Gustave Massiah
in Hommage à Léo Matarasso
The failure of the negotiations cannot be attributed to the protest movement alone. The contradictions within the countries of the North were probably decisive. Especially the American decision not to negotiate; growth does not need to be boosted by a new increase in trade, and the electoral period makes it necessary to spare the trade unions and the environmental movements. Further progress in the negotiations is postponed for two years, after the transition to a new US political leadership.
The turning point in Seattle was not the failure of the negotiations but what that failure revealed. It highlighted the positions of movements that, from the challenge to the MAI to that of the WTO, question the dominant course of globalization, not globalization itself. It has legitimized the search for alternatives and given new life to mobilizations, and increased the confidence of the movements that bring initiatives and proposals.
The contradictions of liberal thought.
After the crises in South and Central America, Asia and Russia, the debate is raging in liberal thought. It has focused on the nature of regulation, the role of the state and international institutions.
Milton Friedman persists in his faith in the financial market alone and his distrust of democracy; Jeffrie Sachs is entangled in his responsibilities for reform in Russia. On the other hand, Jo Stiglitz makes clear the importance of the state and the institutional framework, including for privatisation; he contrasts the interest of the Chinese way with the Russian chaos.
This shows that the neo-liberal direction of globalization is not inevitable. Total deregulation is a means, not necessarily the end. The financial markets have their own logic; it is not that of all financial and industrial groups. They are clearly aware of their own interests and profits; they do not consider it necessary to propose a project for the whole of society.
A programmatic reflection, sustainable development.
The need for a new development is becoming more and more topical with the crisis of liberal thinking. Beyond the effects of fashion, sustainable development offers a way forward. On condition that we do not consider that it must be the opposite of the dominant model. Good development is not just the opposite of bad development, so it is not a question of taking the opposite view of structural adjustment. Just because the dominant model idealizes the market does not mean that the alternative model should be based on its negation.
How can we distinguish between continuity and rupture in the development model? By starting with the proposals put forward by the movements, those discussed in the civil forums of the major multilateral conferences in Rio, Copenhagen, Vienna, Beijing, Cairo and Istanbul.
These are the proposals that converged in Seattle. They include the main lines of an economically efficient, ecologically sustainable, socially equitable, democratically based, geopolitically acceptable and culturally diverse development.
These avenues must be explored and their coherence verified; they are not yet a programme.
A worldwide movement of opinion.
In the past years, these movements have taken root; they have worked, confronted their points of view. They have created an international space for discussion. The social forces that carry the will to seek another mode of development are made up of solidarity movements, human rights movements, movements against ethnic cleansing, consumer movements, workers’ movements, peasants’ movements, feminist movements, movements against discrimination, international solidarity movements. In recent years, there have also been movements that define their actions directly in the field of globalization. Let us mention, for example, the campaigns for the cancellation of the debt, for the reform of the international financial institutions, for the taxation of financial transactions and the prohibition of tax havens, the contestation of the World Trade Organization.
The dynamic has been, in the first instance, the passage from sectoral movements to movements that define themselves as citizen movements. In a second phase, these movements have sought to define their field of action and reflection on the relevant scale, that of globalization. They are looking for world citizenship, international public opinion, universal consciousness.
Civil society, the emergence of new actors on the international scene.
Representation, which puts states and companies face to face, is no longer sufficient. The global question is changing the relationship between the national question and the social question, which has marked the strategic debate for more than a century. States are being challenged from above, by globalisation, and from below, by the demand for local democracy. New actors are intervening on the international scene. Local authorities and associations carry the two forms of representation, delegation and participation.
Civil society, an inappropriate but convenient term, expresses this evolution. The associative movement is certainly diverse and contradictory. With decentralization, it can serve to legitimize a renewal of the political dimension and to renew the ruling classes. This would already be useful, but would not be fundamentally new. Without underestimating the importance of state power in social transformation, the associative movement carries a more fundamentally new approach.
More than the conquest of new powers, of counterpowers to control power, the associative movement is the bearer of the conquest of new rights.
One guideline, international law should not be subordinated to business law.
In Seattle, a simple idea emerged: international law cannot be subordinated to business law. This obvious fact came from the questioning of the Dispute Settlement Body which is at the heart of the WTO. The reason for this awareness is the fact that the DSB can judge outside of multilateral agreements, that there is no possibility of appeal.
From this, the idea emerges that international law can only be based on respect for human rights, civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights. The foundation of international law can only be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
We can respond to the simple, even simplistic, idea that liberalisation is the answer to everything, that it is enough to trust the market, to privatise and to favour international capital, which is the only way to achieve efficiency and modernity. The answer is that progressive modernisation means respecting, guaranteeing and deepening fundamental rights; that economic, social and cultural rights allow for the most interesting regulation of the markets; that the new economic policy is one that organises access for all to basic services.
International law is the bearer of a new modernity.
It allows citizens’ movements in each country to mobilize to advance situations. It can allow citizens to have recourse, if their rights are violated.
Let us take an example. In France, after the occupation of an unoccupied building, Boulevard René Coty, by homeless families supported by the association Droit au Logement (DAL), the Paris city hall, after a judgment of the court of first instance, had the building evacuated by force and had all the floors destroyed to prevent any occupation.
The Paris Court of Appeal, ruling at the request of the DAL, and referring to the signature by France of international conventions recognising the right to housing, had ordered the Paris City Council to rehouse the families. The associations took advantage of this judgment to develop the struggle for access to housing.
States must accept that economic, social and cultural rights can be constraints.
Economic actors, companies and operators in the commercial and financial markets, must respect the rules established by international conventions and treaties. As with civil and political rights, an international complaints system must be set up, and citizens must be able to appeal.
Massiah, Gustave
in: <strong>Hommage à Léo Matarasso, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2004</strong>