The rising tide of economic nationalism

As the global economic crisis continues to deepen, the unmistakable stench of economic nationalism is on the rise around the world. Confronted with collapsing industries and growing anger over job losses, governments are reaching for protectionist measures despite the disastrous consequences of such beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the 1930s. At the G-20 summit in mid-November, the leaders of the world’s largest economies pledged not to raise barriers to trade and investment—even those allowed under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules—for a year. The joint communiqué also promised to restart the failed Doha round of trade talks as a means of boosting world trade. However, as the Financial Times noted this week: “The solemn pledge intended to bind its signatories for a year lasted less than 36 hours before Russia said it would go ahead with planned increases in car tariffs. Moscow’s violation of the pledge was followed by several other G-20 countries—India, Brazil, Indonesia and Argentina—all pushing for increased protection.” Since then protectionist measures under various guises have been enacted in country after country, including the US and the European Union. As for the Doha round, WTO director general Pascal Lamy last month called off a planned ministerial meeting aimed at kick-starting negotiations, declaring that there was “an unacceptably high risk of failure which could damage not only the round but also the WTO system”. This week, Lamy tried to sound a more optimistic note. In an interview on British television, he described the completion of the round as “low-hanging fruit” and emphasised that 80 percent of the package had been finished. But there is no sign of any end to the bitter wrangling over the “remaining 20 percent” that led to the collapse of talks last year. The new Obama administration spurred on the rising tide of protectionism with the comments last week of Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner accusing China of manipulating its currency to boost exports. Designating Beijing as a “currency manipulator” would allow the White House to invoke a broad range of punitive tariffs and other economic penalties against China under US trade legislation. The Democrats in the House of Representatives went one step further by including a “Buy American” provision in Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package approved on Wednesday. The clause, which requires infrastructure projects funded by the package to use only US-made iron and steel, has provoked protests from European steelmakers. Democrat senator Byron Dorgan is proposing a broader measure to exclude most foreign-made manufactured goods when the package reaches the Senate. Such measures threaten to provoke escalating retaliation and a full-blown trade war. A comment in the US journal Foreign Policy warned that the “explicitly protectionist language” contained in the package would “certainly be taken as a bad sign by the rest of the world. The world can deal with a protectionist India or Indonesia. The trading system will have much more trouble if the United States starts to renege on its traditional leadership role.” Cautions about growing protectionism have been sounded already at this week’s Davos Economic Summit, including by the Chinese and Russian premiers. Igor Yurgens, a senior adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, gave vent to some of the bitterness in Moscow and other capitals over the impact of the various US rescue packages. “Of course, [Mr Obama] expects the Chinese or Russians to buy US Treasury bills [to fund the massive US deficit]. That is pretty selfish and philosophically it is protectionism,” he declared. Tit-for-tat trade measures and legal challenges are on the increase. In only its second case before the WTO, China pressed ahead this week with a complaint against US measures restricting the import of steel pipes, tyres and woven sacks. After Beijing initiated the dispute last September, Washington began legal action against subsidised Chinese branded goods. China, which is the world’s second largest exporter after Germany, has been the target of seven WTO disputes, all of which involve the US. There is no shortage of economic commentators issuing dire warnings about the potential for protectionism to catapult the world economy into a depression akin to the 1930s. International trade is slowing dramatically, with the IMF forecasting this week that world trade volumes would contract 2.8 percent in 2009 after rising 4.1 percent last year. Nevertheless, as the global economy shrinks, the capitalist class in every country is driven to foist the crisis onto its international rivals as well as the working class. In 1930, many foresaw the disastrous consequences of the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which increased nearly 900 American import duties. Some 1,028 US economists signed a petition pleading with US President Herbert Hoover not to sign the bill into law. The Economist magazine recently cited the comments of Thomas Lamont, a partner of J.P. Morgan, who recalled: “I almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley Smoot Tariff. That act intensified nationalism all over the world.” Nevertheless, Hoover signed the law, provoking an avalanche of retaliation, the collapse of world trade and the formation of antagonistic currency blocs that set the course for the Second World War. While those promoting “free trade” speak for the bankers, financiers and more globally competitive sections of capital, there is a definite constituency for protectionism among less competitive industries. The whipping up of economic nationalism also serves a vital ideological function in diverting the anger of working people over job losses and the precipitous decline in living standards outwards rather than at the real source of the crisis—the profit system itself. Those who push this reactionary poison in the working class are the trade unions and their various middle class radical allies. Far from defending jobs and conditions, economic nationalism goes hand-in-hand with the continuing impoverishment of working people. Whether in the US, Europe or any other country, the same union bureaucrats who have presided over the decimation of manufacturing industry over the past three decades now insist on the further sacrifice of wages and conditions as part of the protectionist packages to defend American or European companies. The bailout plan for the US auto industry backed by the United Auto Workers is conditional on a savage restructuring of the industry that will result in plant closures, layoffs and the systematic lowering of wages. In France, Germany and other European countries, the unions are collaborating with governments and corporations in plans to defend “their” auto industries, using the threat of job losses to enlist the support of workers. The logic of economic nationalism is class collaboration in a dog-eat-dog competition that pits workers in one country against their class brothers and sisters around the world. The end result is trade war and military conflict. The working class cannot defend its interests under the banner of either protectionism or “free trade”. The precondition for any genuine struggle to defend jobs and living standards is the political independence of workers from all wings of the capitalist class. The natural allies of workers in advanced economies such as US and Europe are workers in cheap labour platforms like China and India who are often exploited by the same global corporations and share a common class interest in abolishing the anarchic profit system and replacing it with a world-planned socialist economy. That is the perspective advanced by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

As the global economic crisis continues to deepen, the unmistakable stench of economic nationalism is on the rise around the world. Confronted with collapsing industries and growing anger over job losses, governments are reaching for protectionist measures despite the disastrous consequences of such beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the 1930s. At the G-20 summit in mid-November, the leaders of the world’s largest economies pledged not to raise barriers to trade and investment—even those allowed under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules—for a year. The joint communiqué also promised to restart the failed Doha round of trade talks as a means of boosting world trade. However, as the Financial Times noted this week: “The solemn pledge intended to bind its signatories for a year lasted less than 36 hours before Russia said it would go ahead with planned increases in car tariffs. Moscow’s violation of the pledge was followed by several other G-20 countries—India, Brazil, Indonesia and Argentina—all pushing for increased protection.” Since then protectionist measures under various guises have been enacted in country after country, including the US and the European Union. As for the Doha round, WTO director general Pascal Lamy last month called off a planned ministerial meeting aimed at kick-starting negotiations, declaring that there was “an unacceptably high risk of failure which could damage not only the round but also the WTO system”. This week, Lamy tried to sound a more optimistic note. In an interview on British television, he described the completion of the round as “low-hanging fruit” and emphasised that 80 percent of the package had been finished. But there is no sign of any end to the bitter wrangling over the “remaining 20 percent” that led to the collapse of talks last year. The new Obama administration spurred on the rising tide of protectionism with the comments last week of Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner accusing China of manipulating its currency to boost exports. Designating Beijing as a “currency manipulator” would allow the White House to invoke a broad range of punitive tariffs and other economic penalties against China under US trade legislation. The Democrats in the House of Representatives went one step further by including a “Buy American” provision in Obama’s $825 billion stimulus package approved on Wednesday. The clause, which requires infrastructure projects funded by the package to use only US-made iron and steel, has provoked protests from European steelmakers. Democrat senator Byron Dorgan is proposing a broader measure to exclude most foreign-made manufactured goods when the package reaches the Senate. Such measures threaten to provoke escalating retaliation and a full-blown trade war. A comment in the US journal Foreign Policy warned that the “explicitly protectionist language” contained in the package would “certainly be taken as a bad sign by the rest of the world. The world can deal with a protectionist India or Indonesia. The trading system will have much more trouble if the United States starts to renege on its traditional leadership role.” Cautions