Antiglobalism is ... Antiglobalism: a description, a history of movement

Antiglobalism is a social movement that arose at the turn of the 21st century and aimed against neoliberal globalization based on the promotion of free markets and free trade.

What is globalization?

A common theme raised by the theorists of the current Giddens, Castells and Harvey is the idea that modern technologies, such as computers, accelerate the development of social relations and make them more flexible. The history of modern society is the history of globalization and technological acceleration of transport (data, capital, goods, people) that made the world less. Technology, reducing distances, more and more effectively mediate social relations. Progress led to the separation of information from its carriers, as the speed of its propagation grew faster than the speed of moving bodies. Transport and communication technologies (railroad, telegraph, radio, car, television, aviation, digital computer communications and network technologies) increased the speed of capital, goods, food and information. The earth has become a global communications network, which has an impact on all spheres of society. Information today is not connected with a specific locality: it can not be limited territorially, and it does not depend on distances. High technologies contribute to the delocalization of communication in the sense of spatial and temporal distances.

The dominant form is neoliberal globalization. According to critics, it is aimed at creating a foundation for the economy, which allows you to increase profits by minimizing investment costs, reducing social security and preaching individualism. With the advent of neo-liberalism, economic logic is increasingly dominant in society-the logic of goods and the accumulation of financial capital.

Against globalism are both right-wing and left-wing activists.

Right anti-globalization: its causes and manifestations

Extremely right-wing groups, such as the British National Party, the National Democratic Party of Germany, the National Front in France and the Austrian Freedom Party, see globalization as a threat to the local economy and national identity. They argue that each country should independently control its economy, and immigration should be strictly limited to guarantee the national identity threatened by the processes of globalization. The anti-globalism of the right is aimed at combating ideology promoted by Zionism, Marxism and liberalism. In their understanding, globalization is presented as a worldwide conspiracy against national self-consciousness, Western culture or white man.

Such arguments often have racist and anti-Semitic overtones. For the right, neoliberal globalization is not the result of the structural logic of capitalism, but rather the result of the conspiratorial political plan of powerful elites. Conservatives do not advocate alternative globalism, and their antiglobalism as a means of solving the problems caused by the dominant form of globalization, offers nationalism and particularism.

Left aniglobalism

Much more important in terms of the number of activists and public attention is left anti-globalization. It attracted public attention during the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in November-December 1999, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington in April 2000 and in Prague in September 2000, the countries " The G8 in Genoa in July 2001, and also thanks to the annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, which is held in opposition to the meetings of the World Economic Forum. The reasons for left-wing antiglobalism, according to the ideologists of the movement, lie in the capitalist logic underlying globalization - it leads to asymmetric power relations both within the country and throughout the world and turns into the product various aspects of life, including health, education and culture.

Alternative Globalization

Antiglobalism is a term that brings a misunderstanding, because the movement is not purely defensive and reactive, but rather advocates for world democracy and justice. Therefore, it is better characterized by such concepts as the movement for alternative or democratic globalization.

The World Wide Web

Transnational protest movement, which is global in nature and has a decentralized, networked form of organization, is formed mainly through the Internet. With its help, protests are organized online and around the world, the strategy of struggle is discussed, political events and past protests are covered. For this movement, characterized by a high degree of openness, accessibility and globality, Internet forms of protest are characteristic, which can be called cyber protests or cyberactivism, mailing lists, web forums, chats, alternative media and media projects, such as Indymedia.

Coalition coalition

Antiglobalism (and alter globalization) is characterized by pluralism and, to a certain extent, contradictoriness. The groups involved include traditional and autonomous trade unions, creative collectives, landless peasants, indigenous people, socialists, communists, anarchists, Trotskyists, environmentalists, feminists, Third World initiatives, human rights activists, students, believers, traditional leftist parties, critically Minded intellectuals from around the world. Antiglobalism is a global network of networks, a movement of social movements, a worldwide protest movement and a coalition of coalitions. It aims at restoring the commonality of goods and services, which are increasingly being appropriated through agreements such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

Unlimited network

Michael Hardt and Tony Negri used the term "multitude" to describe the anti-globalization movement as a totality of individuals who act as a single decentralized body, a polyphonic dialogue, a composite unified force of world democracy controlled from below, an open society and a direct democratic leadership of all for all. The set, according to pro-Marxist philosophers, is a wide open, unlimited network that encourages work and life together.

Unity in Differences

Because of its structure and diversity, the movement is non-regulatory and decentralized. They can not be governed and lead. The unity of this set arises through a general mobilization against the neo-liberal aggravation of global problems. The various questions and problems of the respective groups are due to the fact that they are caused by capitalist globalization, and the anti-globalization of this movement, its goals and practices are not homogeneous. There is a big difference between reformist and revolutionary activists, between non-violent and belligerent methods of protest. Another difference concerns those groups that advocate strengthening the regulation of capitalism at the local level, and those who seek to establish world democracy instead of national sovereignty.

As a collective political force, which consists of a multitude of interrelated non-identical parts, the movement can generally be viewed as a desire for global democracy, justice and the realization of human rights. It tries to draw public attention to the lack of democracy in international organizations and put pressure on support for the democratization of dominant institutions.

"Empire"

Antiglobalism is a spontaneous, decentralized, networked, self-organizing movement based on the democracy of the broad masses. His thinkers see this organizational form as an expression of the changing organizational features of society, which is increasingly becoming a flexible, decentralized, transnational, networked system. Capitalist globalization, they believe, led to the establishment of a world system of domination, which is strictly determined by economic interests. Hardt and Negri call this decentralized flexible networked world capitalist system "empire." The empire is a global system of capitalist domination. It is based on a crisis of national sovereignty, deregulation of international markets and intervention by the world's police forces, as well as mobility, decentralization, flexibility and the network nature of capital and production.

Lower self-organization

The emergence of a decentralized global empire, according to Hardt and Negri, is hampered by a decentralized global protest movement that requires global participation and cooperation and a more democratic, just and sustainable globalization. It is organized on the principle of network self-organization. For many activists, antiglobalism and its manifestations anticipate the emergence of the form of a future society as an integrative and representative democracy. The movement expresses the desire for a society in which power does not determine the behavior of people. They themselves define and organize themselves. The movement is directed against globalization from above through the formation of self-organized forms from below.

ATTAS

Probably the most famous anti-globalization group is ATTAS (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Assistance to Citizens), which exists in more than 30 countries. The organization believes that financial globalization creates less secure and less equal conditions for people, defending the interests of global corporations and financial markets. The main requirement of ATTAS is the introduction of the Tobin tax, a tax on foreign exchange transactions. The organization claims to represent tens of thousands of members in 40 countries.