Anti-globalization
Anti-globalization is a political stance of opposition to the negative aspects of
globalization. The corresponding movement is known widely as the
anti-globalization movement, and is a largely
grassroots effort. Many regard the term "anti-globalization" as a
misnomer, and more nuanced terms include
anti-capitalist,
anti-corporate or
alternative globalization.
Overview
\nThough the mechanisms of globalization are often poorly understood in the western world (see Ford Foundation), the popularity of this stance grew in the late twentieth century mainly due to calls to combat the internationalisation of corporate economic activity and any potential exploitation of developing nations resulting from such activity. Those in the anti-globalization movement generally try to promote awareness for human rights NGO's, advocate socialist or social democratic alternatives to capitalism and seek to protect the public interest and the world's ecosystem from what they believe to be potentially damaging effects from globalisation.
Anti-globalizationists are sometimes perceived to be marginalized by mainstream media and governments because of their strongly "anti-business" views: media across the world often has ownership by wealthy individuals or large corporations, who activists believe have conflicting priorities to others in society.
The anti-globalisation movement
\nAlthough adherents of the movement often work in concert, the movement itself is heterogeneous and includes diverse, sometimes opposing, understandings of this process, alternative visions, strategies and tactics.\nIn preference to anti-globalization, participants may use the positive terms global justice or fair trade movement, Global Justice and Solidarity Movement (GJ&SM), Movement of Movements or simply The Movement, and use slogans like "globalize justice" and "globalize liberation."
Some factions of the movement reject globalization as such, but the overwhelming majority of its participants are aligned with movements of indigenous people, human rights NGO's, anarchism, green movements, and to a minor extent communism. Some activists in the movement have objected not to capitalism or international markets as such but rather to what they claim is the non-transparent and undemocratic mechanisms; and the negative consequences of unregulated globalization. They are especially opposed to "globalization abuse" being misrepresented as neoliberalism, and international institutions that are perceived to promote neoliberalism without regard to ethical standards, such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and "free trade" treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
Activists often also oppose business alliances like the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) and the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC), as well as the governments which promote such agreements or institutions. Others argue that, if borders are opened to capital, borders should be similarly opened to allow free and legal circulation and choice of residence for migrants and refugees. These activists tend to target organizations such as the International Organization for Migration and the Schengen Information System.
It is also worth noting that many nationalist movements, such as the French National Front are also against globalization. They are usually not considered part of the 'mainstream' anti-globalization movement, which tends to adopt left-wing approaches.
Ideology and causes within the movement
\nThere are many different causes championed by movement members, including labor rights, environmentalism, feminism, freedom of migration, preservation of the cultures of indigenous peoples, biodiversity, cultural diversity, food safety, organic farming, opposition to the green revolution and genetic engineering, and ending or reforming capitalism. Many of the protesters are veterans of single-issue campaigns, including forest/anti-logging activism, living wage, labor union organizing, anti-sweatshop campaigns, homeless solidarity campouts, urban squatting, urban autonomy, and political secession. Some protesters identify themselves as revolutionary anarchists, socialists, Gaians, or communists; others agree ideologically but don't immediately identify themselves as such and still others want to reform capitalism, e.g. democratic Greens, some pagans.
Although movement members see most or all of these goals as complementary to one another, the number of different, and sometimes contradictory, issues has been a point of annoyance for the people they are protesting against. Critics claim many views are inconsistent and unrealistic. Many of these concerns can be said to represent specific issues about which the protestors fear a loss of self-determination, because they believe that the global financial institutions and agreements undermine local decision-making methods. Local or national sovereignty is seen as key to protecting cultures, and ecologies.
As such, one common thread among the disparate causes is that the World Bank and IMF are seen as undermining local decision-making methods. Local or national sovereignty is seen as key to protecting cultures and ecologies. Governments and free trade institutions, on the other hand, are seen as acting for the good of trans-national (or multi-national) corporations (e.g. Microsoft, Monsanto, etc.). These corporations are seen as having abilities that human persons do not have: moving freely across borders, extracting desired natural resources, utilising a diversity of human resources. They are perceived to be able to move on after damage to natural capital and biodiversity in a manner impossible for a nation's citizens. Activists also claim corporations impose a kind of "global monoculture". Some of the movements' common goals are, therefore, an end to the legal status of corporate personhood and the dissolution, or dramatic reform, of the World Bank, IMF, and WTO. As protest slogans (simplistically) summarize: "People and planet before profits", "The Earth is not for sale!", or "Teamsters and Turtles, Together At \nLast!".
