A
Global Left Turn?
By Andreas Hernandez
15 July, 2003
In the past month, while
the media was being consolidated into even fewer hands by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) and it was becoming ever more transparent
that the war against Iraq was not about eliminating weapons of mass
destruction, signs of a new global order have begun to unfold. This
has gone strangely unnoticed.
The new Brazilian government
led by the Worker's Party ( PT) has emerged as a solid pivot point for
a global Left turn . This Party with Marxist roots, well-known for its
innovative policies at local and state levels for increasing citizen
participation, took federal power in January after a landslide election
for a broad PT-led coalition. Robert Zoellick, the US Trade Ambassador,
left Brazil frustrated in early June as Brazil will be negotiating as
a block with up to eight or more Latin American countries for both the
upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial and for the creation
of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This block promises to
counter the US´s ability to dominate trade negotiations
and force through profoundly unjust agreements. On June 11th, the Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (popularly known as Lula) and the
new President of Argentina, Nastor Kirchner announced their shared priority
of establishing a common parliament for the Mercosul regional integration
block (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Associate Members Chile
and Ecuador) with the vision of a shared currency and the integration
of Peru and other nations of the Andean pact. Lula is considering Mercosul
the principal medium for consolidating the sustainable development of
the region and fortalizing the presence of South America in the World
scene. Mr. Zoellick may yet have to eat his words from last year, when
he said that Brazil could go trade with Antarctica if they did not like
the US´s terms for the FTAA. Presidents Lula and Bush met
in mid-June for the first major summit between the two countries since
World War Two and both agreed to maintain the 2005 date for the establishment
of the FTAA. The Brazilian camp reinforced their notion that the FTAA
must be in the interest of developing nations and not of corporations
and the financial sector.
In early June, Brazil, India
and South Africa announced the creation of the Group of Three (G-3),
with the immanent possibility of becoming the G-5 to include China and
Russia (who have themselves recently formed an alliance with the specific
aim of countering US power). The creators of the G-3 hope the alliance
will also bring an alliance between Mercosul and the Southern Africa
Customs Union (South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Lesotho)
on many levels including WTO negotiations. The first goal of the G-3
is to gain a seat for one of its members as a permanent member of the
United Nations (UN) Security Council and to reform and democratize this
Council in which five countries - not one of them from the Global South
- virtually run the UN spectacle through their veto power. British Prime
Minister Tony Blair has formally announced his backing for Brazil to
gain a seat. Additionally, in recent months at various times, Brazil,
Mercosul, various European countries and the European Union have all
expressed the intent for closer relations in many spheres between Europe
and Latin America including the trade of non-GMO food and acting as
a common front against US hegemony.
The PT recently announced
that they will be hosting the 2003 Congress of the Socialist International,
which last met in November 1999 (before the Seattle WTO Ministerial).
This Congress will bring together leaders from 141 social democratic,
socialist and labor parties from every continent, including Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Prime Minster Tony Blair. The PT is
considering this as a platform for delivering their message to the world
and many are seeing this Congress as an important moment of consolidation
and a launching point for the World Left after two decades of neoliberal
policies and practices.
This tremendous organizing
on a global scale, directly challenges a uni-polar world, and is a distinctively
Left turn with a strong social democratic bent. In Brazil, there is
significant talk about both a Brazilian and a global â€New
Dealâ€. In an almost ironic turn, this global coalition
building is using the neoliberal tool of Free Trade as a weapon against
the system of neoliberalism itself. By negotiating as a block highly
concerned with the social agenda, a Brazilian-led Latin American coalition
and its expanding alliances are turning Free Trade into Fair Trade by
beginning to demand standards for workers and the environment and an
end for protectionism only for rich countries, as conditions for trade.
Are these major structural signs of the end of world domination by the
US, Europe and the Asian empire of Japan and 500 years of exploitation
of the Global South - first through colonization and then developmentalism
and neoliberalism?
It may be a worthy caution
that Brazil's new government came to be through intense struggle, especially
by those who have been the most exploited. An emerging global architecture
of social solidarity may only be sustainable to the extent that mobilization
continues on all levels, democratizing and transforming the institutions
which structure people's lives. Without this movement, this emerging
global architecture might be little more that an opening for a few more
financial elites from the Global South. However, a more democratic global
architecture could also provide the structure to put the brakes on corporate
power and provide a basis for traditionally Left-of-Center parties that
have been dragged Right by market forces during the neolberal era, to
act for the social agenda and a more just planet.
(Andreas
Hernandez belongs to Department of Development Sociology Cornell University)