Perspectives on Social Transformation
Globalisation : Is there an Alternative ?
Part I: Introduces globalisation and its effects, response to and alternatives to Globalisation.
Part II: Presents the various aspects of the Resistance and Responses to Globalisation.
IIa: Another World is Possible
IIb: Protests and Peoples Action
Part IV: Existing alternatives
1. Viva Zapatista - Alternate Politics
2. An Alternate Public Forum
3. The Peasants Road….
4. Land less Battalions
5. Unemployed Workers
6. Social Movement Unionism
7. CMM - Workers Organisation
8. Cooperatives as Alternatives
9. Participatory Budgeting
10. Alternate Trade Systems
Part I: Globalisation: Is there an Alternative?
Globalisation - as it is unfolding across the globe - is basically a process of
increasing degree of integration of national economies into a global world economy.
http://vakindia.org
http://www.phmovement.org/pubs/issuepapers/belder.html
It has also come to be closely associated with a variety of specific trends and
policies, including an increasing reliance upon the free market, a significant growth
in the influence of international financial markets and institutions in determining the
viability of national policy priorities. The process is accompanied by a diminution in the
role of the State and the privatization of various functions previously considered to be
the exclusive domain of the State. www.vakindia.com
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/define/unstate.htm
Today, unprecedented changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology
have given the process new impetus. As globally mobile capital reorganizes business firms,
it sweeps away regulation and undermines local and national politics. Globalization
creates new markets and wealth, even as it causes widespread suffering, disorder, and
unrest. It is both a source of repression and a catalyst for global movements of social
justice and emancipation.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/index.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/2001/0906gbz.htm
One of the crucial aspects of globalisation is the undermining of democratic functioning. http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/nov/24inter.htm.This
is achieved by the imposition of structural adjustment programme,
http://www.developmentgap.org/ifi_testimony.html
the inauguration of a new world trade regime under the WTO, the gradual marginalisation of the UN and the declining role of the
nation state. These measures in their totality are referred to as http://www.fabianglobalforum.net/knowledge/article023.html
the Washington Consensus. http://www.aidc.org.za/web/archives/chos_glob_poverty.html
Globalisation is not an inevitable process, it is being resisted and there are alternate ways of managing the world's affairs in a just and democratic manner.
Part II: Is there a Anti -Globalisation Movement?
What is ‘the anti-globalization movement’? If it is a movement, is it anti-globalization? This movement we sometimes conjure into being goes by many names: anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, anti-free trade, anti-imperialist. Many say that it started in Seattle. Others maintain it began five hundred years ago—when colonialists first told indigenous peoples that they were going to have to do things differently if they were to ‘develop’ or be eligible for ‘trade’. Others again say it began on 1 January 1994 http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24305.shtml. when the Zapatistas launched their uprising with the words Ya Basta! (enough is enough) on the night NAFTA became law in Mexico.
What are the elements that contribute to this world wide resistance and attempts tp create alternatives to the present from of globalisation ? One such forum that reflects this unique unity in diversity is the annual gatherings under the umbrella of the World Social Forum that meets every year from the 2001. The others are the protests on the streets that have dogged every meeting of the international financial institutions and WTO since Seattle. http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/role/protarch01.htm
Although over the past years more emphasis has been given to the construction of grassroots alternatives to (capitalist) globalization, the movement's largest and most visible mode of organizing remains mass decentralized campaigns of direct action and civil protests. http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization_movement
If, however, that movement is to move on, that “serious thinking about alternatives” cannot be limited to what an alternative world would look like; it must also address getting there. http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/bigdocs/CAIS2_6.1.html. What remains conspicuously absent from the remarkable movements that have emerged is an alternative politics. http://www.monthlyreview.org/0202gindin2.htm
The ultimate response of the apologists for globalisation to their critics is: ‘You always say what you are against, but what are you for; what would you put in its place?’ http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=136 The main point, is that while in the long term the ultimate answer to the cynical, reactionary slogan that "there is no alternative" is to actually enact an alternative, in the near-term the answer is to offer a coherent, consistent, and viable model of preferable institutions and their dynamics. http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/econ/2001/0906gbz.htm
IIa. Another World is Possible.
‘Another world is possible’, means that we are not condemned to neo-liberalism, we can envisage other ways of living and organizing society than those we have at present. So our task is to persuade the largest number of people possible of the viability of such alternatives.
The slogan, around which the World Social Forum first met at Porto Alegro in 2002, is a unique forum for anti-systemic forces to gather at a world level. It is unprecedented both in its diversity—bringing together not only parties and political currents but social movements, NGOs, civil-rights groups, unions—and in its own non-state, non-partisan character. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20010319&s=klein
It proposes to formulate global alternatives to current capitalist practices, and strategies for their implementation. The first meeting of the Forum was dubbed as the coming-out party for the existence of serious thinking about alternatives. The emphasis was on alternatives coming from the countries experiencing most acutely the negative effects of globalization: mass migration of people, widening wealth disparities, weakening political power. (File-1) Basic to the Forum was the idea that alternatives to neoliberalism need to move beyond it.
