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Globalization from Below | Excerpt
Introduction
Corporations, markets, investors, and elites are going global. The globalization that is so often celebrated by economists, pundits, corporate executives, and the leaders of the world's richest nations is actually their "globalization from above."
Globalization from above can and should be contested by a "globalization from below" through which people at the grassroots around the world link up to impose their own needs and interests on the process of globalization. A movement embodying globalization from below is already emerging. Its global grassroots solidarity has the power to transform the world.
Globalization gets mixed reviews. Greater interconnectedness among the world's people seems to promise a "global village" in which the destructive antagonisms of the past can be left behind, replaced by global cooperation and enriching diversity. The advocates of a world without national economic barriers maintain that it will make everyone, including the people and countries at the bottom, better off.
But the actual experience of fin-de-millenium globalization has not fulfilled this promise. Instead, it has given us more poor people than the world has ever known and increased threats to the environmental conditions on which human life itself depends. It has led many to fear the loss of hard-won social and environmental protections and even of meaningful self-government.
Globalization from above is provoking a worldwide movement of resistance. While this movement has been gathering for years, many people first became aware of it in late 1999, when tens of thousands of protesters brought the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization to a halt. As The New York Times reported, "The surprisingly large protests in Seattle by critics of the World Trade Organization point to the emergence of a new and vocal coalition" that included "not just steelworkers and auto workers, but anti-sweatshop protesters from colleges across the nation and members of church groups, consumer groups, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and the Humane Society."
This movement is neither a one-shot nor a local phenomenon. As Elaine Bernard, executive director of the Harvard Trade Union Program, put it in the Washington Post, "The WTO meeting was merely the place where these people burst onto the American public's radar. Social movements around the world had already linked into grass-roots networks, made possible by the astonishing speed at which they can communicate in the Internet era."
Is such a movement futile, or can it actually affect the course of globalization? The argument of this book is that people can indeed exercise power over globalization, but only by means of a solidarity that crosses the boundaries of nations, identities, and narrow interests. A corporate-driven, top-down globalization can only be effectively countered by globalization from below.
Fortunately, much of the movement that is emerging in response to globalization is showing just such a character. As Naomi Klein wrote in a New York Times op ed, "The protesters in Seattle have been bitten by the globalization bug as surely as the trade lawyers inside the Seattle hotels . . . and they know it. This is the most internationally minded, globally linked movement the world has ever seen."
Nonetheless, this movement is ambivalent about globalization. All of its participants share a commitment to resist globalization in its present form, but they differ on what should replace it. Some aim to roll back globalization and restore the national economies—real or imagined—of the past. Some present an agenda of modest reforms to correct globalization's worst excesses. Some are prepared to embrace a more interconnected, less nationally bounded world—but only one radically different from the "actually-existing globalization" being created from above.
We are among those who believe that this movement can only succeed if it evolves from resistance, reform, and restoration to transformation—albeit a transformation that is rooted in today's resistance, that reforms institutions at every level, and that restores the elements of democracy, diversity, and ecological balance that globalization from above has destroyed. Such a transformation requires a multilevel strategy and program to impose new rules on the global economy while transferring wealth and power to ordinary people—a worldwide economic and political democratization.
Why This Book
The emergence of a worldwide social movement for globalization from below changes the conditions of human action. It opens new possibilities for addressing not only globalization from above but also longstanding problems of poverty, oppression, war, and environmental destruction. But it is one thing to initiate a movement; it is something else to change the world. What those new possibilities are and how to utilize them is now the subject of a lively international discussion. This book is intended as a contribution to that dialogue. It lays out a perspective that we believe is already shared by many in this movement and that is implicit in much of what the movement actually does. Our primary purpose is to make that perspective explicit and to spell out its implications so that they can be subject to criticism and improvement.
Conventionally, basic values are the province of priests; policy of officials; and strategy of the top brass. But in a social movement, people must act on their own initiative and on the basis of their own convictions. And so values, policy, and strategy cannot be handed down on a transmission belt from on high, but must be something that people make day by day in the process of determining their own actions.
No movement is born knowing what it thinks, what it wants, and how to achieve its goals. That takes a process, both of experimental action, and of thought and discussion.
