by insisting, in cases of what he called ‘legitimate rape’, women’s bodies tend to shut down and prevent pregnancy anyway. Republican Richard Mourdock argued pregnancy from rape was ‘something God intended to happen’. Both were defeated. Meanwhile, after months of male-dominated discussion of women’s reproductive rights in Congress, record numbers of women were elected (including Elizabeth Warren, one of the most prominent left-leaning Democrats, and the first openly-LGBT senator, Tammy Baldwin.)

Secondly, a series of referendum victories were secured. Maryland passed the DREAM Act, enabling financial support for students without a legal immigration status. It also approved same-sex marriage, as did Maine and Washington; and Minnesota defeated a constitutional amendment outlawing it. Montana and Massachusetts legalised marijuana for medical purposes – and Washington and Colorado legalised it just ‘for the lulz’! California reformed its three-strikes law, which has seen mandatory life sentences handed down for crimes as petty as stealing a pair of socks.

The election night results were also heavily shaped by the contempt shown by many Republicans for those beyond their immediate social base. Romney himself famously dismissed 47% of the population as structurally dependent on big government. As if to prove their isolation, some conservatives tried shifting the terrain of the culture wars: taking on not only abortion, but contraception. Predictably, the party did well with a shrinking demographic of older, white, men. Obama won 93% of African American voters, 90% of gays and lesbians, 71% of Latinos, 60% of young people, and 53% of women.

Some conservatives will certainly now go on the offensive. In the medium term, however – to secure the party’s survival – Republican strategists will presumably try and restore centrist control. They know this will not only mean addressing the xenophobia prolific among its base, but radically rethinking its economic, social, and immigration policy. This will be a major challenge, yet they have few other options. As a spoof Big Bird account tweeted on election night: ‘Hey Romney, this election was brought to you by the number 47 and the letters F and U.’

by The Invisible Committee

As an anonymous 130-page tract, part social criticism and part exit strategy from contemporary capitalism, originally published in France in 2007, The Coming Insurrection was an unlikely book to start making waves on both sides of the Atlantic. But with the arrest of its purported author in 2008 for supposed acts of sabotage (there is, in fact, little evidence against the person in question to support either allegation), the book has caught the attention of those beyond today’s relatively small circles of the radical left.

The book is largely a critique of life in contemporary capitalism, from the world of flexibilised work to ‘the metropolis’. It decries society’s atomisation, symbolised by the fetishisation of the individual in the Reebok advertising slogan, ‘I am what I am’.

One way it moves beyond many similar, previous critiques is in taking on the attempts to ‘green’ capitalism. ‘The situation is like this: they hired our parents to destroy this world, and now they’d like to put us back to work rebuilding it, and – to add insult to injury – for a profit.’ The environment, the book predicts, will become the pivot of the political economy of the 21st century, with new industries from eco-friendly consumer durables to green consultancy, the revival of the nuclear industry, regressive environmental taxation, and the policing of access to water.

The book resembles 1960s Situationist texts, such as those by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, particularly in terms of the disdain it expresses for much of the left. Its alternative positive point of reference is the unmediated struggles that erupted in the French banlieues in November 2005 and the riots across Greece in December 2008.

As a basis for launching an ‘insurrectionary’ effort, it advocates the proliferation of communes. By this, the authors do not just mean spaces for collective living and working, but something that is formed ‘every time a few people, freed from their individual straitjackets, decide to rely on themselves and measure their strength against reality’.

There is no shortage today of proposals for a radical transformation of society in light of crises economic and ecological. Just take a look at the list of current amazon.com politics bestsellers and count the proposals for revolutions that are out there. The vast majority, however, come from the conservative right. There is almost nothing to the left of Thomas Friedman’s call for an American ‘green revolution’ – a gap that The Coming Insurrection is clearly intended to fill.

There are a number of serious shortcomings in the authors’ analysis, however. First, while they describe the conditions in which people live and work today, they shy away from the question of class. They are aware that the industrial factory worker is no longer the paradigmatic figure of capitalist production he once was. But they do not know who has replaced him.

