The Anti-Globalization Movement

Presentation on theme: "The Anti-Globalization Movement"— Presentation transcript:

1 The Anti-Globalization Movement

2 Globalization Neoliberal restructuring and the so-called process of globalization are inevitable facts of the current world system. Until very recently promoters of neoliberal globalization were sure that the globalization of the world economy would enhance economic growth even in the least developed countries and bring welfare to the world societies.

3 Resisting Globalization
However, when expected positive results did not come true, so that even the most prominent figures among the supporters of the neoliberal economic restructuring have started to talk about a “human face of globalization”. The groups that focused on the negative consequences of globalization gave rise to the emergence of an anti-globalization movement. People’s interpretations and understandings of neoliberal economic policies are important in the global protest movement.

4 What to Resist? The Anti-Globalization Movement criticizes:
Transnationalization of Production: During the 1970s, transnational corporations have started to build factories in low-wage countries of the third world, and this process has been continuing with growing intensity. Due to the globalization of production, the components of an ordinary trouser or a car may be made and assembled in a number of different countries. Transnationalization of Finance: International capital markets have globalized at an accelerated rate. The capital has become rapidly mobile, which brought about financial speculative markets able to destroy a nation’s economy in incredibly short times, and leave long-term negative effects behind.

5 What to Resist? Global Institutions: The World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and similar multilateral institutions have developed far greater powers and have used them to accelerate the globalization process. Corporate restructuring: While corporations have always operated on an international level, during the 1980s they have started to restructure in order to adapt to the operations in a global economy. They started to develop new corporate forms by strategic alliances, global outsourcing, and transnational mergers, which allowed for what some economists called the “concentration of control with the decentralization of production”.

6 What to Resist? Changing structure of work: Globalization processes favored “flexible” workers. To facilitate labor mobility most of the OECD countries have loosened labor laws on hiring and firing. “Flexible” workers are also expected to be “flexible” in working hours, wages, benefits, and health and safety standards. In an economy where workers are “flexible” jobs are expected to be “flexible” also. “Flexible” jobs are often casual, part-time and temporary, with few if any benefits beyond the wages offered. “Flexibilization” showed itself with the deterioration of the working conditions, especially for less skilled labor, and increased insecurity in the workplace

7 What to Resist? Neoliberal ideology and policies: Starting with monetarism and supply-side economics, globalization has been accompanied -as well as accelerated-by an emerging neoliberal ideology, which mainly argues that markets are efficient and government intervention in the markets is almost always unwanted and has negative consequences. The main features of the policy implications of neoliberal ideology that are imposed on governments all over the world are; privatization, deregulation, open markets, balanced budgets, deflationary austerity, and the dismantling of the welfare state.

8 What to Resist? Neo-imperialism: Globalization brought much of the global dominance of the former imperialist powers back. With the collapse of communism that dominance has also spread to the formerly communist world. Globalization has taken the control of economic policies away from the hands of the nation states, especially the poor third world states, and handed it over to the capital. While it has enriched some Third World elites it has subordinated them to foreign corporations, international institutions, and dominant states. It has intensified economic competition among the rich powers, and intensified the economic interdependencies, so that it is almost impossible to isolate one nation from the global economy and develop an independent self-sufficient economic system.

9 What to Resist? Changing role of the state: While some governments actively encouraged globalization and most complied, because globalization considerably reduced the power of the nation state, particularly their power to serve the interests of their own people. As mentioned above capital mobility undermined the power of national governments to pursue full employment policies or regulate corporations. International organizations and agreements increasingly restricted environmental and social protections. “Neoliberal ideology reshaped beliefs about what governments should do and what is able to accomplish

10 What to Resist? Movement of people: Globalization has accelerated migration in two different ways: First, globalization has resulted in the development of a professional class which follows the capital and travels with the capital. Second, with the economic disruptions and accompanying job losses globalization has created an illegally migrating class (due to the border barriers of developed nations to the poor people) in search of jobs and subsistence. Cultural homogenization: Globalization has undermined the economic base of diverse local and indigenous communities all over the world. Growing domination of global media based in a few dominant countries and companies has led to an increasingly uniform culture.

