Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum

by William F. Fisher (Editor), Thomas Ponniah (Editor), Boaventura De Sousa Santos (Editor)

Overview

In 2001 the first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The meeting was viewed by many at the time as a new manifestation of the global Left, a people's opposition to the World Economic Forum that stood as the first real front to global capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While many activists and intellectuals on the left have since become deeply critical of the Forum, newer movements, such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the indignados, have built upon its successes and innovations.

Another World is Possible is the original collection of essays and demands from the heart of the ‘movement of movements’. Based on the work of the first two annual meetings of the WSF, this classic collection not only set out the initial aims of the movements that came together, it also paved the way for the theoretical study of new social movements, their multiple and participatory character. Today, as many crises affect all our lives, it is time to revisit the original demands of a global solidarity movement, united in its determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities, and the destruction of our earth, and to reconstitute a global left.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783605170
Publisher:	Zed Books
Publication date:	06/15/2015
Series:	Critique. Influence. Change Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	365
Sales rank:	313,668
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

William F. Fisher is professor of international development and social change at Clark University.

Thomas Ponniah is professor of philosophy and politics at George Brown College, in Toronto, and a summer lecturer at Harvard University.

Read an Excerpt

Another World is Possible

World Social Forum Proposals for an Alternative Globalization

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By William F. Fisher, Thomas Ponniah

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2015 William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78360-517-0

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CHAPTER 1

EXTERNAL DEBT

Abolish the Debt in Order to Free Development

ERIC TO USSAINT and ARNAUD ZACHARIE

The question we try to answer can be summarized as follows: how does one move from an economy of indebtedness towards financing sustainable and socially just development? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimate that 80 billion dollars a year for ten years would be enough to guarantee every human being on this planet access to basic education and health care, adequate food, drinking water and sanitation and, for women, gynaecological and obstetric care.

Eighty billion dollars represents about three times less than the sum of the Third World's already repaid external public debt; it's about a quarter of the US annual defence budget; 9 per cent of annual world military expenditure; 8 per cent of money spent on advertisements and publicity each year; half the total wealth of the four richest people on the planet.

The laws of the market and profit cannot be expected to satisfy essential needs. The 1.3 billion people deprived of clean drinking water do not have enough purchasing power.

Only resolute public policies can guarantee the fulfilment of basic human needs for all. This is why the public authorities must have at their disposal the political and financial means of honouring their obligations towards their citizens.

Citizens must also be able to exercise fully their right to play a central role in the political life of the state. To bring this about, efficient judiciary mechanisms and economic policies must be implemented in a participatory democracy. The example of a participatory budget as practised in Porto Alegre since the early 1990s should be adopted on a worldwide scale and inspire original policies of radical democracy.

The application of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has to be backed up by a powerful social and citizens' movement.

Firstly, the haemorrhage of wealth represented by debt repayments has to be stemmed. Next, different sources of funding must be found for socially just and ecologically sustainable development. Finally, we must break away from the old logic which leads to the cycle of indebtedness, to embezzlement and large-scale pillage of local wealth, and to dependence on the financial markets and condition-laden loans of the international financial institutions.

Breaking the Infernal Cycle of Debt

The champions of neoliberal globalization tell us that the developing countries (in which they include Eastern Europe) must repay their external debt if they wish to benefit from constant flows of funding.

In fact, ever since the debt crisis in 1982, wealth has flowed from the periphery to the centre, not the other way round, as the leaders of the international financial institutions would have us believe. In order to estimate real flows the following factors have to be taken into account: repayment of the external debt; capital outflow due to residents of peripheral countries; the repatriation of profits by multinational firms (including invisible transfers, especially via such procedures as 'over-' or 'under-' billing on invoices); the acquisition of privatized businesses in the periphery at knock-down prices on the part of capitalists of the highly industrialized countries; the purchase of raw materials produced by the populations of the periphery at low prices (deterioration in the terms of trade); the 'brain drain'; genetic pillage – the 'donors' are not the ones we are led to believe. It is a gross error of language to consider the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, members of the Committee for Development Aid (CDA) and the Bretton Woods institutions as 'donors'.

