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The
Bamako appeal
I. INTRODUCTION
More than five years of worldwide gatherings of people
and organizations who oppose neo-liberalism have provided
an experience leading to the creation of a new collective
conscience. The social forums -- world, thematic, continental
or national -- and the Assembly of Social Movements
have been the principal architects of this conscience.
Meeting in Bamako on Jan. 18, 2006, on the eve of the
opening of the Polycentric World Social Forum, the participants
during this day dedicated to the 50th anniversary of
the Bandung Conference have expressed the need to define
alternate goals of development, creating a balance of
societies, abolishing exploitation by class, gender,
race and caste, and marking the route to a new relation
of forces between North and South.
The Bamako Appeal aims at contributing to the emergence
of a new popular and historical subject, and at consolidating
the gains made at these meetings. It seeks to advance
the principle of the right to an equitable existence
for everyone; to affirm a collective life of peace,
justice and diversity; and to promote the means to reach
these goals at the local level and for all of humanity.
In order that an historical subject come into existence
– one that is diverse, multipolar and from the people
– it is necessary to define and promote alternatives
capable of mobilizing social and political forces. The
goal is a radical transformation of the capitalist system.
The destruction of the planet and of millions of human
beings, the individualist and consumerist culture that
accompanies and nourishes this system, along with its
imposition by imperialist powers are no longer tolerable,
since what is at stake is the existence of humanity
itself. Alternatives to the wastefulness and destructiveness
of capitalism draw their strength from a long tradition
of popular resistance that also embraces all of the
short steps forward indispensable to the daily life
of the system’s victims.
The Bamako Appeal, built around the broad themes discussed
in subcommittees, expresses the commitment to:
(i) Construct an internationalism joining the peoples
of the South and the North who suffer the ravages engendered
by the dictatorship of financial markets and by the
uncontrolled global deployment of the transnational
firms;
(ii) Construct the solidarity of the peoples of Asia,
Africa, Europe and the Americas confronted with challenges
of development in the 21st century;
(iii) Construct a political, economic and cultural consensus
that is an alternative to militarized and neo-liberal
globalization and to the hegemony of the United States
and its allies.
II. THE PRINCIPLES
1. Construct a world founded on the solidarity of human
beings and peoples
Our epoch is dominated by the imposition of competition
among workers, nations and peoples. However, historically
the principle of solidarity has played a role much more
conducive to the efficient organization of intellectual
and material production. We want to give to this principle
of solidarity the place it deserves and diminish the
role of competition.
2. Construct a world founded on the full affirmation
of citizenship and equality of the sexes
The politically active citizen must ultimately become
responsible for the management of all the aspects of
social, political, economic and cultural life. This
is the condition for an authentic affirmation of democracy.
Without this, the human being is reduced by the laws
imposed on him or her to a mere provider of labor power,
an impotent spectator confronted with decisions handed
down by those in charge, a consumer propelled toward
the worst waste. The affirmation, in law and in deed,
of the absolute equality of sexes is an integral part
of authentic democracy. One of the conditions of this
democracy is the eradication of all forms of the patriarchy,
either admitted or hidden.
3. Construct a universal civilization offering in all
areas the full potential of creative development to
all its diverse members
For neo-liberalism, the affirmation of the individual
– not that of the politically active citizen – allows
the spread of the best human qualities. The capitalist
system’s unbearable isolation, imposed on the individual,
produces its own illusory antidote: imprisonment in
the ghettos of alleged common identities, most often
those of a para-ethnic and or para-religious type. We
want to construct a universal civilization that looks
to the future without nostalgia; one in which the political
diversity of citizens and cultural and political differences
of nations and peoples become the means of reinforcing
individual creative development.
4. Construct socialization through democracy
Neo-liberal policies aim to impose as the sole method
of socialization the force of the market, whose destructive
impact on the majority of human beings no longer needs
to be demonstrated. The world we want conceives sociability
as the principle product of a democratization without
boundaries. In this framework, in which the market has
a place but not the predominant place, economy and finance
should be put at the service of a societal program;
they should not be subordinated to the imperatives of
dominant capital that favor the private interests of
a tiny majority. The radical democracy that we want
to promote re-establishes the creative force of political
innovation as a fundamental human attribute. It bases
social life on the production and reproduction of an
inexhaustible diversity, and not on a manipulated consensus
that eliminates all meaningful discussions and leaves
dissidents weakened and trapped in ghettoes.
5. Construct a world founded on the recognition of the
non-market-driven law of nature and of the resources
of the planet and of its agricultural soil
The capitalist neo-liberal model aims at submitting
all aspects of social life, almost without exception,
to the status of a commodity. The process of privatization
and marketization to the ultimate degree brings with
it devastating results on a scale without precedent
in human history: the threat to the fundamental biogeochemical
processes of the planet; destruction of biodiversity
through the undermining of ecosystems, the waste of
vital resources (oil and water in particular); the annihilation
of peasant societies threatened by massive expulsion
from their land. All these areas of society-nature metabolism
must be managed as the common wealth and in accordance
with the basic needs of all of humanity. In these areas,
the decisions must be based not on the market but on
the political powers of nations and peoples.
6. Construct a world founded on the recognition of the
non-market-driven status of cultural products and scientific
acquisitions, of education and of health care
Neo-liberal policies lead to turning cultural products
into commodities and to the privatization of the most
important social services, notably those of health and
education. This option is accompanied by the mass production
of low quality para-cultural products, the submission
of research to the exclusive priority of short-term
profits, the degradation of education and health care
for the poorest sectors of the people, including even
their exclusion. The reinstatement and expansion of
these public services should reinforce the satisfaction
of needs and rights essential to education, health care
and providing food.