11 Zapatistas, 1994 To become a member of NAFTA, the Mexican government undertook certain reforms such as opening public lands for privatization; abolishing restrictions on corn imports that used to protect local producers, and giving an end to the protection of the coffee price. In order to protest Mexico’s signing NAFTA, 2000 armed indigeneous peasants seized four municipalities in the southeastern state of Chiapas in January They fought for 12 days against federal troops.

12 Zapatistas, 1994 Zapatistas identified their enemy not only as the Mexican state but as ‘neoliberalism’. Zapatistas demand land, financial and technical support for land workers, and fair price foor their crops. Zapatistas also used information technologies to generate international support for their demands. They took the support of millions of people all around the world due to media attention. The Zapatistas’ opposition to neoliberalism, their ability to rescale their local struggle in global terms and their clever use of the Internet marked a decisive moment in the development of the anti-globalization movement.

13 The Strike Wave in France, 1995
Under the pressure of the Maastricht Treaty, France had to reduce the budget deficit to 3% in order to join the Economic and Monetary Union. So, the French Prime Minister announced a social security reform and railroad privatization in November 1995. The reform included: -retirement age would be extended -the health care system would be partially privatized. For almost a month France witnessed mass demonstrations against the reform and millions of workers took the streets in every city and town.

14 Campaign against Multilateral agreement on Investment (MAI)
In 1995, G-7 countries began to negotiate a new international treaty for investors’ rights within OECD. Without Parliamentary participation, officials negotiated behind closed doors until the draft leaked to a Canadian NGO. MAI would establish that: Foreign investors should be treated as the host country’s own investors Foreign investors’ assets such as land, buildings, equipment and also their patents, trademarks, and copyright should be protected. Foreign investors should directly sue governments for any action they claim undermines their planned profits

15 Campaign against Multilateral agreement on Investment (MAI)
In order to protest MAI, NGOS such as Public Citizens Global Trade Watch and Friends of the Earth launced a Internet campaign. They collected signatures from 600 civil society organizations from 67 countries and called for: - the suspension of MAI negoatiations -participation of civil society representatives to the negotiations -increased transparency

16 Campaign against Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)
Due to the rising opposition against MAI, French government withdrew from negotiations. After the French withdrawal, OECD ministers decided to postpone the approval of the treaty in 1998. However the project was not abondened. Its core elements are now part of the WTO talks.

17 Jubilee 2000 Movement In 1998, Jubilee 2000 Movement called for the cancellation of the Third World debt. Jubilee 2000 Movement was unable to achieve radical policy change. Even though most G-8 countries agreed to cancel bilateral debts of poorest countries, this only represented 1% of total debts. Because, third world countries owe to international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank.

18 ATTAC International After the 1997 Asian economic crisis, protests rose against free flows capital from country to country. The free flow of capital is argued to be dangerous for economic security and the welfare of the orninary people. In 1998, a group of human rights, academic, student, and environmental organizations also trade unions and leftist media organizations formed ATTAC (the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens) France. By the end of 1998, ATTAC became international. The aim of ATTAC was to put tax on currency transactions to prevent free flow of capital. to support debt cancellation of the Third World to promote public health, education, and food security solve problems associated with world poverty

19 ATTAC International In general, ATTAC aimed to establish global rules for financial transactions as a way of limiting the power of the world’s financial elite the organization seeks to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states, which they perceive as being undercut by supranational institutions that act on behalf of investors’ rights. At the same time, it calls for “international movement for democratic control of financial markets and their institutions”.

20 The Battle of Seattle The Millenium Round of WTO was supposed to discuss and further liberalize trade of agriculture and services (education, health care, cultural and environmental activities) activists from the US and other countries blocked delegates' entrance to WTO meetings in Seattle, and the protests forced the cancellation of the opening ceremonies. Due to the protests, Clinton could not make his opening speech. Anarchists resorted to property damage to highly visible corporate symbols of neoliberal success, such as Nike and Starbucks. The Seattle demonstrations wanted to highlight the detrimental effects of unregulated globalization around the world and protest the way in which powerful institutions like the WTO act on behalf of corporate interests over those of everyday people.