about growing protectionism have been sounded already at this week’s Davos Economic Summit, including by the Chinese and Russian premiers. Igor Yurgens, a senior adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, gave vent to some of the bitterness in Moscow and other capitals over the impact of the various US rescue packages. “Of course, [Mr Obama] expects the Chinese or Russians to buy US Treasury bills [to fund the massive US deficit]. That is pretty selfish and philosophically it is protectionism,” he declared. Tit-for-tat trade measures and legal challenges are on the increase. In only its second case before the WTO, China pressed ahead this week with a complaint against US measures restricting the import of steel pipes, tyres and woven sacks. After Beijing initiated the dispute last September, Washington began legal action against subsidised Chinese branded goods. China, which is the world’s second largest exporter after Germany, has been the target of seven WTO disputes, all of which involve the US. There is no shortage of economic commentators issuing dire warnings about the potential for protectionism to catapult the world economy into a depression akin to the 1930s. International trade is slowing dramatically, with the IMF forecasting this week that world trade volumes would contract 2.8 percent in 2009 after rising 4.1 percent last year. Nevertheless, as the global economy shrinks, the capitalist class in every country is driven to foist the crisis onto its international rivals as well as the working class. In 1930, many foresaw the disastrous consequences of the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which increased nearly 900 American import duties. Some 1,028 US economists signed a petition pleading with US President Herbert Hoover not to sign the bill into law. The Economist magazine recently cited the comments of Thomas Lamont, a partner of J.P. Morgan, who recalled: “I almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley Smoot Tariff. That act intensified nationalism all over the world.” Nevertheless, Hoover signed the law, provoking an avalanche of retaliation, the collapse of world trade and the formation of antagonistic currency blocs that set the course for the Second World War. While those promoting “free trade” speak for the bankers, financiers and more globally competitive sections of capital, there is a definite constituency for protectionism among less competitive industries. The whipping up of economic nationalism also serves a vital ideological function in diverting the anger of working people over job losses and the precipitous decline in living standards outwards rather than at the real source of the crisis—the profit system itself. Those who push this reactionary poison in the working class are the trade unions and their various middle class radical allies. Far from defending jobs and conditions, economic nationalism goes hand-in-hand with the continuing impoverishment of working people. Whether in the US, Europe or any other country, the same union bureaucrats who have presided over the decimation of manufacturing industry over the past three decades now insist on the further sacrifice of wages and conditions as part of the protectionist packages to defend American or European companies. The bailout plan for the US auto industry backed by the United Auto Workers is conditional on a savage restructuring of the industry that will result in plant closures, layoffs and the systematic lowering of wages. In France, Germany and other European countries, the unions are collaborating with governments and corporations in plans to defend “their” auto industries, using the threat of job losses to enlist the support of workers. The logic of economic nationalism is class collaboration in a dog-eat-dog competition that pits workers in one country against their class brothers and sisters around the world. The end result is trade war and military conflict. The working class cannot defend its interests under the banner of either protectionism or “free trade”. The precondition for any genuine struggle to defend jobs and living standards is the political independence of workers from all wings of the capitalist class. The natural allies of workers in advanced economies such as US and Europe are workers in cheap labour platforms like China and India who are often exploited by the same global corporations and share a common class interest in abolishing the anarchic profit system and replacing it with a world-planned socialist economy. That is the perspective advanced by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Gloom, perplexity, divisions dominate World Economic Forum in Davos

The World Economic Forum was first launched by its founder and still-president, the Swiss economist and businessman, Klaus Schwab, in 1971 in the midst of a mounting financial crisis that led in August of that year to the collapse of the Bretton Woods System, the international monetary framework, based on US dollar-gold convertibility, that had undergirded the post-war economic expansion. In the ensuing years, the forum developed into a semi-official gathering of business chiefs and government officials that discussed and debated both international economic and political issues. In the more recent period, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become a venue to affirm the supposed triumph of the "free enterprise system," with American investment bankers holding court, surrounded by a small army of economists and