But what seemed to be emerging organically out of the World Social Forum is not a movement for a single global government but a vision for an increasingly connected international network of very local initiatives, each built on direct democracy.(File-2 http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/
Others are a bit skeptical. Some argue that, "… in stark contrast to the movement to http://www.rebelion.org/petras/english/twoforums170202.htm which it traces its birth, the WSF has not yielded a single action against imperialism. … the WSF serves the purpose of imperialism. http://www.rupe-india.org/35/howandwhy.html
The 4th edition of this forum http://www.wsfindia.org/ will be held in Mumbai, India from 16th Janaury, 2004.
IIb Protests and Peoples Action
In February of 1998, grassroots movements of all continents met in Geneva to launch a worldwide coordination network of resistance to the global market, a new alliance of struggle and solidarity called Peoples' Global Action against 'free' trade and the WTO (PGA). That was the birth of this global tool for communication and coordination for all those who fight the destruction of humanity and the planet by capitalism and build local alternatives to globalisation http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/en/
In India, a nation wide coalition of grass root protests and peoples actions are demanding, "for an alternative development model and policies that are interrelated and are a natural extension of the struggles for equality and justice. http://andolan.org/
As others argue, the motive and justification for defensive actions should be that of remedying a failing system but also to make its negative effects from getting worse in the short run. (NLR18. 2002)
III. Alternatives : Prospects and Realities Social movements globally have put the institutions of global economic governance on the defensive. Throughout 2000 and possibly more clearly at the World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre during January 2001 in the framework of "Another World is Possible", the challenge to begin to articulate alternatives has taken on a new urgency.
Civil society organisations and networks are actively responding to the challenge of deepening the analysis of the crisis of the institutions of global governance and developing proposals for comprehensive, substantive and sustainable alternatives to the existing structures of global economic and political governance. They are consistent with democracy, sustainable development and eradication of poverty http://www.tni.org/altreg/docs/intro.htm
"It won't do to replace the neoliberal ethic of the IMF and World Bank with a more social democratic one. We need new institutions that express the principles of what we should be calling 'deglobalization' (file: new politics)
Navdanya score card: http://www.vshiva.net/aticles/oneyear_after_seattle.htm
1. Viva Zapatista - Alternate Politics
On the first day of the year 1994, The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) staged a daring intervention into the course of Mexican history. In a few short months, the EZLN went from an unknown force to one negotiating directly with the government over national issues such as fair elections, economic development and indigenous rights. http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/chiapasuprising.html
http://www.angelfire.com/nh/wolfweb/tezln.html
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/marcos_se_2_wind.html
While these demands echo many of the demands of other revolutionary groups in Latin America, the Zapatistas are very different than other guerrilla counterparts around the world. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/46/016.html
The Zapatistas are anti-patriarchal and openly oppose sexism and respect the rights of women as equals. : http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/councils.html
The Zapatistas stand for the rights of self-determination for all people, including indigenous peoples. They are national in scope, yet they also see the need to expose the brutal situation that the indigenous people have endured for the last 500 years. To rectify this, they maintain that all people "regardless of race, creed or color" should be treated to same.
The EZLN also understands the importance of ecology and preservation of the environment. Article 13 of the Revolutionary Agrarian Law states, "zones means, legal organizational means or any others that people desire to attempt.
The EZLN stands against the notion of leadership that is not tied directly to the communities for which they are fighting. ‘The Punch Card and the Hourglass’ (NLR 9)
This mode of political organization is a model that the Zapatistas see as a way to replace the current political structure. Regional assemblies could replace the present system of State centralization.They argue for a new political system based on village autonomy , perhaps even without a national government. http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws99/ws56_zapatista.html
The significance of this movement is in fashioning a new language of resistance and hope, http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4145255-103390,00.html a new cultural politics of struggle and has demonstrated a sustained response to the neo liberalism of the transnational elites and governments across the globe. One of the most important in a worldwide surge of movements challenging the essential tenets of globalization and neo-liberalism. http://thespleen.com/international/baikilo7/index.php?artID=224
One of the aspects of the Zapatista experience is the network that they have built up from the grass rots across the globe. http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/marcos_index.html writings
2. An Alternate Public Forum
ATTAC an ‘action-oriented movement of popular education’. What does it mean today? http://attac.org.uk/attac/html/about.vmwhat-is Essentially, that militants must be well-informed, intellectually equipped for action. We don’t want people turning out on demonstrations without really knowing why. So ATTAC members aren’t activists in the French sense of the term, which differs from the English, since its connotation is action for action’s sake. Our work is in the first instance—though not the last—educational.
