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There Is an Alternative to Corporate Rule
All over the world, truly democratic approaches are bubbling up from the grassroots.
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.
Even as progressives within the U.S. turned to resisting Bush administration policies of preemptive war and its reactionary assaults on Constitutional rights, international movements have not waited for regime change in the U.S. to further the decline of the Washington Consensus. Massive crowds have joined Americans in rallying against the war in Iraq, as on February 15, 2003, when upwards of ten million people in over 500 cities took to the streets, constituting the largest coordinated global day of action in history. But, at the same time, local communities have waged battles to reverse privatization of public utilities and transnational campaigns have fought for reforms like debt cancellation. In countries throughout Latin America, they have successfully overthrown neoliberal governments, elected leaders who oppose the Washington Consensus, and they have pressured those officials to enact social policies that serve working people.
Reflecting this sustained torrent of global activity, the World Social Forum has grown and matured. While the first global forum in 2001 hosted 12,000 participants, subsequent events have grown larger and larger, drawing crowds of up to 150,000 people. In addition to returning to Porto Alegre for three additional years after the initial summit, the global event has also convened in Mumbai, India and Nairobi, Kenya, with smaller forums taking place at the regional level. At World Social Forum, community leaders, nonprofit representatives, scholars, organizers, and progressive lawmakers have presented, debated, and refined ideas that collectively represent as comprehensive a set of policies for the global economy as any wonky campaign office could ever hope to devise. These spaces have served as physical embodiments of the proposals for a democratic globalization.
Groups meeting in tents designated for discussion of energy and the environment have strategized about ways to break our dependence on the oil economy. They have proposed investment in mass public transportation, high mileage standards for cars, and shifting government subsidies for hydrocarbon exploitation to alternative energy. Other environmentalists have worked to promote an international carbon tax to penalize polluters -- something undoubtedly in the public interest, especially given mounting evidence about the perils of global warming. All these represent perfectly viable public policies, but have been vehemently opposed by the oil industry.
In other tents, family farmers and food safety advocates from throughout the world have gathered to promote models for redistributive land reform. Even the international financial institutions acknowledge that land reform would be beneficial for the poor, but it has been pushed off the political map by national elites and agribusiness conglomerates. Other advocates explained how current government subsidies for exports and for pesticides boost large-scale "mono-cropping" over organic agriculture; in response, they argued for a shift in public funds to support sustainable farming. Indigenous communities further asserted their right to self-determination, particularly with regard to maintaining traditional systems of land ownership and food production.
Tents holding discussions on the need to curb corporate power have advanced a slate of innovative proposals. These include public financing of elections to end what U.S. Senator Russ Feingold has called "a system of legalized bribery and legalized extortion." They include laws that allow victims of corporate abuses in the developing world to sue in U.S. or European courts. And they include detailed proposals for strengthening anti-trust law in order to break up business monopolies -- among them the massive media empires that do much to set the limits of public debate.
A group called ATTAC, one of the organizations that founded the World Social Forum, has set up tents promoting campaigning for the Tobin Tax. First proposed by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin in the 1970s, the initiative would impose a low percentage tax on the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of international financial transactions that take place each day. This would provide a disincentive for short-term gambling on currencies, and it would encourage longer-term and more productive investment. Moreover, even a miniscule levy could create an annual fund of upwards of $100 billion that could be used to stop the spread of disease and alleviate global poverty.
Warehouse workspaces hosting labor organizations have offered myriad methods for protecting workers' rights and ending sweatshop conditions. Over seventy cities and localities in the United States have passed Living Wage laws since the early 1990s. These go beyond paltry minimum wage requirements and mandate that businesses pay employees at least enough to keep their families out of poverty. At the social forums, U.S. advocates discussed how to spread these campaigns. Meanwhile, representatives from the estimated 180 worker-run factories that formed after capital fled Argentina's collapsing neoliberal economy in 2001 spoke about their experiences in self-management. And groups like the Women's International Coalition for Economic Justice have stressed that U.N.-backed summits and other international efforts to advance women's rights must not be subordinated to multilateral trade agreements.
Finally, workshops organized by representatives from the fair trade movement profiled endeavors to build direct ties between producers in the global South and Northern consumers. The fair trade model aims to eliminate exploitative middlemen, ensure that workers get a living wage for their labor, and give local collectives a greater say in the determining the conditions under which international economic exchanges take place. Like organic food, fair trade remains a niche market, and it cannot substitute for wider structural changes in global economy. But it provides both a living alternative to exploitative trade and a hopeful model for future change.
Even this wide range of activity hardly constitutes an exhaustive survey. Unlike the corporate and imperial models, a globalization from below does not take the form of one-size-fits-all prescription for the global economy. With regard to alternative policies, the model of participatory democracy produces, in the words of another slogan, "One No, Many Yeses." It generates a strong challenge to structures of neoliberalism and empire, but allows for a wider sense of what might replace them.