Since 1982, the populations of the periphery countries have sent their creditors in the North the equivalent of several times the Marshall Plan (with the local capitalist elite skimming off their commission on the way).

It has become urgent to adopt the opposite view from that of official discourse: the Third World's external public debt must be cancelled. Indeed, the repayment of the Third World's external public debt represents, on average, expenditure of about $200–250 billion a year, about two to three times the amount required to satisfy basic human needs as defined by the United Nations.

Extra Resources to Finance Development

For debt cancellation to serve the purpose of human development, the money previously earmarked for debt repayment needs to be paid into a development fund, under the democratic control of the local population. However, once this first step of debt cancellation has been taken, the present economy based on international indebtedness must be replaced by a model which is both socially just and ecologically sustainable, and independent of the fluctuations of the money markets and of the loan conditions imposed by the World Bank and the IMF. This development fund, already supplied with money saved through debt cancellation, must also be financed by the following measures.

Restitution of stolen property to the citizens of the Third World

The considerable wealth illicitly accumulated by the ruling authorities and local capitalists in developing countries has been securely deposited in the most industrialized countries with the complicity of private financial institutions and the tacit agreement of the Northern governments (the practice continues to this day).

To operate such restitution implies the completion of legal proceedings in Third World countries and the most industrialized countries. Among other things, they would serve to ensure that people guilty of corruption do not get off scot-free. This is the only hope, if one day democracy and transparency are to triumph over corruption.

Further action would be to support the resolutions made at the international meeting held in Dakar in December 2000 (From Resistance to Alternatives) demanding compensation for the pillage which the Third World has been subject to over the last five centuries. This includes the restitution of economic and cultural property stolen from the Asian, African and South American continents.

Tax financial transactions

ATTAC suggests a tax of 0.1 per cent on such cross-border financial transactions bringing in some $100 billion annually, which could be used to combat inequality, and to provide public health and education services, food security and sustainable development.

Raise Official Development Aid (ODA) to at least 0.7 per cent of the GDP

In 1999, ODA represented a mere 0.24 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product of the most industrialized countries, despite their commitment, frequently reiterated within the framework of the UN, to reach the objective of 0.7 per cent. This means ODA must be multiplied threefold to fulfil the commitments made. Considering that ODA represents a little under $50 billion, it should therefore reach $150 billion a year which should be entirely paid out as grants. Finally, rather than speak of aid, henceforth it would be more appropriate to use the term reparations, the idea being to make reparations for all the damage caused by centuries of pillage and unfair trade.

Levy an exceptional tax on the estates of the very wealthy

In its 1995 report, UNCTAD suggests levying a single, exceptional tax on the estates of the very wealthy. Such a tax levied throughout the world would mobilize considerable funds. This exceptional tax (unlike a recurrent tax on property such as exists in many countries round the world) could be levied on a national scale. A one- off solidarity tax of, say, 10 per cent on the property of the richest tenth in each country could generate very considerable internal resources.

A New Development Strategy

Instead of the present development strategy, which consists of the creditors forcing Southern countries to adopt neoliberal adjustment programmes, an endogenous and integrated development strategy should be embraced. The change would be implemented in the following stages.

End Structural Adjustment Programmes

Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) result in the weakening of states by making them more dependent on external fluctuations (world-market movements, speculative attacks, etc.) and by subjecting them to conditions imposed by the IMF/World Bank duo backed up by the governments of the creditor countries grouped within the Club de Paris.

The UN Human Rights Commission has repeatedly adopted resolutions concerning the debt problem and structural adjustment. In a resolution from 1999, the Commission states that 'For the population of an indebted country, the exercise of their basic rights to food, housing, clothing, work, education, medical care and a healthy environment may not be subordinated to the application of Structural Adjustment Programs and economic reforms generated by the debt' (1999: Art. 5).