7. Promote policies that closely associate democracy
without pre-assigned limits, with social progress and
the affirmation of autonomy of nations and peoples
Neo-liberal policies deny the preconditions of social
progress – that some claim are a spontaneous product
of the market – preconditions such as the autonomy of
nations and peoples, necessary to the correction of
inequalities. Under the regime of market hegemony, democracy
is emptied of all effective content, made vulnerable
and compromised in the extreme. To affirm an authentic
democracy demands giving to social progress its determining
place in the management of all aspects of social, political,
economic and cultural life. The diversity of nations
and of peoples produced by history, in all its positive
aspects along with the inequalities that accompany them,
demands the affirmation of autonomy of peoples and nations.
There does not exist a unique universal recipe in the
political or economic spheres that would permit any
bypassing of this autonomy. The task of building equality
necessarily requires a diversity of means to carry it
out.
8. Affirm the solidarity of the people of the North
and the South in the construction of an internationalism
on an anti-imperialist basis
The solidarity of all the peoples – of the North and
of the South – in the construction of a universal civilization
cannot be founded on the illusory notion that it is
possible simply to ignore the conflicts of interest
that separate different classes and nations that make
up the real world. Such genuine solidarity must necessarily
transcend the antagonisms inherent to capitalism and
imperialism. The regional organizations behind the alternative
globalization movement must seek to strengthen the autonomy
and the solidarity of nations and of peoples on the
five continents. This perspective is in contradiction
to that of the present dominant model of regionalization,
conceived as consisting of mere building blocks of neo-liberal
globalization. Fifty years after Bandung, the Bamako
Appeal calls for a Bandung of the peoples of the South,
victims of really existing capitalism, and the rebuilding
of a peoples’ front of the South able to hold in check
both the imperialism of the dominant economic powers
and U.S. military hegemony. Such an anti-imperialist
front would not oppose the peoples of the South to those
of the North. On the contrary, it would constitute the
basis of a global internationalism associating them
all together in the building of a common civilization
in its diversity.
3. LONG-TERM OBJECTIVES AND PROPOSALS FOR the IMMEDIATE
ACTION
In order to progress from a collective conscience to
the building of collective, popular, plural and multipolar
actors, it has always been necessary to identify precise
themes to formulate strategies and concrete proposals.
The themes of the Bamako Appeal deal with the following
10 fields, including both long- term goals and proposals
for immediate action: the political organization of
globalization; the economic organization of the world
system; the future of peasant societies; the building
of a workers’ united front; regionalization for the
benefit of the peoples; the democratic management of
the societies; gender equality; the sustainable management
of the resources of the planet; the democratic management
of the media and the cultural diversity; democratization
of international organizations.
The Bamako Appeal is an invitation to all the organizations
of struggle representative of the vast majorities that
comprise the working classes of the globe, to all those
excluded from the neoliberal capitalist system, and
to all people and political forces who support these
principles-- to work together in order to put into effect
the new collective conscience, as an alternative to
the present system of inequality and destruction.
PROPOSALS OF THE BAMAKO APPEAL
Only by building synergies and solidarity beyond geographical
and regional borders is it possible to find methods
of action that can lead to real alternatives in this
globalized world. Working groups will continue during
the year to inquire further into and concretize the
topics addressed below, to prepare for the next meeting
and to propose strategic priorities for action.
1. For a multipolar world system founded on peace, LAW
and negotiation
In order to imagine an authentic multipolar world system,
which rejects the control of planet by the United States
of America and guarantees the whole gamut of rights
for politically active citizens, allowing the people
to control their destinies, it is necessary:
1) to reinforce the movement protesting against war
and military occupations, as well as solidarity with
the people engaged in resistance in the hot spots of
the planet. In this respect, it is crucial that the
world demonstration against the war in Iraq and the
military presence in Afghanistan envisaged for March
18 and 19, 2006, coincide with:
● calls for the prohibition of the use and the
manufacture of nuclear weapons and destruction of all
the existing arsenals;
● calls to dismantle all the military bases outside
of national territory, in particular the base in Guantánamo
[U.S.-occupied Cuba];
● calls for the immediate closing of all the CIA-run
prisons.
2) to reject any interventions by NATO outside Europe
and to require that the European partners dissociate
from themselves from U.S. “preventive” wars, while engaging
in a campaign intended to dissolve NATO.
3) to reaffirm solidarity with the people of Palestine,
who symbolize resistance to world apartheid, as expressed
by the wall establishing the divide between “civilization”
and “barbarism.” For this purpose, to give priority
to reinforcing the campaigns that demand the demolition
of the wall of shame and the withdrawal of Israeli troops
from the occupied territories.
4) to widen the solidarity campaigns with Venezuela
and Bolivia, since these are places where people are
building new alternatives to neoliberalism and crafting
Latin-American integration;
Besides these campaigns, it would also be advisable
to:
● set up of a network of researchers, working
in close connection with associations of militants acting
at the local level, to build extensive and up-to-date
data bases concerning U.S. and NATO military bases.
Precise information on these military and strategic
questions would make it possible to increase the effectiveness
of the campaigns carried out to dismantle them;
● create of an observer group, an “Imperialism
Watch,” which would not only denounce wars and war propaganda,
but also expose all operations and pressures, economic
and other, exerted on the peoples of the world;
● create a worldwide anti-imperialist network
that could coordinate a variety of mobilizations throughout
the planet.
