I. Introduction, Bias and Terms of Reference
The organisers have suggested that my contribution to this
important conference on Reshaping Globalisation: Multilateral
Dialogues and New Policy Initiatives deal with "key issues
connected to global governance and reflect post-Seattle debates
and development". Let me begin by stating that this contribution
is biased, written as it is by someone who is not just watching
from the sidelines but is an active participant in the citizens
movement. This movement is increasingly international but inescapable
differences in political culture exist inside it and mine is
largely that of a Western European. While I cannot pretend to
escape my political outlook [particularly as Vice-President
of ATTAC-France] neither can anybody else when commenting on
globalisation. Any social scientist, in particular, who claims
to be neutral on such a subject is either deluded or lying or
both!
Second, allow me to clarify the terms of reference. For reasons
to be explained I'm wary of the word "governance"
and "post-Seattle debates" strike me as virtually
the same as pre-Seattle ones except that they now include far
more people. My contribution will concentrate on these people
because they have coalesced into a genuine international movement
with its own identity, values and agenda.
To the "pre- and post-Seattle" point first: The media
now routinely create these before/after distinctions once reserved
for personages of immense religious stature. "BC"
and "AD" are basic for everyone even though they reflect
Christian and Western dominance. The Moslem and Jewish calendars
start with the Hegira and Yahweh's covenant with Abraham. In
the twentieth century, "pre- and post-war", like the
more recent "pre-and post Berlin Wall", reflect momentous
events. Now, however, we see cropping up everywhere, not just
in this conference, the fault line of "pre- and post-Seattle"
[or Genoa, or other protest venues, ad libitum]. This is doubtless
an accolade for the citizens' movement, but what, exactly, does
it mean?
In my view it means that before Seattle, the media paid virtually
no attention to years of hard work and organising on all the
same issues as today: if memory serves, the first counter-G-7
summit was held in London in 1985. Long before Seattle, thousands
of people from North and South had contributed to innumerable
studies, books, films, symposia, conferences and public demonstrations
denouncing North-South inequalities and mal-development, structural
adjustment and debt slavery; "IMF riots", as they
are called by the people concerned, had occurred in dozens of
Southern hemisphere countries with considerable loss of life.
Indian farmers had marched against large dams and burned genetically
modified crops; the Brazilian "sim terra" had occupied
farmland; the Korean trade unions had undertaken long and dangerous
strikes--one could go on and on.
A number of important international activist networks developed
in the 1980s and early 1990s, like the "World Food Assembly",
the "Debt Crisis Network" or the "50 Years is
Enough" campaign trying to reform the World Bank and the
IMF, or protests against the patenting of life and the all-inclusive
agenda of the WTO; not to mention countless environmental battles
and anti-corporate struggles. In 1997-98, a brand new French
coalition with support from similar ones throughout the OECD
successfully pushed the French government to withdraw from the
Multilateral Agreement on Investment [MAI], causing its collapse
and subsequent formal demise. "Marches of the unemployed"
in Europe protested the impact of financial markets and transnational
corporations on jobs.
In 1998, the Jubilee 2000 campaign brought 70.000 people--far
more than were later present in Seattle--to the counter-G-8
demonstration in Birmingham and nearly that many to Cologne
the following year. Many of them had never before participated
in any public political event but were sufficiently motivated
by the evils of third world debt to take the train, carry a
poster and form a human chain against the "chains of debt".
The media blinked, then yawned; as for the G-8, it made the
usual promises which, as usual, were not kept.
Seattle is now seen as a watershed first because the media finally
accepted there was another voice out there besides governments
and business. Citizens might actually have something important
to say and say it forcefully.
Second, however, and sadly, many North-Americans in particular
are convinced that the mainstream media noticed Seattle only
because hundreds of poorly trained, robotic riot police confronted
tens of thousands of well-trained, creative, non-violent protestors
as well as a few dozen extremely marginal violent ones [some
of the latter police, as we now know]. It was also the first
time that a determined group of people had the gall and the
guts not just to protest across town from a major international
gathering but to stop it altogether. They took the powers-that-be
completely by surprise.