Contrary to individual manifestos that presume that a lack of ideas is the problem for progressives, the advocates at Porto Alegre have presented an agenda for change rooted in local struggles and campaigns that have long been underway. Excellent volumes such as Alternatives to Economic Globalization, a book compiled by the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization, have profiled other aspects of this agenda. The Human Development Reports produced annually by the United Nations Development Program have backed many of these same initiatives. A number of progressive proposals have even been introduced as legislation in the U.S. Congress in such measures as the recent TRADE Act, advanced by fair trade advocates this summer. Needless to say, the elite beneficiaries of corporate and imperial rule, still steadfast in their contention that no alternatives exist, would prefer that the public not take notice of any of these developments.
Just Saying No, or First Do No Harm
The ideas, experiences, and proposals of the World Social Forum provide a trove of information for all those who want to construct a new agenda for the global economy. At the same time, as long as democratic movements do not have the power to overrule political and economic elites, there exists an important case for just saying "no" -- for first insisting that those now in power stop doing harm.
When Wall Street neoliberals and Washington militarists ask, "What is the alternative?" they base the question on faulty assumptions. Their question serves to naturalize very radical agendas of empire and corporate rule, suggesting that these are normal and acceptable states of affairs. They are not. In a situation where power is grossly imbalanced, where crimes are being perpetuated in the name of democracy, and where ever larger sections of public life are being handed over to the market, saying "no" to these radical agendas can be a perfectly worthy task in itself.
In an important respect, the alternative to invading Iraq is not invading Iraq. The alternative to NAFTA is no NAFTA. The neocons' invasion of Iraq has cost thousands of American lives, taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, produced some two million refugees, and is set to squander over a trillion dollars of public funds. It has generated heightened regional tensions, greater instability, and more terrorism. Given the disastrous history of U.S. interventions -- not just in Iraq, but also, to mention some particularly ignoble examples of the past 60 years, in Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Iran, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua -- calling for a moratorium on such military actions, official and covert, is a first step in stemming the damage of imperial globalization.
The agenda of corporate globalization, which unfortunately thrived during the Clinton presidency and is still popular within the right wing of the Democratic Party, is subtler. But this, too, has relied on forceful maneuvering to come into existence. Neoliberalism involves aggressively opening markets, clearing the way for a previously unheard of level of speculative capital transfer, and dictating the restructuring of local economies. None of these things occur naturally, and they deserve opposition. A moratorium on harmful "free trade" deals and on further expansion of the WTO, especially into areas beyond the traditional realm of trade, is a vital immediate demand.
Simply refusing each of the mandates of the Washington Consensus -- or at least rejecting the idea that they should be imposed world as a one-size-fits-all uniform for development -- would itself allow for a substantial restructuring of globalization politics. The true utopians in the global economy are people who embraced the market fundamentalist fantasy that unchecked capital would serve the common good. Refuting this idea can be fairly straightforward.
Neoliberal corporate globalization prescribes the elimination of tariffs and other protections for local enterprises. An alternative would be to allow poorer countries to keep these intact, reviving what is known in trade agreements as "special and differential treatment." This model would give developing countries more flexibility in choosing to nurture infant industries and to protect agricultural commodities that are important to traditional cultures and to the security of their food supply. When the Washington Consensus demands the privatization of public industry and the division of the commons into private property, an alternative is to keep these things in the hands of the public, defending the provision of public goods as a way of ensuring economic human rights -- including guaranteed public access to water, electricity, and health care. If it calls for cuts in social services, an alternative is to reject the cuts, maintaining or bolstering these services and instead pushing for a redistributive tax system that makes the wealthy pay their fair share.
When Washington mandates a more "flexible" labor market -- one without unions or worker protections -- an alternative is to defend living wages, collective bargaining, and the right to associate. And when IMF bailouts for wealthy investors create a situation in which, to paraphrase author Eduardo Galeano, "risk is socialized while profit is privatized," an alternative is simply to end these bailouts, making speculators bear the cost of their gambles.
The demand to reverse neoliberal structural adjustment policies proposes a fundamentally different relationship between wealthy nations and the global South than currently exists. It would grant countries the freedom to determine their own economic policies, priorities for government spending, and rules for controlling foreign investment. Instead of imposing a single hegemonic model on the entire world, this new relationship would allow for broader diversity and experimentation in international development. While this does not by itself constitute a vision for ensuring human rights or protecting the environment, it nevertheless represents an important strategic gain. It alone would likely bring change of great enough magnitude to make the politics of the global economy look virtually unrecognizable to those who have grown accustomed to Washington-dictated corporate globalization.
