A summary of the international meetings “Market dictatorship : an alternative world is possible” organised by ATTAC in Paris, 24-26 June 1999.

“How do we move from resistance (to the neoliberal model) to offensive (and propose an alternative to globalisation, setting a common agenda)?”. This was the question generally put forward to the thousands of participants gathered by ATTAC. The objective of these meetings was specifically to join forces against market globalisation and against the supporters of neoliberalism’s monopoly of the debate, as well as to “contradict the will of the people”.

Globalisation can be split into two separate processes : on the one hand, relaxation in trade of goods and services and in direct foreign investment, i.e. everything that relates to the actual economy, and on the other hand, financial speculation on exchange and capital markets.

An agenda opposed to market globalisation centred round four themes.

Four stakes to fight market globalisation have finally been established : mobilisation against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and against financial speculation, cancellation of third world debt and finally campaigning to challenge parliaments on the democratic control of genetically modified organisms (GMO).

The WTO can be seen as causing a double threat, both in terms of the consequences of its actions - opening up markets to foreign competitors and investors and restricting the rights to intellectual property - and in terms of the actual organisation - the internal decision-making and negotiating structures within the WTO. In this way, the debate affects both economists - who need to question the neoliberalists’ monopoly of the debate - and political militants - who need to rethink the balance of power between Southern and Northern governments. As a result, two battles are being led from the frontline. The first one, an international campaign for information and mobilisation, has been proposed to seek a moratorium on the next WTO round of negotiations, the millennium round, due next December. The second is a battle to ensure the final declaration supports the concept of separation of power within the WTO and to establish an “Economic, international and independent court of justice”.

The very principle of financial globalisation - mobility of capital - weakens national economies as it is implemented without fundamentally being related to the actual economy. In order to counter this drift, the fight for taxation on foreign transactions (the “Tobin” tax) and for the elimination of tax havens is being put forward in the form of a world petition, and in Europe, by exerting pressure on parliaments.

The debate on debt is not solely related to globalisation, (it first appeared in the 1970s), but it has picked up momentum these last years. Jubilee 2000, the campaign led by the catholic church to cancel debt in the poorest countries, has brought to light the determining role the international financial institutions and in particular the International Monetary Fund (IMF), play on the countries in debt. The IMF offers support to countries in debt on the condition that they put into action a “plan for structural readjustments”. This plan results in a systematic relaxation and deregulation of the economy, together with a noticeable reduction in the role of the state, and has the fundamental aim not to develop the economy but to pay back the debt. Apart from the mobilisation to cancel debt, the other issue that is being challenged is the logic behind this “condition” set by the IMF.

The development of GMO does not affect the actual process of globalisation, but more its main players, the multinational organisations. By spreading the GMO industry and by protecting it from any competition by a live patent, multinationals are blocking any alternative autonomous farm-produce from developing in third world countries.

Towards a “globalisation of solidarity”? The debate’s theorical stakes. However, the main purpose of these meetings was to exchange information and to use the arena on offer to the many movements who took part in this international event. Over 1000 participants, of which nearly 500 were from outside Europe, trade-union and agricultural officials, and representatives of social movements, met to discuss something like thirty issues related to globalisation. During the debates, the terms anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism were often mentioned in the same context, to the extent that they were almost interchangeable. This then raises the question of the actual nature of the fight against globalisation. Is this process the global extension of the class struggle, capital versus labour, or is it a new type of conflict between nations, the interest of the richest countries, symbolised by G7, versus the interest of the poorest ones? Is the globalisation debate fundamentally ideological or it is nationalistic, or even regionalistic? The participants were unable to come to a conclusion on this issue, and on the contrary saw both approaches as complimenting each other: a double-sided market globalisation.

The nationalist argument is based on the “Triad” (North America, the European Union and Japan) governments’ instrumentalisation of the international institutions, the WTO and IMF, to serve their own interests. Under the guise of market and capital relaxation, the West will be able to dominate the rest of the globe. With the current process, Jubilee 2000’s Brian Ashley1 sees a new stage in the “colonialisation of the South by the North”. It can be argued that the WTO’s internal regulations therefore help the OECD to put bilateral pressure on other governments during negotiations; in the same way, the structural readjustment plans the IMF imposes on economies in crisis could be seen as serving mainly the interests of the West, and more particularly the United States.

In fact, the American Secretary of State for the Treasury, Lawrence Summers, stated in February 1998 that since the beginning of the Asian crisis “the IMF has done more for American trade and investment in South Korea than 30 years of bilateral negotiations” [2].

The regionalisation of international trade is being put forward as the answer to a globalisation seen as creating a conflict of interests between nations. In this vein, the Economonics Professor Chan Keun Lee [3] suggested the establishment of an Asian Monetary Fund, to replace the IMF in Asia, and the South African delegation proposed an African Concensus to be set up in opposition of the Washington Concensus, to redress the negotiating powers of the West.

The other interpretation defines globalisation as the class struggle spreading world-wide : globalisation is then seen as the result of a coalition of interests between Western multinationals, international institutions and the elites in power in the underdeveloped countries. This would suggest that the multinationals, and not the governments, are pulling the strings. For example, during the last round of negotiations, the Uruguay Round, the official American delegation included representatives of both the American multinationals and the lobbying groups. Oliver Hoederman [4], a specialist in multinational lobbying, sees this confusion as being even more obvious because “governments often confuse national interests with multinationals’ interests, whose share dividends land in the hands of their fellow citizens”.

In a parallel manner, globalisation could be seen as stopping the emergence of a strong and independent middle class, in favour of an insolated minority of people who benefit directly from the opening up of the markets, without their activities contributing to the development of the local economies. According to Boonthan Varawonge5, it was the corruption of the Thai political and financial elite, in the absence of market controls, which precipitated the crash in the economy in July 1997. In the same way, the unionist Ha-Soon Park6 argues that the restructuring of the Korean economy, imposed by the IMF, served the interests of the conglomerates, which are controlled by the important famillies close to power; this is what has led to crony capitalism.
In reply to this coalition of interests, the logic behind which is speculation and capital mobility, mobilisation is two-fold. At the heart of the rich countries, it is important to counter the multinationals’ lobbying of governments and international institutions by questioning members of Parliament. In the South, in countries weakened by globalisation, the mission is greater because of the fact that the democracies are emerging and there are incompetences in a fragmented public arena.

In the end, all the participitants came to the same conclusion: the debate on globalisation is closed in the countries that suffer the most from its consequences. “We do not know what the IMF is discussing behind our backs; it is difficult to call the public to witness on the harmful effects of globalisation, because we are not even able to offer a coherent alternative, through lack of information” sighs a Brazilian official.

For want of planning a different globalisation, “globalisation of solidarity”, these international events have brought to light the inability of democracies to put forward an alternative to globalisation. What is called censorship or propaganda in the South is the only thought in the North.

Pierre Habbard
Reporter

Notes :

1. Alternative Information&Development Centre (aidc.org.za).
2. “The IMF, Now More than Ever”, David D. Hale, p.12, Foreign Affairs vol.77 N.6.
3. Secretary general of Taegu Round Korea Committe, last book “Speculative capital and US hegemony”, 1998.
4. Europe Coroporation Observatory (www.xs4all.nl/~ceo).
5. Director of program Asian Cultural Forum on Development.
6. KOrean Confederation of Trade Unions (www;ktcu.org).

(From La Lettre n° 21, 22th July, 1999)