media, complemented by film stars and other celebrities. One year ago, after the initial collapse of the US housing market and eruption of the credit crisis, concern at the forum over these worrisome developments, which had been almost universally unanticipated, was tempered by assurances from American bankers and politicians that the disorder would be quickly resolved and that, in the worst case scenario, a US recession would be mild and brief. Most of the discussion centered on the widely held notion that the problems in US financial markets would not spread to Europe or Asia, due to the phenomenon of "decoupling." Robert Greenhill, the forum's chief business officer, set the tone for this year's forum by declaring, "The meeting was founded at a time of division and uncertainty in the 1970s and this year is a return to its roots. People are coming to compare notes on what they need to do to emerge from a serious crisis." Just how serious and universal a crisis was underscored on the opening day of the forum by the International Monetary Fund's downwardly revised estimate of world economic growth for 2009 of a mere 0.5 percent, including major contractions in the US, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. That followed the previous week's IMF forecast that world trade volumes would shrink 2.8 percent in 2009. Also on Wednesday, the International Labour Organization warned that some 51 million jobs could be lost worldwide this year. The two dominant and interrelated features of this year's forum are a general sense of shock and near-panic over the inexorable and rapid manner in which the crisis has overtaken the efforts of central banks and governments to shore up the banks and revive economic activity—amounting to trillions of dollars in loans, guarantees and cash infusions—and the devastating loss of American prestige and credibility. The Financial Times on Wednesday wrote: "Most notably, faith that a mix of globalization, financial innovation and free-market competition would build a better financial system has withered away, as bank losses have piled up. Thus the critical question that now hangs over this year's meeting at Davos is: ‘What, if anything, can replace this creed?' " Along similar lines, the New York Times on Friday quoted James Rosenfeld, a co-founder or Cambridge Energy Research Associates, as saying, "We've all been building this big, integrated financial system. We didn't consider what would happen when it disintegrated." As for the position of the United States, the opening day of the forum was given over to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, both of whom lambasted the US, without directly naming the target of their attacks, for precipitating the world crisis, and called for measures to lessen US dominance on world financial markets. Wen urged an expansion of regulatory "coverage of the international financial system, with particular emphasis on strengthening the supervision on major reserve currencies." He said the financial crisis was "attributable to inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies and their unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption, excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit." He also denounced "the failure of financial supervision." Putin was, if anything, more blunt. He attacked the concept of a "unipolar world," called for an end to the privileged position of the US dollar as the world's major reserve currency, and noted that "just a year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the US economy's fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects." He continued, "Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist. In just 12 months, they have posted losses exceeding the profits they made in the last 25 years." Alan Blinder, the Princeton economist and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, responded, "The sad thing is that we might have scoffed at this a while ago. But we really dragged the world down." The Obama administration, for its part, signaled its disinterest in any serious international coordination or financial regulation by failing to send a single high-ranking official to the forum. While an array of government leaders from around the world were in attendance, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, none of the top US delegates who had been advertised—chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Security Adviser General James Jones and chief of the US Central Command General David Petraeus—showed up. The virtual official boycott by the United States underscores the bitter tensions and divisions simmering beneath the diplomatic decorum of the forum. While general statements are being issued at Davos abjuring protectionism, and warnings are being made about the disastrous implications for the world economy of such policies, the reality is a growth of economic nationalism. Less than a week before the opening of the forum, US Treasury Secretary Geithner issued a provocative threat of possible trade sanctions against China, accusing the Chinese of "manipulating" their currency to obtain a trade advantage over the US. Steven Roach of Morgan Stanley Asia spoke at Davos of a "rising tide of economic nationalism." And delegates from so-called developing countries complained that the massive US deficits resulting from Obama's stimulus program and bank bailouts would suck up the bulk of available private credit on world markets. "Large economies are accessing