Some aspects of the movement's agenda is shared by major (pro-capitalist) economic theorists who argue for much less centralized systems of money supply, debt control, and trade law. These include George Soros, Joseph E. Stiglitz (formerly of the World Bank), and David Korten. These three in particular have made strong arguments for drastically improving transparency, for debt relief, land reform, and restructuring corporate accountability systems. Korten and Stiglitz's contribution to the movement include involvement in direct actions and street protest. As many supporters of the movement do not share basic assumptions of capitalism and economics itself, their particular agenda may not dominate the movement or its perceptions, but it potentially provides greater credibility.
Organization
\nAlthough 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 disobedience. This mode of organizing, sometimes under the banner of the Peoples' Global Action network, tries to tie the many disparate causes together into one global struggle. Exposure to the other causes helps create a sense of solidarity and may lay the groundwork for a consensus process and basis of unity for the movement overall, which could eventually include any, all or none of the doctrines listed above.
\nIn many ways the process of organizing matters overall can be more important to activists than the avowed goals or achievements of any component of the movement.
As Ralph Nader has put it: \n:"You may support some of the goals. You may even like some of the decisions. But you can't reasonably support the way these decisions are being made."
At summits, the stated goal of most demonstrations is to stop proceeding. Some demonstration slogans to this effect include:\n"WEF? SHUT IT DOWN!", "CAPITALISM? NO THANKS! WE'LL SHUT DOWN YOUR F**KING BANKS!", and "WTO? NO! WTO? NO!". Although the demonstrations rarely succeed in more than delaying or inconveniencing the actual summits, this energizes the mobilizations and gives them a purpose. Critics claim this form of publicity is expensive in police time and the public purse. Although not supported by many in the movement, rioting has occurred in Genoa, Seattle and London and extensive damage can be done to the area, especially "capitalist" targets like McDonalds Restaurants.
Movement organization
\nDespite (or perhaps because of) the lack of formal coordinating bodies, the movement manages to successfully organise large protests on a global basis, using information technology to spread information and organise. Protesters organize themselves into "affinity groups," typically a non-hierarchical group of people who live close together and share a common goal or political message. Affinity groups will then send representatives to planning meetings. However, because these groups are easily and frequently penetrated by law enforcement intelligence, \nimportant plans of the protests are often not made until the last minute. One common tactic of the protests is to split up based on willingness to break the law. This is designed, with varying success, to protect the risk-averse from the physical and legal dangers posed by confrontations with law enforcement. For example, in Prague, the protest split into three distinct groups, approaching the conference center from three directions: one engaging in various forms of civil disobedience (the Yellow march), one (the Pink/Silver march) advancing through "tactical frivolity" (costume, dance, theatre, music, and artwork), and one (the Blue march) engaging in violent conflicts with the baton-armed police, the protesters throwing cobblestones lifted from the street.[Guardian report].
\nThese demonstrations come to resemble small societies in themselves. Many protesters take training in first aid and act as medics to other injured protesters. Some organizations like the National Lawyer's Guild and, to a lesser extent, the ACLU provide legal witnesses in case of law enforcement confrontation. Protesters often claim that major media outlets do not properly report on them; in response, some of them created the Independent Media Center, a collective of protesters reporting on the actions as they happen.
Influences
\nSeveral influential critical works have inspired the\nanti-globalization movement. These include, most influentially:
Perhaps more influential than any printed book is the vast array of material on spiritual movements, anarchism, libertarian socialism and the Green Movement that is now available on the Internet. The previously obscure works of Arundhati Roy, Starhawk, and John Zerzan in particular - these inspired a critique favoring feminism, consensus process and political secession, opposing a "tyranny of Number" by which the critics seem to mean any global measurements of people or profit at all. Perhaps the only axiom shared widely by such critics is, in line with this critique, that biodiversity is good, extinction bad. Arguably most advocates of globalization would agree with this too, so it may be a straw man.
Other than this vague "biodiversity good, extinction bad, numbers harmful" summary, which would no doubt enrage many followers of specific ideologies, there seems to be no leader who is universally accepted by "the movement". In this respect it resembles the peace movement, environmental movement, ecology movement, Green Movement, and various forms of anarchism and \nfundamentalism, all of which generally abhor usurpation of power by "leaders", while paradoxically elevating previously obscure figures or doctrines. Some call this an anti-monoculture movement, and make strong links between ecological, social, and ideological diversity doctrines.