Now, those powers, although they have clearly learned nothing
else, have learned that they can only meet in sealed-off fortresses
[Prague, Quebec, Genoa], deserts [Qatar] or mountain lairs [the
next G-8 in the Canadian Rockies]. (2) Their only other response
to the protests has been to repeat the same tired formulas and
insist that they are sole guardians of the Truth. Refusing to
hear what the movement is saying, they have chosen to insulate
themselves from it. This was nicely noted in a surprising quarter,
The Financial Times: "The response to the protests has
been largely one of spluttering indignation. Instead of listening,
even learning, the politicians have lectured". (3)
From the protestors' side, as opposed to the media's, Seattle
can also be seen retrospectively to have marked a turning point.
Simply put, we are no longer on the defensive. Just as this
mobilisation did not start with Seattle, so it will not end
with some other singular event like the police-riot in Genoa.
It will assume different forms in different places but it is
an increasingly international phenomenon, it has taken on a
life of its own and is now an organic, permanent presence on
the world stage. Although still very young, the movement is
fast moving towards maturity and its participants are gaining
in knowledge and confidence.
It is the nature of this movement, its history and its agenda
that I understand to be under discussion here and the subject
of my contribution.
II. Who are these people anyway?"
To the increasing irritation of the people concerned, the media
constantly refer to them collectively as "NGOs" or,
worse, as "anti-globalisation". Some, though by no
means all participants do belong to Non-Governmental Organisations
with a single-issue focus [Greenpeace, Amnesty, Jubilee, Via
Campesina, etc.]. The movement itself is, however, multi-focus
and inclusive. It is concerned with the world: omnipresence
of corporate rule, the rampages of financial markets, ecological
destruction, maldistribution of wealth and power, international
institutions constantly overstepping their mandates and lack
of international democracy. The label "anti-globalisation"
is at best a contradiction, at worst a slander.
As has been made clear, these forces call themselves the "social"
or "citizens' movement". They are opposed to market-driven
corporate globalisation but they are not "anti-globalisation"
per se, which would be pointless: clearly technology and travel
are bringing us closer together and this is all to the good.
They are, instead, anti-inequity, anti-poverty, anti-injustice
as well as pro-solidarity, pro-environment and pro-democracy.
Battle lines are being more clearly drawn than at any time
in the past hundred years and they are being drawn internationally.
Participants in the movement understand with greater or lesser
sophistication that only a political project can save the planet's
ecology and provide for the inclusion of everyone in the global
economy on decent and dignified terms.
This is why, mostly over the last five years, people who never
before worked together are shaping a common project. Some people
date the new consciousness not from Seattle but from the emergence
of the Zapatistas on 1 January 1995, to coincide with the birth
of the World Trade Organisation. Some see special significance
in the French public service worker strikes in the winter of
1995. All recognise the fight against the MAI, which preceded
Seattle, as an unexpected, if partial, victory. (5)
Why was the defeat of the MAI significant? This treaty, negotiated
in secret for the previous two and a half years, would have
given blanket rights to transnational corporations and portfolio
investors, including the right to sue States for loss of present
or future profits. States had all the obligations, corporations
all the rights. Widely differing interest groups adopted the
"Dracula Strategy"--expose it to the light until it
shrivels and dies. It proved effective. The media finally recognised
that the MAI was not "too technical, too complicated"
for their readers and listeners to understand as they had initially
argued--in fact people could not believe their ears and were
outraged when they learned the actual content of the MAI.
The French coalition had a particular responsibility as Paris
is the headquarters of the OECD where the negotiations were
conducted. Among the activists who united were cultural industry
workers and film-makers, greens, women's organisations, immigrant
rights groups, researchers and academics, trade unions, the
small farmers organisation, North-South development activists,
some left political parties and many others. Similar coalitions
sprung up in other OECD countries and links between them were
quickly established. In this sense, the Financial Times was
correct to call the coalition "network guerillas".
Ideas and information do travel faster electronically and we
never would have had the funds to carry out the campaign with
phone, fax and ordinary mail.
The MAI struggle was a kind of introductory course on the real
nature of globalisation and a trial run for what followed. People
who learned to know and trust each other have remained in many
informal structures and belong to the same list-serves on a
broad variety of issues--the Tobin Tax, the International Financial
Institutions, Debt and Structural Adjustment, the WTO and the
like. As the political powers that stand behind the spread of
corporate globalisation have continued to meet since Seattle
[in Washington, Prague, Davos, Nice, Barcelona, Gothenburg,
Genoa, etc.] national coalitions in each country have "hosted"
international forums and protests. The Swedish coalition preparing
for Gothenburg numbered over 300 organisations, the Genoa Social
Forum about 750 and so on. At this writing, it will soon be
the turn of the Belgians.