2. FOR an economic Reorganization of the GLOBAL system
With the goal of developing an action strategy for transforming
the global economic system, it is necessary:
1) to reinforce the protest campaigns against the current
rules of operation of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
and to define alternative rules (for the removal of
the WTO from agriculture, services, intellectual property…);
2) to create working groups, which build relations with
existing social associations and movements that have
already undertaken this work over an extended period,
to establish, in the most serious and exhaustive manner
possible, an inventory of proposals for alternative
measures in the most fundamental economic areas:
● the organization of the transfer of capital
and technology;
● the proposal for regulations (“codes of investments”
for example) specifying the rights of nations and workers;
● the organization of the monetary system: control
of the flow of capital (in particular speculative capital),
suppression of tax havens, construction of regional
systems of management of the stock exchanges and their
connection to a renovated world system (calling in question
the role of the IMF and the World Bank, returning to
the principle of the rule of national laws to define
the local economic system, overcoming the obstacles
imposed by the unnegotiated decisions of international
organization, etc.) ;
● the development of a true legislation concerning
foreign debts (requiring that national states provide
audits allowing people to identify illegitimate debts)
and the reinforcement of the mobilization, in the very
short term, for the cancellation of Third World debt;
● the reform of social services and their financing,
including education, health, research, retirements…
3) to create groups of expert researchers who can follow
the evolutions of the movements of capital and mechanisms
of dependence of national financial capital on international
financial capital;
4) to create working groups, with Internet site and
newsgroups, by country and area, for the study of the
structures of capitalist property, and the mechanisms
by which capitalism operates in each country and its
relationship with the international financial system;
5) to create places to educate journalists and inform
them about the complex mechanisms of neoliberal globalization.
6) to establish contacts, in the form of connected Internet
sites, between various associations of economists progressives
and militants engaged in the search for alternatives
to neoliberal globalization in each world region (Asia,
Africa, Latin America, Oceania, Europe, North America).
3. FOR REGIONALIZATIONS IN THE SERVICE OF THE PEOPLE
AND WHICH REINFORCE THE SOUTH IN GLOBAL NEGOTIATIONS
Starting from the assumption that free trade, while
supporting strongest countries and transnational monopolies,
is the enemy of genuine regional integration and that
the latter cannot be carried out according to the rules
of free trade, it is necessary to create the conditions
for an alternative means of co-operation within each
great area, like for example a revival of the Tricontinental,
always in close connection with the action of the social
movements.
● In Latin America, confronting the aggression
of the multinationals, the workers have proposed the
demand for regional integration from a new point of
view, based on cooperative advantages, instead of on
comparative advantages. Such is the case of the alternative
experiments of co-operation in the South regarding oil
(Petrocaribe), reduction of the debt (repurchase of
debts between countries of the South) or of education
and health (Cuban doctors), for example. In fact, this
co-operation that is meant to support the growth and
solidarity of all countries must be based on political
principle and not on the rules imposed by the WTO.
● In Africa, hopes for unity is very strong, as
is the consciousness that resistance and development
are impossible while countries are isolated and confronted
with pressures from neoliberal globalization. The many
institutions of integration, however, are ineffective
there, and the most active are those inherited from
the periods of colonization and apartheid. The African
Union and its economic and social program (NEPAD) do
not include any idea of collective resistance. It is
in this context that civil societies must become aware
of the need to overcome their divisions.
For the North-African countries bordering the Mediterranean
Sea, the Euro-Mediterranean Accords constitute an additional
example of regionalization carried out to impose dependency
on the South.
● In Asia, to confront neoliberal globalization,
despite the difficulties, popular initiatives to carry
out another type of regional integration have succeeded
in beginning to join together a number of civil society
organizations and NGOs in the majority of the countries,
leading in particular to the development of a popular
charter aiming to reinforce co-operation in trade.
Consequently, it seems appropriate to recommend, besides
an intensification of the campaigns against wars and
the threats of wars, the following proposals:
1) for Latin America: to widen the support campaigns
to the ALBA, definitively to make sure the U.S. strategy
of ALCA fails; to promote independence and the development
in justice and equity among peoples and to integrate
based on co-operation and solidarity and with the ability
to adapt to specific needs of these two latter characteristics;
to mobilize the social movements so as to broaden and
deepen the processes of alternative integration, such
as with Petrocaribe or Telesur; to promote trade in
the context of a logic of cooperation; and to strengthen
the coordination of social and political action organizations
to implement these recommendations.
2) for Africa: to sensitize the movements of civil society
to the need to formulate alternative proposals for African
initiatives; to take into account the need for coordinating
actions undertaken on regional and national levels;
to launch campaigns for peace to put an end to the existing
conflicts or to prevent the risks of new conflicts;
to depart designs of integration founded on race or
culture.
3) for Asia: to thwart the expansion and the competition
of capital among countries and to reinforce solidarity
between working classes of the various countries; to
promote the local circuit between production and consumption;
to promote sciences for rural reconstruction.
To be effective, co-operation among countries of the
South must express solidarity with the peoples and governments
that resist neoliberalism and seek alternatives from
the point of view of a multipolar world system.
