PGA Bulletin
Number 1, March 1997
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Table of contents:
1. Letter from the Geneva Welcoming Committee
2. Peoples' Global Action Manifesto
3. Plans of action
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[2]. Peoples' Global Action Manifesto (1/2)
PEOPLES' GLOBAL ACTION MANIFESTO
(Working draft - deadline for submission of comments and amendments: 30
April 1998. Mail your comments, if possible in English and Spanish, to
•••@••.••• or fax them to +41-22-344 4731))
We cannot take communion from the altars of a dominant culture
which confuses price with value
and converts people and countries into merchandise.
Eduardo Galeano
If you come only to help me, you can go back home.
But if you consider my struggle as part of your struggle for survival,
then maybe we can work together.
Aboriginal woman
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Part 1
Economic globalisation, power and the "race to the
bottom"
Exploitation, labour and livelihoods
Gender oppression
The indigenous peoples' fight for survival
Oppressed ethnic groups
Onslaught on nature and agriculture
Culture
Knowledge and technology
Education and youth
Militarisation
Migration and discrimination
Part 2
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I
We live in a time in which capital, with the help of international
agencies like the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and other
institutions, is shaping national policies in order to strengthen
its global control over political, economic and cultural life.
Capital has always been global. Its boundless drive for expansion
and profit recognises no limits. From the slave trade of earlier
centuries to the imperial colonisation of peoples, lands and
cultures across the globe, capitalist accumulation has always fed
on the blood and tears of the peoples of the world. This
destruction and misery has been restrained only by grassroots
resistance.
Today, capital is deploying a new strategy to assert its power and
neutralise peoples' resistance. Its name is economic
globalisation, and it consists in the dismantling of national
limitations to trade and to the free movement of capital.
The effects of economic globalisation spread through the fabric of
societies and communities of the world, integrating their peoples
into a single gigantic system aimed at the extraction profit and
the control of peoples and nature. Words like "globalisation",
"liberalisation" and "deregulation" just disguise the growing
disparities in living conditions between elites and masses in both
privileged and "peripheral" countries.
The newest and perhaps the most important phenomenon in the
globalisation process is the emergence of trade agreements as key
instruments of accumulation and control. The WTO is by far the
most important institution for evolving and implementing these
trade agreements. It has become the vehicle of choice for
transnational capital to enforce global economic governance. The
Uruguay Round vastly expanded the scope of the multilateral
trading system (i.e. the agreements under the aegis of the WTO) so
that it no longer constitutes only trade in manufactured goods.
The WTO agreements now also cover trade in agriculture, trade in
services, intellectual property rights, and investment measures.
This expansion has very significant implications for economic and
non-economic matters. For example, the General Agreement on Trade
in Services will have far-reaching effects on cultures around the
world. Similarly, the TRIPs (Trade Related Intellectual Property
Rights) agreement and unilateral pressures, especially on
biodiversity-rich countries, are forcing these countries to adopt
new legislations establishing property rights over forms of life,
with disastrous consequences for biodiversity and food security.
The multilateral trading system, embodied in the WTO, has a
tremendous impact on the shaping of national economic and social
policies, and hence on the scope and nature of development
options.
Trade agreements are also proliferating at the regional level.
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is the prototype of a
regional legally-binding agreement involving privileged and
underprivileged countries, and its model is sought to be extended
to South America. APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) is
another model with both kinds of countries involved, and it is
being increasingly used to force new agreements into the framework
of the WTO. The Maastricht Treaty is of course the main example of
a legally-binding agreement among privileged countries. Regional
trade agreements among underprivileged countries, such as ASEAN
(Association of Southeast Asian Nations), SADC (Southern African
Development Cooperation), SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Agreement)
and MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market), have also emerged. All
these regional agreements consist of the transfer of
decision-making power from the national level to regional
institutions which are even more distant from people and less
democratic than the nation-state.
As though this was not enough, a new treaty is being promoted by
the privileged countries, the Multilateral Agreement on
Investments (MAI) to widen the rights of foreign investors far
beyond their current positions in most countries and to severely
curtail the rights and powers of governments to regulate the
entry, establishment and operations of foreign companies and
investors. This is currently also the most important attempt to
extend globalisation and "economic liberalisation". MAI would
abolish the power and the legitimate sovereign right of peoples to
determine their own economic, social, and cultural policies.
All these institutions and agreements share the same goals:
providing mobility for goods, services and capital, increasing
transnational capital's control over peoples and nature,
transferring power to distant and undemocratic institutions,
foreclosing the possibility to develop community-based and
self-reliant economies, and restricting peoples' freedom to
construct societies based on human values.
