geert on Fri, 25 Jan 2002 12:16:36 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> ... next week in porto alegre |
(next week the second porte alegre meeting takes place. if there is anyone going there, please drop a note. I heard that there will be indymedia caravan starting from porto alegre, visiting social movements in latin america. what else is happening? ok, attac is going and the personalities, but how about the media activists, for instance? ciao, geert) --- From: Crisinfo-admin@comunica.org Sent: January 23, 2002 2:04 PM Subject: Seminar in Porto Alegre At the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, the CRIS campaign will be launched at a seminar on the Social Appropriation and Control of ICTs. The seminar program is below. World Social Forum, Porto Alegre 2002 Communication and Citizenship II: Seminar on Civil society appropriation and control of information and communication technology (ICTs) Friday February 1, 2pm - 6 pm. Place: Club de Comercio Communication, media and information technology, are central elements in globalisation. They are equally central to people's struggles for social and economic justice. Current trends in the information and communications industry, and in the national and global policies that govern this industry, tend to restrict people's rights to communicate. At the same time, the commodification of information content, for example, on the Internet, limits cultural and intellectual diversity. This seminar will outline these developments and the political challenges in the field of communication, media and new technologies. It will identify civil society initiatives that are seeking to build alternatives, and that are challenging the increasingly powerful onslaught on people's rights to communicate, and on their access to the potential benefits of information and communications technologies (ICTs). And the Campaign for Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) will be presented in the context of the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society. Part 1: The global scenario: - Communication and globalization: Sally Burch, (ALAI) - The right to communicate and the Information Society: Sean O'Siochru, (CRIS) - ICTs: access, appropriation and control: Valérie Peugeot, (VECAM) Part 2: Civil society initiatives: Presentation of on-going initiatives such as: Internet Rights; community radio; community networks; alternative economic models of communication; feminist perspective; open source soft-ware; governance and legislative issues, etc. etc. With a view to the repercussions of global tendencies, alternatives and proposals they are developing; advances in terms of appropriation and control of ICTs. Part 3: Future Interconnections: Presentation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the CRIS Campaign. Discussion on mechanisms and proposals for building a common global agenda. Simultaneous translation will be provided. ------------------ Organizers: Agencia Latinoamericana de Información -ALAI- Association for Progressive Communications -APC- Association pour la promotion de l'économie sociale et solidaire -APRESS- Co-conveners: ATTAC-France VECAM AMARC Carrefour Mondial de l'Internet Citoyen --- SAND IN THE WHEELS (n°114) ATTAC Weekly newsletter - Wednesday 23/01/02 ______________________________ Please circulate and distribute. The Newsletter is received by 9 360 direct subscribers today. To subscribe or unsubscribe: <http://attac.org/listen.htm> Confort Reading and Printing Format RTF http://attac.org/attacinfoen/attacnews114.zip Format PDF http://attac.org/attacinfoen/attacnews114.pdf QUARTERLY REPORTS http://attac.org/listentri.htm ++ NEW: Debt & Development - 3 ____________________________________________________________ Content 1- Porto Alegre Social Summit Sets Stage for Counteroffensive against Globalization Fisherfolk from India, farmers from East Africa, trade unionists from Thailand, indigenous people from Central America will be among those making their way to Porto Alegre. But there will also be a sizable contingent of people from the Northern countries. And the place will be graced by personalities who have come to exemplify the diversity of the movement against corporate-driven globalization-among others, activist-thinker Noam Chomsky, Indian physicist-feminist Vandana Shiva, Canadian people's advocate Maude Barlow, and Egyptian intellectual Samir Amin. 2- Soon in New York City Join us January 31st (Thursday) through February 1st (Friday) in NYC for two days of workshops, infosessions, and teach-ins held in conjunction with The Another World Is Possible Coalition, Eye on Davos, and The National Student Mobilization. 3- Why not in the USA? Around the world in the last few years, labor has responded to globalization and its impact with general or mass political strikes. In Argentina, India, Spain, South Korea, Bolivia, South Africa, and France, labor federations have called on their members and sometimes the entire working class to challenge privatization, austerity, downsizing, and other symptoms of increased corporate power-by stopping work. 4- The Mirage of Progress The past 20 years have been an abject economic failure for most countries, with growth plummeting. The World Bank publishes data on the growth of income per person, as do other official sources. But few economists and almost no journalists have seen fit to make an issue out of what history will undoubtedly record as the most remarkable economic failure of the twentieth century aside from the Great Depression. 5- The Road to Monterrey Our aim with this forum is to generate new suggestions on how to ensure that development will be better financed and that the 2015 Human Development Goals will not represent yet another series of empty words from Western governments. We invite all those with Internet access and an interest in these issues to join us. 6- World Bank PSD Strategy : an Overview. Basic services are threatened - especially in low-income countries - by the World Bank's Private Sector Development Strategy. By promoting privatization of infrastructure and social services, imposing user fees for health and education, and tending to favour international "deep pockets" over domestic providers, this strategy undermines democratic processes. 