The human consequences of SAPs are incontestably negative. The latter must therefore be cancelled and replaced with policies aimed at satisfying basic human needs, giving priority to domestic markets, food security and complementary exchanges on a regional or continental basis.

Ensure the return of privatized strategic sectors to the public domain

Water reserves and distribution, electricity production and distribution, telecommunications, postal services, railways, companies which extract and transform raw materials, the credit system and certain education and health sectors have been systematically privatized or are in the process of being privatized. These companies must be returned to the public domain.

Adopt a partly self-based development model

This type of development involves creating politically and economically integrated zones, bringing to bear endogenous development models, strengthening internal markets, creating local savings funds for local financing, developing education and health, setting up progressive taxation and other mechanisms to ensure the redistribution of wealth, diversifying exports, introducing agrarian reform to guarantee universal access to land for small farmers, and urban reform to guarantee universal access to housing.

Today's global architecture, built on a periphery forced to provide raw materials and cheap labour to a centre that has all the technology and capital, must be replaced by regional economic groupings. Only such self-based development would allow South–South relations to emerge, which is the precondition sine qua non for the economic development of the Third World (and, by extension, the world).

Alter trade practices

The historical tendency for the terms of trade to deteriorate must be brought to an end. To do this, mechanisms guaranteeing a better price for the basket of products exported on the world market by developing countries must be introduced. As for agriculture, as demanded by Via Campesina, there has to be recognition of each country's or group of countries' right to nutritional sovereignty, and especially to self-sufficiency in staple foodstuffs.

The rules of global trading must be subordinate to strict environmental, social and cultural criteria. Health, education, water and culture can have no place in the field of world commerce. Public services in the general interest are the guarantee of basic rights and must therefore be excluded from the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS).

Furthermore, the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement needs to be abolished, aspects of which allow the North to appropriate the rich natural resources of the South and prevent the Southern countries from freely producing goods (such as medicines) to satisfy the needs of their populations.

New Rules of Financial Good Practice

The repeated financial crises of the 1990s proved by their absurdity that there can be no sustainable development without strict controls over the movement of capital and tax evasion. Several strategies are therefore required to subordinate the money markets to the fulfilment of basic human needs:

• Re-regulate the financial markets.

• Control the movement of capital. Eliminate tax havens and remove the bankers' rule of secrecy to combat more efficiently tax evasion, embezzlement of public funds and corruption.

• Adopt rules to ensure the protection of indebted countries External indebtedness may be justified if decided democratically by the countries concerned. However, the use of the borrowed money must be organized according to principles radically different from those that have hitherto prevailed. Two new principles must be adhered to. First, a 'reverse' conditionality: the obligation to repay, and pay interest on, these loans provided at low interest rates and below market conditions will only be valid if the debt is proven to have enabled sufficient creation of wealth in the countries concerned. Second, the lender countries should organize strong and efficient protection for the developing countries on an international scale to enable the latter to defend themselves against all forms of abuse and despoliation by banks, private international investors or the international financial institutions.

• Democratic control of political indebtedness. The decision by a state to contract debts and the terms under which they are taken out must be submitted to popular approval (by debate and vote in Parliament, and citizens' control).

Further Indispensable Measures

Cancelling the external public debts of the periphery, abandoning SAPs and other measures proposed above are necessary conditions, but insufficient as such to guarantee the authentic human development of the peoples of the world. Further measures are indispensable, beginning with equality between women and men and the right to self-determination for indigenous peoples.