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Economic globalisation, power and the "race to the bottom"
Economic globalisation has given birth to new forms of
accumulation and power. The accumulation takes place on a global
scale, at increasing speed, controlled by transnational
corporations and investors. While capital has gone global,
redistribution policies remain the responsibility of national
governments, which are unable, and most of the times unwilling, to
act against the interests of transnational capital.
This asymmetry is provoking an accelerating redistribution of
power at global level, strengthening what is usually referred to
as "corporate power". In this peculiar political system, global
capital determines (with the help of "informal" and extremely
influential lobby groups, such as the World Economic Forum) the
economic and social agenda on a world-wide scale. These corporate
lobby groups give their instructions to governments in the form of
recommendations, and governments follow them, since the few that
refuse to obey the "advice" of corporate lobby groups find their
currencies under attack by speculators and see the investors
pulling out. The influence of corporate lobby groups has been
strengthened by regional and multilateral agreements. With their
help, neo-liberal policies are being imposed all over the world.
These neo-liberal policies are creating social tensions at global
level similar to the ones witnessed at national level during the
first stages of the industrialisation: while the number of
billionaires grows, more and more people around the world find
themselves in a system that offers them no place in production and
no access to consumption. This desperation, combined with the free
mobility of capital, provides transnational investors the best
possible environment to pit workers and governments against each
other. The result is a "race to the bottom" in social and
environmental conditions and the dismantling of redistribution
policies (progressive taxation, social security systems, reduction
of working time, etc). A vicious circle is created, wherein
"effective demand" concentrates increasingly in the hands of a
transnational elite, while more and more people cannot meet their
basic needs.
This process of world-wide accumulation and exclusion amounts to a
global attack on elementary human rights, with very visible
consequences: misery, hunger, homelessness, unemployment,
deteriorating health conditions, landlessness, illiteracy,
sharpened gender inequalities, explosive growth of the "informal"
sector and the underground economy (particularly production and
trade of drugs), the destruction of community life, cuts in social
services and labour rights, increasing violence at all levels of
society, accelerating environmental destruction, growing racial,
ethnic and religious intolerance, massive migration (for economic,
political and environmental reasons), strengthened military
control and repression, etc.
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Exploitation, labour and livelihoods
The globalisation of capital has to a very significant extent
dispossessed workers of their ability to confront or bargain with
capital in a national context. Most of the conventional trade
unions (particularly in the privileged countries) have accepted
their defeat by the global economy and are voluntarily giving up
the conquests won by the blood and tears of generations of
workers. In compliance with the requirements of capital, they have
traded solidarity for "international competitiveness" and labour
rights for "flexibility of the labour market". Now they are
actively advocating the introduction of a "social" clause in the
multilateral trading system, which would give privileged countries
a tool for selective, one-sided and neo-colonial protectionism,
with the effect of increasing poverty instead of attacking it at
its root.
Right-wing groups in privileged countries often blame "social
dumping" from underprivileged countries for the rising
unemployment and the worsening labour conditions. They say that
southern peoples are hijacking northern capital with the help of
cheap labour, weak or non-existent labour and environmental
regulations and low taxes, and that southern exports are forcing
northern producers out of the market. While there is a certain
degree of relocation to underprivileged countries (concentrated in
specific sectors like textiles and microelectronics), the teenage
girls who sacrifice their health doing unpaid overtime in
transnational sweatshops for miserable salaries can hardly be
blamed for the social havoc created by free mobility of goods and
capital. Moreover, most relocation happens between rich countries,
with only a fraction of foreign investment going to
underprivileged countries (and even some investment flowing to the
north from countries traditionally considered as
"underdeveloped"). And the threat of relocation to another rich
country (by far the most usual kind of relocation) is as effective
in blackmailing workers as the threat to relocate to an
underprivileged country. Finally, the main cause of unemployment
in privileged countries is the introduction of "rationalisation"
technologies, over which underprivileged peoples certainly have no
influence at all. In short, increasing exploitation is solely the
responsibility of capitalists, not of peoples.
Many advocates of "development" welcome the free movement capital
from privileged to underprivileged countries as a positive
contribution to the improvement of the living conditions of the
poor, since foreign investment produces jobs and livelihoods. They
forget that the positive social impact of foreign investment is
limited by its very nature, since transnational corporations will
only keep their money in underprivileged countries as long as the
policies of these countries enable them to continue exploiting the
misery and desperation of the population. The financial markets
impose extreme punishments to the countries that dare to adopt any
kind of policy that could eventually result in improved living
standards, as exemplified by the abrupt end to the shy
redistribution policies adopted in 1981 by Mitterand in France.
Also, the Mexican crisis of 1994 and the recent crises in East
Asia, although presented by the media as the result of technical
mismanagement, are good examples of the impact of a corporate
economic rule which gains strength every day both in
underprivileged and privileged countries, conditioning each and
every aspect of their social and economic policies.