At times, one thinks they are going to follow authors such as André Gorz and bid farewell to the category of working class altogether. But they never quite go that far. Capitalism is a social system oriented towards production for profit. If you want to change this orientation, it is important to try to find out who does this producing. Only then can some sort of meaningful discussion about, and experimentation with, alternatives begin. This is a step the book skips.

Second, The Coming Insurrection offers a very one-dimensional reading of history, which derives directly from that of the Situationists. For The Invisible Committee, history is the history of defeat. Or rather, what Debord would call ‘recuperation’, turning systemic opposition or criticism into something not only controllable, but profitable. Think of the trajectory taken by punk: from a riotous youth movement to the shelves of H&M, via Vivienne Westwood diamond-studded safety pins. This narrative is not incorrect as such, but it is incomplete.

The book fails to recognise, for instance, that the precarious, flexible and mobile reality of work today, which it so vividly describes, is in part a result of the earlier rejection of the monotony of the assembly line. This does not mean we should just be happy with our lot. But failing to recognise the role that previous generations’ struggles played in shaping the world runs the risk of underestimating the range of possibilities to bring about further changes.

It is on the basis of these shortcomings that The Coming Insurrection proposes its strategy for change: an attempt to deploy forms of struggle that cannot be recuperated (as if they existed!), de-linked from the rest of the left, and relatively disinterested in some of the most pressing questions. Such as: where and by whom is social wealth produced today? Or: how can we go about democratically deciding how we want to produce and live in the future?

In the current political and economic climate, proposals for a radical remaking of society are an urgent necessity. But in skipping vital questions the book ends up providing a strategy unlikely to bear fruit.

Ben Trott

Interested? This book can be purchased here.

Two lessons at least were learnt from the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles. Firstly, three parallel and only very slightly overlapping mobilisations (Make Poverty History, G8 Alternatives, and Dissent!) failed to pool resources, coordinate or look for commonality. In contrast, the basis of the mobilisation to Heiligendamm was the construction of a common ‘choreography of resistance’. This ensured events did not compete against one another, and that cooperation – where possible – was maximised. Secondly, there was a determination to ensure that the process of legitimation of the G8 – set in motion by Bono and others, and reaching its climax in Gleneagles – was halted and reversed. The aim was to demonstrate that the G8 is illegitimate full stop. To borrow Bob Geldof’s words after the 2005 summit: ‘mission accomplished.’

On Saturday 2 June, 80,000 people demonstrated through the streets of Rostock in the biggest demonstration the city had ever seen. Under the banner of ‘Another World Is Possible’, they declared the G8 an institution without legitimacy. The demonstration’s largest bloc, with around 8,000 participants, was the Interventionist Left’s ‘Make Capitalism History’. It was both these blocs, which came under attack from police; and from which militant actions of the so-called ‘black-bloc’ are said to have taken place. Debates around the nature and activity of the bloc certainly rocked the coalition over the following days. Ultimately, however, the coalition proved itself strong enough to withstand the question of ‘militancy’. All in all, the demonstration provided a clear rejection of both the political and democratic legitimacy of the G8, as well as containing a clear anti-capitalist presence.

The next day, thousands participated in a day of action on global agriculture, demanding food sovereignty, an end to the genetic modification of food and rejecting the patenting of seeds. Many took part in international networking events on the issues of resistance to racist police violence worldwide, the connections between the issues of precarious working and living conditions and migration, and more.

On 4 June, over 15,000 people took part in decentralised actions around Rostock on the issue of migration (in front of a Lidl supermarket, responsible for the exploitation of migrant labour; in front of the so-called ‘Sunflower Houses’ of mostly Vietnamese guest-workers, attacked in 1992 by neo-Nazis; and in front of a government building responsible for processing asylum applications) before taking part in a demonstration ‘For Global Freedom of Movement and Equal Rights for Everyone’. The day of action organised by both anti-racist activists and self-organised groups of refugees and migrants, came under heavy police repression. The demonstration was banned from the city centre and the police did all they could – (unsuccessfully) – to provoke an escalation which could be used to justify further repression.

On 5 June, thousands took part in the day of action against militarism, war, torture and the global ‘state of exception’ – the suspension of legal rights and freedoms, e.g. that of Habeas Corpus, across the planet. Hundreds gathered at Rostock Laage military airport to ‘greet’ George W. Bush as Air Force One landed.