J18
The first major mobilization of the movement happened on June 18, 1999. Anti-globalization protests were organized in dozens of cities around the world, especially London, U.K. and Eugene, Oregon. The protest in Eugene, Oregon turned into a mini-riot where local anarchists drove cops out of a small park. One anarchist, Robert Thaxton, was arrested and convicted of throwing a rock at a police officer. As of 2004, he is still in prison.
Seattle/N30
\nMain article: WTO Meeting of 1999
The second major mobilization of the movement, known as N30, occurred on November 30, 1999, when protesters blocked delegates' entrance to WTO meetings in Seattle, USA. The protests forced the cancellation of the opening ceremonies and lasted the length of the meeting until December 3. There was a large, permitted march by members of the AFL-CIO, and another large, unpermitted march by assorted affinity groups. The Seattle riot police, in \nconjunction with the National Guard, assaulted protesters with night sticks, pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Over 600 protesters were arrested and dozens were injured. One demonstrator miscarried her baby after being exposed to CS and OC gas. Three policemen were injured by friendly fire, and one by a thrown rock. Some protesters destroyed the windows of storefronts of businesses owned or franchised by targeted corporations such as a large Nike shop and many Starbucks windows. The mayor put the city under the municipal equivalent of martial law and declared a curfew. As of 2002, the city of Seattle had paid over $200,000 in settlements of lawsuits filed against the Seattle Police Department for assault and wrongful arrest, with a class action lawsuit still pending.
Law enforcement reaction
\nAlthough local police were surprised by the size of N30, law enforcement agencies have since reacted worldwide to prevent the disruption of future events by a variety of tactics, including sheer weight of numbers, infiltrating the groups to determine their plans, and preparations for the use of force to remove protesters. At the 2000 protest of the Republican National Convention in\nPhiladelphia, John Sellers, a key organizer of the Ruckus Society, one of the groups organizing the protests, was arrested on charges of jaywalking and held in jail on $1,000,000 bail for the duration of the protests. At the same protest, the police made a point of arresting anybody with a cell phone to impede the organization of the protest. Many protesters have been prevented from crossing borders for the purpose of joining a protest, either because their names matched a list of known protesters or because of their appearance. In the UK, a coach heading to a rally was turned back and escorted back to London - a police operation later found to be illegal by the courts.
At the site of some of the protests, police have used tear gas and pepper spray, concussion grenades, rubber and wooden bullets, night sticks, water cannons, dogs, horses, and occasionally live ammunition to repel the protesters. In Quebec City, municipal officials built a 10-foot-high wall around the portion of the city where the Summit of the Americas was being held, which only residents, delegates to the summit, and certain accredited journalists were allowed inside. Although police claimed that violent elements in the protesters required a firm response, they allegedly fired tear gas and rubber bullets indiscriminately, dispersing peaceful assemblies and even teams of medics assisting the wounded. It is claimed they also gassed areas not involved in the protests, firing off the mountaintop where the confrontations were taking place into the city below. The medical centre and independent media centre were evacuated by police at gunpoint.
Genoa
\nOne of the bloodiest protests in Western Europe's recent history, resulting in at least three demonstrator deaths and several hundred demonstrators hospitalized after police attacks and torture in custody, was the Genoa Group of Eight Summit protest, from July 18 to July 22, 2001. The response from protesters to such police tactics has included accusing them \nof brutality in interrupting their right to non-violently protest. All in all, there were several hundred demonstrators injured and several hundred arrests during the days surrounding the G8 meeting; most of those arrested have been charged with some form of "criminal association" under Italy's anti-mafia and anti-terrorist laws. As part of the continuing investigations, police raids of social centers, media centers, union buildings, and law offices have continued across Italy since the G8 summit in Genoa. Many police officers or responsible authorities present in Genoa during the G8 summit, are currently under investigation by the Italian judges, and some of them resigned. Some have since admitted to planting Molotov cocktails in order to justify the Diaz School raids, as well as faking the stabbing of a police officer to frame activists [1].
Influence on the developing world
\nSome people claim that the major mobilizations have taken place mainly in the developed world, where there are strong traditions of free speech, police restraint, civil rights, and the rule of law. In these countries, one of the \nobjectives is to demonstrate that the protesters self-govern better than they could ever be controlled by violent force: on March 15 2002 in Barcelona, 250,000 people "rioted" for days with apparently no serious injury to individuals on either side - far fewer casualties than would be expected in a typical European soccer riot. There was however, much damage to private and public property - which is, arguably, unnecessary in public protest.