The ATTAC movement [literally Association for the Taxation of
financial Transactions to Aid Citizens] occupies a special place
in this historic development. ATTAC began in France in response
to an editorial in Le Monde Diplomatique in December 1997 following
the Asian financial crisis which called for application of the
"Tobin Tax" on currency transactions. The editorial
provoked hundreds of letters from readers who wanted to become
involved and the idea of creating an organisation to take up
the issue matured into ATTAC, founded in June 1998. ATTAC-France
now has over 30.000 members and about 220 local committees.
ATTAC organisations, large and small, now exist in some 30
countries, including some in Latin America and Africa. They
may be persecuted by the government as in Tunisia. For reasons
we cannot entirely explain, ATTAC has not spread to the "Anglo-Saxon"
world, although we have many counterpart organisations and working
relations in Britain, the US, Australia et al. Relative to the
total population, ATTAC Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland are
larger than ATTAC France. While there is no formal "ATTAC
International", members from different countries meet regularly
and share the same goals.
The Tobin Tax is still central to the agenda, but this agenda
now addresses corporate-led globalisation much more broadly
and takes in the international financial institutions and the
WTO, financial markets and pension funds, tax havens, third
world debt and structural adjustment, genetically manipulated
crops, mass firings by transnationals to increase their stock
value, denial of vital medicines to AIDS patients and the like.
These broad coalitions may not agree on every detail of every
issue but they share the basics. They refuse the "Washington
Consensus" vision of how the world should work. Often unjustly
accused of "having nothing to propose", they are,
on the contrary, constantly refining their arguments and their
counter-proposals. An exceptional moment for such work is the
Porto Alegre [Brazil] World Social Forum, held at the same time
as the World Economic Forum in Davos. At Porto Alegre II, the
organisers expect perhaps 100.000 people as compared to 10.000
the first year [Porto Alegre II will convene from 31 January
to 5 February 2002]. (6)
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br
In Porto Alegre, but at other events as well, the emphasis
is not merely on stopping the adversary from committing ever
more egregious horrors, however necessary that may remain, but
also on developing consensus around a more forceful agenda of
proposals, solutions and devising strategies for attaining them.
Although they have often been overshadowed by violence, "counter-summits"
always include forums and "teach-ins" attracting thousands
of people where recognised movement experts lead seminars and
debates. In Gothenburg, there was even an encounter, via video
and giant screen, between eight such experts and Romano Prodi,
Joschka Fischer, Javier Solana and two prime ministers.
These debates must also try to deal with the increasingly panicked,
irresponsible and violent reactions coming from the side of
the State and the corporate elites as well as the [often police-infiltrated]
violence of elements claiming to be on the protesters' side.
Tactics are one of the most hotly debated issues in the movement
today and the answers are not simple. Yet for the participants,
such problems do not seem insurmountable and the overall feeling
is one of great hope and optimism.
III. Adversarial Arguments
We have been subjected to sustained propaganda concerning the
supposed benefits of "globalisation". One tool used
by neo-liberal spokesmen is the constant repetition of misinformation
to try to convince people that "globalisation is good for
everyone". It was thus heartening to see the results of
an opinion poll ordered by Le Monde just before the G-8 summit
in Genoa which shows that the French, at least, don't buy this
line. Replying to the question "who benefits most from
globalisation", 55 percent said "transnational corporations",
47 percent "financial markets", 32 percent "the
United States", 11 percent "Europe", 7 percent
"consumers" and only one percent "everybody"
[two answers possible]. (7)
Another favorite argument is that over the last twenty years,
more people, absolutely and proportionally, are supposed to
have joined the ranks of the materially blessed. This too flies
in the face of the evidence. If you can't pay you can't play.
That is why it is naive and dangerous to accept the word "globalisation"
at face value; to assume that it means a process from which
all the earth's inhabitants will eventually benefit, even if
they must wait a very long time. This is nonsense; it is nonetheless
the dogmatic view of its proponents--most recently President
Bush--who never tire of repeating that "enemies of globalisation
are enemies of the poor".
