아셈반대 서울행동이 세계화 반대 시위의 하나로 언급되었군요.
캘리니코스가 썼네요.

Protests put global capital on defensive

By Alex Callinicos

THE MOVEMENT against global capitalism that started in Seattle is less than a
year old, but its echoes around the world are growing louder all the time. Most
recently we have seen "1020"-the demonstration on 20 October against
the Asia-Europe economic summit in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Twenty
thousand protesters, the overwhelming majority of them workers belonging to the
Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, took part.

This was all the more remarkable because, despite the fact that President Kim
Dae-jung has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the South Korean state
continues to persecute political activists. The emergence of this movement has
forced the international capitalist institutions onto the defensive. 

The most bizarre scene I witnessed in Prague was a debate convened by the Czech
president, Vaclav Havel, between Horst Kohler and James Wolfensohn, respectively
bosses of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and their critics,
headed by Walden Bello, the Filipino academic and activist. Bello wiped the
floor with Kohler and Wolfensohn, who were reduced to pleading that they really
care about the world's poor.

Despite this, Kohler in particular made it clear that they would continue with
the same neo-liberal policies that had provoked the protests in the first place.
There is now a debate in big-business circles about how to respond. Some favour
taking a hard line. Thus the Financial Times argued that the protesters in
Prague should be treated "with contempt" and criticised Wolfensohn for
being too accommodating to his critics.

"What is required instead are leaders willing to state that bringing the
world's peoples within the market economy is the unique opportunity
afforded to this generation," the Financial Times argues. 

The latest issue of Business Week offers a different approach, with a special
report entitled "Global Capitalism: Can It Be Made To Work Better?"
The magazine argues, "It would be a great mistake to dismiss the uproar
witnessed in Seattle, Washington DC and Prague. Many of the radicals leading the
protests may be on the political fringe.

"But they have helped to kick-start a profound rethinking about
globalisation among governments, mainstream economists, and corporations."
Business Week concedes, "The plain truth is that market liberalisation by
itself does not lift all boats, and in some cases it has caused severe damage to
poor nations." 

The magazine warns, "If the world's poor see no benefit from free
trade and IMF austerity programmes, political support for reform could
erode." Given the euphoria about market capitalism that prevailed through
most of the 1990s, these are remarkable concessions. But it's hardly a
surprise that the "reassessment" Business Week proposes is a modest
one.

It wants "a global capitalism with rules". For example, the United
Nations launched a programme in May called Global Compact, under which
multinational companies adopt a code of human rights, environmental, and labour
standards.

Yet Business Week's reports from individual countries show how easily these
codes are subverted both by the multinationals themselves and by their partners
in the Third World. But this isn't where the biggest danger lies. Many of
the NGOs (non-governmental organisations) that helped get the protest movement
going are now involved in the efforts to devise and monitor codes of corporate
responsibility. They thereby run the risk of being incorporated. At the end of
the debate in Prague Havel had laid on a buffet in the grounds of his official
residence, Hradcany Castle. 

Those of us planning to take part in the S26 demonstration left immediately, but
the NGO representatives charged the food and drink en masse. There is, in other
words, a debate developing inside the anti-capitalist movement between the more
moderate and militant elements. The issue is a familiar one-can capitalism be
reformed?

Such differences are an absolute and inevitable feature of a growing movement.
It is a sign of the impact we have had that one section of big business wants to
incorporate us. Meanwhile the protests continue-next stop the demonstrations at
the European Union summit in Nice on 6-7 December. As they said in 1968, this is
only a beginning.
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------