Those who believe in the beneficial social effects of "free"
market also forget that the impact of transnational capital is not
limited to the creation of exploitative jobs. Most of the foreign
direct investment (two thirds according to the United Nations) in
both privileged and underprivileged countries consists of
transnational corporations (TNCs) taking over national
enterprises, which most typically results in the destruction of
jobs. And TNCs never come alone with their money: they also bring
foreign products into the country, sweeping great numbers of local
firms and farms out of the market, or forcing them to produce
under even more inhuman conditions. Finally, most of the foreign
investment provokes the unsustainable exploitation of natural
resources, which results in the irretrievable dispossession of the
livelihoods of diverse communities of indigenous peoples, farmers,
ethnic groups etc.
We reject the idea that "free" trade creates employment and
increases welfare, and the assumption that it can contribute to
the alleviation of poverty. But we also very clearly reject the
right-wing alternative of a stronger national capitalism, as well
as the fascist alternative of an authoritarian state to take over
central control from corporations. Our struggles aim at taking
back control of the means of production from the hands of both
transnational and national capital, in order to create free,
sustainable and community-controlled livelihoods, based on
solidarity and peoples' needs and not on exploitation and greed.
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Gender oppression
Globalisation and neo-liberal policies build on and increase
existing inequalities, including gender inequality. The gendered
system of power in the globalised economy, like most traditional
systems, encourages the exploitation of women as workers, as
maintainers of the family and as sexual objects.
Women are responsible for creating, educating, feeding, clothing
and disciplining young people to prepare them to become part of
the global labour force. They are used as cheap and docile labour
for the most exploitative forms of employment, as exemplified in
the maquilas of the textile and microelectronics industry. Forced
out of their homelands by the poverty caused by globalisation,
many women seek employment in foreign countries, often as illegal
immigrants, subjected to terrifying working conditions and
insecurity. The world-wide trade in women's bodies has become a
major element of world commerce and includes children as young as
10. They are used by the global economy through diverse forms of
exploitation and commodification.
Women are expected to be actors only in their households. Although
this has never been the case, this expectation has been used to
deny women a role in public affairs. The economic system also
makes use of these gender roles to identify women as the cause of
many social and environmental problems. Hence, women having too
many babies (rather than the rich consuming too many resources) is
seen as the cause of the global environmental crisis. Similarly,
the fact that women get low wages, since their remuneration are
supposed to be only supplementary income for the household, is
used to blame them for the unemployment of men and the reduction
in their wage levels. As a result, women are used as scapegoats,
declared guilty for creating the same misery that is oppressing
them, instead of pointing at the global capital as responsible for
social and environmental havoc. This ideological stigmatisation
adds to the physical violence suffered on a daily basis by women
all over the planet.
Patriarchy and the gender system rest firmly on the idea of the
naturalness and exclusivity of heterosexuality. Most of the social
systems and structures violently reject any other form of sexual
expression or activity, and this limitation of freedom is used in
order to perpetuate patriarchal gender roles. Globalisation,
although indirectly contributing to the struggles for women's and
sexual liberation by introducing them in very oppressive
societies, also strengthens the patriarchy at the root of violence
against women and against gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
The elimination of patriarchy and the end of all forms of gender
discrimination requires an open commitment against the global
market. Similarly, it is vital that those struggling against
global capital understand and confront the exploitation and
marginalisation of women and participate in the struggle against
homophobia. We need to develop new cultures that represent real
alternatives to these old and new forms of oppression.
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The indigenous peoples' fight for survival
Indigenous peoples and nationalities have a long history of
resistance against the destruction provoked by capitalism. Today,
they are confronted with the neo-liberal globalisation project as
an instrument of transnational and financial capital for
neo-colonisation and extermination. These new actors of the
globalisation process are violently invading the last refuges of
indigenous peoples, violating their territories, habitats and
resources, destroying their ways of life, and often perpetrating
their genocide. The nation states are permitting and actively
encouraging these violations in spite of their commitment to
respect indigenous peoples' rights, reflected in diverse
declarations, agreements and conventions.
Corporations are stealing ancient knowledge and patenting it for
their own gain and profit. This means that indigenous people and
the rest of humanity will have to pay for access to the knowledge
that will have thus been commodified. Furthermore, the indigenous
peoples themselves are being patented by pharmaceutical
corporations and the US administration, under the auspices of the
Human Genome Diversity Programme. We oppose the patenting of all
life forms and the corporate monopolistic control of seed,
medicines and traditional knowledge systems and human genomes.
The fights of indigenous peoples to defend their lands (including
the subsoil) and their forms of living, are leading to a growing
repression against them and to the militarisation of their
territories, forcing them to sacrifice their lives or their
liberty. This struggle will continue until the right of indigenous
peoples to territorial autonomy is fully respected throughout the
world.
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continuned in 2/2
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