4. FOR the DEMOCRATIC MANAGEMENT OF the PLANET'S
Natural resources
The concept of “natural resources” must be subordinated
to that of sustainability, and thus of the right to
a decent life for both present and future generations,
with the goal of stopping the devastation and plunder
of the planet. What is involved here s a vital principle
and not a simple management of natural resources. These
resources cannot be used beyond their renewal or replacement
capacity, and should be employed in accordance with
the needs of each country. Criteria for their use must
be defined so as to guarantee genuine sustainable development,
which means preserving biodiversity and intact ecosystems.
It is also necessary to encourage the development of
substitutes for non-renewable resources. The commodification
of life results in wars over oil, water, and other essential
resources. Agribusiness gives the advantage to the culture
of exploitation and profits over the culture of ecological
sustainability (and the meeting of subsistence needs).
It imposes technical methods that produce dependency
and destruction of the environment (contracts of exploitation
to impose certain material methods of production: machinery,
chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and imperial seeds--
along with GMO).
Concretely, two levels of actions on the environment
must be combined: micro and macro. At the macro level,
which relates to the national governments, it would
be desirable that an interstate framework of multilateral
dialog should have the ability to put political pressure
on the national governments to take global measures.
The micro level concerns local or regional actions,
where civil society has an important role to play, in
particular to disseminate information and to change
practices in order to save resources and protect the
environment. The local level must be at all times be
reinforced, as decisions are too often considered only
at the macro level.
The following actions could result from this:
1) to constitute an international court charged with
considering ecological crimes: the countries of North
and their local clients could then be sentenced to pay
reparations to the countries of the South (ecological
debts);
2) to disallow as illegal contracts that force farmers
to be dependent on the suppliers of seeds, a situation
that leads to technological slavery and the destruction
of biodiversity;
3) to abolish “pollution rights” and their sale and
purchase and to oblige the rich countries to decrease
their production rate of carbon dioxide (now 5.6 tons
per person per year in the United States) to allow the
poor countries (now 0.7 tons per person per year for
the non-G8 countries) to industrialize;
4) to prohibit the buildings of dams( insofar as they
are really necessary) without compensation for the displaced
populations (economic refuges);
5) to protect the living and genetic resources from
being patented by the North, which impoverishes the
countries of the South. This process constitutes a colonial-type
theft;
6) to fight against the privatization of the water,
which the World Bank promotes, even in the form of private-public
partnership (PPP) and to guarantee a minimum quantity
of water per person while respecting the rhythm of renewal
of ground water;
7) to create a group to Observe the Environment (Ecology
Watch) prepared to denounce and respond to those actions
characterized as aggression against the environment.
5. FOR A BETTER FUTURE FOR PEASANT FARMERS
In the domain of peasant agriculture, there are initially
medium and long-term objectives related to food sovereignty,
which are simultaneously at the national, international,
multilateral (that of the WTO) and bilateral levels
(Economic Partnership Agreements [EPA], negotiated between
the African, Caribbean and Pacific [ACP] countries and
the European Union). Then, at the national level, this
also involves agricultural pricing and marketing policy
(more than structural policy)-- the access of the farmers
to the means of production and first of all, the land.
In the very short term, in 2006, what is necessary is
preventing the completion of the Doha Round, and the
refusal to conclude the EPAs. For this purpose, the
proposals here relate to two axes: the means to achieve
food sovereignty in the medium term, and as a precondition
imposing a setback on the Doha Round and EPAs.
1) Proposals to assure food sovereignty:
Food sovereignty involves granting to each national
state (or group of states) the right to define its internal
agricultural policy and the type of connection it wishes
to have with the world market, along with the right
to protect itself effectively from imports and to subsidize
its farmers -- with the proviso that it is prohibited
from exporting agricultural produce at a price lower
than the average total production cost excluding direct
or indirect subsidies (upstream or downstream). Food
sovereignty is the lever that makes it possible for
all countries to regain their national sovereignty in
all areas. It is also a tool to promote democracy since
it requires the participation of all the various forces
in agro-alimentary production in defining its objectives
and means, starting with the family farmers. It thus
implies regulatory action on the national, sub-regional
and international levels.
— At the national level:
The national states must guarantee access of the peasant
producers to the productive resources, and first of
all to the land. It is necessary to stop promoting agribusiness
and the monopolization of the land by the national bourgeoisie
(including government officials) and transnational firms
to the detriment of the peasant producers. That implies
facilitating investments in family farms and improving
the local products to make them attractive to consumers.
Access to land for all the peasants of the world must
be recognized as a basic right. Implementing this right
requires adequate reforms of the land systems and sometimes
agrarian reform.
To share the objective of food sovereignty with the
urban consumers — an essential condition to have the
governments participate — three types of actions should
be carried out:
● restrict actions of the merchants that penalize
the farmers and consumers.
● hold public awareness campaigns for consumers
regarding the immense harm done to agriculture and to
the economy as a whole by dependence on imported products,
which are virtually the only products sold, for example,
in the supermarkets of West Africa.
● gradually raise farm prices by promoting the
right to import, but only in such a way as to avoid
penalizing consumers with very limited purchasing power.
This must be accompanied by the distribution of coupons
to the poorer consumers that allows them to purchase
local foodstuffs at the old price, similar to what is
done the United States, India and Brazil--while awaiting
an increase in productivity of the farmers to cause
a drop in their unit production costs, enabling them
to lower their selling prices to the consumers.
— At the sub-regional level:
So that the national states can recover their full sovereignty,
and first of all their food sovereignty, regional political
integration is unavoidable for the small countries of
the South. For this purpose, it is necessary to reform
the current regional institutions, in particular, in
Africa, the West African Economic and Monetary Union
and the Economic Community of West African States (UEMOA
and CEDEAO in their French initials, resp.), which are
much too dependent on the various mega-powers.