international capital markets for themselves," said Trevor Manuel, the finance minister of South Africa. Ernesto Zedillo, the former Mexican president who was in power during that country's financial meltdown in 1994, said, "The US needs to show some proof they have a plan to get out of the fiscal problem. We, as developing countries, need to know we won't be crowded out of the capital markets, which is already happening." The New York Times cited Lord Adair Turner, the chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, as voicing similar concerns, speaking of "the risk of a new mercantilism" centered on credit availability rather than trade. These tensions erupted into the open on Thursday, when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed off the stage after an angry exchange with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, during a panel discussion on the Gaza crisis. Erdogan, whose government maintains close political and military ties with Israel, told Peres, "When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill." The Davos forum underscores the impossibility of developing a rational and coordinated international policy to resolve the economic crisis within the capitalist framework of private ownership of the means of production and finance and the division of the world between rival nation states. Putin, speaking as a defender of capitalism, referred to the financial parasitism that fueled the massive fortunes of the financial aristocracy over the past three decades as a "pyramid of expectations [that] would have collapsed sooner or later," and indicated who is to pay the price for its collapse: "This amounted to unearned wealth, a loan that will have to be repaid by future generations." Within the existing economic and political system, the only future is one of increasing poverty and repression and the growth of national antagonisms leading inevitably, as in the last great depression, to the horrors of global war. The specter haunting Davos is the emergence of an independent movement of the working class fighting to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist society based on the satisfaction of human needs, not private profit. The disintegration of the world economy poses with the greatest urgency the development of a unified struggle by the working class on the basis of an international socialist program.

Why the World Social Forum Needs to Be Less Like Neoliberalism

January is a special month for the global left. Every year at this time, progressives and activists convene at the World Social Forum, usually in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In January 2005, I too was eagerly awaiting my first trip to the Forum, imagining a week of cross-cultural communication, strategic organizing, and inspiring celebrations. Although I didn’t know exactly what to expect, I did know one thing – the Forum would be an alternative to neoliberalism. So why did I walk away from Porto Alegre worried mostly about the similarities between the Forum and neoliberalism? And is there still reason to be worried, as the 2006 Forum approaches? The World Social Forum (WSF) and neoliberalism seem to have little in common. Neoliberalism is the world’s dominant political and economic ideology, promoting a system of competitive individuals governed only by the invisible hand of the almighty market. The WSF is a "people’s alternative" to the elite World Economic Forum, bringing together thousands of people to fight against neoliberalism and build another world. Despite these apparent contradictions, however, the WSF and neoliberalism both claim to create unregulated "open space" – non-hierarchical physical and social space that permits free interaction. If neoliberalism strives for unregulated open space, should social forums as well? Or could social forums be more powerful forces for social change if we focused less on protecting them as unregulated open spaces, and more on planning them as equitable, educative, and democratic spaces? What Does the Social Forum Accomplish? Before judging what kind of space the Forum should be, we need to look at what the Forum actually accomplishes as it is. The 2005 WSF consisted of six days of panels, workshops, meetings, concerts, rallies, art events, eating, producing, shopping, gatherings, and parties. So what are the results of all this activity? Many people say that the Forum mainly serves to bring people together to exchange ideas. This may be true, but people often came together without talking, and exchanged ideas without listening. To be more specific, we can say that the Forum encourages existing actions, facilitates learning, establishes new connections, and organizes new actions. Speeches, personal testimonies, and mass rallies provide people with feelings of solidarity and excitement, encouraging them to continue in their struggles. Participants learn new information, ideas, and ways of thinking, in panels, workshops, information fairs, and informal discussions. They even learn how an alternative world might work by modeling it, through an on-site solidarity economy. The Forum establishes connections between people who otherwise might not have met, by bringing together activists from many different countries, movements, and issues. Perhaps most importantly, participants organize new networks, protests, websites, organizations, listservs, meetings and campaigns. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, the 2005 Forum only partly achieved these accomplishments. For example, it encouraged plenty of actions, but most of the actions were strictly Brazilian or Latin American. The vast majority of the participants were from Brazil. Asians, Africans, and low-income people from the North, however, were underrepresented. Perhaps this is not surprising, since the costs of participation, including plane tickets, were cheapest for Brazilians and most expensive for those who participated the least. Even those who were able to attend the Forum were unable to fully participate in many of its events. Panels and workshops were often cancelled, sometimes because of competition with larger organized events. Many participants were unable to participate in chosen sessions because of insufficient translation. At least half of the sessions were in Portuguese with no translation, and the primary language of each session was not always publicized in advance. Many people had difficulty hearing or sitting through the speakers, because of the excruciating mid-summer heat, noise from the fans, and sounds from neighboring sessions. And although there seemed to be as many women as men at the Forum, panel speakers were disproportionately male. With the majority of sessions either cancelled, without translation, or uncomfortable, many of the Forum’s activities were not very productive. People often drifted in and out of events, making focused discussion difficult. Few sessions encouraged participant mixing, networking, or dialogue. Most were dominated by panel presentations, and few provided time or space for organizing or groupwork. Participants therefore had to find time for organizing outside of the Forum’s packed schedule, in informal gatherings. The opportunities for learning were often limited. Most sessions approached learning from what popular educator Paulo Freire described as the "banking" method, with expert panelists attempting to deposit information in passive participants. People may have learned about solidarity economies by participating in one, but since there were few democratic decision-making processes, there were limited opportunities to learn about democracy. Perhaps more importantly, most decisions were therefore not very democratic, but were rather made by small groups of movement leaders meeting informally. The WSF accomplished much, but not as much as it could have. Most people were inspired, learned new information and established new connections. Many people also expressed frustration at not learning as much information, meeting as many contacts or engaging in as many productive discussions as expected. So why were the Forum’s accomplishments so limited? The Problems with Unregulated Open Space The Forum’s achievements and limitations are largely a result of the type of physical and social space that organizers planned. The WSF attempted to create unregulated open space for free and non-hierarchical communication, and to some extent it succeeded. Most events were organized independently by individual organizations or coalitions, with little external control. People were free to enter and leave any event and participate as desired. This freedom was at times empowering, inspiring, and magical. The Forum’s emphasis on unregulated open space, however, also contributed to some of the problems described above: inequitable participation, unproductive activities, and undemocratic decision-making. These problems are similar to those of neoliberalism, and they can be traced to three false assumptions: regulation inherently limits free interaction, activities are more productive when left to individual discretion, and the guiding hands are neutral and benevolent. Because these assumptions are not always accurate, neither neoliberalism nor the WSF actually create spaces that are as open as claimed. By discouraging regulation, for example, neoliberalism and the WSF enable existing power hierarchies to decide economic and social interactions. For neoliberalism, reducing trade quotas, tariffs and regulations creates a more open, but not level, playing field on which more developed corporations of the North can more easily exploit less developed economies of the South. In Porto Alegre, unregulated workshop discussions and decision-making often enabled the most powerful participants to dominate – panelists, NGO experts, men, loud or confident voices, and (when the social forum is in Brazil) Portuguese speakers. Unregulated open space encourages more individual autonomy over productive activities and less coordinated planning, which can lead to wasted time and energy. As neoliberal privatization and deregulation download state planning to the market, increasingly independent corporations become increasingly wasteful (Enron, Bechtel, the US healthcare system). At the WSF, insufficient coordination between sessions led to many repetitive or cancelled workshops, while the lack of structure within sessions often made it more difficult to learn, network, and organize together. For both neoliberalism and the WSF, the power of small coordinating groups deters democratic decision-making. The architects of neoliberalism (WTO, IMF, World Bank) claim that they only facilitate the natural and inevitable course of international development, even as their decisions shape the basic conditions of this development. The WSF is allegedly driven by its participants, but logistic decisions (Forum location, dates, registration fees) of the self-selected Organizing Committee and International Council dramatically affect participation. For