Any movement develops a self-understanding, whether a tacit set of assumptions expressed primarily in action, a formalized theory, or something in between. This book is intended as a contribution to the self-understanding of the movement that has developed in response to globalization. It presents a perspective on the character, values, goals, and strategy of this emerging movement. We try to place it in the context of a broad understanding of social movements, how they develop, and how they achieve their objectives, drawing on the history of past movements and our own experience as activists in the current movement and a few dozen previous ones. We try to map the terrain on which this movement operates and indicate how it can avoid the many pitfalls and move toward its goals. Whatever the weaknesses of our approach, we hope that this book identifies a set of questions that the movement needs to discuss.
This book was written in the wake of the Battle of Seattle and reflects the significant changes that took place in the politics of globalization at the end of the old millenium. While its concerns are global, its focus no doubt reflects the experience and limitations of the authors not only as Americans, but as residents of southern New England, which has had its own specific experience of globalization.
While we try to articulate a perspective for the movement as a whole, and even more broadly, for all those people who need to change the course of globalization, we would emphasize that there is no privileged position from which to view this whole. Every movement participant—individual or group—will have to put the pieces of the puzzle together for themselves. Indeed, a fundamental tenet of the movement should be that everyone is entitled to participate in the social dialogue on the big questions about the world and its future.
This book reflects, and is limited by, the view from our own vantage point. But however limited their own vantage point, people can learn from each other, can adapt to and incorporate each others' views. We have tried to do so, but our effort is inevitably inadequate. Our fondest hope is that others will criticize it and correct it to accommodate their own views—but do so in a way that also incorporates the needs and perspectives of others.
This book does not aim to present either an introduction to or a complete analysis of globalization. (Our more general analysis of globalization in presented in Global Village or Global Pillage.) Nor is it meant as a universal guide for social change. It is focused on the transnational, multi-issue movements emerging at the turn of the millenium in response to globalization from above. Those movements are now only in their early stages of development; we will be delighted if they grow and change so rapidly that they come to transcend much of what is said in this book. In the meantime, we hope this book will be useful to everyone who is fighting against globalization from above.
The Chapters
"Globalization and Its Specter" presents a brief overview of globalization from above and the problems it causes for people and the environment. Then it describes the itineraries through which various constituencies have come to challenge globalization from above and to converge toward a common movement for globalization from below.
"The Power of Social Movements (And its Secret)" investigates the character of social movements to discover how a movement like globalization from below can possibly affect something so powerful as globalization from above. It examines how social movements arise; how they link initially disparate groups; how they transform dominant power configurations; and the pitfalls they face.
"Two, Three Many Levels" looks at the relation between globalization from below and governmental power. It examines what kind of global governance structure is emerging; discusses the problems with either a global government or a return to conventional national sovereignty; and proposes a multilevel alternative.
"Handling Contradictions in the Movement" considers how the movement for globalization from below can address its contradictions. It examines two controversial issues as examples: the tension between protecting the environment and meeting human needs and the conflicting needs of people in rich and poor countries.
"A World to Win—for What?" looks at an emerging common vision of globalization from below; tells why that vision needs to be concretized into an implementable common program; and describes how such a program is being constructed.
"Draft of a Global Program" presents one possible version of globalization from below its emerging common program.
"Self-Organization from Below" examines the rise of transnational social movement networks and affinity-group based action organizations and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses. It looks at the relation of these forms to the movement as a whole and discusses ways the movement can be strengthened organizationally.
"Are We Alone?" explores how globalization from below should relate to its allies, the public, the anti-globalization Right, electoral politics, governments, regionalism, and those who would make modest reforms in the current system.
"Fix It or Nix It" looks at the interaction between movement initiative and elite response, indicating how the power of the people can be parlayed into social change.
Our "Conclusion" presents a vision of how the movement, following such a strategy, can transform globalization.
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Globalization is both irreversible and, in its present form, unsustainable. What will come after it is far from determined. It could be a war of all against all, world domination by a single superpower, a tyrannical alliance of global elites, global ecological catastrophe, or some combination thereof. Human agency—what people choose to do—can play a role in deciding between these futures and a more hopeful one.
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