CHAPTER 2

AFRICA/BRAZIL

Conference Synthesis

JACQUES D'ADEKSY

The Africa/Brazil Conference, which took place on 1 February 2002, had Taoufik Bem Abdallah, Aminata Traore and Benedita da Silva as discussants and Jacques d'Adesky as facilitator. Pauline Muchina could not be present because, according to information obtained by Nilza Iraci, member of the Afro-National Committee and the World Social Forum International Committee, she was refused a visa by the Brazilian authorities.

Medical reasons prevented Senator Abdias Nascimento from being present. However, he sent his greetings and a message in which he made some remarks about the social mobilization of people in Africa and their Afro-Brazilian descendants in their struggle against racism and colonialism. He emphasized the need to establish a strategic alliance between the people of Africa and their descendants in Brazil in order to strengthen the case for reparations.

The discussants agreed with Abdias Nascimento's proposal. In relation to the Africa/Brazil dialogue, they noticed the spectacular increase in African and Afro-Brazilian participation in the Forum this year, as well as the increased opportunity to debate these issues. This growth also highlighted the fact that the World Social Forum 2002 had assumed considerable importance, in the sense that it carried forward its partnership with the African Social Forum (ASF) and the Afro-National Committee, making this alliance more solid and meaningful for the future.

The discussants reminded the audience that the idea of an Africa/Brazil Conference had first been proposed by the World Social Forum 2001, and had gained momentum during the World Conference against Racism, Xenophobia and Intolerance that took place in Durban, South Africa, later that year.

Starting from a report from the ASF meeting that had taken place in January 2002 in Bamako (Mali) analysing the socio-economic, political and cultural issues that affect both African and Afro-Brazilian people, the discussants pointed out proposals that would make another world possible. The suggestions could be divided into two complementary groups: the utopian and the pragmatic.

The utopians point out the necessity of understanding that society can no longer be founded on profit and competition, but should be based on the values of equality, equity and social justice. The desired globalization is a humane one; profit can no longer be prioritized over human needs.

However, the construction of a new world that integrates these values depends on the collective action of civil society to put pressure particularly on states and international institutions. Only when the importance of these values is understood, will it be possible to implement concrete and differentiated actions in the economic, social and cultural fields.

Concerning concrete actions, the consensus reached is to go beyond the rhetoric of solidarity, which is ever present in diplomatic parlance. Faced with the social and economic inequalities that affect the African people and Brazil's Afro-descendants, it is necessary to deepen the notion of reparations and to extend the scope of affirmative action.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword to the critique influence change edition
Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Preface to the critique influence change edition
Thomas Ponnia and William F. Fisher

Foreword to the first edition
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Preface to the first edition
William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah

Introduction: The World Social Forum and the Reinvention of Democracy
Thomas Ponniah and William F. Fisher

PART I: The Production of Wealth and Social Reproduction

Overview: Key Questions, Critical Issues
William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah

1. External Debt
Abolish the Debt in Order to Free Development
Eric Toussaint and Arnaud Zacharie (Committee for the Annulment of Third World Debt)

2. Africa/Brazil
Conference Synthesis
Jacques d'Adesky (Facilitator)

3. Financial Capital
Controls on Financial Capital
ATTAC-France

4. International Trade
Conference Synthesis
Bernard Cassen, ATTAC (Facilitator)

5. Transnational Corporations
Issues and Proposals
Joshua Karliner, CorpWatch and Karolo Aparicio, Global Exchange

6. Labour
(i) A Strategic Perspective on the International Trade Union Movement for the 21st Century
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)

(ii) A Global Strategy for Labour
Jeff Faux (Economic Policy Institute)

7. A Solidarity Economy:
(i) Resist and Build
Economic Solidarity Group of Quebec
(ii) Conference Synthesis
Sandra Quintela (Institute of Alternative Policies for the Southern Cone) (Facilitator)

PART II: Access to Wealth and Sustainability

Overview: Key Questions, Critical Issues
William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah

8. Environment and Sustainabity
(i) The Living Democracy Movement: Alternatives to the Bankruptcy of Globalization
Vandana Shiva, Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology

(ii) Conference Synthesis
Sara Larrain, International Forum on Globalization, Chile (Facilitator)

9. Water - A Common Good
(i) Conference Synthesis
Glenn Switkes, International Rivers Network, USA, and Elias Diaz Pena, Rios Vivos/Amigos de la Tierra, Paraguay (Facilitators)

10. Knowledge, Copyright and Patents
(i) Intellectual Property and the Knowledge Gap
OXFAM, UK

(ii) Conference Synthesis
Francois Houtart, Tricontinental Centre (Facilitator)

11. Medicine, Health, AIDS
Conference Synthesis
Sonia Correa, IBASE and DAWN Network (Facilitator)

12. Food
People's Right to Produce, Feed Themselves and Exercise their Food Sovereignty
APM World Network

13. Cities, Urban Populations
Conference Synthesis
Erminia Maricato (Facilitator)

14. Indigenous Peoples
(i) Indigenous Commission Statement
Dionito Makuxi, Pina Tembe, Simiao Wapixana, Joel Pataxo, Lurdes Tapajos, Luiz Titia Pataxo Ha-Ha-Hae
(ii) Conference Synthesis
Paulo Maldos, Centre for Popular Education, Brazil (Facilitator)

PART III: The Affirmation of Civil Society and Public Space

Overview: Key Questions, Critical Issues
William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah

15. The Media
Democratization of Communications and the Media
Osvaldo Leon, Agencia Latinoamerica de Informacion

16. Education
Conference Synthesis
Bernard Charlot, World Forum on Education and Paul Belanger, International Council on Adult Education (Facilitators)

17. Culture
Cultural Diversity, Cultural Production and Identity
Fatma Alloo, Luiza Monteiro, Aureli Argemi, Imruh Bakari, Xavi Perez

18. Violence
(i) Violence Against Women: The 'other world' must act
World March of Women

(ii) Conference Synthesis on the Culture of Violence and Domestic Violence
Fatima Mello, ABONG, Brazil (Facilitator)

19. Discrimination and Intolerance
(i) Combating Discrimination and Intolerance
National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, India

(ii) Conference Synthesis
Lilian Celiberti, Articulacion Feminista Marcosur (Facilitator)

20. Migration and the Traffic in People
The Contradictions of Globalization
Lorenzo Prencipe, Centre for Documentation and Research on International Migration, Paris

21. The Global Civil Society Movement
(i) Discussion Document
Latin American Social Observatory (OSAL), Latin American Social Science Council (CLACSO)

(ii) Conference Synthesis
Vittorio Agnoletto, Genoa Social Forum (Facilitator)

Part IV: Political Power and Ethics in the New Society

Overview: Key Questions, Critical Issues
William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah

22. The International Architecture of Power
(i) International Organizations and the Architecture of World Power
Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South

(ii) Conference Synthesis
Teivo Teivainen, Network Institute for Global Democratization (Facilitator)

23. Militarism and Globalization

Conference Synthesis
Marcela Escribano, Alternatives, Canada (Facilitator)

24 Human Rights

Conference Synthesis on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Maria Luisa Mendonca, Social Network for Justice and Human Rights (Facilitator)

25. Sovereignty

Sovereignty, Nation, Empire
Daniel Bensaid, University of Paris (St-Denis)

26. Democracy

Participatory Democracy
M. P. Parameswaran, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad

27. Values

(i) Values of a New Civilization
Michal Lowy, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris

(ii) Feminism and the Enlightement Ideals
Celia Amoros, La Universitad Complutense, Madrid

Epilogue: Social Movements' Manifesto
Resistance to Neoliberalism, War and Militarism; For Peace and Social Justice

Appendices
World Social Forum Charter of Principles
World Social Forum 2003: Contacts
Index

Editorial Reviews

"...a fascinating and valuable reflection of political reality."-Roger S. Gottlieb, Tikkun

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