— At the international level:
To pressure the United Nations to recognize food sovereignty
as a basic right of national states, one essential to
implement the right to food as defined in the Universal
Declaration of Humans Rights of 1948 and the International
Treaty of 1996 relating to economic, social and cultural
rights. At this level, four regulatory instruments of
international agricultural trade should be established
to make food sovereignty effective:
● an effective protection against irresponsible,
socially destructive imports, i.e., one founded on variable
deductions that can guarantee a high-enough fixed entrance
price to assure a minimum domestic farm prices adequate
to secure farmers’ investments and banks’ loans; customs
duties alone are insufficiently protective with regard
to strongly fluctuating world prices, a fluctuation
worsened by that of fluctuating exchange rates.
● the elimination of all forms of dumping, by
prohibiting any export priced below the total average
production cost of the exporting country, excluding
direct or indirect subsidies.
● set the mechanisms of international coordination
of price controls, so as to avoid structural overproduction
and to minimize conjunctural overproduction that collapses
farm prices.
● the need for get agriculture away from WTO control
by entrusting the international regulation of agricultural
trade to an institution of the United Nations, possibly
the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). In particular,
by reforming its organization on the tripartite model
of International Labor Organization (ILO), which would
associate to this regulation the representatives of
agricultural trade unions (International Federation
of Agricultural Producers and Via Campesina) beside
representatives of the agro-alimentary firms (which
act already in the shadows on the governments negotiating
with the WTO) and of the national states.
2) Short-term proposals to prevent the Doha Round and
the Economic Partnership Agreement:
A major lesson of the ministerial Conference of the
WTO in Hong Kong is that the governments of Brazil and
India, and with them G-20, abandoned the interests of
the populations of the Third World and appeared the
most determined promoters of neo-liberal globalization.
Since the Doha Round is a “total package” (individual
undertaking), there is a way to cause its failure. International
civil society, and first of all the country-wide organizations
of North and the South, will be able in a media campaign
to show that these subsidies (particularly of the “green
box”), are an instrument of dumping much more significant
than the explicit subsidies for exports, and they will
be still more significant starting in 2014 when the
export subsidies are eliminated.
6. TO BUILD A WORKERS’ UNITED FRONT
Two of the principal weapons in the hands of workers
are the right to vote and the right to form trade unions.
Up to now democracy and trade unions were built mainly
within the national states. Now, however, neo-liberal
globalization has challenged the workers the world over,
and globalized capitalism cannot be confronted at the
national level alone. Today, the task is twofold: to
strengthen organizing on a national level and simultaneously
globalize democracy and reorganize a worldwide working
class.
Mass unemployment and the increasing proportion of informal
work arrangements are other imperative reasons to reconsider
the existing organizations of the laboring classes.
A world strategy for labor must consider not only the
situation of workers who work under stable contracts.
Employment out of the formal sectors now involves an
increasing portion of workers, even in the industrialized
countries. In the majority of the countries of the South,
the workers of the informal sector – temporary labor,
informal labor, the self-employed, the unemployed, street
salespeople, those who sell their own services — together
form the majority of the laboring classes. These groups
of informal workers are growing in the majority of the
countries of the South because of high unemployment
and a two-sided process: on the one hand, the decreasing
availability of guaranteed employment and increased
informal employment, and on the other hand, the continuous
migration from the rural areas to the towns. The most
important task will be for workers outside the formal
sector to organize themselves and for the traditional
trade unions to open up in order to carry out common
actions.
The traditional trade unions have had problems responding
to this challenge. Not all the organizations of the
workers—except in the formal sectors--will necessarily
be trade unions or similar organizations and the traditional
trade unions will also have to change. New perspectives
for organizing together, based on horizontal bonds and
mutual respect, must develop between the traditional
trade unions and the new social movements. For this
purpose, the following proposals are submitted for consideration:
1. An opening of the trade unions towards collaboration
with the other social movements without trying to subordinate
them to the traditional trade-union structure or a specific
political party.
2. The constitution of effectively transnational trade-union
structures in order to confront transnational employers.
These trade-union structures should have a capacity
to negotiate and at the same time have a mandate to
organize common actions beyond national borders. For
this purpose, an important step would be to organize
strong trade-union structures within transnational corporations.
These corporations have a complex network of production
and are often very sensitive to any rupture in the chains
of production and distribution, that is, they are vulnerable.
Some successes in the struggles against the transnational
corporations could have a real impact on the world balance
of power between capital and labor.
3. Technological development and structural change are
necessary to improve living conditions and eradicate
poverty, but the relocations of production are not carried
out today in the interest of the workers; instead, they
are exclusively profit-driven. It is necessary to promote
a gradual improvement of the wages and working conditions,
to expand local production along with local demand and
a system of negotiation to carry out relocation in other
ways than simply following the logic of profit and free
trade. These relocations could fit under transnational
negotiation in order to prevent workers of the various
countries from being forced to enter in competition
with each other in a relentless battle.
4. To consider the rights of migrant worker as a basic
concern for the trade unions by ensuring that solidarity
among workers is not dependent on their national origin.
Indeed, segregation and discrimination on ethnic or
other bases are threats to working-class solidarity.
5. To take care so that the future transnational organization
of the laboring class is not conceived as a unique,
hierarchical and pyramidal structure, but as a variety
of various types of organizations, with a network-like
structure with many horizontal bonds.
