Uniting Hearts and Minds
Review of David McNally, Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism, revised and expanded edition (Arbeiter Ring, 2006).
By Gabrielle Gérin
In the course of my life, I have come across a few books, poems and speeches that have made me live intense moments of intellectual excitement, with my heartbeat accelerating, my eyes or ears opening wide, and my mind racing. I like to call the feeling in these moments “euphoria.” The words before me seem almost familiar, perfectly expressing an understanding I have felt as true but hadn’t digested or translated into words. Growing and learning as a young activist was made possible by such moments; they completed the consciousness of my heart with a consciousness of the mind.
I first read David McNally’s Another World is Possible in 2005, after having participated in two events that radically transformed me as a person and formed me as an activist: the 2005 World Social Forum and the two-month Quebec students’ general strike. It felt like euphoria all along. The book helped me clarify my understanding of the world in a way I had felt a deep need for in the course of struggle, discussion and learning – moreover, in simple and very human language. My heart felt light because I knew the book would be an empowering tool, not only in making sense of the world but also in changing it.
McNally’s book seemed designed for young activists like me who were born out of “anti-globalization” struggles. Seeing the mobilization wave crashing on the shores of 9/11 and the repression that followed, and the configuration of social forces significantly changing since 2001, McNally prepared this revised edition to identify new challenges and sources of hope for the Left.
McNally starts with a brilliantly popularized Marxist analysis of the globalization process. He places this process within capital’s drive to violently commodify resources and labour power, reinforcing its power through class exploitation and gender and racial oppression. In doing so, he demonstrates that this process is in no way natural and has always been met with resistance, that history is not driven by competing moralities but rather by struggle between social forces with opposed material – and human – interests and needs.
McNally’s book is rich with much needed references to peoples’ history (for example, the shocking account of the colonization of the Americas), providing the inspiration and references that are especially lacking for today’s young activists. It is also incredibly rich with the words of participants in struggles the world over, past and present, and the result of thorough research into various struggles, helping us feel the pulse of contemporary global resistance to capitalism.
One of the books’ greatest strengths is its thoroughly inclusive approach: it speaks to all struggles and reaches to all those engaged in them, whatever their level of political awareness and radicalism. This is because McNally puts the radicalism of the heart at the centre of the analysis. It is this radicalism, expressed in all refusals to comply passively with oppression, exploitation or commodification, which provides the necessary fuel for revolutionary struggle, which must be built through a radicalization of minds and the democratic empowerment of the masses. McNally stresses the need for an inclusive, revolutionary anti-capitalist vision and mass-based, democratic organization from below for these struggles to develop their revolutionary potential.
In times like these when the radical left can feel isolated and pessimistic, it reminds us that hope lies wherever there are struggles against oppression and spaces where the vision of an alternative develops, and that our task is to be at their heart, providing empowering analysis, strategy and organization. Strategic thinking cannot develop in an office, outside struggles: there it is of almost no use, loses touch with the reality and humanity of social forces at play, and faces the great danger of losing the optimism that develops with the contact of rebel hearts.
In a context where reformist institutions dominate over social movements, when struggles and demands appear fragmented and when the new generation of activists born in the struggles of the turn of the century seems more keen on a “lifestyle” type of activism rather than on mass political organization, this book gives us reasons for hope and calls us to action. It is a powerful reminder that history is made when hearts and minds unite.
Gabrielle Gérin is a student at York University who is currently organizing the first Quebec Social Forum and is also involved in Presse-toi-à-gauche, a weekly Quebecois left news website.