Those who reject corporate and imperial models of globalization have a wealth of ideas at their disposal, a healthy internal debate to refine their strategies, and a vibrant, growing international network of citizens that see their efforts as part an interconnected whole. They also have very powerful enemies. Fortunately, as we enter the post-Bush era, the international community has voiced a firm rejection of unilateralism and preemptive war. Likewise, ever-larger swaths of the globe view the neoliberal doctrine of corporate expansion as a failed and discredited vision. This creates unique opportunities for citizens to fight to bring a democratic globalization into existence. More exciting still is that many people are already doing so, and, on key issues like debt relief and across entire regions like the Latin America, they are winning. The punditry is increasingly taking notice. For there is nothing so dangerous to those who insist that the world must remain as it is as the simple, stubbornly defiant doctrine of hope.
50 Comments so far
Show AllI wish someone had not lost the paragraphing for this article!
It is perfectly acceptable for a paragraph to be up to 200 words. of course, it means the idea or point being made is a bit more complex that "we are all going to die!'
So glad everyohe focused on the paragraphs, cause that's what really matters
Damn, people. Have you guys ever heard of paragraphs?
Oh man, my eyes are still swirling and the rocks are rolling in my head. If you expect someone to read what you write, you REALLY REALLY need to know how to do paragraphs. This one was just too much.
Hey, protest actually works! It's fixed! Right Tab On! or something.
Got a great laugh about the first agreement in CD history...
Woo hoo! Power to the protesting political paragraph people!
While this piece offers a kind of Utopian vision, the practical matter is that it relies on the acquiescence of the ruling class, indeed, relies on the ruling class to willfully cede power to the very people the system the ruling class has established has made powerless. There is no reason to believe that this will happen, and, even if there are short term gains, what is given may be taken away.
Hopeful reformism offers us nothing that it hasn't for the last century, and that hasn't worked at all. It's not just about getting rid of the worst excesses of the system that creates poverty, creates homelessness, creates the underclass -- the point is to get rid of the very system that demands such things for its very survival.
http://www.internationalsocialist.org/caseforsocialism.html
vox
http://voxsjournal.livejournal.com
good points, but consciousness is raised amongst the reformers while they're organizing, and as the techniques to control people become more intrusive (no privacy rights), brutish (beating/murdering demonstrators - here and globally) and omnipresent - it will be the organizers of these reforms who will have the awareness to see and collectively resist the global imperial police state for what it is. then they can threaten the super structure that perpetuates this madness. w/out awareness (an understanding of a common response) we're doomed - either to prison or endless reruns of the andy griffith show...
again thank you for your comment and link...
...peace...
I guess it just depends on whether you're really interested in the topic. My eyes glaze over on alot of this stuff (like Plain's lipstick or something). I read every word of this, didnt notice "no paragraphs" ( is it fixed??)but agree that international socialism is the answer. To class warfare, I say --Hell yeah!!
Its poor judgement to give people nothing to lose.
Thanks to Feingold--although Obama is "more liberal"--what/??
Thanks for the links
Thought I would read the comments to see if anyone else was bothered by the lack of paragraph breaks. I'm sure it is a tecnical glitch. I'll check later to see if it's fixed.
Thanks
Yeah but, unlike the Congressional Record, this article uses more than one sentence.
I think there was a 'technical' problem with the Carrage Return.
Solution: Just Google author's name and title.
This article has appeared (with paragraphing) on several sites.
Here's one: http://www.alternet.org/story/96806/there_is_an_alternative_to_corporate_rule/
The idea that the productive capabilities of humanity can be used for the good of all instead of the enrichment of the few and the misery of the many is not a new idea.
It's been around since the 40s. The 1840s.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2008/07/unitarians-and-rush-limbaugh.html
But the world has only become more divided and more polluted since then.
Marx pointed out that capitalism destroys the family in 1848! And today we have Palin, espousing family values, AND bragging about how she returned to work one day after giving birth.
There is something wrong with this picture.
Good for those around the world who are trying for the possibility of a better one.
And all the first 7 out of 8 posters care about is punctuation? No wonder the US isn't far on the road to a better world!
i agree the lack of paragraphing is frustrating...
a few responses to what i could glean..
"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"
-- yes the masses around the globe see the problem more clearly, as they are the least protected people on earth, and therefore feel the repercussions of neo-liberal policies more acutely (yes we also suffer here in usa, and when more americans suffer, change will occur, as long as we remain complacent - let's face it about 1/2 the people in this country will willingly vote against their economic interest when they vote to continue bush's policies in the manifestation of mccain)
"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."
"international movements have not waited for regime change in the U.S. to further the decline of the Washington Consensus"
-it's true the people in the developing world continue the struggle, irrespective of the awareness or popularity of the struggle in the usa.
"the model of participatory democracy produces, in the words of another slogan, "One No, Many Yeses." It generates a strong challenge to structures of neoliberalism and empire, but allows for a wider sense of what might replace them."
