It is no coincidence that a New Labour government which has so consistently sided with the bosses at home should also play a leading role in promoting the neo-liberal policies of the World Bank, World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund on an international level.
The WB and IMF in particular have become by-words for austerity, welfare cuts, privatisation and plunging living standards imposed on third world countries through their "structural adjustment programmes". The WTO epitomises the global high command of free market capitalism, seeking to break down any obstacle to the domination of western banks and multinational corporations.
New Labour’s eagerness to embrace the neo-liberal agenda is summed up in the long-awaited white paper on globalisation by international development secretary Clare Short. She denounced anti-capitalist protestors, and claimed that to dismantle the WB, IMF and WTO could unleash a new wave of protectionism. Promoting her document, piously entitled "Eliminating World Poverty", she argued with no apparent sense of irony for a traditional reformist approach, claiming that:
"Globalisation brings with it opportunities and risks. If the poorest people and countries can be included in the global economy on more beneficial terms, it could lead to a rapid reduction in global poverty. But if we go on as we are the poor will become more marginalised." (Guardian Dec 12 2000)
But the experience from the last few years is that as globalisation gathers strength, and as the IMF and WB force home their structural adjustment programmes, the gap between rich and poor on a world scale is widening. Poverty is not reducing but deepening. The very essence of globalisation is that it requires massive deregulation, and stripping away any of the protective measures which might ensure "more beneficial terms" and shield poorer countries from the full blast of international competition and market forces.
Socialists favour greater international co-operation, and recognise that the future must involve world-wide trading links. But we recognise that capitalism, itself a system of competition and exploitation, cannot eliminate the exploitation of dependent countries by imperialist finance capital, or establish genuine relations of fair trade between politically and economically unequal countries. The global bodies, all dominated by the US and other free market ideologues, are part of the problem, not the solution: they must be swept away.
The responsibility of the wealthy countries, which owe so much of their prosperity to the prolonged exploitation of the raw materials and cheap labour of the ex-colonial countries, is to assist in a massive programme of investment to help build an infrastructure of education, health, welfare services, transport and public services to enable the culture and creative talents of the people in each country to develop.
A new international mechanism must be developed to work for co-operation and fair trade agreements between the wealthier nations and those struggling to escape the poverty imposed upon them by imperialism.
At the same time, in many countries, we have seen widening resistances to the process of globalisation. The mobilisations that took place during the Seattle summit, which was supposed to open the Millennium Round, triggered a wave of resistance which expressed itself in a series of demonstrations including Washington, Millau, Melbourne, Prague and Nice.
These mobilisations reflect a growing radical anti-capitalist sentiment which has developed world-wide during the late 1990s. In many rich western countries mass (if minority) support, has developed especially among the young. But the driving force behind this phenomenon is the plight of the third-world in today’s globalised economy (both the neo-liberal agenda and the debt burden) and the anti-capitalist movements thrown up against globalisation, again particularly in the third world itself.
These struggles take a number of forms, from opposition to the debt and IMF and World Bank "structural adjustment programmes", to movements of the landless, and opposition to vast industrial developments which ravage people’s lives and destroy the environment. It was the refusal of 70 third-world countries to sign on the dotted line, many of them under pressure from mass movements at home, and backed up by the mass mobilisation outside the conference, which led to the collapse of the Millennium Round in Seattle.
It was these factors, in the context of the current political weakness of the traditional workers’ movement - which could not lead the resistance - which created the anti-globalisation movement in the form it has emerged.
We are told that there is a neo-liberal consensus, that we have seen the end of history. But it is a consensus between the most powerful elites, not a consensus between the elites and the mass of people. This reflects the polarisation between rich and poor which is taking place - both between the third world countries and the rich countries, and within the populations of each country.
The rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer, and the gap widens all the time. It is a defining feature of neo-liberal globalisation. As a result people are mobilising across the world. They know that privatisation makes things worse. They know that deregulation makes things worse. They know what happens when their economies are "structurally adjusted": they know an austerity programme ordered by the IMF when they see one, and they don’t like it.
It is this gap, between the neo-liberal project itself, and the alienation, exclusion, and poverty it creates, which is the driving force behind the anti-globalisation movement in all its diverse forms and the mood of anti-capitalism which has developed.
These anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist sentiments, therefore, are not a temporary political phenomenon. They are an important new development in world politics rooted in the real experience of people and the way that neo-liberalism, in its globalised form, has affected their lives. It is rooted in material political developments and the activists on the streets are reflecting widely shared feelings of large numbers of people.
It is true that the anti-globalisation movements retain a generally defensive character - resisting the destructive effects of globalisation - and that they still do not have a coherent political expression. But they do have very important, dynamic, offensive, aspects, rejecting the neo-liberal ideological and social order, defending the environment and developing new forms of action and solidarity.
They have created a force which, during the second half of the 1990s, is helping to redress the balance of forces back towards the working class and its allies. This has highlighted the role of capitalism’s supranational institutions in a way which has never happened before.
One year after Seattle the third world countries are standing firm and refusing further negotiations without a fundamental review of WTO agreements and changes to its structures. There is little sign, however, that the WTO will comply: it is pushing for a new round of negotiations later in 2001, although at the moment it is having difficulty finding a host country prepared to take responsibility for the inevitable battles with the anti-globalisation forces.
And sections of the trade unions have begun to respond to this movement (as we saw in Seattle and Nice) despite the politics of nationalism and protectionism which often dominate them at the top. There is not only growing support for the anti-globalisation movement in the unions, but strike action is increasingly becoming internationalised. The recent General Motors strike across a number of European countries was unique in its character and follows previous actions by Renault workers.