[E-rundbrief] Info 72 - Walden Bello: The Future in the Balance, RLA speech 2003

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 72 - Walden Bello: The Future in the Balance, RLA speech 
2003 ("Alternativer Nobelpreis")

Bad Ischl, 18.12.2003

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at

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The Future in the Balance

Walden Bello

Acceptance speech, Right Livelihood Award ceremonies, Swedish Parliament, 
Stockholm, Dec.8, 2003

I would like, first of all, to express my profound gratitude to the Right 
Livelihood Foundation for selecting me as one of the awardees of this 
prestigious prize for 2003.

I would also like to thank the Parliament of Sweden for hosting these 
beautiful ceremonies today.

My gratitude also goes to my comrades-in-arms and fellow travelers in the 
movement against corporate-driven globalization, including my wife Marilen, 
who is here with me today.

Whenever friends, comrades, and colleagues have congratulated me on the 
occasion of this award, I have told them that in recognizing me, the 
Foundation is really recognizing the work of everyone in this burgeoning, 
diverse movement.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the supreme institution of 
corporate-driven globalization, and the collapse of its fifth ministerial 
in Cancun on Sept. 14 this year has dramatically underlined the deepening 
crisis of legitimacy of the globalist agenda.

Less than 10 years ago, our movement was marginalized. The founding of the 
WTO in 1995 seemed to signal that globalization was the wave of the future, 
and that those who opposed it were destined to suffer the same fate as the 
Luddites that fought against the introduction of machines during the 
industrial revolution. Globalization was going to bring prosperity in its 
wake, and how could one oppose the promise of the greatest good for the 
greatest number that the transnational corporations, guided by the 
invisible hand of the market, were going to shower the world?

But the movement stood firm in the face of the scorn of the establishment 
during the 1990's, when the boom in the world's mightiest capitalist 
enginethe US economyappeared to be destined to go on and on. It was 
steadfast in its prediction that, driven by the logic of corporate 
profitability, the liberalization and deregulation of trade and finance 
would bring about crises, widen inequalities within and across countries, 
and increase global poverty.

The Asian financial crisis in 1997 provided sudden, savage proof of the 
destabilizing impact of eliminating controls from the flow of global 
capital. Indeed, what could be more savage than the fact that the crisis 
would bring 1 million people in Thailand and 22 million people in Indonesia 
below the poverty line in the space of a few weeks in the fateful summer of 
1997?

The Asian financial crisis was one of those momentous events that removed 
the scales from people's eyes and enabled them see cold, brutal realities. 
And one of those realities was the fact that the free market policies that 
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank imposed on some 100 
developing and transitional economies between 1980 aand 2000 had induced, 
in all but a handful of them, not a virtuous circle of growth, prosperity, 
and equality but a vicious cycle of economic stagnation, poverty, and 
inequality. The year 2001 brought us not only Sept. 11. 2001 was also the 
year for reckoning of free-market fundamentalismthe year that the Argentine 
economy, the poster boy of neoliberal economics, crashed, and the US stock 
market collapsed owing to the contradictions of finance-driven, deregulated 
global capitalism, wiping out $4.6 trillion in investor wealthhalf of the 
US' gross domestic productand inaugurating a period of stagnation and 
rising unemployment.

As global capitalism moved from crisis to crisis, people organized in the 
streets, in work places, in the political arena to counter its destructive 
logic. In December 1999, massive street resistance by over 50,000 
demonstrators combined with a revolt of the developing governments inside 
the Seattle convention center to bring down the third ministerial of the 
WTO. Global protests also eroded the legitimacy of the IMF and the World 
Bank, the two other pillars of global economic governance, albeit in less 
dramatic fashion. Anti-neoliberal regimes came to power in Venezuela, 
Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador. The fifth ministerial meeting in Cancun, an 
event associated in many people's minds with the altruistic suicide of the 
Korean farmer Lee Kyung-Hae at the barricades, became Seattle II. And, just 
three weeks ago, in Miami, the same alliance of civil society and 
developing country governments forced Washington to retreat from the 
neoliberal program of radical liberalization of trade, finance, and 
investment that it had threatened to impose in the western hemisphere via 
the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Justice and equity has been one thrust of our movement. The other has been 
peace. For we never believed the pro-globalization argument that 
accelerated globalization would bring about the reign of "perpetual peace." 
Indeed, we warned that as globalization proceeded, its economically and 
socially destabilizing effects would multiply conflicts and insecurities. 
Driven by corporate logic, globalization, we warned, would herald an era of 
aggressive imperialism that would seek to batter down opposition, seize 
control of natural resources, and secure markets.