7- Meeting ATTAC worldwide. ______________________________ 1- Porto Alegre Social Summit Sets Stage for Counteroffensive against Globalization ____________________________________________________________ By Walden Bello Porto Alegre is not exactly a Third World city. Located in one of Brazil's more prosperous states, Rio Grande do Sul, and populated by people mainly of European stock, this city of 1.2 million people is First World when it comes to infrastructure and social services. In fact, it ranks near the very top in terms of the country's "quality of life" index. "ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE" Yet Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum (WSF) last year and again this year, has become the byword for the spirit of the burgeoning movement against corporate-driven globalization. Galvanized by the slogan "Another world is possible," some 70,000 people are expected to flock to this coastal city from January 30 to February 4. This figure is nearly six times that for last year. Fisherfolk from India, farmers from East Africa, trade unionists from Thailand, indigenous people from Central America will be among those making their way to Porto Alegre. But there will also be a sizable contingent of people from the Northern countries. And the place will be graced by personalities who have come to exemplify the diversity of the movement against corporate-driven globalization-among others, activist-thinker Noam Chomsky, Indian physicist-feminist Vandana Shiva, Canadian people's advocate Maude Barlow, and Egyptian intellectual Samir Amin. COUNTERPOINT TO DAVOS The World Social Forum emerged as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the global corporate crowd in Davos, Switzerland. Proposed by a coalition of Brazilian civil society organizations and the Workers Party that controls both Porto Alegre and the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the idea triggered strong international support from organization such as the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique and Attac, an influential Europe-wide organization supporting a tax on global financial transactions, and received financial support from progressive donors like Novib, the Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation. Driven by this energy, the first WSF was put together in a record time of eight months. A televised trans-Atlantic debate between representatives of the WSF and some luminaries attending the WEF was billed by the Financial Times as a collision between two planets, that of the global superrich and that of the vast marginalized masses. The most memorable moment of that confrontation came when Hebe de Bonafini, a representative of the Argentine human rights organization Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, shouted at financier George Soros across the Atlantic divide: "Mr. Soros, you are a hypocrite. How many children's deaths are you responsible for." Since its first meeting the stock of the WSF has risen while that of the WEF has fallen. Already put on the defensive as a gathering to "discuss how to maintain hegemony over the rest of us," as one of the debaters on the WSF side put it, the WEF was asked by the Swiss government to leave Davos on the grounds that it could no longer guarantee the security of its corporate participants. Sealing off Davos from demonstrators last year had already necessitated the biggest Swiss security operation after World War II, and the authorities anticipated a security and logistical nightmare in the wake of the September 11 events. As a result, the WEF is holding its sessions in New York this year, but many observers say that Davos high up in the Swiss Alps was the key attraction for corporate executives, and without this "ambience," the WEF is headed for oblivion. The centerpiece of this year's gathering in Porto Alegre are 26 plenary sessions over four days structured around four theme: "the production of wealth and social reproduction," "access to wealth and sustainable development," "civil society and the public arena," and "political power and ethics in the new society." Around this core will unfold scores of seminars, a people's tribunal on debt sponsored by Jubilee South, and about 5,000 workshops. Marches and demonstrations of workers and peasants are also expected, led by the Brazilian mass organizations CUT (Central Union of Workers) and MST (the Movement of the Landless) that are among the key organizers of the WSF. TUMULTUOUS YEAR The anti-establishment forces gather in Porto Alegre after a tumultuous year. Perhaps the apogee of the anti-globalization movement came during Group of Eight Meeting in Genoa in the third week of July, when some 300,000 people marched in the face of police tear-gas attacks. Shortly after the Genoa clashes, in which one protester was killed by police, there was speculation in the world press that elite gatherings in non-authoritarian countries might no longer be possible in the future. And indeed, Canada's offer to hold the next G-8 meeting in a resort high up in the Canadian Rockies in the province of Alberta seemed to confirm the fact that the global elite was on the run from the democracy of the streets. Then came September 11, which stopped a surging movement dead in its tracks. The next big confrontation between the establishment and its opponents was supposed to take place in late September in Washington, DC, during the annual fall meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Unnerved by the prospect of a week of massive protest that was expected to draw some 50,000 people, the Bretton Woods twins took advantage of the September 11 shock to cancel their meeting. Without a target and sensitive to the sea change in the national mood in the US, organizers cancelled the protest and held a march for peace instead. The establishment followed up on the unexpected opportunity to reverse the crisis of legitimacy that had been wracking it prior to September 11 by pressing the developing countries to approve a declaration launching a limited set of trade negotiations during the Fourth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Doha, Qatar, in mid-November. Third World governments were told that unless they agreed to talks leading to greater liberalization, they would have to take responsibility for worsening a global recession that had been accelerated by the World Trade Center attack. Taking no chances, the WTO secretariat and the Qatar monarchy had worked to limit the number of legitimate NGO's attending the meeting to about sixty. This ensured that the massive demonstrations on the street that characterized Seattle, which had served as a context for the famous developing country revolt at the Sheraton Convention Center, were not present in Doha, and under these circumstances, developing country opposition collapsed. REVERSAL OF FORTUNE Had the WSF meeting been held in late November of December, the mood of people coming would have been different. The Bush administration would have been riding high after its devastating triumph in Afghanistan. However, in the last few weeks, history, cunning as usual, has dealt Washington two massive body blows: the Enron debacle and Argentina's economic collapse. Enron has become the sordid symbol of the volatile mixture of deregulation and corruption that drove the US' "New Economy" in the 1990's and helped lead it to what is possibly the worst global recession since the 1930's. Burdened with an unpayable $140 foreign debt, its industry in chaos, and 2,000 of its citizens falling under the poverty line daily, Argentina serves as a cautionary tale of the disaster that awaits those countries that take seriously the neoliberal advice to liberalize and globalize their economies. As the WSF opens, these twin disasters have brought back with a vengeance the crisis of legitimacy that the global elite and its project of corporate-driven globalization were experiencing prior to September 11. Porto Alegre provides the perfect site and the perfect moment for the counter-offensive on the part of the movements that believe that "another world is possible." * Dr. Walden Bello is the executive director of the Bangkok-based policy and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines. Focus on the Global South (FOCUS) Web Page http://www.focusweb.org ______________________________ 2- Soon in New York City ____________________________________________________________ >From Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, the