It is not my intention to demonstrate the validity of these
assertions because this has been done again and again. Studies
by the Washington think-tanks Center for Economic Policy Research,
Institute for Policy Studies and the Economic Policy Institute
or by scholars at the United Nations University all show that
inequality has worsened, growth has slowed and rewards to capital
far surpass the gains of labour. To give only a few examples,
in the United States, the median real wage is nearly the same
as it was 28 years whereas it had increased by 80% in real terms
over the previous 27 years. Globalisation has not improved growth--quite
the opposite. Between 1960-1980, growth worldwide was many percentage
points higher than in the period 1980-2000, particularly in
Latin America and Africa. (8)
Over the past 20 years, inequalities have increased drastically
both within and between countries. This skewed distribution
of wealth has been more than borne out by the findings of successive
UN Development Programme Human Development Reports or the UNCTAD
Trade and Development Reports: the top 20 percent of the world
population now indeed holds more than 80 percent of the wealth;
the bottom 20 percent makes do on slightly over one percent.
Someone or something must be responsible for such a marked
evolution, which can no longer be denied. The citizens movement
believes that "something" is globalisation. In order
to stress the perception that transnational corporations, financial
markets and the holders of capital are the chief beneficiaries,
movement people usually add a qualifier like "corporate-led"
or "corporate-driven globalisation". The opposition
is convinced that for the half of the world unfortunate enough
to be living on less than $2.00 a day, "globalisation"
means further concentration of wealth and power at the top of
the social scale and their own continuing poverty and marginalisation.
Nor does this movement believe, contrary to the neo-liberal
camp, that everyone can be included in the economic benefits
of globalisation although these benefits have been undoubtedly
real for ten to twenty percent of any given population. The
unfettered market without progressive taxation and redistribution
will, as Vilfredo Pareto saw a century ago, follow a "20/80"
distribution pattern in which 20 percent of the population controls
80 percent of the assets. (9)
Movement participants further affirm that this economic system
has absolutely no plans for the billions left out no matter
how many years we may wait; that the global market based on
the competition of all against all is an engine for exclusion
and will tend to freeze people, nations and entire regions,
with few exceptions, at the level at which they presently find
themselves. Furthermore, as the great economic anthropologist
Karl Polanyi was the first to show, the market, left to itself,
will destroy both society and nature.
IV. Polyani's Enduring Contribution
Because we are meeting in Budapest, it is especially important
to refer to Polanyi's enduring contribution because he refuted
present-day globalisation avant la lettre. Polanyi showed that
the market does not come first--society comes first and social
relations are the necessary condition for a properly functioning
market. The tragic mistake--but is it just a mistake?--of the
"Washington Consensus", has been to act as if one
can simply introduce market relations and society will take
care of itself. We have witnessed the result, clearly foreseen
by Polanyi, most dramatically in the former Soviet Union.
Polanyi's prophetic book The Great Transformation destroyed
the neo-liberal argument that the market can be a substitute
for a genuine political project; that the market economy should
dictate its rules to society and not the opposite. Such beliefs
are not merely bizarre, irrational and quasi-religious--they
are lethal.
To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate
of human beings and their natural environment... would result
in the demolition of society. Since, he explained, "labour"
is another name for human activity, "land" another
name for nature and "money" comes into being through
the mechanism of banking or state finance, it follows that "none
of them is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor,
land and money is entirely fictitious". But it is a convenient
fiction for those who want nothing to stand in the way of the
market mechanism. (10)
Writing in 1944, Polanyi believed that market fundamentalists
could never again gain the upper hand. As we know today, his
optimism was misplaced. However, the people joining the citizens'
movement in ever-increasing numbers are "Polanyians"
whether they know it or not. They refuse the domination of the
market over "the fate of human beings and their natural
environment"--that is, they refuse present-day, actually
existing, neo-liberal globalisation.
V. Specific Issues on the Pro-Democracy Agenda
One can be justifiably suspicious when one hears the word "governance"
emerging from this mistrusted leadership. They would like to
see the notion of governance applied to those who use it so
glibly for others. When the World Bank and the IMF speak of
governance, for example, they mean simply another set of conditions
to be added to the long list of conditions already set out in
structural adjustment programmes. (11)
Where is "governance" when neo-liberal globalisation
not only leaves out vast swathes of humanity and intentionally
weakens the State but also plunges even countries like the erstwhile
"tigers" Korea, Thailand or Indonesia into financial
chaos and mass unemployment? Where is governance when the Fund
deliberately turns a blind eye to the looting from Russia of
billion$ in its own hard currency loans? Over the decade of
the 1990s, under the guidance of the IMF and the World Bank,
the Russian economy shrank by more than half. The number of
poor people skyrocketed from around two million to over 60 million.
