The Filipino analyst and organizer of Focus on the Global South, veteran of the years of Allende and Marcos, discusses the prospects for the World Social Forum after September 11, arguing for the need to link protests against the IMF and WTO to campaigns against US military expansion.
...[O.] From Seattle onwards it's been clear that a critical faultline within the movement runs between those, essentially Northern, activists and organizations who group themselves around a combination of environmental and labour-rights issues -- the position you've described as Green protectionism -- and those in the South who see development in a much wider sense as the main priority. It would clearly be an illusion to think that these two perspectives could fit together easily. Yet if the movement is to develop, this tension has somehow to be negotiated and resolved?
[Bello] The faultline is real, though I would point out that there are large areas of agreement between Northern and Southern movements -- a shared critique of multinationals and global capital, a common perception that citizens need to play a stronger role in curbing the rules of the market and of trade. The fact that people from both tendencies can come together in coalitions and work on a range of points is testimony to the strength of these overlapping interests. However, I think the labour question has to be worked out. We were very critical of the way that trade unions in the US -- and, to a great extent, in Europe, through the ICFTU -- argued that the WTO would be strengthened if it took up tariffs and labour rights. [4] In our view they should not be calling for a more powerful WTO. That's a very short-sighted response. Beneath the surface rhetoric about human rights in the South, this is essentially a protectionist movement, aimed at safeguarding Northern jobs. Whenever we raise this in a fraternal way, they get very defensive about it. We say, let's cut out the hypocrisy: of course we should fight for the jobs of workers in the North -- but in a way that supports working-class movements everywhere; not so as to protect one section and leave the rest aside. We need to work out long-term strategies to respond to the way that capital is re-stratifying the working class throughout the world -- a division in which hundreds of millions of rural workers get the short end of the stick. The dynamics of global capital are creating a vast underclass, with no support from Northern unions. This is where we need to focus our strategy, on a powerful, visionary effort to organize the world working class. So far, the response from the North -- especially from the trade unions -- has been a very defensive one, hiding behind the mask of human rights. It makes us deeply uneasy when people from our countries, who have been strongly supportive of workers' rights and have actively opposed ecologically damaging development policies, are cast in these polemics as anti-environmentalist and anti-labour.
Market access is not the central problem, but it is a problem. There is a tendency in the North -- though not all Green organizations fall into this -- to use environmental standards as a way of banning goods from developing countries, either on the grounds of the product itself or because of the production methods. The result is a form of discrimination. We need to find a more positive solution to this. We've called for a global Marshall Plan -- one in which environmental groups would actively participate -- to upgrade production methods in the South and accelerate the transfer of Green technology. The focus should be on supporting indigenous Green organizations in developing countries and this sort of positive technological transfer, rather than on sanctions. Sanctions are so easy -- they appeal to defensive, protectionist interests, which even some progressive organizations in the North have taken up. It's very unfortunate that the US labour movement has adopted this hypocritical stance, saying that it's really concerned about people in China, whereas in fact its objectives are quite egoist. If we can get past this sort of pretence and establish a dialogue at the level of principles, on the interests of the global working class as a whole, we'll be moving forward....
...[Q.] What has been the effect of September 11th on the movement as a whole? The business press has triumphantly declared it a death-blow to the anti-globalization campaign, since it showed that anti-capitalist demagogy always leads to violent protests in the streets, which lead straight to terrorism; now 9.11 has fortunately had a sobering effect. Many activists were indeed very disorientated or dispirited, partly by the way in which the war on terrorism captured the broad attention, but also by the fact that the movement itself was not well-equipped to respond to it. You alluded earlier to the disconnection between the campaign against corporate-driven globalization, which targets multinationals as the enemy, and the pattern of military deployments and structures of the US state, felt by some to be a divisive issue that is best kept off the movement's agenda. So perhaps it didn't have the resources for an immediate response, when confronted with this reality. How serious a set-back has all this been?
[Bello] The initial impact of 9.11 was extremely disorientating, especially when the World Bank and IMF cancelled their meeting that month in Washington, which they were delighted to do. Thanks to Al Qaeda, they then managed to override both grass-roots protests and the qualms of developing countries and ram through the WTO's declaration at Doha -- when previously, there had been a fifty-fifty chance that we could have stopped it. There is no denying this was a defeat. At the same time, there have been some countervailing developments. Firstly, Enron erupted; one should not underestimate the delegitimizing role that played, in taking the wind out of the triumphalism and the ideological push that followed 9.11. Secondly, there's been the ongoing crisis in Argentina, a social and economic catastrophe brought about by neoliberalism. Both have reignited a widespread scepticism about the corporate-globalization project. Thirdly, there has been the United States' own performance. The Pentagon still hasn't managed to get bin Laden, and is now becoming over-extended in areas from which it will be difficult for the US to extricate itself. Going into Iraq will create even greater problems.
Given the tensions in South Asia and the conflict in the Middle East, it's arguable that the strategic situation of the United Sates is probably worse now than it was prior to September 11, precisely because of this over-extension. The American response has served to strengthen Islamic-fundamentalist tendencies rather than reduce them. Mahathir and Musharraf are bending over backwards for the United States, but a big gulf is emerging between these leaders and their populations. Finally, I think there has been an evolution in the role of many of the anti-corporate globalization groups, who are now beginning to confront issues of warfare and militarism. In the recent conflict in Palestine we had quite a number of people trying to break through Israeli lines.
There were 50,000 people at the World Social Forum this year, as opposed to 15,000 in January 2001. At the EU summit this March in Barcelona, there were 300,000 protesters -- much bigger than Genoa. There's a lot of work to be done before we get back to the situation we were in prior to September, but there are several indications that the movement is on its way back to a fighting stance. One example of this is that, when the US sent troops to the Philippines in January, we put out an appeal for people to participate in an international peace mission, and got so many volunteers that we were able to mount a full-scale investigation: to go to Basilan, study the situation, talk to people -- including the Americans -- and come back with a critical report that was lambasted by the Philippines government, and became an issue in the archipelago's politics. This was an instance of people who had simply been concerned with trade questions moving towards broader security-related issues. The Euro-parliamentarian, Matti Wuori, who went to Basilan is a former head of Greenpeace; these are the sort of links and transformations that are being made.... -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>