And then came Wednesday 6 June, the opening day of the summit, the day on which blockades – both mass and decentralised, pre-advertised and spontaneous – would try to shut down the summit itself. The extent of the success of these blockades surprised everyone – not least those who had spent almost a year and a half mobilising for them.

Bloc(k) Parties

One of the most prominent elements of the counter-mobilisation was the Block G8 campaign for mass blockades of the access roads to Heiligendamm. This campaign was made up of over 120 different organisations, groups and networks: from church organisations, trade union youth groups, the anti-nuclear waste transport (CASTOR) movement, over groups from the radical and autonomous left, the youth wings of political parties (both the Greens and the socialist Linkspartei), to anti-fascist organisations and non-violent direct action groups.

The composition of the coalition was, for many, surprising. Most of the groups had never cooperated before and those who had, had not always had good experiences. Nevertheless, the campaign based itself on the notion that cooperation was essential for the blockades to be successful. Moreover, and more interestingly, there was a feeling that as groups moved away from the comfort zones of their traditional action; new forms of action and new commonalities could be produced, despite and beyond obvious differences.

After many months of discussion, the following action concept was developed: a practical rejection of the legitimacy of the G8 could only be achieved through real – rather than merely symbolic – blockades of the summit. The aim was not to stop the heads of state from reaching their destination (everyone knew they would be flown in by helicopter), but to cut the G8 summit off from its infrastructure of thousands of service providers, caterers, translators, journalists and so on. Our first objective was to reach our blockade points: two of three key roads leading to Heiligendamm. We would not engage in an escalation with the police, or allow ourselves to be provoked. At the same time, we would do all that we could to prevent anyone from being injured. Once we reached the blockade points, we would not leave again voluntarily.

In order to ensure the success of the blockades, hundreds of action trainings and information events were organised across Germany and beyond. Thousands were trained in the techniques which would be required: from how to build an ‘affinity group’ (a group of 5-10 people, prepared to act together and look out for one another during an action); through to methods for getting through police lines; to how to resist an eviction and deal with minor injuries. The action concept was published on the campaign’s website, translated into numerous languages, integrated into a PowerPoint presentation, and distributed via various publications. The media were invited to observe – and on one occasion, partake in – some of the action trainings, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung (perhaps an equivalent of the UK’s Guardian) reproduced one of the trainings in an online multimedia presentation.

Block Around the Clock

One of the Block G8 blockades would be made up of people based in the camp near Reddelich, the other by those in Rostock. From Reddelich, the blockaders would be able to reach their desired blockade point by foot. Rostock, however, was too far to be able to rely on people moving on foot alone. So the people from this camp were transported by bus, car, bike and train to a pre-announced destination. On arrival, the crowd of around 4000 began to move along the road in the direction of their secret destination. As soon as the front of the demonstration met the first line of police, the so-called ‘Five-Finger-Tactic’ came into play. Rather than trying to push through the line of police in front of it, the first of the five ‘fingers’ left the road and went out into the field to the right of it, attempting to move around the line of police, stretching their resources as far as possible. The line of police retreated to try and remain in front of the first finger, which was making its way rapidly across the field. As it did so, the remaining four fingers moved forward with it. Once the line of police stopped, the second finger moved again out of the road and into the field, this time to the left. Again, the police were forced to retreat and to spread themselves out over a greater distance. This process repeated itself, with the fingers alternately moving off the road to the right and then the left. As planned, all five fingers (and the 4000 people within them) were able to either move around the lines of police, or else flow through them once they had been forced to spread themselves out so far that large gaps emerged.

Whilst the 6000 plus Reddelich blockaders were able to reach their desired blockading point relatively unhindered by the police – blockading not only their chosen road, but also the railway line which ran alongside (the only one in and out of the ‘Red Zone’) – those coming from Rostock were forced to brave pepper spray, batons and the police’s water canons (some of which had mixed pepper spray into the water) in order to finally – and successfully – reach their destination.

