World Economic Forum, Alternative Globalization, and ICTs
World Economic Forum (Davos Forum)
The World Economic Forum, also known as Davos Forum, is a private foundation created in 1971. Its initial mission was to gather annually at Mount Davos in Switzerland the major European economic leaders. From 1991, it transformed into the summit meeting of political leaders and the world’s most powerful businesspeople. It is a major strategic center of globalization, headquartered in Geneva, and overseen by the Swiss government.
Alternative Globalization
This movement contends that globalization is driven and controlled by multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the elite composed of the world’s richest and most powerful individuals. Already in the nineteenth century, unionism was conceived as a global, “internationalist” movement, celebrating May 1 as a day of global worker mobilization. During the twentieth century, numerous social movements and organizations with global reach emerged: human rights, feminism, consumer protection, environmentalism, pacifism, and the hippies. Similarly, diverse cultural movements formed in the nineteenth and especially the twentieth century, flowing globally: Impressionism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, rock and roll, punk, rap, karate as a way of life (and martial arts in general, tracing back to samurai roots), fashion, new network games, pop culture (not just music, but popular culture in general), the world of sports (with various branches like surfing, motor racing, biking, skateboarding as a form of expression, etc.), and graffiti as a form of expression (like Banksy’s anti-capitalist works).
From the moment globalization began as a historical process, a critical view emerged, termed “corporate globalization.” This view grew organically and heterogeneously, encompassing intellectuals and organizations of all kinds: political, union, environmentalist, feminist, indigenous, peasant, journalistic, human rights, consumer rights, etc.
This movement erupted on November 30, 1999, in what has been called the Battle of Seattle. Tens of thousands of people, summoned by an unprecedented alliance between organized labor, environmental organizations, and over 1,500 organizations, mobilized against the WTO and caused the failure of the so-called Millennium Round, chanting, “Whose street? Ours! Who is the world? Ours!”.
Probably the most representative expression of this heterogeneous movement is the World Social Forum, with its slogan, “Another world is possible.” Individuals, personalities, and intellectuals within this movement for an alternative globalization include housewives, unorganized workers or retirees, college professors, professionals at all levels, intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy, Nobel laureates like José Saramago, professors like Carlos Taibo and Thomas Ward, journalists like Naomi Klein, Ignacio Ramonet, or Eduardo Galeano, environmentalists like Vandana Shiva, Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN, and the French farmer José Bové.
Although it has also been called anti-globalization, this term is inappropriate. As Susan George stated: “I reject the term anti-globalization the media attributes to us. The fight is actually between those who want an inclusive globalization based on cooperation and security, and those who want all decisions to be made by the market.” She identified various groups participating in the movement for alternative globalization: trade unionists, NGOs, communities, environmentalists, protectionists, anarchists, Christian-based groups, pacifists, feminists, and many partisan groups.
Look Etxezarreta stated in his Economic Review Seminar that “neoliberal globalization is simple to implement: liberalize trade and capital flows so they can be traded without control worldwide, anyone can set conditions, privatize state-determined assets claiming inefficiency without evidence, create labor market flexibility (turning workers into a variable cost, hiring them at desired wages and dismissing them when convenient), and deregulate, eliminating government regulation of economic and social life so businesses can set their own rules.” Roberto Velasco, professor of applied economics at the UPV, indicates that “the illusion of a self-managed ultra-liberal globalization by world markets has vanished, risking electoral setbacks for political leaders or a delicate economic situation.”
Alternative globalization movements argue that the globalization process can have general benefits for the world’s peoples. Some basic proposals include:
- Fair trade.
- Third-world industrialization and economic improvement: Cancellation of foreign debt of the poorest countries.
- Tobin tax, a tax levied (e.g., 0.1%) on each financial transaction, penalizing speculation and investing in development in poor countries.
- Reduce military spending and eliminate tax evasion. In wealthy countries, these measures could increase development spending, aiming for the UN’s target of 0.7% of GDP.
- Freedom of movement: They argue that after centuries of European emigration worldwide, restricting worker emigration to Europe is unjust. If capital moves freely, labor should have the same freedom for a balanced relationship. Many Europeans and Americans reject these claims, arguing for measures to prevent mass migration.
Globalization in Relation to ICTs
Globalization is the process by which increased communication and interdependence among countries unite markets, societies, and cultures through social, economic, and political changes, giving them a global character. Modes of production and capital movements are configured globally, as governments lose power to what has been called the network society.
In this context, technological development, particularly the incorporation of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in every nation, drives competitiveness in a globalized system. A country’s competitiveness depends largely on acquired technology, hence the close relationship between ICTs and globalization.