It is based on membership from the lower-middle classes upwards, above all in the public services, with a significant proportion of students and teachers, but employees and executives of the private sector are also present. We also have a sprinkling of farmers and unemployed. What we do not possess—any more than anyone else—are roots in the working class, or popular sectors more broadly http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR25303.shtml
Attac’s political objective is not socialism—the transfer of political power to the working class and the economic reconstruction of society on the basis of human need—but the restoration of political power and economic sovereignty to the capitalist nation-state http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/sep2001/att-s10.shtml
3. The Peasants Road….
Via Campesina argue that theirs is a, " response to the increasingly hostile environment for peasants and small farmers the world over is to collectively challenge those conditions. http://www.virtualsask.com/via/lavia.deceng.html
Via Campesina is an international coalition of of peasants and farmers, they stand for :
http://www.viacampesina.org/welcome_english.php3
They believe food is a human right, not a commodity, and that their job-- the production of food--is fundamental to all human existence Via Campesina has been marching on every WTO meeting from 1994 onwards. "We will not be intimidated. We will not be 'disappeared'," they have declared. http://www.newfarm.org/depts/gleanings/0503/peasantrevolt_print.shtml
This global alliance of small and family farmers, peasants, landless and indigenous people, women and rural labourers, has a membership of millions--the vast majority from poor countries--and they're putting an alternative agricultural paradigm on the map. http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24605.shtml
4. Land less Battalions
Since the late 1970s, more than one million people in Brazil have transformed their lives. They have done so by organizing peaceful protests that have forced the Brazilian government to redistribute approximately 20 million acres of agricultural land to 350,000 families and to assist them further in creating news livelihoods.(File 1)
Less than 3% of the population owns two-thirds of Brasil's arable land. While 60% of Brasil's farmland lies idle, 25 million peasants struggle to survive by working in temporary agricultural jobs. The Landless Workers' Movement - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) is a response to these inequalities.
The MST has three main objectives: to win land for the landless, to carry out a real programme of agrarian reform in which power as well as land is redistributed, and to achieve a more just society. (www.mstbrazil.org)
The success of the MST lies in its ability to organize. Its members have not only managed to secure land, thereby guaranteeing food security for their families, but have come up with an alternative socio-economic development model that puts people before profits.(File2) This is transforming the face of Brasil's countryside and Brasilian politics at large.
5. Unemployed Workers
This movement, which transparently challenges the assumptions of the atomized impotent urban poor, is a case worth exploring for its innovative features and its explosive possibilities for the rest of urban Latin America. http://www.monthlyreview.org/0102petras.htm
While the unemployed workers’ movement initially proved promising in pressuring for jobs and funding for local projects, it soon confronted a series of serious problems. http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2003&leaf=06&filename=5900&filetype=html
These demonstrations have been enormously successful within the limitedareas in which they operate. But recently, as early as September of last year, there were two national meetings trying to coordinate the committees from all the different cities and the regions and suburbs of Buenos Aries,and they created a kind of coordinating committee. http://www.geocities.com/wageslavex/intarg.htm)
The composition, tactics, and demands of these groups varied, but they were all united in their opposition to neoliberalism and imperialism, that is, the neoliberal economic regime and the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of local and foreign elites.
6. Social Movement Unionism
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was founded in 1985. COSATU believes in a democratic society free of racism, sexism and the exploitation of the working class. We believe in a society where workers have full control over their lives. We are determined to work with other democratic forces to do away with all forms of oppression and exploitation. http://www.cosatu.org.za/docs/aboutcos.htm
Since then COSATU has been in the forefront of the struggle for democracy and workers' rights and is one example of new forms of trade unionism - social movement unions. Social-movement unionism implies an active strategic orientation that uses the strongest of society’s oppressed and exploited, generally organised workers, to mobilise those who are less able to sustain self-mobilisation: the poor, the unemployed, the casualised workers, the neighbourhood organisations. http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/needed2.html
COSATU has over the years is actively involved in the resiatance to privatisation http://www.cosatu.org.za/docs/2002/02priva.htm. , addressing gender concerns http://www.cosatu.org.za/docs/2003/gendbook.htm and other policy issues. http://www.cosatu.org.za/docs/2001/peob2001.htm
Trevor Ngwane of COSATU says that,. " We cannot finally win this immediate struggle unless we win that greater one. But still, connecting with what touches people on a daily basis, in a direct fashion, is the way to move history forward ". http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR25603.shtml
7. CMM - Workers Organisation