6. To promote a labor front in reorganized structures
that also include workers outside the formal sector
throughout the world, capable of taking effective coordinated
actions to confront globalized capitalism.
Only such a renewed movement of workers, worldwide,
inclusive and acting together with other social movements
will be able to transform the present world and to create
a world order founded on solidarity rather than on competition.
7. FOR A DEMOCRATIZATION OF SOCIETIES AS A NECESSARY
STEP TO FULL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Progressive forces must re-appropriate the concept of
democracy, because an alternative, socialist society
must be fully democratic. Democracy does not come from
on high. It is a process of cultural transformation,
because people change through their practice. It is
thus essential that activists in popular movements and
in left or progressive governments understand that it
is necessary to create spaces for real participation
both in workplaces and in neighborhoods. Without the
transformation of people into protagonists of their
history, the problems of the people -- health, food,
education, housing... -- cannot be solved. The lack
of political participation contributed to the fall of
the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. The citizens
of these countries were hardly motivated to defend regimes
where they were observers and not actors.
The struggle for democracy must also be linked to the
struggle to eradicate poverty and all forms of exclusion.
Indeed, to solve these problems, the people must become
wielders of power. That implies waging a struggle against
the logic of capitalist profit and erecting in its place,
in whatever areas that can be won, a different, humanist
logic of solidarity. It is no longer enough to just
assert the need for an alternative society; it is necessary
to propose popular initiatives which are alternatives
to capitalism and which aim to break the logic of commerce
and the relations that this dynamic imposes.
But this also involves organizing struggles that cannot
be reduced to simple economic demands, as necessary
as these are, and which put forward an alternative social
project, including real levels of authority and democracy,
going beyond the current forms of parliamentary representative
democracy and its elections. We must struggle for a
new type of democracy, coming from below, for those
on the lowest levels of society, through local governments,
rural communities, workers fronts, politically active
citizens… This democratic practice of solidarity will
be the best way to attract new sectors of society to
the struggle for a fully democratic alternative society.
In order to concretize these principles, the following
broad outline is proposed:
● Insert democracy into the totality of the conditions
that characterize movements of emancipation and liberation,
in their individual and collective dimension.
● Recognize that the failures of the Soviet system
and the regimes that arose from decolonization resulted
largely from their denial of freedom and their underestimation
of the value of democracy. The development of alternatives
must integrate this fact and give preeminence to building
democracy.
● Contest the hypocritical words of the dominant
powers, which are all too ready to give lessons in democracy.
U.S. imperialism’s cynicism is particularly unbearable,
as its agents reveal themselves as torturers, warmongers
and violators of liberty. Despite this, U.S. cynicism
should not serve as a pretext to limit freedom and the
exercise of democracy.
● Reject the dominant conception of democracy
advanced by the United States and the Western powers.
Democracy cannot be defined as accepting the rules of
the market, subordinating oneself to the world market,
to multi-party elections controlled from abroad and
to a simplistic ideology of human rights. This type
of neoliberal democracy blocks genuine democracy by
arbitrarily tying the importance of free elections and
the respecting of human rights to demands for an expansion
of the market economy. The curtailment of democracy
in this way, which puts the market first, perverts its
meaning.
● Recognize that there is strong dialectic between
political democracy and social democracy, because political
democracy is incomplete and cannot last if inequalities,
exploitation and social injustice persist. Social democracy
cannot progress without struggle against oppression
and discrimination, while still keeping in mind that
no social policy can justify the absence of freedom
and disrespect of basic rights.
● Affirm that democracy requires an effective
and increasing participation of the population, producers
and inhabitants. This implies transparency in decision-making
and in responsibilities. It does not diminish the importance
of representative democracy On the contrary, it completes
and deepens it.
● since democracy must facilitate the struggle
against poverty, inequalities, injustice and discrimination,
it must reserve a strategic position for the poor and
oppressed, their struggles and their movements. In this
sense democracy in the operation of these movements
contributes to their survival and successes.
● Democracy in the anti-globalization (or “other-globalization”)
movement is an indication of the importance the movement
attaches to democracy in its orientations. It indicates
a renewal of the political and organizational culture,
with particular attention given to the question of authority
and hierarchy. For this purpose, one proposal for immediate
action is to lead a campaign so that the movements for
popular education have an important role in civic education
in democracy and that this dimension be present in teaching.
Let us recall, indeed, that the anti-globalization movement
is carrying a fundamentally democratic project. It asserts
the access for all to fundamental rights. These include
civil and political rights, in particular the right
to freedom of organization and expression that are the
bases of democratic freedoms. It also asserts the economic,
social, cultural and environmental rights which are
the foundation of social democracy. It finally asserts
collective rights and the rights of the people to struggle
against oppression and violence imposed on them. It
is a question here of defining a program to implement
democracy.
The anti-globalization movement also recognizes the
importance of public services as one of the essential
means to guarantee access to equal rights for all. It
defends the struggles of workers and users of these
public services. It promotes proposals coming out of
movements to defend them, in education and health. For
example in health, access to a list of free drugs, the
rejection of monopolies, the dictatorship of patents
and their attempts to put living organisms under control
of a patent.
● the struggle for democracy must take account
of various levels of intervention. We will examine five
of these levels: enterprise, local democracy, national
democracy, larger regions, and worldwide democracy.
For each of these levels, an action can be proposed
as illustration. The choice of the priorities will be
the result of debate over strategy.