- excellent points, the structures for a decentralized society that is empowered by collectively owning it's resources and making rational choices for their development and participation in trade exist today and are ignored and marginalized (notice how any marxist criticism/alternative is humorously dismissed, as being childish in msm. chuckle - chuckle 'my my', 'here we go again folks talking about class warfare', etc...)
"At the same time, as long as democratic movements do not have the power to overrule political and economic elites, there exists an important case for just saying "no" -- for first insisting that those now in power stop doing harm. When Wall Street neoliberals and Washington militarists ask, "What is the alternative?" they base the question on faulty assumptions"
--and here in lies the problem, we have accurate social, environmental criticisms - we have models (participatory economics, tobin's tax) that could alleviate suffering.
the author and the world social forum suggest local/regional resistence will help tip the balance. thank you for the info, i will gladly support these institutions and ideas,
however, if the US government (and by proxy the economic elites) were to be de-legitimized by a failed military campaign (i don't mean a quagmire like iraq - think more like 4 aircraft carriers and their support vessels disappearing instantly, or an economic depression w/ acknowledged rates of UE over %25 (numbers so large that the common person on the streets would recognize the crisis). when all legitimacy is lost and the masses understand this as truth - then america, through example, can honestly uphold it's ideals, until then the federal govt can check all the incremental gains achieved on the local level...
a socialist revolution in the US would instantly transform global relationships, leading to one human existence on one planet - earth (look for martian white flight)
...peace...
Paragraphing aside, I didn't get that far myself. My instantaneous response to the title of this article was DUH. Then, this opening sentence: "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." Who could possibly be surprised that the global elites would deny alternatives to the current order from which they benefit? What an illogical premise. What's surprising is that the global multitudes not only allow the unjust "current order" to prevail, unchallenged, but that anyone with the slightest capacity for independent thought would buy the justifications and denials of the beneficiaries. The author may have made some excellent points in his article, and illuminated the room in the process, but there's a lot to read in cyberspace, and his title and opening sentence lost me at the starting gate. For high-value input on alternatives to corporate domination, read David Korten's excellent books, "When Corporations Rule the World" and "The Great Turning."
Dude, paragraphs!
Sorry, couldnt resist.....;-)
" I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Abraham Lincoln
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Please Put Lipstick on the Pig
Say just who are these pigs of empire?
Do they have a plan?
Is there a ‘project for a new american century’?
Will it be a unipolar hyper military powered one?
Who gets to call the shots?
Who benefits from forever war? ...people
Who’s calling for more war?.....people
Perhaps it’s time to put lipstick on the pig,... people
Perhaps it time to pillory and pie the pigs of empire,... people
Let’s put lipstick on the pig of empire...people
The ‘global cop’ is the global pig
who hype the homeland hyper stick
to the dreaded color coded red
the red of eternal blight, empire might
& ‘collateral dead’ the market led insight
of the corporate fools who think blowback
is just a hyper profit opportunity
while they mortgage our children’s generation
with the supreme international crime
say folks.....
It’s all on you and your children’s dime.
So please put lipstick on the pig...people.
have never responded to your poetry, so thought I might take this opportunity. I skim over many of the inanities, but always take the time to read your posts. You have a talent for distilling the essence that you've successfully employed in many of your poems.
Having realized that years of subtlety in my own posts have gone mostly wasted, I now tend to be blunt and to the point. However, that doesn't mean I can't stop and appreciate your work. Thanks empirePie... I'd drive my Chevy to the Levy but the gas tank's all dry.
... and thanks Mark for the core message in this post. Agree that it has been said before, but we need to be reminded, more often than not... and work to refine and embrace the movement.
Capitalism is the lipsticked pig.
Today, there exist scores of books and hundreds of reports that offer new directions for the global order ---
First, you have to be able to read and second, you have to have the interest in the subject and third, you have to have some realization how much trouble we're in. Does that sound to you like a description of most Americans?
The author is correct - there are multiple alternatives to the current economic/social order. But none of them are being championed by the political duopoly of this country that wishes to maintain the TINA myth. If you want these alternatives to ever have the chance of seeing the light of day, vote 3rd party. Remember that the "lesser of two evils", the "hasn't a snowball's chance in hell", and all the other arguments against 3rd parties are simply nothing more than variations of the TINA argument that keeps us down. As they say, you cannot achieve what you cannot conceive - and then work like hell to see it through. When 3rd parties demonstrate enough support at the polls, the "majors" will either have to chuck their current leadership or fail, and they know it; that is why they are so shrill in shouting "TINA" at those who they fear may "just say NO".
sierra7
Another alternative that I have been advocating for several years is for those who are really concerned about the direction US is going (downhill fast)is to re-register as non-partisan voters...the more the better...that will force the "duopoly" to wake up and not be able to "poll" a victory.....by either party. Of course there are other changes we need like eliminate electoral college; public financing; open primaries in ALL states etc....
