Download World Economic Order since 1945 part 2

III. Economic governance: a
southern perspective
• Structural Adjustment policy imposed
as condition of loans
– Very unpopular
– Developing countries demand a more
balanced world governance body
Structural Adjustment
Some of the conditions for structural adjustment
can include:
• Cutting expenditures, also known as austerity.
• Focusing economic output on direct export and resource
extraction,
• Devaluation of currencies,
• Trade liberalization, or lifting import and export restrictions,
• Increasing the stability of investment by supplementing FDI with
the opening of domestic stock markets,
• Balancing budgets and not overspending,
• Removing price controls and state subsidies
• Privatization or divestiture of all or part of state-owned
enterprises
• Enhancing the rights of foreign investors vis-a-vis national laws
• Improving governance and fighting corruption
Which of these policies do you think are the most
unpopular with developing countries?
Creation of UNCTAD 1964
United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development
Responsible for dealing with development issues,
particularly international trade – the main driver of
development.
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194 member States,
promote the macroeconomic policies best suited to ending
global economic inequalities
Generate people-centered sustainable development.
establish a better balance in the global economy.
offers direct technical assistance to developing countries and
countries with economies in transition, helping them to build
the capacities they need to become equitably integrated into
the global economy and improve the well-being of their
populations.
• Video: The Faces of UNCTAD 2013 Symposium 2’20
Anti-Globalization Movements
• The anti-globalization movement, or counterglobalization movement - critical of the
globalization of corporate capitalism.
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global justice movement,
alter-globalization movement,
anti-corporate globalization movement,
movement against neoliberal globalization.
• Criticism based on a number of related ideas:
– opposition to large, multi-national corporations
having unregulated political power
– Opposed to powers exercised through trade
agreements and deregulated financial markets
Anti-Globalization Movements
• Corporations are accused of seeking to
maximize profit at the expense of :
– sabotaging work safety conditions and
standards,
– labor hiring and compensation standards,
– environmental conservation principles,
– the integrity of national legislative authority,
independence and sovereignty.
• Misleading term:
– Many anti-globalization activists generally call for
forms of global integration that better provide:
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democratic representation,
advancement of human rights,
fair trade
sustainable development
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The Battle of Seattle
November
30,
1999
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2 major mobilization of the anti-globalization
movement, known as N30
Protesters blocked delegates' entrance to WTO
meetings in Seattle, Washington, USA.
The protests forced the cancellation of the
opening ceremonies and lasted the length of the
meeting until December 3.
Large, permitted march by members of the AFLCIO, and other unauthorized marches by
assorted affinity groups who converged around
the Convention Center.
The protesters and Seattle riot police clashed in
the streets after police fired tear gas at
demonstrators who blocked the streets and
refused to disperse.
• Results:
The Battle of Seattle
November 30, 1999
– Over 600 protesters were arrested and thousands
were injured.
– Three policemen were injured by friendly fire, and one
by a thrown rock.
– Some protesters destroyed the windows of storefronts
of businesses owned or franchised by targeted
corporations such as a large Nike shop and many
Starbucks windows.
– The mayor put the city under the municipal equivalent
of martial law and declared a curfew.
– As of 2002, the city of Seattle had paid over $200,000
in settlements of lawsuits filed against the Seattle
Police Department for assault and wrongful arrest,
with a class action lawsuit still pending
Anti-globalization protests in
Genoa in 2001 and Edinburgh at
the G8 summit in 2005
World Social Forum
• Created in 2001 supported by the city of Porto Alegre (where it took
place) and the Brazilian Workers Party.
• The motivation was to constitute a counter-event to the World
Economic Forum held in Dayton at the same time.
• The slogan of the WSF is "Another World Is Possible".
• Periodic meetings:
– 2002 and 2003 Porto Alegre - became a rallying point for worldwide protest
against the American invasion of Iraq.
– 2004 Mumbai , to make it more accessible to the populations of Asia and Africa.
This appointment saw the participation of 75,000 delegates.
– 2006 Caracas, Bamako and Karachi (Pakistan).
– 2007 Nairobi
– 2009 the Forum returned to Brazil, where it took place in Belém
– 2011, Dakar
– 2014 in Porto Alegre
World Social Forum
• Meeting place for organizations and individuals
opposed to Neoliberalism was soon replicated
elsewhere.
• The first European Social Forum (ESF) was held in
November 2002 in Florence . The slogan was
"Against the war, against racism and against neoliberalism“
• Discussion behind the movement about the role of
the social forums:
– a "popular university", an occasion to make many
people aware of the problems of globalization.
– the coordination and organization of the
movement and the planning of new campaigns.