The Chattisgarh movement led by Niyogi transcended the question whether industrial workers and peasants or agricultural laborers have the major political or historical precedence in terms of political organization. He realized that a trade union movement isolated from the problems of the society would soon find that the rest of the society does not stand by it. Therefore, it broke the traditional mould of trade union movement in India. http://chhattisgarh.nic.in/profile/cchhattisgarh.htm
He negated the concept of development and industrialisation as a process of deprivation, de-skilling and displacement of masses; and upheld the view that meaningful industrialisation is that which taps the creativity of the people, and when the technology gets integrated into the day to day life and culture of the people http://www.labourfile.org/cec/Publication/cc_pubs05.html
This incidentally is the formulation of citizenship that has been put forth by the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha. It needs to be thought out, for current notions of citizenship and connected notions of freedom show us nothing but the ugly face of societies http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/09/20/stories/05202523.htm
The workers believe that this is not just a hospital, it's a health care movement. There could be no better tribute to its architect, Niyogi, who was shot dead on September 28, 1991. http://www.humanscapeindia.net/humanscape/hs0800/hs80016t.htm
8. Cooperatives as Alternatives
A spirited struggle by the people of Cochabamba in Bolivia against a water multinational reverses privatisation and offers lessons for people engaged in the search for alternatives hat are democratic and accountable to the people. http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2003/stories/20030214000206000.htm
The coalition that began the process was an alliance summoned by the call of people from rural and urban areas, who driven by an elementary need to defend vital necessities such as access to water, called on the population to unite. http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~mspadmin/pages/Conferences/Services/Olivera.htm
In the urban areas management of water is completely in the hands of the people. We do not want either a state owned enterprise or private enterprise http://www.kisanwatch.org/eng/special_reports/feb.03/spr_Bolivian_experience.htm
If the World Bank were truly interested in water policy reform, it would proactively facilitate Saguapac and other similar institutions that are both economically viable and dedicated to poverty alleviation," http://www.waterindustry.org/Water-Facts/world-water-4.htm
The alternative such as the SAGUPAC in Cochabamaba show the way that people run
coopretaives are an viable alternative to state run or private enterprises based on
profit. http://www.tni.org/altreg/water/participation.pdf.
Even the World Bank had to agree. http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/oed/oeddoclib.nsf/
DocUNIDViewForJavaSearch/EE95EE729B8A87
CB85256BAD0066C3A4/$file/Precis_222.pdf (INCLUDE DHAKA AND COSATU - FROM VAK)
9. Participatory Budgeting
How would you like to distribute 200 million dollars to your fellow citizens?
That’s the amount of money the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil spends in an average year for housing, public transport, street paving, garbage collection, clinics, hospitals, sewage, environment, social housing, literacy, schooling, culture, law & order, et cetera. But who decides on how much is to be spent on what , how and by whom. . http://www.thinkcity.ca/Participatory%20Budgets.pdf
It is the population, through a debate and consultation process, who define and decide on the amount of income and expense, as well as where and when the investments will be done, which are the priorities as well as the plans and actions to be developed by the Government. http://www.unesco.org/most/southa13.htm
The decision process includes two huge annual assemblies and myriads of smaller special interest meetings . One of the lessons learned is, that everybody can contribute, including the poor and the less educated. They are given time and space to learn the process, by those who are more experienced. http://www.worldbank.org/participation/sdn/snd71.pdf.
The results have been amazing. Since they started doing it in 1989, the number of houses with running water has gone from 75% to 99%. Housing assistance has gone from 1.700 families to 29.000 families, the number of public schools has increased from 29 to 86 and literacy is now at 98% (better than some parts of eg. the US). http://democracy.mkolar.org/pdda/directdemorcamento.html
Here is a local alternative to top-down, back-scratching, back-room, police-backed elite business as usual. Apart from such concrete achievements in addressing inequality and exclusion, corruption- which before was the rule--has disappeared. http://www.futurenet.org/24democracy/lewit.htm
It is also a major contributing factor to forming an active and mobilized citizenship. Today, the citizens of Porto Alegre have access to all the information about public investments and are empowered to make decisions affecting their future. http://www.sustainabledevelopment.org/blp/Hangzhou/Presentations/PortoAlegre.htm
More important than these practical results is the revival of citizenship in Porto Alegre and the realization that it is possible to actively participate in public affairs. The role of the citizen has been the main strength and primary consequence of this experience. http://www.innovation.cc/case_std/doucet.htm
A similar experiment http://www.worldbank.org/participation/webfiles/PEM1Bangalore.pdf is now underway in the city of Bangalore, reportedly inspired by Porto Alegro ? http://www.humanscapeindia.net/humanscape/new/oct02/cleaningupthegardencity.htm
10. Alternate Trade Systems
A LET System is a trading network supported by its own internal currency. It is self-regulating and allows its users to manage and issue their own 'money supply' within the boundaries of the network. The key points include: http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/faq.html#whatis
Note : indigenous perspective on globalisation: http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/indbring.htm
Compiled by Raajen Singh, 2004