D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 6, November/December 2001, p. 13 - 15)

When at the end of 1999 the spectacular pictures of the protest actions against the WTO summit in Seattle went around the world, the public became aware that globalisation had also globalised its own opposition. Since then the series of protests against symbols of globalisation such as the IMF and World Bank has not let up. The high-water mark of the protest wave to date came at the G7 summit in the Italian port-city of Genoa, where about 200,000 critics of a globalisation dominated by neo-liberalism gathered to make their voices heard.

This process confirms the by no means new perception that major social upheavals and problems sooner or later also give rise to civil society actors who propose solutions to problems which go beyond what appears to be feasible in day-to-day politics and articulate alternatives to the status quo.

The proposition that globalisation is an upheaval of historic dimensions which is resulting in new and great problems - including social polarisation and exclusion, heightening of environmental destruction and erosion of democracy - is being contested less and less. And for most of the inhabitants of this planet there is little evidence of the much-cited opportunities that globalisation is supposed to hold out to them. That is why, as early as at Seattle, the then US President Bill Clinton confirmed the legitimacy of the protests there. “If they [the WTO] want to avoid protests at every trade conference until the end of time, they must open the process so that the voices of labour, the environment and the developing countries can be heard, decisions are transparent, files are open and consequences are clear,” he said. EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy took exactly the same line, saying: “The fact is that these gatherings have a legitimate right to protest and we must listen to them.”

Since Genoa, the questions posed by the critics of globalisation have found their way on to the political agenda with greater weight than ever before. The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel commented after Genoa: “A new, and for the first time a really international, protest generation is turning the heat on politicians and corporation bosses - and rightly so.”

Reform of the financial markets -
new topic for civil society

The criticism is aimed at various dimensions of globalisation. Certain single aspects such as world trade or the developing countries’ indebtedness have been worked on by NGOs and other civil society actors for a fairly long time. But a quite central factor, the role of the international financial markets, long escaped any great attention. The unbridled money markets are at the centre of the globalisation process and form its spearhead. Their developmental significance now goes far beyond the creditor-debtor relationship. The markets’ volatility is a great risk of instability for the vulnerable national economies of the South, and in the event of crises its impacts are disastrous. But the financial markets also are increasingly influencing the fiscal, economic and social policies of the industrialised nations and threatening to become something akin to their ‘fifth estate’.

Since the financial crash of the emerging markets in Southeast Asia in 1997/98, more and more civil society actors have focused on reform of the international financial system. The realisation that the threat to stability posed by financial markets must be controlled by political regulations has also gained ground even in the mainstream of finance policy. For instance, World Bank President James Wolfensohn argues that “we cannot adopt a system in which the macroeconomic and financial is considered apart from the structural, social and human aspects”. The German Federal government also no longer disputes that there is a need for reform. A finance ministry paper, for example, cites not only the opportunities of globalisation. It also points to “risks and social costs - as the financial market crises of the 1990s have made clear”. The German Bundestag (Federal Parliament) commission of inquiry on globalisation also advocates a fundamental reform of the international finance system. It goes so far as to present convincing arguments for the introduction of a Tobin tax on short-term international movements of capital.

The German government’s zeal for reform, however, has cooled again in line with the growing distance in time from the Asian crisis. And the “new international financial architecture” which officials used to talk about from time to time is dissipating itself in inadequate ‘touch-up’ repairs of the old ruins. This is precisely where the importance of civil society’s pressure for reform comes into play. In view of many structural ‘blockades’ at government level which establishing global regulation comes up against , attempts to achieve changes in the international financial system are time and again in danger of coming to nothing. But pressure for reform emanating from civil society can now no longer articulate itself solely in a national framework. Like the problems it aims to remedy, it must be organised and asserted on a transnational basis, even if its roots at local or national level are still important in establishing and driving it.

The international ATTAC movement

One of the most interesting and successful of the civil society projects that are going all out for political regulation of the financial markets is the international ATTAC movement (the acronym stands for “Association pour la taxation des transactions financiers à l’aide des citoyennes et citoyens”). Founded in France in 1998, ATTAC France has in the meantime become an extremely successful project. Its membership includes more than 30,000 individuals, 80 municipalities, a great number of NGOs, trade unions, and newspapers and magazines. The monthly magazine Le Monde Diplomatique has played an important catalyst role in the project’s rise.

National ATTAC structures have in the meantime been established in more than 30 other countries - including Belgium, Brazil, Finland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Philippines, Sweden, Switzerland, Senegal, South Korea and Tunisia. In Sweden, more than 12,000 people, including many young ones, joined ATTAC in the first five months after the national organisation’s founding in January this year.

