March 2001

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Building a Movement for Global Justice

Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith, Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity, Cambridge: South End Press, 2000, 165 pages, $13.00.

Arnie Alpert heads the AFSC office in Concord, NH.

Talk about globalization paused at a recent AFSC meeting when David, a committee member, asked what we meant by "globalization" to begin with. A little reluctant to divert time from planning to analysis, the facilitator asked David to briefly describe what he thinks globalization is.

David described his home town in the central states, where family farms have gone out of business, replaced by huge industrial hog farms. The workers are mostly Mexicans, drawn to the community by the jobs which pay more than they could make at home. The town appears to be prosperous, though huge lagoons of hog waste pose an environmental threat to the community's future. "Is that what we're talking about?" David asked. Heads nodded.

Globalization is about the industrialization of agriculture, the flow of goods across borders, and the orientation of community economies to markets that may be thousands of miles away. It is also about the rising power of multi-national corporations, the 1.6 trillions of dollars worth of currency exchanged each day on international markets, the decentralization of production, barriers to the migration of workers across borders, and the increasing sway of multi-lateral organizations that set the rules of the game. It is about so many things that "globalization" is in danger of becoming a buzzword that confuses as much as it illuminates.

After the committee meeting, David asked me to recommend books or magazines that provided a theoretical grounding for work on globalization. I suggested Globalization from Below, the new book by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith.

In a sense the book is a sequel to Global Village or Global Pillage, a 1994 work by Brecher and Costello. The earlier book described the "race to the bottom," in which global corporations increasingly base their competition on where they can most exploit labor, community, and environmental resources. Instead of allowing the discussion to be framed as "free trade" vs. "protectionism," as it was during the NAFTA debate, or globalization vs. globophobia, as some pundits did during the 1999 WTO protests, the real debate should be between globalization-from-above, or the process led by and for the benefit of wealthy elites, and globalization-from-below, the cross-border mass movement of people struggling for human rights, environmental protection, and democracy.

As for the way to win the debate--and the world--for the from-below side, Brecher and Costello advocated "the Lilliput strategy," or a web of local, regional, national, and international efforts that challenge the institutions of global capital and assert democratic alternatives. In addition to the old adage, "think globally, act locally," it would be necessary to "think locally, and act globally."

The late '90s gave plenty of examples of Lilliputians at work: farmers attacking bio-engineered food, religious groups calling for elimination of the foreign debts of the world's poorest nations, students demanding their colleges dissociate themselves from apparel companies that profit from sweatshops, and protesters marching outside meetings of the WTO, G-8, IMF, and World Economic Forum.

"The movement that developed in response to globalization from above has tended to formulate its objectives in negative terms: block NAFTA, stop the MAI, end the World Bank support for big dams, prevent a new round of the WTO," caution Brecher, Costello, and Smith. What they set out to do in their compact but ambitious new book is to set forth both a strategy for the movement, and a program for it to rally behind.

Their program has seven principles:

• Upward leveling of environmental, social, and human rights standards, instead of the "race to the bottom";
• Democratization of institutions at every level;
• Decision making as close as possible to those affected;
• Equalization of wealth and power;
• Environmental sustainability;
• Development based on meeting human and environmental needs; and
• Protection against global boom and bust.

The program is more a synthesis of Lilliputian demands than a new platform. The authors recognize it will not come about based on the power of good ideas, or the good will of the elite. Instead, realization of the democratic vision that underlies their goals "presupposes that the problems of globalization can only be corrected through a profound shift of wealth and power. And it asserts that the necessary changes will not be brought about by the purveyors of globalization from above, but rather by the united action of those challenging their power."

Easier said than done, of course. One strength of Globalization from Below is its grounding in the history of social movements, the power of the people "that is repeatedly forgotten, to be rediscovered every time a new social movement arises." Drawing on the work of Gene Sharp and other theorists, the authors suggest that the movement for globalization from below can succeed by withdrawing cooperation from the institutions that sit at the top of the global order. In general, the public--even in the United States--is sympathetic with the movement's perspective, they assert. Actions should be oriented in part to winning over larger segments of public opinion, gaining active allies and passive sympathizers, progressively de-legitimizing the institutions which protect undemocratic power.

The strategy requires work at many levels, including both the strengthening of global governance and increased organization of civil society. It cannot succeed within one village or one country. Nor can it succeed by eliminating entities like the IMF or WTO, which serve the interests of global capital, but do not generate them. ("Globalization was not caused--even though it was accelerated--by the WTO or NAFTA," write the authors. "And globalization will continue even if such institutions are abolished.") In a world in which capital can--and will--move at the click of a mouse, there is a need for supra-national regulation at the same time there is a need for community-based institutions which serve local needs.

"No one campaign can represent all the interests and accomplish all the goals of the movement as a whole." Together, though, campaigns both global and local can succeed if they:

• "unify the concerns and approaches of different parts of the movement,"
• "appeal to the uncommitted for their support,"
• "fragment, neutralize, delegitimate, or even win over parts of the opposition," and
• "propose good solutions to the problems of the real world."

Having read Globalization from Below, my friend David recalled the 1973 murderous coup that overthrew the democratically elected Allende government in Chile, and installed the Pinochet regime which ushered in many of today's neo-liberal programs. The people who control most of the world's wealth do not take kindly to movements that aim to equalize global wealth and power. The stakes are high.

Brecher, Costello, and Smith wrote their new book after the 1999 Seattle protests that shook the WTO and gave the movement a sense of its power. The advocates of globalization from below have the attention of the elite (the next WTO summit is planned for Qatar, where political demonstrations, unions, and human rights groups are prohibited), and are in a position to gain the attention and support of broad sectors of the public. Globalization from Below doesn't have all the answers, but it gives the movement for globalization from below some solid analysis to build upon.

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