4th/05/2004
(From the liner notes of Another World is Possible)
. . .

Partly as a consequence of developments in ICT, the concentration of capital and power has increased dramatically over the past two decades. A new leap forward occurred at the beginning of our millennium with the control scientists now have on bioengineering. The privatisation of the human genome and the generalisation of life patentability opens new prospects for the expansion of capitalism. A large-scale privatisation of genetic resources is on its way and will be favourable to the development of a more absolute kind of power than anything we have ever known in the course of History. A power that turns everything into commodities - words and objects, goods and services, nature and culture, bodies and minds.

[The end of globalisation is not so much to get hold of new countries as to get hold of new markets. The main concern of this modern form of power is not to get hold of new territories as was the case in colonial invasions but to get hold of riches.]

The new form of conquest called globalisation goes hand in hand with terrible destruction. Industries suddenly collapse, with the dreadful social misery that results from plant closures: massive unemployment, social exclusion, precarious living conditions, unbounded exploitation of men, women, and - worse still - of children (300 millions children are exploited in unprecedented brutal conditions).

Globalisation also means global plundering. Large corporations destroy the environment with disproportionate means; they unrestrainedly and unashamedly draw profit from natural resources which are the common good of humanity.

It also goes hand in hand with financial crime in business circles and with major banks recycling more than USD 1,000 bn a year, that is, more than the GNP of a third of mankind.

Such generalised commoditization of words and objects, goods and services, nature and culture, bodies and minds yields deeper and deeper inequalities. We knew that the gap between the haves and the have-nots had deepened during the two ultra liberal decades (1979-1999), but how could we imagine that it was as dramatic as it is ? Indeed we now find out that while in 1960, 20 % of the world population who lived in more affluent countries had an income that was 30 times higher than those who lived in poorer countries, in 2000 the ratio had become 85 to one. In over 70 countries the income per head is lower than what is used to be twenty years ago.... On a global scale, close to three bn people - half of the human population - live on less than 2 euros a day...

The abundance of goods has reached unprecedented levels, yet simultaneously the number of homeless, workless and starving people has never been so high either. Out of the 4.5 bn inhabitants in developing countries, about a third have no access to drinking water. A fifth of the children do not get enough calories or proteins. And some 2 bn people - a third of humankind -suffer from anemia.

Is such a situation unavoidable? It isn’t. According to the United Nations, 4 percent of the cumulated revenues of the 225 larger corporations in the world would be enough to satisfy the basic needs of the earth’s population (food, drinking water, education, health care).

Health and food requirements could be met for everybody on earth for only USD 13 bn a year, that is about what US and EU people spend on perfumes... (...)

The most affluent fifth of the earth’s citizens own 80% of its resources while the most deprived fifth have access to only 0.5%...

More and more of the latter now demand a "radical democracy" in which social and economic rights would be applied as well as political rights. When they vote, citizens no longer have any real effect on crucial decisions, now beyond their scope of influence. Economic decisions in particular are more and more disconnected from any social considerations, and decision-makers refuse to take responsibility for consequences following from adopting the dogma of globalisation - unemployment, pauperisation, exclusion, inequalities.

In the day to day operating of the EU, democracy often moves away from the foundations of the social contract and does not bat an eyelid at close to eighteen millions of unemployed and fifty millions of deprived people... In some allegedly democratic states a double-tier society is emerging under our very eyes, with people living on the revenues of capital on one hand and exploited workers or would-be workers on the other.....Capitalism again proves to be fully compatible with slavery whereas democracy should establish equal rights.

Is it at all surprising that over half of the population claim that such democracy is a sham ? That they feel that democracy is betrayed and confiscated by a limited number of privileged people?

On a global scale poverty is the rule and affluence is the exception. Inequalities have become one of the major structural features of the globalisation era. And they are getting deeper and deeper, with the rich ever farther from the poor. Some individuals are now richer than states: the property owned by the 15 richest people in the world amounts to more than the total GDP of subsaharan Africa... (...)

It is high time for us to acknowledge that another world is possible, and to establish another more fraternal economy that relies on sustainable development and focuses on human needs. And first we have to neutralise financial power. To take the financial circles apart we have to significantly tax revenues on capital and particularly speculative transactions on the currency market, via a Tobin-like tax.

To this programme we ought to add yet other emergency issues: cancelling the external debt contracted by countries of the South, doing away with tax havens, putting a stop to children’s slave labour, emancipating women on a global scale, implementing the precaution principle against all genetic engineering, banning flags of convenience in sea transport, etc. Such former utopias have become concrete political objectives for the new century. What is the name of this threshold moment when another world becomes possible? It has a beautiful name, comrades. It is called dawn.

Ignacio Ramonet Founding member and honorary president of ATTAC France
L’Aurore (Attac at the ’Zénith’ ) 19 January 2002

Additional Info
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About Uncivilized World
We Farmers by: José Bové
From the Mountains of Southeast Mexico by: Subcommander Marcos
The Dawn by: Ignacio Ramonet
FROM JUSTICE TO DEMOCRACY BY WAY OF THE BELLS by: Jose Saramago

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