It gave us no pleasure that we were proved right. Instead, the movement 
swung into action, becoming a global force for justice and peace that 
mobilized tens of millions of people throughout the world on Feb. 15 of 
this year against the planned invasion of Iraq. We did not succeed in 
stopping the American and British invasion, but we have surely contributed 
to delegitimizing the Occupation and made it increasingly difficult for 
invaders that brazenly violated international law and many rules of the 
Geneva Convention to remain in Iraq.

The New York Times, on the occasion of the Feb. 15 march, said that there 
are only two superpowers left in the world today, the United States and 
global civil society. Let me add that I have no doubt that the forces of 
justice and peace will prevail over the contemporary incarnation of empire, 
blood, terror, and greed that is the USA.

Our movement is on the ascendant. But our agenda is massive, our tasks 
formidable. To name just a few: We have to drive the US out of Iraq and 
Afghanistan. We must stop Israel from destroying the Palestinian people. We 
must impose the rule of law on outlaw, rogue states like the US, Britain, 
and Israel.

But above all, we must change the rules of the global economy, for it is 
the logic of global capitalism that is the source of the disruption of 
society and of the environment. The challenge is that even as we 
deconstruct the old, we dare to imagine and win over people to our visions 
and programs for the new.

Contrary to the claims of the ideologues of the establishment, the 
principles that would serve as the pillars of a new global order are 
present. The primordial principle is that instead of the economy, the 
market, driving society, the market must be--to use the image of the great 
Hungarian Social Democrat Karl Polanyi"reembedded" in society and governed 
by the overarching values of community, solidarity, justice, and equity. At 
the international level, the global economy must be deglobalized or rid of 
the distorting, disfiguring logic of corporate profitability and truly 
internationalized, meaning that participation in the international economy 
must serve to strengthen and develop rather than disintegrate and destroy 
local and national economies.

The perspective and principles are there; the challenge is how each society 
can articulate these principles and programs in unique ways that respond to 
their values, their rhythms, their personality as societies. Call it 
post-modern, but central to our movement is the conviction that, in 
contrast to the belief common to both neoliberalism and bureaucratic 
socialism, there is no one shoe that will fit all. It is no longer a 
question of an alternative but of alternatives.

But there is an urgency to the task of articulating credible and viable 
alternatives to the global community, for the dying spasms of old orders 
have always presented not just great opportunity but great risk. At the 
beginning of the 20th century, the revolutionary thinker Rosa Luxemburg 
made her famous comment about the possibility that the future might belong 
to "barbarism." Barbarism in the form of fascism nearly triumphed in the 
1930's and 1940's. Today, corporate-driven globalization is creating so 
much of the same instability, resentment, and crisis that are the breeding 
grounds of fascist, fanatical, and authoritarian populist movements. 
Globalization not only has lost its promise but it is embittering many. The 
forces representing human solidarity and community have no choice but to 
step in quickly to convince the disenchanted masses that, indeed, as the 
banner of World Social Forum in Porto Alegre proclaims, "Another world is 
possible." For the alternative is, as in the 1930's, to see the vacuum 
filled by terrorists, demagogues of the religious and secular Right, and 
the purveyors of irrationality and nihilism.

The future, dear friends, is in the balance. Thank you.

http://www.tni.org/archives/bello/future.htm

Transnational Institute
Paulus Potterstraat 20
1071 DA Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 662 6608
fax: +31 20 675 7176
http://www.tni.org

Weitere Informationen zu den Preisträgern und Preisträgerinnen des Right 
Livelihood Award ("Alternativer Nobelpreis") auf: 
http://www.rightlivelihood.org

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Matthias Reichl
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Wolfgangerstr.26
A-4820 Bad Ischl
Tel. +43-6132-24590
e-mail: mareichl at ping.at
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at