World Economic Forum (WEF) will be meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan for its annual summit. Alexander Downer, who attended the 1998 Summit, describes the Summit as the world's 'Business Olympics'. The yearly meeting, usually held at WEF headquarters in Davos, Switzerland, was rescheduled to meet in New York as a token of support for the injuries our city sustained on September 11th. In reality, this meeting and the agenda it represents are an affront to the people of New York, who, like many others around the world, face a period of economic uncertainty and austerity which threatens their very livelihoods. The WEF is, in a way, a big cocktail party for the global corporate elite. As an organization, it has no power to actually set policy, but it creates a space in which international "leaders" can hash out their vision for the rest of us. In their own words, "they are fully engaged in the process of defining and advancing the global agenda." More specifically, it's our globe, but it's their agenda. One way in which the WEF has advanced this agenda was by helping to create the notorious World Trade Organization (WTO). For the first time in many years, anti-capitalist protest has returned to the capitalist heartland, and to the global stage. These protests open up the ideological space for the articulation of alternative guiding principles, putting on the agenda the possibility of transformation away from the current pro-corporate malaise. As the promotion of capitalist discipline is questioned, protest targeted at the agents of neo-liberal globalization gains remarkable political leverage. In this political climate WEF meetings start to take on a special significance. Since 1996 the WEF has attracted increasingly militant opposition, and it has responded by attempting to re-chart the neo-liberal project. The WEF response is to deliberately avoid the appearance of backroom strategizing, and instead to seek a higher public profile, attempting to reground its legitimacy by being seen to engage with prominent advocates of the emerging alternatives. But in reality the WEF meetings are still overwhelmingly comprised of the most powerful and wealthy corporations, individuals, and government officials; in fact, mostly male and mostly representative of the developed countries. Below you will find links to information on how you could get involved in the planning and carrying out of diverse, imaginative, and impassioned actions against the WEF, including actions in the streets, a counter-summit being held at Columbia University, and an evening concert. The main day of action is being planned for Saturday, Feb 2. Please join the people of New York and the world from Jan 31 to Feb 4 as we say NO! to corporate globalization, neo-liberalism, global economic apartheid, militarism, and the destruction of our planet; as we present our vision of another, more just, democratic, and sustainable world. Thank you. Another World is Possible Coalition: http://www.anotherworldispossible.com/ Stop the WEF and mobilize for global justice. Site features a comprehensive calendar of events and information on logistics such as housing, subway maps, and maps of the Waldorf. Globalizing Justice: http://www.studentsforglobaljustice.org/ A Call for a WEF Counter-Summit and National Student Mobilization >From Thursday, January 31st to Sunday, February 3rd 2002 at Columbia University in New York City Featuring speakers, workshops on a variety of topics, and more. *Deadline for proposing workshops is Jan 11. Check the site for schedules, information on housing, etc., and subscribe to these lists for more detailed information or to help plan: http://www.studentsforglobaljustice.org/contact.htm Anti-Capitalist Convergence Against the World Economic Forum: http://www.accnyc.org/ JOIN US AS NEW YORKERS STRIKE BACK AGAINST CORPORATE TERROR! SHUTDOWN THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM ! Join us January 31st (Thursday) through February 1st (Friday) in NYC for two days of workshops, infosessions, and teach-ins held in conjunction with The Another World Is Possible Coalition, Eye on Davos, and The National Student Mobilization. After Friday's activity has ended, a legal vigil will be held in Union Square, followed by a spokes council, to which each affinity group is invited to send a representative. Please send a member who is familiar with the processes of facilitation and consensus. February 2nd (Saturday) will be the universal day of action against the World Economic Forum. Legal marches and rallies are being planned by The Another World Coalition and The International ANSWER Coalition. ACCNYC is in the process of determining its role in the street action. More info will be available soon. Check back for scenario updates: www.accnyc.org Start spreading the word! Flyers and Agitprop will be soon available here: www.accnyc.org/outreachIndex.html *NOTE: for those of you who will be in town: THE REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING AGAINST THE WEF Saturday, January 19 @ 2pm Chashama Theatre - 129 W 42nd St (Between Bdway & 6th in Times Sq) The NYC Anti-Capitalist Convergence calls on all anarchists and anti-authoritarians to join us for a regional organizational meeting in preparation for the mass mobilization against the WEF, January 31 to February 4. For more information contact - David Graeber drg9@drg9.mail.yale.edu Note - Space on Times Square has been provided for this meeting by The Intergalactic Anarchist Convention - Jan 17 to Jan 20: <http://www.igac.infoliberationfront.org/> Proceeds benefit May Day Books and WEF actions-related legal funds. Check www.nyc.indymedia.org for coverage of the events. Other relevant links: http://www.citizen.org/ http://www.otherdavos.net/ http://www.davos2001.ch/ http://www.buko24.de/ ______________________________ 3- Why Not in the U.S.A.? ____________________________________________________________ Around the World, Mass Political Strikes Challenge the Effects of Globalization. Why Not in the U.S.A.? by Kim Moody Around the world in the last few years, labor has responded to globalization and its impact with general or mass political strikes. In Argentina, India, Spain, South Korea, Bolivia, South Africa, and France, labor federations have called on their members and sometimes the entire working class to challenge privatization, austerity, downsizing, and other symptoms of increased corporate power-by stopping work. Not too long ago, the Ontario Federation of Labour organized one-day general strikes in cities across that province called the Days of Action. In 1998, Puerto Rico's labor movement, including most of its AFL-CIO unions, struck in opposition to the sale of the public telephone company. With the Free Trade Area of the Americas coming down the Fast Track, why not a general strike throughout the hemisphere, including across the whole U.S.? It's a novel idea for a labor movement that, especially since the 1940s, has been focussed on industry-by-industry or company-by-company bargaining. Since the go-it-alone strategy is not working in an era of globalization, some changes may be in order. THE AMERICAN SYSTEM It has to be admitted that in the United States, general strikes are as rare as a generous employer. One reason for this is simply that the business unionists who head up most of our unions are not for it. Back