Another World Is Possible -- and Necessary
by Mark Weisbrot
Dissident Voice
January 29, 2003
PORTO ALEGRE,
BRAZIL -- "I will tell the people at Davos that the world does not need
war, the world needs peace and understanding," said President Lula da
Silva to a cheering crowd of tens of thousands in this sunny port city in
Southeastern Brazil. If there is one theme that unified this year's World
Social Forum -- and captures the irrationality and destructiveness of letting a
handful of people determine so much of the world's fate -- it is opposition to
the looming war against Iraq.
The World Social
Forum began three years ago -- under the slogan, "Another World is
Possible" -- as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, an exclusive
gathering of the rich and powerful held at the same time at the mountain resort
of Davos, Switzerland.
The WSF has
grown enormously, attracting more than 100,000 participants to Porto Alegre for
this year's series of events. And among the delegates from 126 countries, the
largest contingent outside of Brazil this year is -- to the surprise of many --
from the United States.
This, too, is
related to the war. While Secretary of State Colin Powell works the crowd in
Davos in an attempt to bully and bribe other governments into going along (e.g.
a giant $16 billion IMF loan and $4 billion grant to the government of Turkey,
where 90 percent of the people oppose the war) the sizeable American anti-war
movement has also reached out to their counterparts around the world.
It is a sad
testimony to the state of American democracy that we need the help of other
countries to stop our President from getting our own people killed -- along
with thousands or tens of thousands of innocent civilians -- in a war that most
Americans don't want.
But the war is
not the only issue here that brings people throughout the world together
against American-led policies that cause so much harm throughout the world. The
largest number of delegates are from Latin America, where the profound failure
of the policies known here as "neo-liberalism" has become painfully
obvious. The last 20 years have seen the region's worst performance in more
than a century, with income per person hardly growing at all. The US recipe of
substituting the indiscriminate opening of trade and financial flows for what
used to be development policy, along with punishingly high interest rates and
budget austerity, has failed miserably even on its own terms.
The rejection of
the "Washington Consensus," often imposed on Latin America by
US-controlled institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, is what brought
Brazil's President Lula da Silva to power last October. And so he is an
appropriate symbol of the growing importance of the WSF and its ideas, relative
to its elite counterpart in Davos. Last year Lula was also welcomed
enthusiastically by the crowds here, as a genuine working-class hero who
everyone loved but few thought would actually win. Now he is president of the
second largest country in the Americas.
But he still has
to deal with the unelected "Masters of the Universe" as the London
Financial Times dubbed the leaders gathered at Davos, where Lula also spoke.
Chief among these masters is the IMF, which has a program for Brazil's
government that is literally impossible. The previous government piled up an
enormous public debt: it swelled from 29 percent to more than 65 percent of GDP
during former President Cardoso's eight years of office. With domestic interest
rates at 25.5 percent (as compared to our own Federal Reserve's 1.25 percent),
this debt burden is not sustainable.
Brazil will have
to either lower its interest rates considerably or renegotiate its debt, but
the IMF and the financial markets are against both of these options. Instead
they hope to keep squeezing ever larger debt payments out of the government
budget. This cannot be sustained, and for as long as these policies are pursued
it will be very difficult for the government to restore economic growth or
deliver on its other promises to end hunger and help the poor. A confrontation is
inevitable.
"I was not
elected by the financial markets, and I was not elected by the powerful
economic interests . . . I was elected through the high level of consciousness
of Brazilian society," Lula told the crowd in Porto Alegre.
The people here
seem to agree. A banner at one of the big marches here said "Give it up,
Davos: Lula is one of us."
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic
and Policy Research, a nonpartisan think-tank in
the nation's capital. Readers may write him at CEPR, 1621 Connecticut Ave NW,
Suite 500, Washington, DC 20009-1052 and e-mail him at Weisbrot@cepr.net