1) Democracy in the enterprise is a major demand. It
implies the recognition of the authority of workers,
users and territorial and national collectives. It necessitates
the rejection of the shareholders' dictatorship and
the destructive logic of finance capital. It leads to
control of decisions, and in particular to making them
on a local level. The development of innovative forms
of self-organization and mutualisation is one way to
assert the plurality of forms of production and to reject
the false evidence that private capitalist enterprises
are the most efficient. The movement demanding social
and environmental responsibility from companies is of
great interest, in spite of the risks of cooptation,
on the condition that it leads to putting enforceable
public standards into international law.
2) Local democracy responds to the demand for proximity
and participation. It bases itself on local institutions
that must guarantee public services and that provide
an alternative to neoliberalism. It puts the satisfaction
of the needs at the local level ahead of arrangements
for companies on the world market. It makes the acquisition
of citizenship possible, in particular through residence,
and its consequences in terms of voting rights.
3) National democracy remains the strategic level. The
questions of identities, borders, respect of the rights
of minorities and the legitimacy of institutions form
the bases of popular sovereignty. Public policies can
be the arena of confrontation against neoliberalism.
The progressive redistribution of wealth based on taxation
should be defended and extended. Measures like a minimum
income and retirement based on solidarity between the
generations are not reserved for the rich countries,
but flow from the division between profits and the income
of labor specific to each society.
4) The larger regions can spread neoliberal policies
everywhere, as in the European Union, or can demonstrate
counter-tendencies or provide sites of resistance, as
the development of Mercosur and the failure of the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA – English, ALEA – French,
ALCA -- Spanish, Portuguese) shows. From this point
of view, the continental social forums have considerable
responsibility.
5) Worldwide democracy is a prospect for response to
widespread neoliberal policies. In the current situation,
the mobilizations with the highest priority to be carried
by the anti-globalization movement are: cancellation
of the debt, fundamental questioning of World Trade
Organization (WTO – English, OMC-- French), suppression
of tax havens, international taxation particularly on
financial capital (transfers of capital, profits of
the transnational firms, etc.), a radical reform of
the international financial institutions (with in particular
the principle one country, one vote), the reform of
the United Nations in respect of the rights of the people
and the rejection of preventive war.
We should create a Democracy Observation Post, which
is able to resist the hegemony of the dominant countries,
primarily the United States, with its duplicitous discourse
on democracy; to encourage citizen control; to promote
the democratic forms invented and implemented by the
social movements and politically active citizens.
8. FOR THE ERADICATION OF ALL FORMS OF OPPRESSION,
EXPLOITATION AND ALIENATION OF WOMEN
The forms of the patriarchy are multiple, like its bonds
with imperialism and neoliberalism. It is important
and necessary to analyze its impact on women. « Patriarchy
» refers to the domination of the father/patriarch and
was used to describe a family model dominated by men,
who have authority over all other members of the family.
This model is certainly not universal, a number of African
societies having been matrilineal or dual, with paternal
and maternal lineages, each having their own roles for
an individual. This patriarchal system expanded with
the rise of monotheistic religions along with colonial
ideologies and legislation.
Today, patriarchy specifically designates domination
by males, and inequality between genders to the detriment
of the women, and their multiple forms of subordination.
The family, which socializes the child, remains primarily
for the “domestication” of girls and women. This imposition
of a hierarchy of the genders is all the more marked
in that it is supported by cultural standards and religious
values leading to the appropriation of women’s productive
and reproductive capacities. The State reinforces this
patriarchal structure with its policies and family codes.
Discrimination persists in relations within the family,
in education, in access to material, financial and natural
resources, in employment, in participation in political
power, etc. Despite a perceptible advance in women's
rights, male domination is still firmly in place with
the “masculinization” of institutions that constitute
neoliberal organization.
The analysis of the relationship between patriarchy
and imperialism and the balance sheet of the struggles
of women against these systems leads us to propose several
actions:
1. Break with the practice of placing the women's question
on the side. This practice leads to a political and
scientific apartheid. Since the question of gender cuts
across many arenas, it must be taken into account in
every recommendation.
2. Continue lobbying organizations of civil society
and the political community, in order to reinforce the
alliance between feminist organizations and progressive
forces and to insert in the progressive agenda appeals
in favor of women, including:
● struggle against the image of their inferior
position in the social, political, cultural and religious
discourse of the global society;
● develop education and training of women in order
to break the internalization of this position of inferiority;
● spread a better consciousness of their active
roles in society;
● encourage men to question this masculine domination
in order to deconstruct its mechanisms;
● reinforce legal provisions for an effective
equality between the genders;
● increase women’s equal representation in institutions
(parity).
3. Render visible the history of the women, their individual
and collective actions, notably:
● the nomination of Mille women, established by
some associations in Hong Kong, for the 2005 Nobel Peace
Prize;
● the campaign of Women say No to war against
the war in Iraq;
● various campaigns on current subjects or social
projects;
4. Promote the basic right of the women to control their
bodies and their brains, to control decisions relating
to their life choices: education, employment, various
activities, but also sexuality and child-bearing (right
to contraception, choice to have a child, right of abortion…)
-- women's bodies being the site for all sorts of oppression
and violence.
5. Support theoretical reflection, starting from feminine
experiences, in order to counter male domination in
order to reinforce the perspectives of women on various
questions affecting society, and in order to open new
horizons for research and action. Women’s perspectives
need to be cultivated particularly on matters of population
(such as the population Conference in Cairo in 1994),
or environment (as in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
in 1992), where women demand the right to live in a
healthy environment.
6. Develop databases and an Internet site on the relationship
between women and imperialism and neoliberalism.