example, the main session organized to discuss the future of the WSF was only in Portuguese. What Kind of Space Should a Social Forum Be? If the emphasis on unregulated open space limits what the WSF can accomplish, what other kinds of space could overcome these limitations? If social forums are meant to model and lead us towards the world we want, would this world be anything more than an unregulated open space? If neoliberalism strives for unregulated open space, social forums should strive for something more. The forum participants may not agree on specific goals, but after five years we should be able to say something about another world besides that it is possible. To start, let us say that social forums and the world they seek to create should be spaces of equity, education, and democracy. By creating more equitable, educative, and democratic forums, we might learn how to build a more equitable, educative, and democratic world. 1) Equitable Space Social forums should correct resource and power inequities by promoting equitable participation. They can encourage more equitable attendance by charging higher registration fees for those with the greatest ability to attend and offering subsidies for those with the least ability to attend. This means not only charging higher fees for participants from the North, but also higher fees for participants with low travel costs and more subsidies for those coming from far away. Locating forums in cities that are cheap airline destinations would enable more people with few resources to attend. Forums could also facilitate more equitable participation amongst participants. They could promote gender equity by asking that half of speakers or facilitators at any session be women. Requesting that official speakers talk for no more than half of the session time would enable more people to participate in discussion. Higher registration fees or more volunteers could be used to provide interpreters at every event, so that participants have a more equal opportunity to understand and contribute. 2) Educative Space The spaces and activities of forums should be designed to actively facilitate learning. In 2005, the Forum moved towards more educative spaces by eliminating large plenaries; next it could request that sessions include small group discussions or activities, to encourage social learning through dialogue and deliberation. The WSF could ask session organizers to provide written or visual materials (handouts, flipcharts, pictures, PowerPoint presentations) to make information more accessible to more people in more ways. We might also recognize that formal sessions are not the only way to learn, and do more to facilitate informal social interactions throughout the Forum site and host city. The site’s discussion spaces, information tents, art exhibits, and vendors fostered more learning than many panels. Future forums could create more opportunities for informal education by further integrating educational art, movies, and popular theater into the world of panels and workshops. We could also think more about how forums could better facilitate the education of those not present, in the surrounding city and world. 3) Democratic Space Social forums should encourage and facilitate democratic decision-making. Neoliberalism is based on decisions imposed from above by the market, so alternatives need to forge more democratic decisions from below. To democratize decision-making within forums, the forum coordinators could provide session organizers with information on democratic decision-making processes, and then ask them to identify not only their session’s format but also its decision-making process. To democratize decision-making about forums, we could draw on the multi-layered decision-making of Porto Alegre’s other acclaimed innovation, participatory budgeting. For example, participants of local forums could elect delegates to regional forum councils and participants of regional forums could elect delegates to an international forum council, to help decision-making filter from the local to the global. So why has the WSF not more actively promoted equitable, educative, and democratic space? Some of its leaders have strongly opposed the Forum being anything but neutral space. Like neoliberalism, however, the Forum’s open space is not actually neutral. Its unregulated interactions and predetermined shape empower certain participants and exclude others. Without formal rules and structures, open space is only truly open for those with the power to decide the unwritten rules and control the informal structures. Open space, though, does not need to be unregulated. Rather, planning and organization can make it more genuinely open. In fact, the Forum is already becoming more than open space. Its on-site solidarity economy empowers street vendors and cooperatives while banning corporations, in an attempt to regulate an inherently unequal playing field. To become a more powerful force for social change, the Forum must recognize and move beyond the limitations of unregulated open space. This debate is not only about the WSF, however. Local, regional, and national social forums face similar challenges. Other civil society and people’s convergences, even if they are not called social forums, must also decide what kind of spaces to be. The debate over the WSF’s open space therefore points to even broader questions: What kind of spaces should progressives create to communicate and work together? How can we plan spaces for social change?