In both instances, as soon as the blockaders reached their desired points, the police appeared to concede defeat. In neither situation were the police well equipped enough to evict either 4000 – 6000 people from the street, nor to ensure that the crowds – which had already proven themselves very determined – would not immediately return. Securing kilometres of road running alongside open fields, or arresting and transporting up to 10000 people was obviously out of the question. At the same time, the social breadth of the blockades (which expanded across church groups, trade unions and political parties), along with the public support of prominent politicians, media and civil society personalities in Germany and other countries also ensured that the deployment of extreme levels of violence against the blockades would have been politically very difficult. This was exacerbated by the fact that repression in advance of the summit (with simultaneous ‘anti-terror’ raids on over 40 offices, social centres and private homes supposedly connected to the mobilisation, along with huge restrictions on the freedom to demonstrate) had been met with heavy criticism. On the day of the raids, over 6000 people demonstrated in Berlin and 4000 in Hamburg alone. The media were tremendously critical, as were a number of prominent politicians on both the left and right. For a while, it appeared that attac Germany (who, incidentally, never signed up as official supporters of Block G8, although some of their leadership and local groups did) would distance themselves from the blockades, following the events of the previous Saturday. Thanks to both the mood of the organisation’s grassroots, who were already present on the camps and geared up for blockading – and a couple of isolated voices higher up in the organisation – this never came to fruition. Had this been the case, the police may have responded very differently.

Another likely reason for success was that police resources were massively over-stretched. Thousands were demonstrating, again, at Rostock Laage military airport. Others had begun to take down the 12-kilometre fence around the ‘Red Zone’. Small, decentralised actions – from passive sit-ins to burning barricades – were taking place in dozens of other locations all around the area. And nobody knew what to expect next. An attempted eviction of either or both of the Block G8 mass blockades would have swallowed enormous amounts of resources, and the police were almost certainly unsure when they would – perhaps more urgently – be needed elsewhere.

The outcome on the first day of the G8 summit was that many delegates were told not to go to Heiligendamm, but to make their way to their hotels and remain indoors. Some never even made it to Heiligendamm while those who did often faced long delays. Others were forced to fly into the ‘Red Zone’ by helicopter at huge expense. Journalists resorted to travel by boat. Some reports suggest that only four journalists made it to the opening ceremony. If the Financial Times report that the summit was chaos, then I believe them.

And now?

The political consequences of the very successful mobilisation around this year’s G8 summit – both on the ‘internal’ movement level, and on the level of global political economy – remain unclear. How can it be that both the movement, and the G8 leaders themselves (claiming to have found commonality in difficult times, as well as having supposedly made progress on both climate change and commitments to poverty alleviation) are proclaiming: ‘We are winning’? How long will the coalitions formed by the movement in the run up to the summit hold out? How will – if at all – those mobilised to take part in the blockades remain involved in movements and struggles? And how far will the different groups that united as the Block G8 coalition continue to experiment with new forms of political practice, outside of their traditional comfort zones?

A few conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, the differences between the various groups, which took part in Block G8 are far less important than the commonalities. This was demonstrated and played itself out in practice. Secondly, the whole of the left needs to recognise that whilst it now needs to enter into a process of critical (self-) reflection, exploring both the victories and the problematics, which arose during the summit, the mobilisation was a greater success than any of us could have imagined. It is a success that everyone played a role in creating, and the fallout from which (in terms of debts incurred, repression and so on) needs to be dealt with collectively. But moreover, it should be recognised that none of us are the same as we were before the summit. The days of action in Rostock and around Heiligendamm were much more than an expression of ‘Unity in Diversity’, they represented a ‘becoming-other’, together. Through coordination, cooperation and the constant search for commonality, we became a more genuine ‘movement of movements’ – more than just the sum of our parts.

And thirdly and finally, we need to recognise that only two years ago, 300,000 people demonstrated in Edinburgh, largely to welcome the G8 summit and its supposed efforts to make poverty history. This year, 80,000 demonstrated their opposition to the G8 as an institution, and well over 15,000 took part in actively blockading the summit. Another world is not just possible. It is already here. We saw it in Heiligendamm. The alter-globalisation movement can once again be seen as a serious social actor, able to influence the direction of global events and politics.