\nIn Argentina during the winter 2002 economic crisis, millions of ordinary citizens took to the streets for days with similar results to the Barcelona 'protests', forcing several changes in the federal government. On the 19th and 20th December 2001, demonstrations (called "cacerolazos") in Buenos Aires forced the resignation of then-president De la Rua, though over 32 demonstrators were killed. Since then, Argentine citizens have continued to try and develop 'alternative' neighborhood-based economic systems, social structures and local systems of autonomous self-government. A popular slogan within the uprising was, "Que se vayan todos! Que no se quede ninguno solo!" This means, "Everybody out [of the government]! Nobody stays!" indicating protesters' frustration not only with corruption in government but with the entire governmental structure. Whether these protests are beneficial to the functioning of fledgling democracies is debatable, given the ability of the voters to change their representives periodically anyway.
In India, the views of Vandana Shiva, Amartya Sen and Arundhati Roy are very popular, effectively they enjoy full celebrity status. The acceptance and interest in their ideas and in the methods of Mohandas Gandhi are forming a major and specific challenge to both Hindu fundamentalism and Muslim. The three have also had a substantial impact on views within the anti-globalisation movement.
Criticisms
\nThe anti-globalization movement has been heavily criticized on many fronts by politicians, members of right-wing thinktanks, mainstream economists, and other supporters of free trade policies. Participants in the movement dismiss these criticisms as carping from a tiny minority who can express their opinions via what they call the corporate media. They claim that the criticisms themselves are self-serving and unrepresentative of informed popular opinion.
Other critics come from the partisans of democratic globalization, who are pro-globalization and want it to be taken into account in all fields of human activity, and above all in world institutions where citizens of the world should have a say. They don't see the point to mix social and economic ideologies with this need to develop democratic global institutions. For them, political orientations should be left to the free choice of those democratic institutions, the priority being to build them.
One of the most fundamental criticisms of the movement is simply that the anti-globalization mobement lacks coherent goals, and that the views of different protesters are fundamentally contradictory. A survey that was made recently during such a protest has shown that at least 40% of the people protesting could not define the meaning of the word globalisation nor list actual reasons against what they are protesting.
For instance, it is argued (especially by The Economist), that one of the major causes of poverty amongst third-world farmers are the trade barriers put up by rich nations. The WTO is an organisation set up to work towards removing those trade barriers. Therefore, it is argued, people really concerned about the plight of the third world should actually be encouraging free trade, rather than attempting to fight it. Further in this vein, it is argued that the protesters' opposition to free trade is sometimes aimed at protecting the interests of Western labour (whose wages and conditions are protected by trade barriers) rather than the interests of the developing world. This contrasts with the 'goals' of those in the movement, in favour of improving the conditions of ordinary farmers and workers everywhere.
Anti-globalization activists counter that free trade policies create an environment for workers similar to the prisoner's dilemma, in which workers in different countries are tempted to "defect" by undercutting standards on wages and work conditions, and reject this argument in favor of a strategy of cooperation for mutual benefit.
Another criticism is that, although the movement protests about things that are widely recognised as serious problems, such as human rights violations, genocide and global warming, it rarely proposes detailed solutions. Those solutions that are advocated are often what some people regard as failed variants of socialism, e.g. see the debate between Michael Albert, Marvin Mandell and Barry Finger [1]. Proponents of the movement point to the existence of web resources like the Philadelphia IMC alternatives site [1] and the annual World Social Fora where numerous solutions are proposed and debated and empirical data on social experiments are exchanged. However, even some supporters of the movement, such as George Monbiot, believe this is a serious problem in the movement: in a forum discussing "life after capitalism" he stated he was "as unconvinced by my own answers as I was by everyone else's" [1].
Some have criticized its claim to be non-violent. Aside from the indisputably violent tactics by a minority of protesters (possibly aggravated by the police), some see a enforced blockade of events and public throughways as a violent action, in and of itself. Many protesters counter that blockades are a time-honored technique of civil disobedience.
\nFinally, the motivations of the organisers of the protests is often questioned. Some believe that the key organisers are really Trotskyite, who are simply using whatever grievances they can find to enlarge their protests with the aim of provoking violent revolution. The counterargument to this is that the movement has a very horizontal power structure, so that the power of any key organisers is limited, and that the communications structures in rich countries make it totally unrealistic for violent revolution to occur there, since the vast majority of ordinary people reject violence once they have sufficient evidence of it. As such a revolution is so improbable, activists believe organisers cannot be so mistaken as to advocate it.
