Ref. :  000002927
Date :  2002-03-04
langue :  Anglais
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Solidarity

Solidarity

Source :  Michael Löwy


Resistance to Neoliberal capitalist globalisation, to the incommensurate power of the multinationals and financial markets, the oukases of the IMF and WTO… since Seattle (1999), a vast social movement on a planetary scale, at the heart of which organises little by little the globalisation of solidarities. This movement marks itself out with its resolutely universalist character of diverse outdated ‘antiglobalisation’ protests, fundamentalist, nationalist, xenophobic or intolerant, of an ethnic or religious nature – of which the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York (11 September 2001) appears the most spectacular example.

This movement is not merely abstractly ‘antiglobalist’. It is opposed to the liberal and capitalist model of ‘corporate globalisation’ with its cortege of injustices and catastrophes: growing inequalities between North and South, unemployment, social exclusion, environmental destruction and imperial wars. Its aim is not a return to the nation, ethnicity, tribe or religious community, but another globalisation (‘another world is possible!’) was the slogan of the Porto Alegre World Social Forum, which held for the second time in February 2002, gathered nearly 80,000 people together. Rather than ‘antiglobalist’, this movement could be termed alterglobalist.

The solidarities that arise within this vast network - often in the large street demonstration, as in Seattle (1999), Prague (2000), Genoa (2001), as in collective discussion groups such as the World Social Forum – are of a new order, different from those that characterised the mobilisations of the 60s and 70s.

Then, international solidarity rallied in support of liberation movements, whether they are in Southern countries – Algerian, Cuban, and Vietnamese Revolutions – or in Eastern Europe, with the Polish dissidents or the Prague Spring. Later in the 80s, it was solidarity with the Sandinists in Nicaragua, or Solidarnosc in Poland.

This generous and fraternal tradition of solidarity with the oppressed, has not disappeared, far from it, in the new movement against corporate globalisation which began in the 90s. A clear example of this is the sympathy and the support to neozapatism, since the uprising of the Chiapas indigenous people on the 1st of January 1994. But, here we saw something different occur, a change in perspective. In 1996, the zapatist army of national liberation (EZLN) called together in the Chiapas Mountains an Intercontinental Meeting- ironically called ‘intergalactic’ in certain Sub-commandante Marcos speeches – against neoliberalism and for Humanity. The thousands of participants, from 40 countries, who attended this meeting – which can be considered as a forerunner to what would later be called ‘the people of Seattle’ – had certainly come here through solidarity with the zapatists. But the aim of the meeting, defined by the latter, was much greater:
la recherche de convergences dans la lutte commune contre un adversaire commun, le néolibéralisme, et le débat sur les alternatives possibles pour l’Humanité.

Voici donc la nouvelle caractéristique des solidarités qui se tissent au sein de, ou autour du mouvement de résistance globale à la globalisation capitaliste:
The fight for objectives common to all – for example, the taxation of speculative capital flows, abolition of tax havens, the failure of the WTO, the moratorium on GMOs, equality of salary for women- and the search for new paradigms for civilisation. In other words, rather than a solidarity with, it is a solidarity between diverse organisations, social movements or political forces from different countries or continents, which help each other and come together in the same fight, faced with a planetary enemy.

To give an example: the International countryside network Via Campesina includes movements as diverse as the French Confédération Paysanne, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores sem Terra (MST) of Brazil or rural associations in India. These organisations provide mutual support, exchange their experiences, and act together against neoliberalist policies and the adversaries that they have in common: the agricultural industry’s multinationals, the seed producers monopoly, the transgenic products makers, the large landowners. Their solidarity is reciprocal and together they constitute one of the most powerful and active components of the global movement against capitalist globalisation. A component which is not only concerned with immediate demands, but also the projects for alternative societies.

Other examples could be cited from the unionist, feminist – the Global March of Women-, ecological or political domains. Certainly, the revitalisation process for former solidarities and the invention of new solidarities is only just beginning. It is fragile, limited, uncertain and clearly incapable, for now, to put the crushing domination of the global capital and planetary hegemony of neoliberalism in danger. It is nonetheless the strategic location for the development of the internationalism of the future and, maybe, a new paradigm of civilisation: the civilisation of solidarity.


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