Do it now: re-register non-partisan...
Of course in some states they are so scared of you doing that that you will receive a restricted ballot...in California you will be able to vote for whomever...and in the regular election you can ask for any ballot when you vote.
Margalo
Re Mordecai's post: "Today, there exist scores of books and hundreds of reports that offer new directions for the global order ---
First, you have to be able to read and second, you have to have the interest in the subject and third, you have to have some realization how much trouble we're in. Does that sound to you like a description of most Americans?"
No, it doesn't. But that is what political activists do. Then: Organize, Organize, Organize!
The current mess we are in has most Americans in a tizzy, justifiably afraid of losing their jobs and their homes. That is the motivation for them to listen to a better way to live by stopping the Neo-Con madness.
So stop the whining that it will never happen (which guarantees that future) and get out and organize.
And while you're organizing, please remember to advocate for a cabinet level Dept. of Peace, which is a key step in changing the Bush-McSame All-War-All-The-Time Doctrine.
One quick alternative to corporate rule is for We the People to become the corporation that rules.
Agreed, ezeflyer. However, the question is just how are We the People to do this? It takes organization, work, and a fair amount of compromise for a large enough group to coalesce and take control.
From what I've seen just on Common Dreams, "progressives" are not going to put aside their pet peeves in order to form the critical mass necessary to usurp the corporate power elite. So, we're basically on our own.
Of course, there is one way that is available to all of us right now: We stop buying (literally) into the lies that the ruling elite keep foisting upon us. Our economic power is absolute and cannot be denied. The less we buy, the more power we claim.
Buy less, buy local, form buying groups and co-ops, form support groups for those with cultural Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (yes, it affects us all), vote wisely and strategically, and for God's sake, let go of the idea that one person is the answer - which means that neither Obama nor Nader nor McKinney will be able to do much to help us (but we can certainly wind up with someone who will hurt us even more). We are on our own, but even as individuals, we have strength.
Ain't gonna be no quick alternatives to corporate rule. It's going to be a long uphill struggle, and they're going to be punishing us ever step of the way. People better get used to that little fact. There are no quick fixes, especially if we're entertaining the idea of becoming people's corporations. It's a good idea, but we're going to have to fight like hell for it.
There is, of course, an alternative to corporate rule, but no legal way (remember who wrote the laws) to achieve it.
This leaves us with . . . corporate rule.
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others."
Frederick Douglass
There is a way, it would only involve people actually doing something other than complaining about it. I am not talking about any kind of hostile or violent actions. I believe those will come when and if Americans actually are no longer allowed to drive their sport utility vehicles to the mall to shop while drinking a 5-dollar Late.
I have continually re-iterated on blogs like this that we need to pass laws that take away the power of the corporate interests in this country. One way to guarantee this is to pass a law that makes it illegal for any elected official to not represent their constituents.
Representation would mean the major of the vote of those the elected official represented. The crime would be treason, and the punishment would depend on the extent of the violation. To remove this official a vote would occur locally where that representatives constituents reside. If the voters felt "no confidence" in their elected official, they would be removed from office, and tried by the people in a court of law.
These laws need to be voted in at the lowest levels of government on a grass roots level. First pass the law in the cities, then the counties, and lastly the states.
Congress would have no say if the law can pass or not, and it would end this madness.
Imagine no more illegal wars of aggression, no more spying on Americans, no more torture, no more Patriot Act, no more taking away our civil liberties, instead we the people would reverse everything that has been done to destroy this country!
This is a 100% legal way to permanently stop the NWO, our corrupt congress and future wanna be "King's" and "Ruler's" over the World.
I'm beginning to believe that corporate international's may be having second thoughts about wars of aggression for their benefit. It seems that our competitors (China, Russia, India, and Europe) are the ones signing contracts. Reasons - America's image - Value of the dollar - Lack of cash and credit - Belligerent attitude. China seems to be going into Africa and Latin America with an attitude of how can we benefit each other. America and Europe, on the other hand, seem to be continueing the attitude of "this is the way it's gonna be" We're spending billions on war, which may be counter productive.
In spite of outrageous profits, oil companies may be coming up short. They're not signing contracts and adding to their inventories. American oil companies can't operate in regions of conflict, especially if our troops and intelligence are causing the conflict. I can't believe off shore drilling and drilling in the tundra is their first choice. The opportunities are not here. Hopefully the day will come when corporate America will say - NO MORE WARS.
