There Is an Alternative to Corporate Rule

By Mark Engler, Nation Books. Posted September 1, 2008.

Editor's Note: This article is adapted from Mark Engler's new book How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008).

One of the remarkable features of modern political life is how consistently global elites deny that viable alternatives to the current global order exist, even as the terrain of international politics rapidly shifts. The "imperial globalists" that rose to power in the Bush years contend that without U.S. military strength decisively projected abroad, the forces of evil will sweep the globe. Meanwhile, "corporate globalists" of Wall Street persist in their belief that, in the post-Cold War world, we have no choice but to embrace the continual advance of the "free" market.

Neither idea is credible. The disastrous war in Iraq has firmly contradicted the neocons' argument that preemptive war can create security. Meanwhile, mainstream pundits continue to proclaim neoliberalism -- the radical free market doctrine that has defined the "Washington Consensus" in international economics in recent decades -- to be inevitable and irreplaceable. Yet as that ideology falls into disrepute across the globe, their contention is revealed as ever more deeply disingenuous. Today, there exist scores of books and hundreds of reports that offer new directions for the global order -- plus innumerable initiatives at local, national, and international levels to create political and economic systems that uphold human rights and defend the environment.

In truth, a lack of viable ideas is hardly the problem for those who reject both corporate and imperial models of globalization. Whether they are part of boisterous national uprisings or quiet, persistent community efforts to fuel a truly democratic globalization -- a globalization from below -- members of grassroots networks are now engaged in a debate about the proper balance of vision, program, political strategy, and tactics needed to move forward.

Changes in the Global Justice Movement

Part of what has fueled public confusion about alternatives was specific to the political moment when globalization protests captured the attention of the mainstream media. During the period around the year 2000, global justice organizing was being covered only in contexts where participants were providing a voice of opposition -- at the summit meetings of institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF). These events became flash points of resistance for a reason: the summit meetings were remarkably effective at drawing together a tremendously diverse body of global citizen activists.

Yet the globalization scene began to shift early in the Bush years, with the attacks of 9/11 playing an important role in the change. Just as abruptly as the major news outlets had announced the arrival of a "new" global movement after the Seattle protests against the WTO, challenges to the Washington Consensus became virtually invisible to their reporters once again after 9/11. This only partially reflected what was happening on the ground. In the months following the attacks, some protests -- notably a major mobilization against World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington, DC -- were cancelled as the world rose to express sympathy for the victims. However, the Bush administration's reckless response wiped out global good will and ultimately widened the scope of protests.

As strategies to impose elite visions of globalization continued, global justice protests throughout the world resumed. Many people, particularly in Southern countries, combined outrage at U.S. militarism with a repudiation of corporate globalization. When Bush traveled abroad, he was met with huge protests, many of which raised economic issues as well as anti-war concerns. Yet media outlets mostly reported these demonstrations as incoherent anti-American riots when they covered them at all. Beltway pundits rushed to declare the global justice movement dead. Leading the pack was Edward Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think-tank of the pro-"free trade" Democratic Leadership Council, who pronounced the movement "destined for irrelevance" in a realigned world.

Millions of people had reason to protest. These activists were about to redraw the political map of Latin America, preside over the collapse of neoliberalism's legitimacy, lead a worldwide rebellion against preemptive war, and push issues of economic justice to ever more prominent places in the global development debate. Their efforts for a democratic globalization, they would assert, were very much alive.

The View From Porto Alegre

As it turned out, a most visible manifestation of the next stage of global justice movement would come from a modest city of 1.5 million people deep in the south of Brazil, a place whose name has become synonymous with the pursuit of a more just and democratic global order. Today, mention of Porto Alegre, the original home of the World Social Forum, should be sufficient to forever put to rest the knee-jerk contention that there is no alternative to dominant visions of globalization.

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Mark Engler is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus. He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com.