in the mid-1970s then-AFL-CIO President George Meany said, "We believe in the American system. We don't take to the streets and we don't call general strikes and we don't call political strikes." In one respect Meany was wrong. "We" certainly do take to the streets, and it hasn't just been in the 1930s or the 1960s. Check out the streets around Pittston's western Virginia coal mines in 1989, or the highways hit by "road warriors" from Hormel in the mid-1980s or Staley in the mid-1990s. What about the Latino drywallers in Los Angeles a decade ago or the construction workers in New York City a couple of years ago? And then there were the thousands who marched last June in Columbia, South Carolina in support of the Charleston 5, members of the ILA threatened with felony charges for trying to stop scabs. And does Seattle ring a bell? Meany was wrong. American workers hit the streets with regularity. But they don't stop work and hit the streets all at once, together, for a common goal. In large part this is due to the weak class consciousness of most American workers that is both a cause and consequence of business unionism. Over the years, it has been further undermined by a prosperous past, racial divisions, and an approach to politics and social programs unique to unions in the United States. Most accounts of the tightening grip of business unionism after World War II include the, by then, universal presence of no-strike clauses in union contracts; the purge of leftists from the CIO; the growing dependence on the Democratic Party; McCarthyism; increased bureaucracy; and, of course, the Taft-Hartley Act. All of these played a role in the triumph of the narrow ideology and practice of business unionism. But it is important to understand what they did and didn't accomplish. All of these events and trends weakened organized labor in important ways. They wrecked the plan to organize the South, leaving that region a haven for runaway shops to this day. Bargaining in the electrical industry was fragmented and seriously undermined by the attacks on the United Electrical Workers after it was forced out of the CIO. Most unions, however, emerged from the 1940s larger and institutionally stronger. Many grew from the 1950s through the 1970s, although private sector unionism slipped for a time. There were more strikes in the 1950s than in the 1930s, and many of the big gains in collective bargaining came in that decade. Real wages, adjusted for inflation, grew by 250 percent from 1945 to 1975. In most respects, the unions of the 1950s were stronger than they had ever been and much more powerful than they would become. A NARROWED VISION What the very success of the path chosen in the 1940s did do, however, was to undermine the notion of the labor movement as the representative of a class and to narrow the vision of most unions. Frustrated in the late 1940s by a Republican Congress and a rightward moving Democratic Party, leaders of the individual unions turned toward a trend begun by the Mine Workers in 1946 when John L. Lewis negotiated an employer-paid health and welfare fund. "If we cannot bring this protection to our members by national legislation," said Textile Workers President William Pollock, "we should insist that this become part of our contracts." This trend toward winning social gains union-by-union, industry-by-industry instead of class-wide was given a boost by the Taft-Hartley Act, which in an attempt to control union-run plans actually encouraged them. It meant, of course, that programs such as improved pensions and national health care that had been seen by millions as benefiting the entire working class and others as well, now only came to those whose union was strong enough to win them from reluctant employers. Whereas in 1946 the major industrial unions had bargained at the same time for the same demand and many had struck together, henceforth each union sought its own way, and fought only for its own members. Whether they administered industry-wide union-run plans like the Mine Workers or Teamsters or the company-based health and pension plans like those in auto, steel, and electrical, top union leaders now stood over highly complex "private welfare states" that encouraged more bureaucracy and a greater focus on a particular company's well-being. It was the companies, after all, not the government or the public as a whole, which appeared to "pay the bills" for health care and pensions. Thus, the leaders' and staffers' concern for company profits, already there for many, was reinforced and deepened. This meant the continual surrender of workplace organization and power to management in return for expensive benefits-presumably paid for by the productivity squeezed out of the members. It meant the abandonment of cross-industry pattern bargaining and eventually the unraveling of even single-industry patterns, as union leaders focused on the "health" of the big companies that provided the benefits. Above all, it meant a growing identification with the company, not only among the leaders, but in the ranks as well. This didn't mean that workers didn't hate management and resent the indignity and physical pressure of the demands of production. But the realization that your pension and health benefits derived from the company-even if won through struggle by the union-could not help but affect your outlook. FRAGMENTED RESISTANCE The aggressive speed-up and productivity drives of the late 1950s through the 1960s provoked an upsurge in rank and file militancy, expressed through wildcat strikes and the formation of reform movements among coal miners, airline mechanics, auto, steel, postal, public sector, and trucking workers. Yet the movements and organizations they created never came together or had much contact with one another. For all their daring and militancy, these grassroots workers' movements of the 1960s and 1970s reflected the fragmentation underwritten by the "private welfare state" that brought both a measure of prosperity to many and speed-up to millions. By the early 1980s, the corporate assault on the workplace was joined by company efforts to cut costs across the board. Now, the wages and benefits employers had ceded in more profitable times came under attack along with working conditions. The room for trade-offs shrank year by year. For most top union leaders this produced accelerated concern with company well-being. Labor-management cooperation, jointness, and partnerships became the alleged salvation of company and union alike. It might cost jobs as downsizing proceeded, but the goose that laid the golden egg would be saved-even if the eggs going to the workers became more scarce. Even in its own terms this "strategy" has failed. It has not stopped the erosion of benefits or the loss of jobs. The go-along, go-it-alone route can't work for workers in a world of global corporations. Perhaps ironically, the corporate post-September 11 rush to war profiteering and government hand-outs has made the question of class all too real for millions, who are being forced to sacrifice jobs or income in the face of war and recession. In this context, the fight against the Free Trade Area of the Americas offers an opportunity to pull organized labor and its allies back together again. It holds out a chance to retrain our movement in the idea that an injury to one is an injury to all. A mass political