The author focuses more on protecting the developing world, but is correct in his views on neo-liberal economics and globalization. Free Trade today is the same as Free Trade in the 19th century under the British Empire, a tool for imperialism and facilitating corporate plundering of the resources of countries abroad while creating a massive gap between the wealth of upper and lower classes. Millions died globally as a result of these Free Trade policies from opium addiction to famine, as food from exported from nations under British control which had not enough to feed the local population
But the developed worlds bottom 80% is also being hard hit by globalization and these free trade practices, since their productive economies are fleeing for greener pastures, leaving behind an economy that runs on debt (fictitous capital) and jobs created that involve serving fries, denying health care claims or cleaning bed pans that do not pay a living wage. Carbon Caps and Trading will be tbe last straw for these economies, as these industries will leave for countries which do not have them.
Free Trade is actually a misnomer since those countries who resist it are attacked economically, and in some cases militarily. The IMF, military and intelligence agencies who whip up dissent and try to implement regime change against those countries who are too protectionist have caused great resentment towards those trying to ram the NWO down their throats. Many poor nations hesitate to accept loans from the IMF/World Bank which are conditional and have turned instead to China or Venezuela.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, both McCain and Obama support Globalization and Free Trade, and the neoliberal economics of the Chicago Boys and the late Milton Friedman. No change.
Green Fascism (Carbon Caps) or Black Fascism (Oil), is still fascism, and Globalization and Free Trade are here to stay, since thats what our corporate government has decided, and they have provides us with 2 candidates to vote for that will do their bidding.
All these proposals are great (except maybe the Tobin tax. To really discourage speculation in currencies, stocks... it should be about 95%. Really!) But HOW do we actually DO these things? Especially when the enabling governments set their attack dogs (and yes, they are dogs!) on the movements, such as in St. Paul, Denver, and can anyone forget Tiannamen Square? Simply appealing to them to change isn't working. Simply appealing to the ones they use to attack us falls on deaf ears. I don't like this, but, unfortunatly, the only way I can see real change happening is through violent, bloody revolution. And the poor will be the ones to suffer the most. we will be the ones that will be trampled in teh trenches, desperatly trying to fight off the attack dogs as the CEOs and high level "elected" government officials sit in their penthouses smoking cigars, drinking champagne and eating caviar. That WE, the poor, made FOR them. These same fat cats, that exploit us year-round, are able to stay where they are because they know that eventually we will be desperate: desperate for a job, for food, for housing, for clean water even. That same desperation is sustains the current system. That same desperation is what drives so many people to risk everything, even their very lives, to come north into the US, only to be labled "illegal" human beings. First we need to realize that. Then, somehow, realize that we don't want to be that desperate!
On another CD article, someone else (wish I could easily check, but I am using a finicky, text browser on a dial-up, retyping this for the THIRD time... Sorry.) said that another part of the problem is that the system rewards abuses. It is indeed a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle that recursively feeds itself, bunt on on itself, on US, the masses! Destroy the reward, destroy the incentive. How do we do that, on the outside looking in? While desperatly waiting for those lucky numbers in the lottery that will magically propel us into that elite circle? In the meantime, I will support such good social movements as I can. But, frankly, it's late and I'm out of ideas. I just hope humanity isn't out of time.
Ralph Nader?
For starters, the USA could honour the International Labour Organisations's (ILO) core labour standards. http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/subjectE.htm
The US are after all a founding member of this UN agency.
The USA could ratify - only Somalia and the US didn't! - the ILO convention on child labour, just to prove that one is a civilised country after all.
I have always been very sympathetic of the WSF, and I do also believe, like the WSF, that "another world is possible", but it would already be quite an achievement if the US weren't behaving like some third-world sweatshop outfit in established organisations!
So it would have been nice if this article hadn't just tried to create a lot of PR for itself, i.e. the WSF, but if it had pointed out that even within the boring old existing internationall existing frameworks, the US are sorely lacking re compliance.
"One No, Many Yeses."
Nice slogan but dangerously vague. You have to be specific about what you say no to. Lacking a careful definition, organizations such as Oxfam will back ideas such as: "export growth can be a more efficient engine of poverty reduction than aid", and get developing countries more integrated into the mindless global consumption/destruction project. Is this what anyone wants?
We can say no to mindlessness itself and embrace the more evolved solutions such as localism which solve all problems at once, not perfectly but to a far greater degree than all the various incremental solutions.
Localism puts people in face-to-face contact. Localism makes producers responsible to consumers. Localism puts a natural brake on over-production/consumption. Localism suppresses destructive long-distance freight. Localism supports culture. Localism puts the political/economic power at the local level where it is required for sanity to prevail in the wider society.
"grant countries the freedom to determine their own economic policies"
How can you grant something that is already theirs? This author seems to be making a lot of dangerous assumptions. Even the title of the article gives Thatcher FAR more than she is due. Let's re-title it: "There is NO Legitimacy to Corporate Rule."
Earth to Mark Engler, come on back down!
Nothing in the world will change without that change first being accomplished at home, here in the US. People come together in various countries in the WSF and attempt to devise a populist trade policy in a democratic way. Fine. Admirable.