Such disasters as have occurred in Asia, Latin America and the
so-called "transition countries" show that, contrary
to the neo-liberal myth, freedom of capital flows, highly leveraged
loans and uninhibited Portfolio Equity Investment are not the
road to prosperity but to ruin.
Despite all the talk two or three years ago about "new
financial architecture", no new safeguards have been put
in place and at this writing, we are all waiting for the collapse
of Argentina followed by who knows what other human disasters.
Instead of calling a halt to its policy of safeguarding creditors'
assets at all costs, the IMF has set up yet another $90 billion
bail-out fund. It does not respect the legal principle of "odious
debt" and forces debtors to honour the debts contracted
even by previous corrupt totalitarian, miliary or apartheid
regimes.
Although the IMF has lately soft-pedalled the issue, until
the financial crisis of 1997-98, its only idea of "governance"
for its own account was the attempt to change its Articles of
Agreement for the first time since they were adopted in 1944.
The Fund wanted to drop Article VI,3 which specifically recognises
that "members may exercise such controls as are necessary
to regulate international capital movements"; it wanted
to make total freedom of capital circulation a condition for
membership. It has also ignored it own Article VI,1 which declares
that "A member may not make net use of the Fund's resources
to meet a large or sustained outflow of capital..." and
indeed has caused many member-countries to do exactly the opposite.
It has thus protected Western creditor assets however reckless
and greedy those creditors may have been. Unrestricted capital
flows and fluctuating currencies whatever the political and
economic circumstances may be a speculator's paradise but they
invariably harm ordinary people.
The movement, for its part, is demanding a genuine new financial
architecture. Careless lenders and imprudent investors should
be forced to take responsibility for their actions [aren't risk
and responsibility what capitalism is supposed to be about?].
The Fund should once again become what Keynes intended it to
be: a mechanism for helping countries with temporary balance
of payments problems. It should advise them on how to avoid
contracting future debts in hard currencies and should supervise
a long-overdue debt workout: outright cancellation for the poorest
[and of all odious debts]; orderly bankruptcy proceedings and
write-downs for many others. If it cannot be reformed, the IMF
should be abolished and a new international lending institution
started from scratch.
It may well prove necessary to have several, more local Funds
as Japan proposed to create for Asia during the Asian financial
crisis. The United States immediately put a stop to such a plan;
the Fund listens closely to the US Treasury.
Sustained citizen campaigns on debt have gone on for longer
than on any other global issue. The G-7 has acknowledged this
movement and cannot say it has not been made aware of the problems.
What has been its actual response on third world debt? Despite
years of work by hundreds of thousands of people and the collection
of literally tens of millions of signatures, significant debt
relief for the poorest--much less the slightly better off--remains
a dim hope on an ever-receding horizon. At a conference on debt
strategies in Lima in 1988, the well-known Peruvian economist
Javier Iguiniz made what sounded like a quip but was in fact
a serious remark: "Don't cancel what we're not paying!"
"Canceling what they weren't paying" is what most
"debt relief", trumpeted by the G-7, has amounted
to so far.
Since most poor countries, despite the enormous sacrifices
of their peoples, are still unable to remit the total debt service
theoretically due, the unpaid portion is added to the principle.
Canceling that portion may mean that debt grows more slowly:
it does not mean that the actual burden has been lessened from
year to year. And so far, in the eyes of the Bank and the IMF,
only five countries have proven worthy of relief through the
stiff HIPC [Highly Indebted Poor Countries] terms. Overall,
less than five percent of total debt stocks has been canceled.
People who have worked on these issues for many years have
frequently arrived at the conclusion that debt is not a financial
or an economic problem at all but in every way a political one.
It is the best instrument of power and control of North over
South [and now East] ever invented; far superior to colonialism
which requires an army, a public administration and attracts
a bad press. Control through debt not only requires no infrastructure
but actually makes people pay for their own oppression.