To be sure, it is unlikely that the vast majority of those who took part in the blockades and other events will become involved within organised political structures – be those of the radical-left, of non-violent action groups, of political parties, or of organisations such as attic. In many ways, this limits the ability of those in attendance to be able to act in a coordinated, organised fashion, maximising their agency. But such organisational forms have only ever been a very small element of what social movements are all about. Far more important are the affective connections, which were formed over those 44 hours on the streets, those late nights of action planning, and those often-painful coalition meetings. These are connections, which have the potential to last in the long term.

Foucault once said that a barricade only has two sides. Everyone who was in Heiligendamm will forever know on which side it is that they stand…or sit.A slide show, with music and photos against the G8 summit can be found on Avanti’s website: http://www.avanti-projekt.de/images/G8-Slide/index.html (Avanti – Project for an undogmatic left, are one of the groups involved with the Interventionist Left)

Info: www.block-g8.org

The mobilisation was split in numerous directions. Confusion had been created by the role that the German Greens – and in particular Joschka Fischer, who was foreign secretary and their most senior member of parliament – were playing in steering Nato towards a military intervention in Kosovo.

The radicals, meanwhile, were split into two different camps and unable to exert much influence within the broader coalition.The turnout on the streets was low, huge police repression was experienced and the protests were generally considered a disaster.The mobilisation around this year’s G8 summit, to be held in Heiligendamm near Rostock on 6-8 June 2007, has sought to learn from this experience.

How to do a summit protest

In the middle of April of this year, around 450 people met at the old Ehm-Welk school in Rostock for the third and final Rostock Action Conference – a series of events attended by trade unionists, NGOs, members of political parties (specifically, the new Linkspartei and the Green Party Youth), Attac, antifascists, church groups and groups belonging to the autonomous left, including those organised within the Dissent Network.

As well as Cologne in 1999, the 2005 G8 mobilisation to Gleneagles also provided a model for ‘how-not-to-do-a-summitprotest’, with its three separate, only very slightly overlapping mobilisations.These were Make Poverty History (composed of big NGOs, charities and ‘civil society’), G8 Alternatives (a Trotskyite-dominated coalition, with a number of smaller NGOs also involved), and Dissent! (anarchists, autonomists and the ‘direct action movement’).

Everyone pretty much remained within the comfort zones of their own traditional political practices, whether these were demonstrations, counter-conferences or small ‘affinity group’ based actions, further entrenching both their own ideological positions and cultural identities.

The Rostock Action Conferences – initially conceived by the Interventionist Left, a network of groups and individuals from the radical-left – have sought to use this year’s G8 mobilisation to do precisely the opposite.

First of all, the desire to create one broad-based coalition arose from the assessment that the various aspects of the German left – from the once-huge movement against nuclear transport to the plethora of anti-fascist groups scattered across the Federal Republic – are nowhere near as strong as they once were. So their ability to influence the direction of politics and society is extremely limited when they act alone.

Yet the political rationale for mobilising against the G8 remains as strong as ever. As an institution, it has a very obvious lack of democratic legitimacy. Even if one were to assume that the G8 heads of state represent the interests of their entire populations (which of course they do not), these amount to only 14 per cent of the world’s population. Despite this, these states control 48 per cent of votes within the IMF and 46 per cent in the World Bank, and hold four out of five veto-holding seats on the UN security council, enabling them to wield enormous influence over and throughout the global political economy.

The G8 also lacks a political legitimacy in the sense that it symbolises a globalised and militarised form of capitalism. Its raison d’être is the expansion and intensification of the neoliberal project, meaning privatisation, the curbing of trade union powers, an attack on any existing welfare state and the flexibilisation of labour.The extent to which it sets the agenda within other international institutions allows the G8 to function as one of global capitalism’s ‘crisis managers’, creating stability for sustained exploitation. Summit protests function as a symbol of resistance to neoliberalism. For this symbol to be powerful, considerable cooperation and coordination is required.

The G8 mobilisation is also motivated by the desire to transform the ‘globalisation-critical’ movement into a more genuine ‘movement of movements’, so that the whole becomes more than simply the sum of its parts. Central to this is developing a common political practice: engaging in social struggles together with others, learning from one another, being sensitive to our differences, and in the process all being prepared to become something else – together.

At the beginning of the mobilisation, almost two years ago, it was clear what this would have to mean in practical terms. First, the radical, explicitly anti-capitalist sections of the left would need to try to escape their largely self-imposed isolation.