ATTAC Germany

Germany also now has its own ATTAC structure, called ‘ATTAC Germany - Network for Democratic Control of the Financial Markets’. Besides many individual members from the academic world, MPs of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), leading trade union officials, former Federal finance minister Oskar Lafontaine (SPD), artists such as Konstantin Wecker and many NGOs and associations signed the founding charter. The trade unions represented included ver.di, formed after a merger of Germany’s services sector unions and the country’s second-largest labour organisation. Among the other signatories was BUND, Germany’s biggest environmental group. Because one of ATTAC’s tenets is orientation on the grass roots and the movement, the German chapter is aiming for local anchoring. There are now ATTAC initiatives in more than 20 German cities and towns, and others are coming into being almost daily.

Innovative organisational philosophy

The key features of the ATTAC organisational philosophy are:

• Pluralism. ATTAC has no binding theoretical, philosophical, religious or ideological basis. Even more, it has no need for such a basis, and any attempt to foist one on the project would soon be stopped. ATTAC does not care whether someone takes part in the project as a Good Samaritan, a humanist, a champion of human rights, or a Marxist. But this does not mean an ‘as you like’ approach. The project is based on consensus which rejects neo-liberal globalisation on the basis of the criteria of democracy, social justice and ecological tenability. Different positions have their place within this corridor. They range from those committed to single aspects of ATTAC’s demands (such as debt relief for the poorest developing countries or introduction of the Tobin tax) to those who stand up for democratic regulation and civilising of globalisation and a radical reformism to others who believe that capitalism per se should be called into question. Respect for this pluralism is the non-negotiable basis of ATTAC’s activities, as are conflicts of views based on solidarity.
• Orientation on grass roots and civil society movements. This means the engagement of local people is the basis of the project’s activities. In the 1990s, mainly professional NGOs were the chief protagonists of critical and opposition positions against neo-liberal globalisation. But since Seattle they appear to be fading into the background and the civil society movement is becoming the determinant force of the criticism of globalisation. True, many NGOs and in some countries also trade unions (and in France even municipalities), collaborate with ATTAC. But the movement-oriented grass roots is the foundation of the organisation.
• Open, decentral, participatory and flexible organisational structures with the greatest possible autonomy for local initiatives, as well as decision processes based on discussion, consensus and transparency.
• Plurality of instruments and types of action. ATTAC helps itself from a variety of instruments ranging from publications to workshops, conferences, exerting influence in the official political system, and imaginative ‘happenings’, demonstrations and civil disobedience actions. It uses these instruments depending on the circumstances at the time, without making them a standard operational procedure. In other words, it is about giving free rein to a productive dialectic based on actions which both conflict and cooperate with each other. But ATTAC rejects violence.
• Cooperation and orientation on alliances. ATTAC makes no claim to sole representation. It aims at a broad civil society alliance as a counterweight to the forces of the global market and their political organs such as the IMF, WTO, G-7, and so on. ATTAC neither wishes to nor can oust or replace other organisations. Rather, it makes efforts to achieve a relationship which complements them. ATTAC is also willing to cooperate across a spectrum ranging from selective tactical collaboration to strategic alliances. But the movement maintains its independence from political parties. Civil society actors in developing countries are particularly important partners. For example, ATTAC cooperates with the landless movement in Brazil (MST), with farmers’ movements, with networks of indigenous peoples, and with organisations and networks of the now not-so-new ‘new social movements’ such as the environmental and women’s movements in all continents.

ATTAC thus clearly differentiates itself from the conventional structures of political parties, associations and NGOs. At the same time, it can fall back, at least partially, on the resources of the trade unions, associations and NGOs which cooperate with it. Great importance is placed on self-organisation. But these structures also take account of the fact that ever fewer people, especially of the younger generation, are willing to be tied to the traditional organisational scheme of things.

Political orientation

The starting point for ATTAC’s programme is criticism of the results of the globalisation process to date. It says: “The promise that globalisation brings prosperity for all has not been fulfilled. On the contrary, the gap between the poor and the rich is getting ever bigger.” The criticism, however, is not aimed fundamentally at the internationalisation of economic, political and cultural relations, as the term “globalisation opponents” used in many media reports suggests. Rather, it rejects a globalisation which is oriented solely on powerful business interests and, as it were, has a neo-liberal distortion. ATTAC’s idea of globalisation is one based on solidarity, social justice, human rights and democracy. Its goal is the creation of socially just, ecologically sustainable and democratic structures in the international system as well as within societies in both North and South. In other words, it is about shaping globalisation according to emancipatory rationalism.

At the same time, ATTAC emphasises that it is not aiming for a “return to the supposedly idyllic conditions of past decades”. By that, the project also rejects the fatalistic perception of globalisation. “The suggestion that globalisation in its currently prevailing neo-liberal form is just another force of circumstance is pure ideology.” That is why ATTAC’s main slogan is: “A different world is possible.”