Structural adjustment programmes are often beneficial to local
elites, providing them with such advantages as rock-bottom wages
and opportunities for buy-ups of privatised companies; they
are happy to cooperate. Debt has further atomised the debtor
countries politically and made them far less of a threat to
established Northern interests. Once significant organisations
like the G-77; third world-led initiatives in the United Nations
like the "New International Economic Order" are defunct
or toothless.
The citizens movement sees debt relief as an essential condition
of more equitable North-South relations and many people stress
that it should be accompanied by restitution of the riches siphoned
from the South for decades or centuries. Private banks as well
as public [multilateral and bilateral] creditors should be obliged
to participate: they have already been paid back many times
over.
On the front of international commerce, the movement is also
determined to transform the World Trade Organisation. Contrary
to what is often implied, everyone agrees that the world trading
system needs rules. The question is who makes them and for whose
benefit. One can show only too easily that transnational business
is the beneficiary, to the neglect of all other sectors of society.
(12)
The General Agreement on Trade in Services, GATS, is seen as
particularly dangerous as it provides a broad avenue for corporate
interests to invade the civic sphere. Corporations active in
services sectors see public education, health care, transport,
environmental services not as rights and public goods but as
gigantic markets. Now that more and more citizens have understood
what is at stake, the WTO is worried and accusing its "hostile
and ill-informed" critics of maliciously "spreading
scare stories". (13)
The fact remains that essential services for which previous
generations fought and sometimes died are open to attack and,
under present circumstances cannot be durably protected. The
GATS limits public services not covered by its rules to those
"supplied neither on a commercial basis nor in competition
with one or more service suppliers" and the Services Council
has established that this Article [I,3,c] "should be interpreted
narrowly".
Furthermore, prescriptions against subsidies, the fact that
governmental regulations in a host of areas will be open to
challenge as "unnecessary barriers to trade", refusal
to consider the "precautionary principle"; lowering
of public health and food safety standards; the patenting of
life forms and universal patent protection of medicines and
other vital goods for twenty years; the dangers of irreversibility
and many other issues have made citizens extremely wary not
only of the GATS but of the WTO in its entirety. Its Dispute
Resolution Body, operating in secrecy, has no obligations to
place any other international law above the rules of the WTO
itself: neither the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nor
Multilateral Environmental Agreements, nor ILO labour conventions.
The WTO is entirely independent of the United Nations and therefore
of the international law it has developed.
VI. What to do and How to do it
It is curious that, as the world slips deeper into recession,
established leaders do not seem to have a clue how to come out
of it. The solution to this problem is over 50 years old. It
was invented by Keynes for the national context and used successfully
in the international sphere after the Second World War. This
post-war solution was called the Marshall Plan and it put Europe
back on its feet, re-establishing it as a viable trading partner
for the United States.
Today there are two Keynesian ways to kick-start the world
economy. One is massive international spending on preserving
and repairing the environment. The other is to start including
the billions of people left out of the world economy by corporate-driven
globalisation. The UN Development Programme claims that approximately
$90 billion a year would cover a basic standard of living--enough
food, clean water, shelter, basic health care and education--for
everyone on earth. Let's say, generously, that the "basics"
programme plus environmental clean-up and preservation would
cost $200 billion a year for 10 years. In today's world, this
is a paltry sum.
It is vain to hope that Official Development Aid will ever
do the job. ODA from the OECD countries is dropping precipitously
at about 5% yearly, proving that Northern concern for the South
was largely a Cold War phenomenon and many countries simply
have lost any strategic interest they might once have possessed.
The UN 0.7% goal is a pious fiction--ODA now represents a scant
0.22 of the GDP of member countries according to the OECD Development
Assistance Committee. Total aid from G-7 countries fell by a
further 5 percent in the year 2000. (14)
We should stop pretending that real change will emerge from
national budgetary contributions and go for the money where
it really is, on international financial markets, in tax havens
and in coffers of transnational corporations.
One hundred years ago, inequities in the now-wealthy countries
were brought to public attention by a few crusaders.15 Health
and education standards, illiteracy, appalling housing, crime,
infant and child mortality rates in the poor neighbourhoods
of London and New York were in all respects comparable to what
one finds in many third world countries today. These gross inequalities
were eventually recognised as not merely scandalous but dangerous
to society as a whole, including its more privileged members.