9. FOR THE DEMOCRATIC MANAGEMENT OF THE MEDIA AND
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
1 - For the right to education:
Before the right to culture, the right to information
and the right to inform, the fundamental problem of
the right to education arises. This right, though it
is officially recognized everywhere, remains ineffective
in many countries, and particularly for young women.
It is thus a priority for all social movements to pressure
governments to fulfil their most elementary obligations
in this field.
2 - For the right to information and the right to inform:
— Initiatives towards the large media
The right to obtain information and the right to inform
enter in contradiction with the general logic of how
the media are structured. Through their increasing concentration
on a worldwide scale, the media are not only the direct
recipients of the benefits of neoliberal globalization,
but also the carriers of its ideology. It is thus necessary
to fight tooth and nail to throw sand into the gears
of this machinery for “formatting” the human spirit,
machinery whose goal is to make the neoliberal order
appear not only inevitable but also even desirable.
For this purpose, campaigns must be launched in each
country, within the framework of an international coordination:
● for legislative initiatives aimed at fighting
against media concentration;
● for legislative initiatives aimed at guaranteeing
the autonomy of the editors as opposed to the shareholders
and owners, by encouraging, where they do not exist,
the creation of journalists’ associations with real
power to act;
● for education encouraging criticism of the media
in the school system and popular organizations.
— To support the alternative media
The alternative media and the non-profit media, in all
their forms (print, radio, television, Internet), already
play important role in delivering pluralist information
not subject to the diktats of finance capital and multinational
corporations. This is why it is necessary to demand
that governments create legal and tax conditions from
which these media can benefit. A watchdog group of the
Alternative Media could identify the most advanced laws
existing in the world today. Just as the owners and
directors of the large media do, it would be useful
for the alternative media to organize each year a worldwide
meeting of the people responsible for the alternative
media, possibly within the framework of the process
of the World Social Forums.
— Don’t allow the television networks of the North a
monopoly of the images broadcast to the world
The large networks of international television of North,
like CNN, have profited for a long time from a de-facto
monopoly and have presented a view of the world corresponding
to the interests of the dominant powers. In the Arab
world, the creation of Al-Jazeera, with great professionalism,
made it possible to break with the one-sided vision
of Middle-Eastern conflicts. The recent launching of
Telesur makes it possible for Latin America to be seen
not exclusively through the prism of the North-American
media. The creation of an African network meets an identical
need, and all effort must be made to assure that it
is born.
3 - For the right to express oneself in one’s language:
The first way to recognize all the expatriate elites
of the planet is by their use of English. There is a
logical bond between the voluntary or resigned submission
to the U.S. super-power and the adoption of its language
as the sole tool for international communication. Today
Chinese and the Romance languages have – if one promotes
mutual comprehension within the large family that they
form – and tomorrow Arabic will have as much a right
to play in parallel the role English does. It is a question
of political will. To fight against “all-English,” the
following measures should be encouraged:
● to create a goal within the educational systems,
if conditions allow, of teaching two foreign languages
(and not only English) for active and passive competence
(understand, speak, read, write) and one or two other
languages for passive competence (to read and understand
orally).
● to put into practice, in the education systems,
methods to teach mutual comprehension of the Romance
languages (Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese,
Rumanian -- which are official languages in 60 countries).
When each one speaks his/her own language and understands
that of the conversational partner that communication
is most efficient.
● in the specific case of Africa, to make teaching
and promotion of the national languages a political
priority of the African Union.
To create an international fund to support the translation
of the maximum number of documents in the languages
of the countries which have low incomes, in particular
so that they are present on the Internet.
10. FOR the DEMOCRATIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
AND the institutionalization of a multipolar international
order
The United Nations is a peoples’ institution, and for
this reason represents a step forward. But it also reflects
the balance of power among national states, whose impact
can prove to be ambivalent, even negative, regarding
certain peoples or under certain circumstances. Changes
in the UN are thus necessary, insofar as the hegemony
of the most powerful countries enables them to use the
UN for their own purposes. Consequently, we propose
the following initiatives:
1. Democratize the area referred to as the United Nations;
2. Initiate “reforms” of the UN with a goal of limiting
the inequalities of the balance of power among national
states;
3. Act on the governments which constitute UN, and for
this reason, to constitute within each country an observer
group that permits a demonstration of the action of
the governments within the United Nations, its specialized
organizations and the authorities created by the Bretton
Woods meeting (the IMF, the World Bank, WTO);
4. Refinance the specialized organizations such as the
FAO or the WHO, to avoid their dependence upon transnational
corporations;
5. Ensure a wide and effective presence of social movements
and nongovernmental organizations within the international
institutions;
6. Promote International Courts of Justice, in particular
concerning the economic crimes, while preventing them
from being manipulated by the dominant powers, and,
in same time, constitute courts of popular opinion in
order to promote alternative means of establishing justice;
7. Democratize the United Nations, increase the power
of the General Assembly and democratize the Security
Council in order to break the monopolies (right of veto,
atomic powers);
8. Promote a United Nations that allows for regionalization
that is equipped with real powers on the various continents.
It is in particular proposed to promote a Middle East
Social Forum, gathering the progressive forces of the
countries of the area to seek alternative solutions
instead of the U.S. project of the Greater Middle East.
9. Promote inside the UN respect for the sovereignty
of national states, in particular vis-à-vis the actions
undertaken by the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.
10. Promote a world Parliament of the People to bring
humanity out of the vicious circle of poverty.
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