21 Battle of Seattle What was important in the ‘Battle of Seattle’ was that it has taken place in the United States, the most active promoter and the imposer of free trade and neoliberal globalization. There were two important groups present in the street protests besides the usual groups of left-wing activists; the US trade unions and the middle class environmental movements. President Clinton could not afford to ignore such protesters, since labor and the environmentalists provide two of the indispensable pillars of a Democratic victory in the elections of 2000. So Clinton called upon the WTO to include provisions of the type the US trade unions and environmentalist groups had demanded

22 Battle of Seattle The estimated 50,000 people on the streets of Seattle included 20,000 members of the American Labour Federation-Congress of Industrial Organization (ALF-CIO). Protest by NGOs: Greenpeace (protesting against the proliferation of genetically modified organisms in food and agriculture), Public Citizen (against multinational corporations), the Sierra Club (against rainforest logging), Confederation Paysanne (against hormone-fed beef), N30 (against global capitalism) and Sea Turtle Restoration Group (against turtle-killing shrimp nets)

23 Battle of Seattle Rising criticisms and mounting public demonstrations directed at neoliberal policies and institutions had been occurring globally for some time, but gained particular attention after Seattle Protests in 1999. A new spirit of social movement has started to spread from Seattle to different parts of the world. This spirit resulted in the mobilization of wide varieties of protesters all over the world, which developed into a worldwide mass protest. Tens of thousands of activists protested the meetings of IMF, World Bank, and WTO in places such as Praq, Quebec Melbourne, and Genoa...

24 The anti-globalization movement accelerates
On 16th of April 2000, the activits protested IMF meetings in Washington DC. On September 26 they were in Prague for protesting the regular yearly meetings of IMF and World Bank (WB). The protesters were in Davos, Switzerland, on January 27th 2001 to protest the World Economic Forum (WEF); Between of January, they also were organizing the First World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre in order to discuss the alternatives to globalization with 40 thousand participants

25 The anti-globalization movement accelerates
In September 2000, for example, 15,000 protested the IMF and World Bank summit in Prague. In April 2001, 100,000 were present outside the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Summit in Quebec City. In June 2001, 50,000 protested the EU-US Summit in Göthenburg and just one month later, 300,000 protesters were on the streets of Genoa, the largest of the GJM protests. The invasion of Iraq and inauguration of the War on Terror brought many new activists onto the streets. In addition to the active members of the anti-Vietnam (of the 1970s) and anti-nukes (of the 1980s), anti-Iraq war movement emerged in the U.S. and around the world.

26 World Social Forum (WSF)
World Social Forum (WSF) was founded as a site in which these new social and political actors are attempting to move beyond protest and toward the construction of alternative, democratic social and political institutions and networks. The World Social Forum is a collection of organizations such as activists, church groups, NGOs and civic and political leaders. These groups meet to discuss contemporary social problems and, within the context of globalization, develop new strategies to address them WSF is an annual meeting that involves hundreds of workshops and conferences on topics varying from indigenous rights to human trafficking to resistance against US imperialism, and so on.

27 World Social Forum (WSF)
The WSF grew out of the Global Justice Movement (GJM) that protested the increasing concentration of power in international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Economic Forum (WEF), and the devastating effects of their policies on people around the world, especially the poor. Initially, the WSF was conceived as a counter-summit to the WEF in Davos, Switzerland.

28 The Global Justice Movement (GJM)
The Global Justice Movement (GJM) is comprised of movements of indigenous peoples, human rights and ecology movements; anarchists, socialists and communists; NGO and trade union activists from a variety of backgrounds; and many other left-leaning groups and individuals. A network of local movements around the world linked by their common opposition to neoliberalism, free trade, privatization, market liberalization and fiscal austerity. They are also against deregulation, and drastically reduced social services.

29 The Global Justice Movement (GJM)
The GJM gained substantial momentum after Seattle, staging protests at nearly every meeting of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), WTO and Group of Eight (G8) to demand increased accountability from these and other supranational institutions and to demonstrate their opposition to capitalism itself.