Though many of the latter ranted and raved and claimed the end
of the world was at hand, graduated income taxes were finally
introduced so that redistribution and social inclusion could
proceed.
We now stand at just such a crossroads with regard to North-South
inequities. Money to deal with them is available but it will
have to come from international taxation. Such repair and renewal
is in everyone's interests. The present holders of extraordinary
wealth, like the rich New York a century ago, will, naturally,
resist. This is no reason, quite the contrary, to lessen the
pressure.
VII. The Future?
The citizens movement wants to remain exactly that: a movement.
So far, it has suffered no temptations to transform itself into
a political party, much less a "revolutionary" party,
and its members come from a variety of party political backgrounds
or, frequently, none at all. The tacit bet is that it is still
possible to work through existing political structures. How
long this conviction will continue to guide the movement is
anybody's guess.
It is extremely worrisome that trust in conventional politics
is rapidly fraying. Thus I hope to have conveyed something of
the urgency of addressing the concerns brought forward by the
citizens' movement: if they are not dealt with, and soon, we
will witness even deeper social divides, increasing disgust
with nominally democratic institutions, hardening of positions,
confrontation and escalation of violence, mostly by the State.
Those who maintain that the present world system is incapable
of self-regulation and reform will be proven correct.
The lessons of Genoa have not been lost on activists. We have
already witnessed citizens' democratic rights being trampled
and free expression denied with unprecedented brutality. European
governments which rightly protested the election of Jörg
Haider in Austria and momentarily boycotted the entire country
have said nothing about fascistic police behaviour in Genoa
under the orders of a G-7 government.
The consequences of spreading distrust in conventional politics
and governments are unforeseeable. Those who, like me, are struggling
to avoid the paths of repression, upheaval, violence and chaos
and are proposing practical solutions; those who hope not for
some undefinable worldwide "revolution" but for a
kind of Universal Welfare State--a perfectly feasible goal materially
speaking--will be marginalised or radicalised.
There is no polite way to say this: movement people, particularly
young people, are angry. Nowhere in the realms of actually existing
power can they discern the slightest sign of serious recognition
or responsible behaviour concerning the life-threatening problems
faced by human beings and the earth; neither on the part of
the G-8 governments and the European Commission, nor that of
the multilateral institutions like the World Bank, the IMF,
the WTO; nor above all the transnational corporations, the financial
markets and their numerous lobbies that have assumed unprecedented
sway over human affairs.
What this movement does see is unbridled greed, the undivided
reign of capital over labour and of rich over poor, rules made
to insure freedom of trade in all goods and services at the
expense of every human value; rampant privatisation, the destruction
of public services and the dismantling of welfare states where
they exist and policies to make them forever impossible where
they do not; massive and accelerating destruction of the earth,
its climate and its creatures--all this in the name of a fraudulent
"efficiency", increased profits and so-called "shareholder
value".
They see leaders who, once elected, are deaf and blind to the
needs of ordinary citizens but attentive to those of corporations;
they see an increasingly discredited political class worldwide
and, with it, the discrediting of the notion of politics itself.
They see that the State is prepared to use not just huge repressive
"robocop" forces, horses, dogs and tear gas against
them, but live ammunition as well. They see all this, they are
enraged and they are moved to fight.
I am attempting to explain to people of good will why this
movement is not going to go away; also why State-corporate power
is hardening and can be expected to continue to repress, defame
and criminalise citizens exercising their democratic rights.
The notion of "dialogue" with such an adversary is
becoming daily more problematic. So far, what we have witnessed
is "dialogue" which will be prolonged only so long
as those in power can set the terms, name the participants16
decide which subjects are on the table and which are taboo,
and generally put off any genuine change.
The crystallization of anger and mistrust are at the root of
the "post-Seattle" phenomenon as well as the new confidence
of the movement. Anger is legitimate when, in an age of wealth
and plenty, life remains nasty, brutish and short for billions;
so is the mistrust of a leadership which is at best timorous,
at worst frivolous, pretentious and mean-spirited. Repeated
claims of its desire to "help the poor" ring increasingly
hollow. The Genoa G-8 proposal of a miserable $1.5 billion to
deal with AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis was particularly disgraceful
given that Kofi Annan had, only weeks previously, asked the
"international community" for $7 to $10 billion to
deal with AIDS alone. This "international community",
led by the G-7, has so far rejected every opportunity for remedy
in every area, and listened only to a minority. Thus a new generation,
not all of it young, a kind of "trans-generational, trans-class,
trans-gender and trans-national generation" is rising internationally
in opposition.
