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Beyond altermondialisme: anti-capitalist dialectic of presence

2005; Routledge; Volume: 12; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09692290500339875

1466-4526

André C. Drainville,

Political Economy and Marxism

ABSTRACT ABSTRACT That 'Another World is Possible' has become the ensign of the left's common sense. For lack of having been thought through, and for want to take it all in, the new reasonableness has given itself a hollow name with a ring to it: altermondialisme. Notwithstanding fashionable certainties, everything about it needs to be problematized, both because, in carrying on the century-old internationalist drive for programmatic coherence, altermondialisme rather stands at the rearguard of the movement than at its forefront, and because in its relationship to it, it reproduces rather than challenges attempts by the World Bank et al. to contain contemporary anti-capitalism and empty it of political possibilities. The text is divided into three parts. In the first, I identify what I take to be an essential political dynamic of contemporary world order: the attempt by regulatory agencies of global capitalism to invent a functional, civil and perfectly apolitical global subject that could serve as an ideal social companion to global-neo-liberalism. In the second part of the text, I work from concepts that originated with the Internationale Situationniste to begin making political sense of contemporary anti-capitalist praxis. In the third part of the article, I extract from the first two principles of articulation that may allow us to understand contemporary anti-capitalism for what it is, without containing or reifying it. KEYWORDS: Altermondialismeanti-capitalism Notes 1. 'Exact phrase match' search carried out on January 21, 2004. 2. The citation is from the World Social Forum's 'Charter of Principles', found on the WSF 2004 Site ⟨http://www.wsfindia.org/charter.php⟩. Global Exchange is a San Francisco-based 'international human rights organization dedicated to promoting environmental, political and social justice'. Details of the 2004 Mumbai Reality tour can be found at http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/index.html. 3. (Gallagher and Robinson, 1953 Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald. 1953. 'The Imperialism of Free Trade'. The Economic History Review, VI(1): 1–15. [CSA][Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) cited in (Panitch and Gindin, 2003 Panitch, Leo and Gindin, Sam. 2003. 'Global Capitalism and American Empire'. Socialist Register, : 1–42. [CSA] [Google Scholar]) 4. La société du spectacle (Debord, 1992 Debord, G. E. 1992. La société du spectable (1967), Paris: Gallimard. [Google Scholar]) is one of two defining texts of the Internationale Situationniste. The other is Raoul Vaneigem's Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations (Vaneigem, 1967 Vaneigem, Raoul. 1967. Traité de savoir-vivre à l'usage des jeunes générations, Paris: Gallimard. [Google Scholar]). 5. The citation is from Marx's instructions to delegates at the Geneva congress of the First International in 1866, cited in van Hoolthon, F, and Marcel van der Linden (1988) van Hoolthon, F. and van der Linden, Marcel. 1988. Internationalism in the Labour Movement 1830–1940, Vol. II, Leiden: E.J. Brill. [Google Scholar]. Internationalism in the Labour Movement 1830–1940. Vol. II. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 6. The first Independent Media Center was created in November, 1999 to cover protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The Seattle IMC web site was said to have 'received almost 1.5 million hits during the WTO protests'. http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/FrequentlyAskedQuestionEn#how. At last count, there were more than one hundred members of the IndyMedia family. 7. Information on the Chiquita campaign can be found at http://bananas.xs4all.be/ 8. See http://www.usleap.org/ 9. See for instance (Gill, 2003 Gill, Stephen. 2003. Power and Resistance in the New World Order, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 10. http://www.mumbairesistance.org.