Toronto's G-20 Weekend

If you ask me, the the recent Toronto G-20/G-8 is a harbinger of things to come. Over the weekend there were around 600 arrests of demonstrators. More striking, Canada spent almost $1 billion on Summit security alone. And all of this is happening in Canada, a civilized country!

The Toronto G-20/G-8 demonstrations were not a focused one-issue protest. Anti-poverty and anti-globalization groups were out in numbers. So were Canadian labor unions and the Canadian left. And of course, there were the anarchist kids. Toronto's protesters seemed an accurate cross-section of all the people who are being flushed down capitalism's toilet. And all were met with cyclone fences, police cordons and tear gas.

"Black-Clad Anarchists"

As a political force, I don't think too much of these masked anarchist kids. They don't have an analysis, a program or a plan. The anarchists don't particularly care what the rest of the people think and they aren't particularly interested in communicating with anybody.

All the same, there is one thing these kids know very well. Capitalism offers them nothing. Options are narrowing and these kids have figured it out, that they are being faced with radically decreasing educational opportunities and a lifetime of unemployment and crap jobs in the context of a failed capitalism and ecological collapse.

No wonder these anarchist kids are into property destruction and revenge! Personally, I'm glad they made a mess out of Toronto's weekend affair. Any nation willing to spend $1 billion to keep their own people shut-up and out of sight deserves to have their party trashed and leaders embarrassed.

The G-20 Summit Itself

Coming out of this weekend, the post modern "first world" had one reflexive mantra. The word is "austerity". Europe especially has announced that it is ready to declare war on its own working class. Drastic budget cuts will lead to drastic cuts in social entitlements, collective bargaining agreements dissolved, workers soon to be presented everywhere with seriously reduced wages and benefits; a whole lot more work for a whole lot of less of everything else.

The cabal of heads of state, finance ministers and the bankers they represent have a plan. The final G-20 communique means this; the capitalist world is ready to gut 80% of their populations in order to shift even more wealth to the top 1% of the population and the institutions they own and control (banks and corporations). This is necessary to do in order to save our economies, or so we are told. The reality is that this is necessary to save capitalism, but we don't need to be told that; those little details of policy are best left to the experts.

What austerity really means is seriously decreased standards of living and a capitalism that survives by eating its own populations. Even many capitalist oriented economists will tell you that such a recipe as the above can lead to nothing but stagnation. Wealth isn't being created, instead capitalism is shifting and eating up all the social wealth it can... To keep itself fed. This is what Marx meant with the phrase about capitalism being its own grave-digger.

Things to Come?

There is no quick fix and there will be no recovery, at least for 80% of our populations. The proof is in the pudding; every recession since 1980 has lead to the downgrading of living standards for working people (those who live paycheck to paycheck) with little or no resulting recovery. So, here we are in the second Great Depression and the only thing being offered to the people who actually do society's work, making goods and providing the services, are decades of impoverishment and chronic economic insecurity.

To date, a number of European nations have passed harsh austerity plans. Here in the USA we have the red-herring "deficit" panic creators. However, to date the plans passed and intents agreed upon have largely not yet been implemented.

So what will happen as the capitalist agenda is implemented? It's one thing to hear and anticipate what capitalism will do to you. However, there's a whole different mindset when these kinds of agendas are actually implemented and folks feel these effects in their day to day lives. The difference here is between anticipated hardship, fear and a sense of hopelessness on one hand, and the raw anger that results when the harm is actually done on the other.

Harbinger of the Future?

Economically, things are much worse than they seem. As the capitalist agenda is being implemented and as people feel the pain, resistance will rise. G-20 type demonstrations will get bigger and will turn uglier as things get worse... And things will get worse. Increasingly, such demonstrations of working class wrath will not be reserved only for G-20 Summits. I'm going to take a leap here and suggest that what's coming are Toronto kinds of events happening over and over at the national level where the capitalist agenda will be implemented piece by piece, blow by blow.

Resistance however does not guarantee a desirable outcome. Real improvements in the well-being of our societies' will not occur unless the capitalist agenda is known for what it is and is firmly rejected for what it is.