'Anti-empire' development
\nIn 2003, the movement showed wide and deep global opposition to the war in Iraq. Following the most spectacular show of numbers on the weekend of February 15, when about 10 million or more anti-globalization protesters participated in global protests against war on Iraq (pre-war), the New York Times dubbed the movement as the "world's second superpower".
Although the global protest did not stop the invasion itself, supporters believe it demonstrated to the world the seeming inconsistency between the claim that the invasion defended and promoted Democracy, and the fact that the leaders of many formally democratic countries (Spain, Italy, Poland) were acting against the wishes of the majorities of their populations in supporting the war. Noam Chomsky claimed these leaders "showed their contempt for democracy". Critics of this type of argument have tended to point out that this is just a standard criticism of representative democracy - a democratically elected government will not always act in the direction of greatest current public support - and that, therefore, there is no inconsistency in the leaders' positions given these countries are parliamentary democracies.
\nTo show how closely linked the economic and military issues are in the eyes of some in the movement, one new statement of its human rights aims was written as the We Stand for Peace & Justice statement [1], leading in the USA to a coordination of the movement known as United for Peace and Justice [1].
Mobilizations
\nNote that the start of this timeline only reflects the start of major American mobilizations; international anti-corporate globalization mobilizations occurred prior to Seattle.
1999\n* November 30 -- Seattle, USA WTO Third Ministerial conference
2000\n* April 16 -- Washington, DC, USA IMF\n* May 1 -- Global, May Day protests\n* July 29 -- Philadelphia, USA, Republican National Convention \n* August 11 -- Los Angeles, USA, Democratic National Convention \n* September 11 -- Melbourne, Australia, World Economic Forum\n* September 26 -- Prague, Czech Republic, World Bank/IMF\n* November 20 -- Montreal, Quebec, G20 meeting
2001\n* January 20 -- Washington, DC, USA Bush inauguration\n* January 27 -- Davos, Switzerland, World Economic Forum\n* April 20 -- Quebec City, Canada, Summit of the Americas (FTAA) \n* June 15 -- Gothenburg, Sweden EU Summit\n* July 20 -- Genoa, Italy G8 Summit \n* September 29 -- Washington, DC, Anti-capitalist anti-war protests
2002\n* February 1 -- New York City, USA / Porto Alegre, Brazil World Economic Forum / World Social Forum\n* March 15 -- Barcelona, Spain EU Summit\n* April 20 -- Washington, DC (War on Terrorism)\n* June 26 -- Calgary, Alberta and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, G8 summit at Kananaskis, Alberta J26 G8 Protests\n* September 27 -- Washington, DC, IMF/World Bank
2003\n* weekend of February 15 -- Global protests against war on Iraq (pre-war) about 12 million antiwar protesters\n* March, April -- Global protests against war on Iraq\n* July 28 -- Montreal, Quebec\n* September 14 -- Cancún, Mexico -- Fifth Ministerial of the WTO collapses [1]\n* October -- regional WEF meeting in Dublin, European Competitiveness Summit, cancelled [1]
See also
\n* Globalization\n* Capitalism\n* No Border network\n* Zapatista Army of National Liberation\n* World Social Forum\n* Consensus democracy\n* Environmental movement\n* ATTAC\n* Comprehensive Corporate Power\n* Corporatism\n* Corporatocracy \n* List of conservation topics
Opponents of global corporatization
\n*CorpWatch\n*POCLAD\n*ReclaimDemocracy.org
Opponents of anti-globalization (pro-globalists)
\n*Democratic globalization
External links
\n* International Forum on Globalization\n* Focus on the Global South\n* Global Exchange\n* World Socal Forum 2004\n* Resistance 2004\n* International Monetary Fund\n* World Trade Organization\n* World Economic Forum\n* Peoples' Global Action\n* World Bank Group\n* The Free Trade Area of the Americas\n* Stop FTAA\n* FTAA Resistance\n* Independent Media Center\n* United for Peace and Justice\n* Landless Workers' Movement\n* Our World Is Not For Sale\n* ZNet global economics site - are the alternatives practical and ethical?\n* Anti-Capitalist Convergence-DC\n* Mobilization for Global Justice\n* Infoshop.org - Archive of the anti-globalization movement
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