strike in America? Think about it. A Striking History Though rare, mass political strikes have not been completely absent in American labor history. During the Civil War, as the Confederate army retreated or disintegrated across much of the South, hundreds of thousands of slaves walked off the plantations in what W.E. B. DuBois called the general strike that crippled the Southern economy. There were no unions and no central coordination, but there was a common goal-emancipation. On May 1, 1886 a general strike for the eight-hour day brought much of industry and commerce to a halt in many cities. It was called not by the more visionary Knights of Labor but by the predecessor of the AFL. Some of the very founders of business unionism had called America's workers into the streets for a common objective. In 1919, Seattle was shaken by a general strike. The unions-the AFL and IWW together-ran the city and the local economy for a while. There were general strikes in San Francisco and Terre Haute, Indiana in 1934. In the same year, the threat of general strikes helped bring union victories in Minneapolis, Toledo, Milwaukee, and Pekin, Illinois. When World War II ended, employers moved to test the new balance of power. This brought not only the giant industrial strike waves of 1945 and 1946, but a series of local general strikes in 1946. Near total work stoppages occurred in Oakland, California; Stamford, Connecticut; Lancaster and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; and Houston, Texas. These began as sympathy strikes in support of a particular group of workers, but turned into political, class confrontations. By the end of the 1940s, general strikes had disappeared as anything more than a dream in the minds of union militants. The CIO leadership rejected proposals for a general strike in opposition to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947-although half a million UAW members did stop work for five hours. The Act itself outlawed the sort of sympathy strikes that had sparked the local general strikes of 1946. The idea of the general strike was among the casualties as modern business unionism solidified in the late 1940s. The Failure of Labor's Democratic Dependency American labor's dependence on the Democratic Party headed off the development of the labor-based parties that were typical of most other industrial nations of the time. While the union preference for Democrats goes way back, dependence was solidified in 1943 with the formation of the CIO's Political Action Committee and the explicit rejection of independent political action. This meant that the CIO's ambitious political program-including national health care, housing for all, full employment, civil rights, and more-became dependent on the goodwill of the Democrats. This will rapidly proved ill indeed. The CIO's political strategy was a compete failure. The labor vote collapsed between 1948, when union members voted 81 percent for Truman, and 1952, when only 57 percent of union members voted Democratic. From then on, this percentage would rise to the levels of the 1940s in only one year, 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran the first truly right-wing Republican campaign. Dependence on the Democratic Party left the unions with no independent means of pursuing their political agenda. Kim Moody Published in collaboration with Labor Notes. 'Labor Notes' is a monthly magazine based in Detroit, USA. We are committed to reforming and revitalizing the labor movement. We report news about the labor movement that you won't find anywhere else. News about grassroots labor activity, innovative organizing tactics, international labor struggles, immigrant workers, and problems that some union leaders would rather keep quiet. Subscribe and receive a copy of 'Labor Notes' in your mailbox! Subscription information can be found at our website at www.labornotes.org ______________________________ 4- The Mirage of Progress ____________________________________________________________ by Mark Weisbrot Everyone knows that the past 20 years have been an era of rapid overall economic progress for the vast majority of countries, especially in the developing world. Tariffs have collapsed and countries have flung open their borders to international trade and investment. Technology has progressed as never before, we are told, with revolutions in such cutting-edge industries as communications, computers, and the Internet spawning and spreading productivity miracles around the globe. Of course, there are problems: a widening gap between rich and poor nations; environmental destruction; and, in some countries and regions, the poor being left behind. But the engine of growth has roared ahead. So if we can fix some of the problems, then growth--and the policies that produced it--will allow future generations to enjoy a better life. Right? Actually, it's quite clear that the opposite is true. The past 20 years have been an abject economic failure for most countries, with growth plummeting. The World Bank publishes data on the growth of income per person, as do other official sources. But few economists and almost no journalists have seen fit to make an issue out of what history will undoubtedly record as the most remarkable economic failure of the twentieth century aside from the Great Depression. Consider this: In Latin America and the Caribbean, where gross domestic product grew by 75 percent per person from 1960 to 1980, it grew by only 7 percent per person from 1980 to 2000. The collapse of the African economies is more well known, although still ignored: GDP in sub-Saharan Africa grew by about 34 percent per person from 1960 to 1980; in the past two decades, per capita income actually fell by about 15 percent. Even if we include the fast-growing economies of East Asia and South Asia, the past two decades fare miserably. For the entire set of low- and middle-income countries, per capita GDP growth was less than half of its average for the previous 20 years. Also, as might be expected in a time of bad economic performance, the past two decades have brought significantly reduced progress according to such major social indicators as life expectancy, infant and child mortality, literacy, and education--again, for the vast majority of low- and middle-income countries. There is no disputing this data; nor can anyone take issue with the time periods chosen for comparison. This is not a cyclical phenomenon: Both of these periods contain a world recession, and the 1970s had major oil shocks. In fact, if full data were available for the 1950s, the past 20 years would look even worse. Yes, growth isn't everything, but it's all that the authorities who have directed policy for most of the developing world--the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department--have promised to deliver. If the basic facts were better known, one big economic question would occupy center stage with regard to the developing world: What are the structural and policy changes that have led to this terrible economic failure? What Went Wrong? It is, of course, difficult to isolate the causes of a long-term, worldwide economic decline that involves so many economies in very different stages of development. But there is a pattern to the policies that have emanated from Washington, D.C., during the past 20 years; and a few examples can illustrate a big part of the story. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 was brought on by an opening of capital markets that led to a rapid inflow of foreign funds. This was forcefully promoted by the U.S. Treasury Department, despite the fact that the affected countries had high domestic savings rates and did not necessarily need to increase their foreign borrowing. As Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz--the World Bank's chief economist at the time--has pointed out, the architects of this policy did not have a single study showing that opening up capital markets led to higher growth. In this case, the policy had the opposite effect: In 1996 and 1997, there was a reversal of capital flow that amounted to about 11 percent of the GDP of South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The outflow of funds crashed the local currencies and set off a financial panic. Washington intervened in several ways that helped transform the crisis into a serious regional economic downturn. First, Treasury convinced Japan to abandon a proposed Asian monetary fund, that would have provided at least $100 billion to stabilize the currencies before they went into free fall. Second, the IMF imposed unnecessary fiscal and monetary austerity on the crisis-ridden economies, with interest rates as high as 80 percent in Indonesia. There were other major blunders as well, and the result was disastrous: In 1998 Indonesia's economy shrank by 13.7 percent and Thailand's by 10 percent. The Asian crisis spread first to Russia and then to Brazil. This illustrates another debilitating effect of the period's reckless liberalization of investment: "Contagion" could now spread panic among countries that had only the slightest of commercial relationships with one another. The herd behavior of investors who sought to avoid the next emerging-market meltdown was the only connection needed. Once again, the IMF's intervention exacerbated the damage. In both Russia and Brazil, the organization insisted on maintaining overvalued exchange rates, propping them up with enormous loans ($42 billion in Brazil) and high interest rates (up to 170 percent in Russia). In both cases, the currencies collapsed anyway; the countries had suffered lost output and high-debt burdens in exchange for no economic gain. The IMF's only proffered argument for maintaining the overvalued exchange rates was that a collapse would trigger hyperinflation. But the hyperinflation never occurred; and both economies responded very positively to the currency devaluations, with Russia recording its highest growth in two decades (8.3 percent) in 2000. This scenario has been repeated most recently in Argentina, where the government is currently defaulting on the mountain of debt it has accumulated in maintaining its fixed exchange rate through four years of recession, a tripling of interest rates, and a phenomenal $40-billion loan package from the IMF last December. To grasp the absurdity of the situation that Argentina was drawn into, imagine the U.S. government borrowing $1.4 trillion--70 percent of the federal budget--to keep the overvalued dollar from falling. The transition economies are a special case, but they illustrate the monumental damage that can be done when America's best and brightest are given free rein to design a new society. Russia lost about half of its national income in just a few years after adopting the recommended "shock therapy" program in 1992. Although the IMF has tried to deny it, Russia really did follow its program, including immediate decontrol of prices (which resulted in 520 percent inflation within three months) and rapid privatization of industry. The government even met most of the IMF's fiscal and monetary targets, at least until the economy had collapsed to the point where barter became the preferred medium of exchange. The result was a newly underdeveloped country with a per capita income that was less than Mexico's; outside of wars or natural disasters, it was the worst economic collapse in history. Other structural and policy changes also slowed growth in low- and middle-income countries during this period. Tight monetary policies (high interest rates) were part of a general trend in IMF lending requirements throughout the developing world. This trend was evident in high-income areas as well, including the United States and Europe (where it prevails today), and the resulting slower growth also hurt developing countries through reduced demand for their exports. In addition, monetary reserves held by developing countries grew markedly, probably as a result of more financial instability and globalization. In terms of forgone investment, the cost of holding the se reserves is significant--probably between 0.4 and 2 percentage points of annual growth, depending on the country's accumulation. The West's Double Standards The failed policies of the past two decades are often described as a product of extreme free-market or free-trade ideology. But this is not accurate. For example, in the countries that sacrificed the economy in order to maintain a fixed exchange rate--Russia, Brazil, and Argentina--the free-market solution would have been to abandon the peg and let the currency fall. In the Asian crisis, one of the few things that Washington actually did accomplish was to get the governments of the region to guarantee the privately held debt of foreign lenders, rather than letting the banks be subjected to the discipline of the market. The more consistent pattern is that the national interests of the developing and transition countries have been increasingly sacrificed for the sake of more-powerful foreign interests. This is perhaps most obvious in the case of intellectual-property rights. The global South already loses some tens of billions of dollars annually to these foreign monopolies--a drain of resources that will multiply if the rich countries succeed in implementing the World Trade Organization's TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement. (To put this in perspective: Total Official Development Assistance from high-income countries to developing ones was $40.7 billion in 1999.) Patent monopolies are the most costly, inefficient, and--in the case of essential medicines--life-threatening form of protectionism that exists today. From an economic point of view, they create the same kinds of distortions as tariffs, only many times greater. Yet the attempt to extend U.S. patent and copyright law to developing countries has become one of the primary objectives of America's foreign commercial policy. The expansion of foreign intellectual-property claims not only drains scarce resources from developing countries but also makes it difficult for them to follow the more successful examples of late industrialization, such as South Korea or Taiwan, where diffusion of foreign technology played an important role. This is part of a more general problem that is reflected in the economic failure of the past 20 years. There have historically been many paths to development, but none resembles the collection of policies that Washington foists upon developing countries today. The late-industrializing countries used various combinations of industrial policy and planning, state-owned industries, extensive controls on subsidies and exchange rates, tariffs, and import restrictions to reach the point at which their industries