People with knowledge, confidence, numbers and organisation
can unmake what some have made, they can undo what some have
done. This movement has made a momentous discovery and revealed
a dangerous truth: the corporate coup d'état, the triumph
of rich over poor, market over society, rapacity over nature
is not inevitable. And we will be heard.
Susan George
Paper completed 30 August 2001 to be presented at the Conference
on Reshaping Globalisation: Multilateral Dialogues and New Policy
Initiatives.
Sponsored by the Central European University, a project of George
Soros's Open Society Foundation
Budapest, October 2001
References
As proposed by Prof. Howard Wachtel of American University
in several papers: If TNC worldwide profits, worldwide sales
revenues and sales revenues in each tax jurisdiction are known,
then they could be taxed in each jurisdiction at a flat rate
worldwide. Example: Company X makes worldwide profits of $1
billion and receives 40% of its worldwide sales revenues in
the United States. The profits earned in the U.S. are thus considered
to be $400 million and the corporate profit tax is applied to
that base.
It may well be time for the citizens' movement, too, to re-examine
its image instead of reproducing, at the invitation of the adversary
and on his terrain, the image of the medieval siege with the
defenders symbolically pouring boiling oil from the battlements
on the rabble beneath. Perhaps we could go even further back
in history and invent a new Trojan Horse...
Philip Stephens, "A poor case for globalisation: The world's
leaders are failing to address legitimate questions raised by
protestors about the effects of global capitalism" 16 August
2001
After the defeat of the MAI which appeared to come out of nowhere,
the Financial Times plaintively recalled this line from "Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and labeled the victors "network
guerillas". The member unions of the OECD Trade Union Advisory
Committee, for example, were so sure the MAI would pass that
they limited their efforts to attempting to obtain at least
a "social clause".
Movement people are inspired by the participatory municipal
budget of Porto Alegre [population 1.3 million] where neighbourhood
organisations are in charge of choosing their priorities and
overseeing how the money is spent. Waste and corruption have
been, predictably, all but eliminated.
Le Monde, SOFRES poll, 19 July 2001 See in particular Mark Weisbrot
et al. "The Emperor has no Growth", Center for Economic
Policy Research, May 2001 and UNCTAD Trade and Development Report,
1997, Chapter 3
For a fascinating mathematical grounding of Pareto's century-old
law, see Mark Buchanan, "That's the way the money goes",
New Scientist, 19 August 2000
The Great Transformation, Rinehart, New York, 1944, p.72-73
One can no longer politely refer to "Structural Adjustment:
say instead, with the same hypocrisy as the IMF, "Poverty
Reduction and Growth Facility".
See Susan George, Remettre l'OMC à sa Place, Eds. Mille
et une Nuits, Fayard, Paris June 2001 for proof of overwhelming
business involvement in establishing trade rules. The WTO has
announced that 647 "NGOs" will be accredited to the
Ministerial meeting in Qatar, over three-quarters of them from
the rich, developed countries [502]. Of the total, 328 [50,7%]
will go to "BINGOs" or business-initiated NGOs, including
representatives of 35 advisory committees to the US government's
trade policy bodies which are themselves entirely made up of
business interests. Only 256 of the total can be classed as
"PINGOs" or public interest NGOs; the rest are research
organisations or unclassifiable. These figures do not of course
include the business representatives included in official delegations.
[Thanks to Vincente P.B. Yu of Friends of the Earth International
for the data].
See for example the WTO's recent 16 page brochure Fact and Fiction.
As for Director General Mike Moore, protesters, he says, "make
me want to vomit".
See the OECD website: "Development Assistance Committee
announces ODA figures for 2000". Only Denmark, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have met or surpassed the 0.7%
target--not exactly the largest OECD members.
Including the great investigative reporter-photographer Jacob
A. Riis whose ground-breaking study of New York's poor led to
public outrage and the beginnings of reform. How the Other Half
Lives [Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1897] inspired me
to call my own first book How the Other Half Dies [Penguins,
1976].
Cf. footnote 11 for an outstanding example of such control.