30 The World Social Forum:Issues and Debates
The 2002 WSF included 27 conferences, 96 seminars and 622 workshops. The conferences featured well-known intellectuals and activists, such as Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Lori Wallach, Naomi Klein, Maude Barlow and Samir Amin. The third WSF took place in Porto Alegre from January 23 to 28, The 2003 WSF saw a tremendous increase in the number of participants to approximately 100,000, including 20,000 delegates from a total of 123 countries. The major themes of WSF 2003 included: Sustainable Development; human rights, diversity and equality; Media, culture and counter-hegemony; Political power, civil society and democracy; and the Democratic world order: the fight against militarism and promoting peace

31 The World Social Forum, 2004 (Mumbai, India)
The city of Mumbai was strategically chosen as the site of the 2004 World Social Forum. Mumbai is the center of India’s Bollywood enterprise and home to the country’s wealthiest people as well as the world’s poorest. More than half of the population lives in slums (roughly two million on the streets), whereas 73% of the families, usually large, live in one-room tenements. The recent spread of the informal economy has turned two percent of the population into street vendors. Mumbai is called as a living symbol of contradiction of capitalism in our time.

32 The World Social Forum, 2004 (Mumbai, India)
With a population of 16 million people, Mumbai is the “largest financial center in the world outside the OECD, as well as being the location of some of the most aggressive and violent acts of religious sectarianism. Notable speakers included Arundati Roy, former Indian president K.R. Narayanan, Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirn Ebadi and another Nobel Prize winner (in Economics), Joseph Stiglitz, the former chairman of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors and ex-chief Economist of the World Bank.

33 The World Social Forum, 2005 and 2006
The fifth WSF was held in Porto Alegre (PoA) between January 26 and 31, It was attended by 155,000 people from over 135 countries. to spread the social forum process around the globe, the WSF International Committee decided to organize the 2006 WSF simultaneously in three venues: Caracas, Venezuela; Bamako, Mali; and Karachi, Pakistan.

34 Where does Turkey stand in the Anti-globalization Movement
The “Liberal Leftist Reaction”: ÖDP (Özgürlük ve Dayanışma Partisi / Freedom and Solidarity Party). The “Nationalist Left Reaction”: İP (İşçi Partisi/Workers Party) İP is the most prevailing representative of the stance of Kemalizm and symbols of the National Independence War. It looks at the democratization demands in the country as demands which have been involved by the imperial powers that want to divide the country.

35 Workers Party In the program of this party the visible agent is the working class, however, this stance is expecting a leading role from the national army in the struggle to take Turkey out of the control of the cores of the world system For the Workers Party, the real leading powers in this stance are youngsters, intellectuals and soldiers. This political party does not have wider support since it does not recognize the democracy and equality demands of the society.

36 The Partipation of Turkish Civil Society in the AGM
The attendance of the civil society and social movements to the ongoing process of AGM has been very late. While the world societies, especially the ones in the developed countries were mobilizing, there were only minor attempts in Turkey. The first visible attempt has been the formation of the “Ankara Anti-globalization Initiative” which consisted of TMMOB (Turkish Architects and Engineers Association Consortium), unions of KESK (Public Employees’ Unions Confederation), Halkevleri (Folk Houses), AST (Ankara Art Theatre), Can Şenliği Actors, a group of anarchists, Social Ecology Group, Antikapitalist (AKAP), ÖDP (Freedom and Solidarity Party), TTB (Turkish Doctors Association), and Ankara Branch of DISK (Revolutionary Workers Unions Confederation)

37 The Partipation of Turkish Civil Society in the AGM
The aim of this initiative was to send a delegate to the protests against the yearly meetings of the IMF and WB taking place in Prague, as well as organizing a solidarity campaign. However, the participants did not show any considerable attendance in Prague, and the solidarity campaign was not wide reaching. After Prague, some activists from Antikapitalist attended the protests in Genoa with their individual efforts.

38 The Partipation of Turkish Civil Society in the AGM
Turkish civil society groups attended to the European Social Forum (ESF) third preparatory meeting in Thessalonica on July 2002. 45 activists from the Istanbul Social Forum (ISF) initiative applied for visa in order to attend European Social Forum in Florence, however, only 27 were able to get visas, due to the strict inspections of the Berlusconi Government.

39 Rising AGM in Turkey The social forum experiences in Florence affected youngsters and the rising anti-war movement in Turkey. On 15th of February 2003 the ISF initiative coordinated the ‘Global Anti-war Day’ protests in Istanbul. Following this on 1st of March 2003 the ISF initiative together with many other national social movements and civil society representatives marched to the parliament in order to resist the passage of the ‘license’ which would enable the government to send and base military power to Iraq. The parliament did not pass the ‘license’. this supplied a great prestige to the ISF among the international movement, which encouraged the participants.