and firms could become internationally competitive. In many respects, these strategies were similar to those of the high-income countries that came before them. The United States had a hefty average tariff of 44 percent on manufactured goods as late as 1913. But the rich countries are now "kicking away the ladder," as economist Ha-Joon Chang describes it in his forthcoming book by that title. It is difficult to say how much of the growth slowdown has resulted from the prohibition of potentially successful development strategies and their replacement by a rigid adherence to the theory of comparative advantage. Trade liberalization has historically followed development, as national economies became competitive on world markets. It would not be surprising if attempts to reverse this pattern proved to be counterproductive. In response to such criticisms, the World Bank has produced a series of papers and arguments purporting to show that the countries that "globalized" the most during the past two decades were the most successful. Yet this research proves nothing of the sort, as Harvard University's Dani Rodrik has demonstrated. It takes the trade share of GDP as its measure of globalization. But trade share is an outcome, not a policy variable; it tends to increase with growth. So all that the World Bank has really shown is that faster-growing countries tend to increase the proportion of their economy devoted to trade. Indeed, the World Bank's favorite "globalizers" seem to be three countries whose growth has accelerated over the past 20 years: China, India, and Vietnam. But China and India have two of the most protected domestic markets in the world. China does not even have a convertible currency, and India retains strict capital controls. So does Vietnam, where the majority of investment in recent years has been undertaken by the state. The successful globalizers, then, are the exceptions that prove the rule. And if there is any rule that can be gleaned from successful development experiences, it is that the conditions under which international trade and investment can contribute to growth and development are country-specific. Even some of the most basic questions of international finance, such as whether to have a fixed or flexible exchange rate, depend on specific national institutions. All the more reason to let national governments make their own economic policies. But that is exactly the point that Washington's army of economists and bureaucrats will not concede. And they have a powerful creditors' cartel, headed by the IMF, that is able to determine policy for dozens of borrowing countries. A government that does not comply with the IMF's conditions will often not be eligible for private credit or, in most cases, for credit from the World Bank, other multilateral lenders such as the Inter-American Development Bank, or Group of Seven nations. Until this cartel is broken--or its policies drastically changed--only countries whose governments are strong enough to stand up to it will have a reasonable chance of reversing the economic failure of the twentieth century's last two decades. Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Published in collaboration with CEPR www.cepr.net ______________________________ 5- The Road to Monterrey ____________________________________________________________ OneWorld www.oneworld.net, in partnership with Eurodad www.eurodad.org, has launched an online discussion at www.debtchannel.org, to help move international policy-makers 'beyond rhetoric' and towards action at the UN International Conference on Financing for Development taking place in Monterrey, Mexico at the end of March. 'The Road to Monterrey' OneWorld DebtChannel.org Discussion Forum will run from 21 January - 29 March and can be accessed at http://forum.oneworld.net:8080/~debtchannel. Jonathan Wolsey, Eurodad forum moderator says: "Our aim with this forum is to generate new suggestions on how to ensure that development will be better financed and that the 2015 Human Development Goals will not represent yet another series of empty words from Western governments. We invite all those with Internet access and an interest in these issues to join us." The UN International Conference on Financing Development comes as calls continue to grow for reform to the international financial architecture and greater participation in international economic decision-making by developing countries. The OneWorld DebtChannel.org Discussion Forum will explore these and other Summit themes such as debt relief, official development assistance, investment flows and controls, and the Financing for Development process so far. The online discussion will conclude with responses to the news and decisions in Monterrey. Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, has said of the Financing for Development agenda (May 2001): "Unless we succeed in mobilizing far greater amounts of resources - both public and market-led investment - our plans to eradicate poverty and to accelerate development will be thwarted." The 'The Road to Monterrey' OneWorld DebtChannel.org Discussion Forum follows 'From Genoa to the World Bank/IMF Autumn Meetings', a highly successful online event on debt reduction last year. For more information contact: Henk Campher, OneWorld DebtChannel.org editor, t: +27 21 8867208 e: mailto:henk.campher@oneworld.net Jonathan Wolsey, Eurodad forum moderator, t: +32 2 543 9060 e: mailto:jwolsey@eurodad.org Notes: 1. OneWorld is a non-profit network that aims to harness the democratic potential of the Internet to promote sustainable development and human rights. Its website www.oneworld.net is the world's leading portal on global issues and a gateway to over 1000 partner NGOs worldwide. 2. Eurodad is a network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 16 European countries. It aims to coordinate the activities of NGOs working on the issues of Third World debt, structural adjustment, and financial markets in order to ensure that their views be brought to bear on decision-makers in Europe, the Bretton Woods Institutions and other relevant players. 3. The UN International Conference on Financing Development http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/ (18-22 March Monterrey, Mexico) is the first time the United Nations will convene for a Summit-level meeting to address key financial and related issues pertaining to global development. ______________________________ 6- World Bank PSD Strategy : an Overview. ____________________________________________________________ By S Dossani The World Bank's Private Sector Development (PSD) Strategy would expand four types of operations financed by the World Bank Group: structural adjustment, privatization of infrastructure and services, social funds,and microfinance. Two arms of the World Bank Group would partner to privatize infrastructure and service provision, especially in low-income countries: the World Bank's private sector affiliate, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank's soft loan arm, the International Development Association (IDA). The IFC will increasingly take the lead in expanding private provision of services, while IDA will work with governments to design subsidy and other schemes to offset the costs of private provision to low-income consumers. In the past several months, the Bank's Board of Executive Directors