It would not (and should not) have to give up its desire for a complete break with capitalist social relations, but it would have to show a willingness to work together with those who have different goals. An anti-capitalist position would not have to be hidden, but a new language would need to be found if it is to be able to communicate with anyone other than just itself. It would be able to push (even break) the boundaries of legality, but it would need to find ways of bringing others along and avoiding political isolation.

Others, of course, would be presented with different challenges.While there would not be the need for complete ‘unity’ within the coalition, commonality would have to be sought. Furthermore, any attempts at adopting the role played by ‘the party’ in previous eras of struggle – in other words, of assuming the vanguard role, determining the official ‘consciousness’ and leading the direction of any movement – would have to be given up.This does not mean that there is not a role for political parties within the movement of movements (or the G8 mobilisation), but they will never again be able to assume the hegemonic role that they once did. And finally, there would need to be a mutual toleration of different forms of action – including those that would inevitably be condemned as ‘unreasonable’ by those in power.

Of course, it was also clear that there would need to be limits to the breadth of the coalition. In Germany, the far-right has a long history of deploying an anti-globalisation discourse rooted in anti-semitism, racism and the construction of fear on the basis of the ‘threat’ posed to national identity by processes of globalisation. Indeed, the Nationalist Party of Germany (NPD) will be demonstrating in the nearby town of Schwerin at the same time as the international demonstration in Rostock the weekend before the summit (see www.demo-schwerin.tk and www.heiligendamm2007.de).

There has also been a desire to learn from the experience of 2005 and the extent to which Live8 (and parts of Make Poverty History) succeeding in presenting the demonstrations as pro-G8. A clear rejection of the political and democratic legitimacy of the G8 has been a hallmark of the spectrum that has gathered around the Rostock conferences.

A pre-emptive evaluation

At the time of writing, around a month before the summit, there are many reasons for optimism about the potential for a successful mobilisation, measured in terms of numbers of participants, cross-pollination between different milieu, the visibility of anti-neoliberal (or even anti-capitalist) movements on the world stage during the summit, and the potential for involving people who have had no previous engagement with social movements.

Actions, demonstrations and events around the summit begin on 1 June, with a number of camps and convergence centres providing places to eat, sleep, plan and party (www.camping-07.org).The biggest and broadest event planned is the international demonstration through Rostock on Saturday 2 June. Under the banner of ‘Another World Is Possible’, in the region of 50-100,000 demonstrators are expected. An Alternative Summit, debating the official themes of this year’s G8 (energy and climate change, Africa, Aids and infectious disease, intellectual property) and more will take place from 5-7 June.

Other events include concerts in Rostock and beyond (www.move-against-g8.org), a day of action on the issue of migration on 4 June (http://g8-migration. net.tf) and on war and militarisation the following day (www.g8andwar.de), as well as blockades of the G8 summit itself on 6-7 June.

For the Interventionist Left, the group most responsible for setting in motion the Rostock Action Conferences, success will be judged by the visibility of an anti-capitalist politics in the international demonstration and the breadth of participation in the mass blockades – particularly those being organised by the Block G8 campaign.To achieve these goals will mean undoing – to a very large extent – the process by which Geldof, Bono and others created an unprecedented legitimacy for the G8 at Gleneagles.

It will require a sizeable number of radicals to give up on the idea that an ethics of autonomy means refusing productive engagement with non-autonomous others, and instead ‘getting their hands dirty’ by working to influence the direction of broad coalitions. It will mean more official ‘civil society’ organisations accepting the legitimacy of a far wider range of action forms as means of trying to create another world; and radicals accepting that they also need to make compromises – preparing actions that do not primarily cater to the needs of the supposedly most radical (read: militant) but instead constitute the greatest possibility of effecting change.

It will mean no longer giving precedence to our differences over our commonalities. And it will mean not only recognising these commonalities in theory, but having them played out in practice on the streets of Rostock and the roads and fields around Heiligendamm.

See you there!

Ben Trott is a PhD candiate at the Freie Universität, Berlin, an active participant in the Für eine linke Strömung (FelS) group, and co-editor of Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005 and the Movement of Movements

See www.shutthemdown.org