But the behavior of this nation, the so-called Washington Consensus, reflects the lack of democracy here. That is how NAFTA was established, through a lack of informed citizen participation in decision making. The protests against the WTO underscore the lack of democracy. We ain't got it here, and no WSF is going to give it to us outside our own political process.
The problem is first of all local( national ), not global. The failure of our political process to function in a democratic fashion should be our first concern. How do we fix this?
When you can figure out how to make the US political system represent the will of the American people, then I might be inclined to listen to you bloviate about global matters.
"Tents holding discussions on the need to curb corporate power have advanced a slate of innovative proposals."
This is a pitiful picture.
The radicals are chattering in tents in Brazil...
What's next?
Tree houses in Tasmania?
Tiny people whispering together in a shoe box?
Jacob Freeze
Do business with a co-operative...don't bank at a bank bank with a CU
Look at www.ica.coop and see how this is an under reported vital part of the world economy.
There Is an Alternative to Corporate Rule - Faith Based Rule for example.
"Saudi's top judiciary official has issued a religious decree saying the
owners of television networks broadcasting immoral content may be killed."
Does anybody here understand the point? All you do is bitch and demean. Gathering in tents is laughable? How about gathering in armchairs to spew nonsense and pretend you are doing something? You arm chair activists should pay attention when someone is telling you what real activists are doing, yes in tents. What are you doing? The world is moving forward and you laugh at being left behind. What are your ideas for moving forward? Latin America is pointing the way. Could you at least find out about it or is it to difficult to do anything other than criticize? Talk about electoral reform here in the US. Talk about protesting to bring about an article V convention. Talk about uniting the alternative parties and how to build them up. Talk about protesting to enforce the rule of law. Talk about how to change the tax system so land is taxed. Comment on the tax on transactions and if it is feasible and how to do it. Talk about finding a way to force the government to join the international tribunal and other world forum. Talk about organizing a movement that shows people where to find information that will change their minds. Talk about how to reach children so they know the truth. Talk about something worthwhile instead of mocking and criticizing. Rise to the task for heaven's sake..........lizard
ZAZ: Savvy & optimistic post. Thanks for offering it to the forum.
Yes! And, not all the posts were negative (you have to read down pretty far, though) I found the article ALOT more interesting than this garbage about which conservative candidate would be able to make a bigger niche hacking awawy at the pile of crap the neo-cons have left the uS in.
More concrete measures would be adviable, sure, (like some mentioned in the post below), but nobody is going to think up all of this stuff for you, people.
"So glad everyone focused on the paragraphs, cause that's what really matters"(lol)_
The old form over content argument.(LOL)
Mark Engler's piece was a giant elaboration of "Think Globally, Act Locally." It is a good idea, as an oligarchs' biggest enemy is an informed citizenry who put their money where their mouth is, by refusing to buy in. The corporate oligarchs' are already concerned, as their poo-pooing campaign demonstrates. The best thing to do is to raise the oligarchs' stress level.
"In other tents, family farmers and food safety advocates from throughout the world have gathered to promote models for redistributive land reform."
One of the unfortunate aspects of "redistributive land reform" is that before you can redistribute land, you have to take it away from the people who own it. In the United States, the Fifth Amendment prohibition against "taking" without just compensation means that the land to be redistributed must be bought at market value, and in all countries at all times this purchase can only be accomplished with mountains of ad hoc currency, which dilutes whatever value the rest of the money in circulation may have. Hyper-inflation inevitably follows, and since the new possessors are previously inexperienced with the management of anything (cf. land "reform" in Zimbabwe), the entire economy falls to pieces, militias appear, and you find yourself in that condition of society which Hobbes succinctly described as "the war of all against all."
Since the shooting will inevitably begin sooner or later, successful attempts at "redistributive land reform" have taken the precaution of shooting first and observing local analogues of the Fifth Amendment later. In the immortal words of Chairman Mao, "This is not a simple, clean, or quick struggle."
Chairman Mao's recipe isn't much different from the Bolshevik cookbook: Start with peasants and workers, add guns, subtract the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and try to survive a few decades of chaos until another ruling elite emerges to make the machine work again.
But way down south in the tent-city of "global justice," there's always yet another hopeful gang of crusaders meeting in yet another tent.
"Groups meeting in tents designated for discussion of energy and the environment have strategized about ways to break our dependence on the oil economy."
Small hand-made windmills may be sprouting all over a landscape somewhere, but not too far from the chattering tents in Port Alegre peasant entrepreneurs are cutting down the last remnants of the rain forest that produces the air we breathe, and all the chatter about "global justice" will soon be moot, because none of us will survive to enjoy it.