MAKING FINANCE WORK FOR HUMANS

A bitter lessoon we have to learn the hard way The financial crisis is a systemic crisis that emerges in the context of global crises (climate, food, energy, social…) and of a new balance of power. It results from 30 years of transfer of income from labor towards capital. This tendency should be reversed. This crisis is the consequence of a capitalist system of production based on laissez-faire and fed by short term accumulation of profits by a minority, unequal redistribution of wealth, an unfair trade system, the perpetration and accumulation of irresponsible, ecological and illegitimate debt, natural resource plunder and the privatization of public services. This crisis affects the whole humanity, first of all the most vulnerable (workers, jobless, farmers, migrants, women…) and Southern countries, which are the victims of a crisis for which they are not at all responsible. The resources to get out of the crisis merely burden the public with the losses in order to save, with no real public benefit, a financial system that is at the root of the current cataclysm. Where are the resources for the populations which are the victims of the crisis? The world not only needs regulations, but also a new paradigm which puts the financial system at the service of a new international democratic system based on the satisfaction of human rights, decent work, food sovereignty, respect for the environment, cultural diversity, the social and solidarity economy and a new concept of wealth. Therefore, we demand to: • Put a reformed and democratized United Nations at the heart of the financial system reform, as the G20 is not the legitimate forum to resolve this systemic crisis. • Establish international permanent and binding mechanisms of control over capital flows. • Implement an international monetary system based on a new system of reserves, including the creation of regional reserve currencies in order to end the current supremacy of the dollar and to ensure international financial stability. • Implement a global mechanism of state and citizen control of banks and financial institutions. Financial intermediation should be recognized as a public service that is guaranteed to all citizens in the world and should be taken out of free trade agreements. • Prohibit hedge funds and over the counter markets, where derivatives and other toxic products are exchanged without any public control. • Eradicate speculation on commodities, first of all food and energy, by implementing public mechanisms of price stabilization. • Dismantle tax havens, sanction their users (individuals, companies, banks and financial intermediates) and create an international tax organization to combat tax competition and evasion. • Cancel unsustainable and illegitimate debt of impoverished countries and establish a system of democratic, accountable, fair sovereign borrowing and lending that serves sustainable and equitable development. • Establish a new international system of wealth sharing by implementing a progressive tax system at the national level and by creating global taxes (on financial transactions, polluting activities and high income) to finance global public goods. We call on NGOs, trade unions and social movements to converge in order to create a citizen struggle in favor of this new model. We urge them to mobilize all over the world, in particular in the face of the G20, from March 28th onwards.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

>>>> NIGERIA IMPOSES FOREIGN EXCHANGE CONTROLS The global financial crisis we are told is far removed from the realities of daily tarry in the developing world ,especially Africa but the decision of the the Nigerian Central bank to impose foreign exchange restriction shows that the threat ids much nearer than we have assumed up till now. Nigeria is the indispensable big brother we in Ghana cannot do without and when it sneezes we might want to take precaution.

MORE ACTION,LESS TALK

THE GOVERNING STYLE OF THE NEW PRESIDENT President Mill's withdrawal of the nomination of Moses Asaga's nomination as the minister designate for Works and housing is a clear indication of the style he intends to adopt for the next four years. During the electioneering campaign he promised to deal with any of his officials who will be corrupt and this has been a swift and ruthless example of how he intends to make good on his promise. Prior to this action many had berated the president of appearance "not-in-control" as a result of his inaction and absence from the public sphere. For almost week news on the activities of the president was scarce and valuable commodity and in a nation that has just gone through an era of incessant media use by the executive, it was a troubling sign. It only went further to deepen the rumors of his ill health and control by Rawlings. However when the act on Asaga emerged it sent the right signals and quietened the chatter. The Hon Asaga who was a member of the three-man economic Management Team was alleged to have signed a cheque for 25m Ghana Cedis to be disbursed to the beneficiaries of the much maligned Ex-Gratia package that was cooked the out-gone government without recourse to any one in the party or the Government. Mr Asaga exhibited poor judgment when he signed the cheque during the period when there was an angry public outcry over the Ex-gratia. President Mills duly exercised his executive powers and sacked the yet-to-confirmed minister as an example to all the rest. In the process he scored good political points and earned the praise of many including staunch opponents. His action and the manner of it shows the kind of president he will shape up to be; DOING MORE AND TALKING LESS.