Carnival Against Capitalism Rocks Auckland

Scores of protesters converged on the corner of K Road this Saturday to attend the Carnival Against Capitalism.

Up to a hundred activists kicked the day off with on an football pitch with improvised roadworks barriers for goals. The rough weather typical for the season relented, with the sun making a suprise appearance to warm the gathered crowd, with Food Not Bombs distributing savoury lentil patties to the hungry.

The event was organised by Radical Youth, an Auckland anti-capitalist group. Although primarily in their teens and twenties, the crowd was diverse: students and teachers, workers and unemployed, punks, hippies, rockers, straight-edgers, Polynesian and Pakeha, North American and Asian.

Black flags flying in the sea breeze, the protestors chalked slogans, symbols, poetry and even quotes by Nietzsche and "Red" Emma Goldman. Speakers made links between the struggles against racism and patriarchy, colonialism and neo-liberalism, the Zapatistas and those fighting the police in Scotland.

A warm response was received from the majority of the passers-by, many taking leaflets and stopping to chat. An exception to all those was a group of 4-5 people sporting ACT Party and "Enjoy Capitalism" shirts. These deserve a special mention as they provided the comic relief to those who enjoy a good debate. A small circle formed, anarchist and capitalists crossing their rheotorical rapiers.

For those of you unfamiliar with local protests, I should give you a quick background. There seems to be a small group of rabidly pro-capitalist activists that like getting their kicks by turning up to May Day demonstrations and generally anywhere they think they can prove they're smarter, more rational and more ideologically advanced than lefties. They are of a similar breed to street preachers, albeit they are indoctrinated into capitalist ideology and repeat the same straw-man arguments as their predecessors. The basic position they take is that central control is bureaucratic and inefficient (which every anarchist will agree with), therefore allowing profiteering private enterprise was the desirable solution.

One charming young man tried to post that the wealth of the Western nations is directly attributable to capitalism, ownership of private property and free enterprise. Oddly, he was rather unprepared for what he was getting himself into.

He asserted that the standards of living in the Third World were being raised by capitalist growth. I countered that it was hardly surprising, given the colonial history of the Third World and the capitalist nations' greed for raw material and slaves.

He pointed to the Asian "tiger" economies of Korea and Taiwan. I explained that South Korea was a military dictatorship that slaughtered hundreds of pro-democracy students at mass demonstrations in the 1980s (something even Ceaucescu and Honecker wouldn't dare do), and that it owes its post-war reconstruction to sending 50,000 troops as mercenaries to support the US in Vietnam (accounting for a hefty 20% of its GDP in the 60s). I also told him that capital flight was punished by death by the South Korean government. I told him about state control of land in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as their reliance on cheap Chinese labour. I didn't complicate things by explaining the elite Vietnam veteran paratroopers later murdered and raped Korean youths on the streets of Gwanju city a mere 25 years ago.

He tried to assert that the life expectancy hasn't dropped in the former USSR following free market reform, but that it was Stalin falsifying statistics (until 1991 presumably Stalin's ghost haunted the census offices).

He told me America was a shining example of capitalism making a nation wealthy. He couldn't bear to admit that they only became a major economic power following profligate usury, lending money to warring European states. At this point he became agitated, beginning to cut me off and repeat the "free enterprise, private property, competition" mantra. I couldn't even begin to ask him whether distributing small-pox infected blankets was a valid means of competition, and whether slave ownership was a valid kind of private property. He probably hadn't heard of the CIA overthrowing the Guatemalan government at the cost of 200,000 lives to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company in the 1950s. He probably didn't consider Michelin's interests in Indochinese labour or Britain's loot of South Africa's gold and diamonds. In fact, he preferred to think that Western nations didn't have a colonial history and that it hasn't caused them to accumulate wealth at the expense of the poor. He didn't think the dispossessed of the Third World had the right to claim back any stolen mineral resources (let alone expropriate!). Frustrated and mumbling something about free enterprise, competition and private property he gave up and wandered off.

Whatever your name was, thanks for the laughs. I hope you and your friends can organise a pro-capitalist demonstration some time so we can watch. Perhaps it might attract up to a dozen people. Maybe the idea of timocracy still has its adherents.

The day was concluded without any arrests or even police presence, resulting in an upbeat mood as Don Julio And The Hispanic Mechanic provided the tunes and assorted musicians jamming on assorted guitars, drums and steel cans. The Carnival wrapped up as the sun descended towards the western horizon, the participants dispersing to continue with an after-Carnival party at an undisclosable location, but that's a whole other story.