No retreat in Doha Far from being finished, the anti-corporate movement's cause has been strengthened by September 11 Madeleine Bunting Monday November 5, 2001 The Guardian (...) September 11 and its aftermath have starkly exposed what was the glaring weakness of the movement all along. Its analysis focussed on the dwindling power of the state and overweening corporate power. Its disregard for the state was such that it had no strategy for achieving the political power necessary to deliver its aims, and fell back on subverting the state by declaring it impotent. All that looks a bit threadbare now in the midst of war, as the state re-emerges as hugely important in delivering that most basic of its functions - security. Patriotism has re-appeared as a powerful force, clawing in unprecedented poll ratings for Bush and Blair. Nearly every day, we hear of the state granting itself more power - trampling on civil liberties and over financial privacy, and even broaching the question of higher taxation. The anti-corporate movement can no longer convincingly bemoan that the governments of western democracies are simply puppets of corporate interests. It has to revise its analysis of political power and develop its own understanding of how to achieve it. (...) The tragic events of September 11 have underlined the urgency of its critique of globalisation. It shattered the traditional notion that security depended on the individual state's superior military technology. Now, security requires unprecedented transnational cooperation on a huge agenda ranging from intelligence to poverty eradication. Old obstacles are tumbling like ninepins; most strikingly, if financial controls can be put in place to cut off terrorist financing, why can't mechanisms be developed to exact the Tobin tax, which - a New Economics Foundation report out today shows -would pay for all the 2015 development targets? What lies ahead is a challenge to get the rhetoric into action. There is plenty of evidence that many European leaders grasp this agenda (both Jospin and Schröder have expressed interest in the Tobin tax). But there's little evidence of such good intentions in the Doha agenda, which is as skewed against developing countries as Seattle was, prompting the Nigerian WTO representative to issue a public letter of protest last week. Clare Short's claim that Doha is a "development round" of negotiations is hypocrisy. And there is a real risk of a gap opening up between Europe and America on this new agenda, with the US in its current state of beleaguered nationalism, retreating into a bullying unilateralism. (...) According to the World Bank, the 90s saw a dramatic increase in inequality between rich and poor countries, and we will pay a bitter price in violence and conflict for our wealth. We ignore the rage of the dispossessed at our own peril. m.bunting at guardian.co.uk