considered, debated, and rejected successive drafts of the PSD Strategy. Some officials said that they had never seen the U.S. -- the main proponent of the Strategy -- in such an isolated position. The Board has postponed decisions on the PSD Strategy for several weeks. (In a related decision, the IDA Deputies also postponed action on a U.S. proposal to convert half of IDA's resources from loans to grants.) The three prongs of the PSD Strategy would: A. Launch a new and expanded generation of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) with policy conditions intended to induce borrowers to adopt "minimum investment standards." The launch of this investment initiative comes just after the announcement by the World Trade Organization in November of a new round of negotiations on investment rules (which will revive the Multilateral Agreement on Investment). Bank promotion of output-based aid (see "B," below) depends, among other things, upon easier private sector entry into markets of low-income countries. B. Accelerate the privatization of infrastructure and basic services (e.g., health, education, water) on a commercial basis- that is, with cost-covering user fees. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) would help spearhead this process by, among other things, urging governments to employ more output-based aid (OBA) schemes. OBA schemes delegate basic service provision to private firms (and NGOs) under contracts that tie provision of financial support to the outputs or services delivered. These schemes can be risky, especially in poorly regulated environments. Also, because OBA schemes provide back-loaded finance, they often favor international actors with "deep pockets" rather than domestic enterprises. The U.S. is pressuring the shareholders of the World Bank to convert IDA resources from loans to grants so that, among other things, grant financing can subsidize private provision of services, including OBA schemes. C. Launch more aggressive efforts to expand the reach of markets by supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, mainly through expanded business development services and microfinance schemes. The Bank plans to revise its operational policies to ensure that finance is provided on unsubsidized terms. Some loan operations contain microfinance schemes to enable low-income consumers to borrow at market rates in order to purchase basic services, such as water. II. Key Messages 1. Undermining Democratic Processes. The World Bank and other creditors and donors should not use pressure tactics to induce recipient governments to privatise basic services. Examples of pressure tactics include: failing to involve the public and affected unions in privatization decisions, failing to publicly disclose information about privatization plans; withholding aid until recipient governments agree to privatize; running "public information" campaigns to persuade publics to privatize; and supporting biased cost-benefit analyses of policy options. Important political decisions about modes of service delivery should be made by domestic groups, including poor and vulnerable groups, without outside interference. 2. Privatizing Social Services. The World Bank Group poses as a "knowledge bank," but the PSD Strategy states that there has been no evaluation of operations that privatize social services. Yet, new loans show expanded support for such privatization! 3. Imposing User Fees. People may be deprived of basic services because (a) exemptions and subsidizes for private primary education and basic health care may fail to reach the people who need them; (b) low-income groups may not be able to afford fees, especially for non-compulsory levels of education and secondary/tertiary health care; and (c) the PSD Strategy practically overlooks the necessity for regulation of social sectors. 4. Privatizing into Poorly Regulated Environments. The World Bank Group is "harmonizing" regulatory standards with those of other development institutions. In this process, World Bank safeguard (and other) policies are being weakened with adverse implications for poor and vulnerable groups and the environment. (Ultimately, this process may be guided by the WTO's ambiguous emphasis on "least burdensome" regulation.) 5. Sidelining Domestic Actors. Output-based aid (OBA) schemes compensate service providers AFTER services have been delivered. Back-loaded finance will favor international actors with "deep pockets" over domestic service providers. Domestic actors should not be sidelined, especially in service sectors. 6. Providing Grants rather than Loans. The Bank has not disclosed the uses to which grants might be put and, in particular, whether grants would subsidize OBA schemes. Many groups feel that grants are inappropriate in certain circumstances. [For instance, according to Bank publications ("Note on IDA13 and PSD," November 2001), the Bank envisions subsidizing corporations that have not recouped costs through tariffs.] 6. Increasing Fiscal Burdens. The PSD Strategy overlooks off-budget fiscal risks implicit in privatization schemes (e.g., the failed Enron project in Maharastra). Acknowledgement of risks would undermine claims that the PSD Strategy would shift performance risk to private actors and Northern taxpayers 8. Deepening World Bank - WTO Collaboration. The World Bank Group has not disclosed the ways in which the PSD Strategy will pave the way for the new WTO agreements on investment and services, which are currently in the works. 9. Expanding Ineffective Operations. The World Bank's own evaluators have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of PSD operations in low-income countries. The Bank should not expand ineffective operations. For further information, see "News & Notices for IMF and World Bank Watchers," http://www.challengeglobalization.org/html/news_notices/winter2002/Win ter02N&N.pdf ______________________________ 7- Meeting ATTAC worldwide. ____________________________________________________________ If you are interested in one of these rendezvous please click on http://attac.org/rdv/ Then select the country in which it will take place to find further information. Wednesday 23 : AUSTRIA : LINZ / DANMARK : BORUPS HAJSKOLE / FRANCE: PARIS 11 - LYON - TOULOUSE - CHAUMONT / NORGE : OSLO / SUISSE SCHWEIZ : GENEVE / SVERIGE : STOCKHOLM Thrusday 24 : AUSTRIA : ST POLTEN - ROCHUSGASSE / DANMARK : NIELS - GRONNEGADE / FRANCE: MARSEILLE - PARIS 13 / SUISSE SCHWEIZ : GENEVE / SVERIGE : AVIKA Friday 25 : AUSTRIA : WIEN / FRANCE: BRIANCON - CREST - ST PIERRE D' OLERON - SAINT BRIEUC / NORGE : NESODDEN / SUISSE SCHWEIZ : GENEVE Saturday 26 : FRANCE : PARIS 11 - ONET LE CHATEAU - PARIS CENTRE - LYON - STRASBOURG / NORGE : NESODDEN / SUISSE SCHWEIZ : ZURICH (OTHER DAVOS) Sunday 27 : FRANCE : PARIS 11 - QUIMPER / NORGE : NESODDEN Monday 28 : FRANCE : MARSEILLE - MARTIGUES - ST PIERRE D'OLERON - LA ROCHELLE Tuesday 29 : DANMARK : NY LYNGBYGARD / ESPANA: MADRID / FRANCE : TRAPPES - VALENCE - CAEN - PARIS 15 - BREST - ST JEAN DE BOISEAU / NORGE : OSLO Wednesday 30 : AUSTRIA : WIEN / DANMARK : AALBORG / FRANCE : PARIS 11 - TOULOUSE - LYON - GIBERVILLE ____________________________________________________________ This weekly newsletter was put together by the « Sand in the Wheels » team of volunteers. <newsletter@attac.org> <http://attac.org> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net