Jacob Freeze
There are already in place American systems of governance set up in more enlightened times, more progressively-striving times, that bubbled up with democratic and social approaches for the commonweal, that need to be protected and built upon. It is for these that the world used to admire us. For instance, the Justice Department's socialist-inspired anti-trust division, the socialist EPA, the Civil Rights Act, Social(ism) Security, scoialist Medicare, socialist highways... see a pattern?
Of course you do, and the NeoCon Fundamentalist Right is battling against this tide with all their might, with every lowdown trick that the cynical political chessmaster of sleaze and polarizing-hate Karl Rove can muster, and with every lowdown lie and smear that the modern-day Goebbels Rush Limbaugh can utter - he whose recent contract for $400 million made me shout out the Rev Wright line of 'goddam America.' Rush has now been greatly rewarded for his trashy use of the public airwaves by those who wanted the word 'liberal' made into a public swear word -synonymous with 'commie' -and Rush has done so over the last two decades, even though LIBERALS FOUNDED this Country!
But all these previousy-formed implements for progress by government have been thwarted and placed in jeopardy by the simple expedient of placing Hack Repugnant-ican Political Operatives in charge of All Of Them! So for example, yes, Brownie of FEMA DID do a HECKUVA JOB- only the 'job' was not what the American people were made to believe it was! As NOTHING is what the American people are LED to believe it is by this administration, in this dark, dark period of Bush/McCain Republican Rule.
The Bush-Cheney manipulation partially consists of GUTTING and OUTSOURCING (i.e, 'Privatizing' to their cronies) ALL of the functions of government, stealing the American people's treasury blind, and then, like the old hypocrite McCain, turning around and pointing and saying government doesn't work... without mentioning that Bush-Cheney-McCain Themselves Intentionally fucked it all up. Oil company executives and lobbyists now Control over 60 departments of the American government, placed there by Bush-Cheney. GoldmanSachs in the form of Paulson now controls The American Treasury!
And then there is the related matter of around 800 US Military bases abroad (see the Chalmers Johnson trilogy of books BLOWBACK, THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE, and NEMESIS- THE LAST DAYS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC), and The Bush Wars. Why do we need this? For our 'protection'? NO. The Bush Wars serve to enalrge the MilitaryIndustrialCorporate Complex, and the military bases are there as ENFORCERS of CORPORATE CONTRACTS, contracts not of the American Government, but rather of THE TRANS-NATIONAL, SUPER-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS FOR WHICH IT STANDS!
Welcome to Fascism, wherein the state and the ruling corporations are one. The USA is now a subsidiary of Exxon, or is the United States of Enormous Corporations, USEC or the 'SIC for short, and we the peons are all just wageslave 'Sikos' to be used and discarded at will (see the flag with the symbols of corporations instead of stars - that is the new American reality.) The trickle-down theory has been unmasked to be what it really is: the tinkle-on theory.
SO it has become just a struggle merely to keep what progress has been made in government over the last 200 years, much less make ANY progress with the Corporate/Capitalist Neanderthals in charge! Not with The Bush/Cheney/McCain Republicans blocking the way, and actually FUBARring the way (Fucking things Up Beyond All Recognition) like some pillage-and-burn retreat!
Smedley Butler, a Marine Corps general and perhaps the most-decorated soldier in our history (and actually like most generals do in the end, like Eisenhower did)finally got this, and railed against it way back in the 1930's! War is a Racket, he said, and he had been played by the racketeers as just a 'muscleboy' for enforcing the interests of the 'big money boys' who are the Wall Street Privateers, Corporatists, and International Banksters.
By the way, though he has been mostly forgotten by history, Gen Butler also single-handedly saved the United States as a democracy back in the 'thirties by exposing a big-business plot to overthrow the President, declare martial law, and make America into a fascist dictatorship modeled on Mussolini's. But for this ONE man, all our history would have been vastly different! He did so even despite the fact that HE was offered to be made the frontman of the takeover, the Dictator of the American Junta. HE REFUSED and instead exposed the plot. How we need people like this today... and yet America now gets people like Bush and Cheney and McCain and Palin... greedy, mean, scheming, shrewd, petty, selfish, small-minded, egotistical people, who think of service to the nation as "a great opportunity for themselves" to get fat on, and who readily volunteer to be the malicious smiling frontmen for the powers behind the curtain, like it was some game of winner-take-all.
Yes, the battle over corporate control will be hard. The cards are DEALT by the corporate rulers, who want America to finally vote like corporations do- own a million shares(or dollars) and get a million votes, one one share (or dollar)and get one vote. That is why 95% of the equity of America is owned by 1% of its people. And the Owners, like King George, want to keep it that way, even if it bankrupts the American nation and its people. So what can be done? That is the question. If only we could Just Ask Smedley.
I think the corporations have figured out that people working eighteen hour days have no time or energy for politics.
Charles Derber covered this topic very well in his book People Before Profit. The book offers a comprehensive set of specific strategies and proposes several particular new institutions.