• often been argued that in the dominated countries
(most of the world) the WSF is little more than an
'NGO fair' driven by Northern NGOs and donors most
of which are hostile to popular movements of the
poor
Video: The Isle of Flowers:
• How does this film reflect the ideas of the
world social forum and anti-liberalism?
Occupy Wall Street Movement 2011
• Peaceful protest movement denouncing
the abuses of financial capitalism.
• began Sept 17, 2011 with 1000
demonstrators near Wall Street in NYC.
• A portion of the demonstrators set up
temporary camp in Zuccotti Park,
occupying the place in a sort of sit-in.
• Over the next few weeks, several hundred
demonstrators lived and slept in the park.
• The movement also spread to other
locations around the U.S. where they tended
to congregate in public parks.
Statement of the 99 Percent
“We are the 99 percent. We are getting
kicked out of our homes. We are forced
to choose between groceries and rent.
We are denied quality medical care. We
are suffering from environmental
pollution. We are working long hours for
little pay and no rights, if we're working at
all. We are getting nothing while the
other 1 percent is getting everything. We
are the 99 percent.”
Influences of the anti-globalization
movements
• Strongly influenced by Pacifist and antiimperialist traditions
• Several influential critical works have inspired
the anti-globalization movement.
– No Logo, the book by the Canadian
journalist Naomi Klein
– criticizes production practices of
multinational corporations and the
omnipresence of brand-driven marketing
in popular culture
– "manifesto“ of the movement
– Video: An Introduction to Naomi Klein’s No
Logo 7’24
Vandana Shiva – Biopiracy
– Indian ecologist and feminist,
– natural capital of indigenous people and
ecoregions is converted into forms of
intellectual capital, which are then
recognized as exclusive commercial
property without sharing the private utility thus
derived
– “Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal
collection of indigenous plants by
corporations who patent them for their own
use.”
– Video: The Corporation:
Chapter 8 Mindset 7’30
– The writer Arundhati Roy is famous
for her anti-nuclear position and
her activism against India's
massive hydroelectric dam
project, sponsored by the World
Bank.
Le Monde Diplomatique and
ATTAC
ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions
and for Citizens' Action)
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advocates the antiglobalization cause
Ignacio Ramonet Spanish journalist and writer – his editorial
brought on the creation of ATTAC
Movement originally created against currency speculation
now devotes itself to a wide range of issues related to
globalization, monitoring the decisions of the WTO, the OECD
and the IMF
attends the meetings of the G8 with the goal of influencing
policymakers' decisions
recently criticized Germany for what it called the
criminalization of anti-G8 groups.
Aims of ATTAC
• to produce and communicate information, and to
promote and carry out activities of all kinds for the
recapture, by the citizens, of the power that the financial
sector has on all aspects of political, economic, social
and cultural life throughout the world. Such means
include the taxation of transactions in foreign exchange
markets (Tobin tax).
• Not an anti-globalization movement, but it criticizes the
neoliberal ideology that it sees as dominating economic
globalization. It supports globalization policies that they
characterize as sustainable and socially just.
• Slogans:
– "The World is not for sale", denouncing the “merchandisation"
of society.
– "Another world is possible" pointing to an alternative
globalization where people and not profit is in focus
Susan George of the
Transnational Institute
– long-term influence on the
movement, as the writer of books
since 1986 on hunger, debt,
international financial institutions
and capitalism
– Video: Susan George on using the
financial crisis to tackle other crises
4’05 European Social Forum –
Sweden 2008
3 Sociologists having detailed
underdevelopment and dependence in a
world ruled by the capitalist system
– Jean Ziegler:
• Swiss sociologist, politician, writer
• "A child who dies from hunger is a murdered
child.”
– Christopher Chase-Dunn:
• American Sociologist educated at Stanford,
specializing in cross-national quantitative
studies of the effects of dependence on
foreign investment
– Immanuel Wallerstein:
• American Sociologist, educated at Columbia
focus world system and emergence of
capitalism, especially their effects on India
and Africa
– Critics of United States foreign policy
such as Naom Chomsky, Susan
Sontag, and anti-globalist pranksters
The Yes Men are widely accepted
inside the movement.
– Video: Utopia Susan Sontag, Naom
Chomsky 1’25
– Video: Naom Chomsky agrees with
Ron Paul on foreign Policy 6’55
– Yes Men - Bhopal Disaster BBC spoof
Homework
Reading Material
Articles
– FDR on IMF to Congress
– John Maynard Keynes
– Keynes vs. White at Bretton Woods
– The Legacy of Bretton Woods
– “It’s China’s World, we’re just living in it”
Mastering Modern World History
Chapter 9 The United Nations pp. 181-189