Transcripts
"For an United Mouvement"
by John Bunzl
The so-called strength in diversity which the anti- globalisation movement often prides itself upon and which was again much triumphed at the recent World Social Forum is, I would suggest, no longer its strength but its weakness. For whilst a fragmented movement may have made it difficult for governments and their corporate masters to control or undermine their work when the movement was in 'protest mode', that fragmentation is a fatal weakness when it comes to the all-important issue of finding solutions.
Now, I am not suggesting that all the many NGOs and activists groups should seek unity by banding together into one huge organisation - far from it. For what is needed is not organisational unity but rather for our movement to find a common 'tool' which all its many factions can use to harmonise their political action on a global scale while at the same time continuing with their very valid individual campaigns. What we need, therefore, is a tool that provides for a synthesis of unity and diversity.
Increasing numbers around the world are recognising the Simultaneous Policy (SP) as just such a tool. For SP provides the movement and the general public with a unique opportunity to develop a range of measures to re-regulate global capital markets and trans-national corporations, to then gradually force politicians around the world to adopt those measures and then, finally, to have them implemented by all, or virtually all, simultaneously.
In a globally competitive world where unilateral action cannot be contemplated for fear of adverse market reaction or job losses, global simultaneous implementation provides the only secure basis upon which restorative policies can now be safely
contemplated and implemented. This is what allows governments and people to say 'Yes' to Tobin, 'Yes' to a Kyoto with teeth, and 'Yes' to significant restrictions and taxes on TNCs instead of saying 'No'. By removing the key objection to being the first to 'go it alone', SP represents a vital and new consensus-building strategy without which the vicious circle of destructive global competition can only continue. As Jackie Navarro of Attac Canada put it 'With a system like SP there is no way for governments to wriggle out. All excuses evaporate. It's a system that unmasks all those seeking to hide behind theoretical impossibilities. I can't wait to see what follows'. But I stress that the SP is a tool for use BY the movement.
And this new technology is urgently needed. For the existing technology - party politics - has, in the competitive global market, become substantially obsolete as a means for seeking change. For we live today not in democracies, but in pseudo democracies in which whatever party we elect, the policies implemented inevitably conform to the market and corporate demand of 'maintaining international competitiveness'.
We should not be fooled into believing that party politics within an expanded EU will provide a way out. For as the fall in the value of the Euro showed, and as the on-going dismantling of the European social market shows, the EU is just as much subject to global market competition as anywhere else and cannot escape its adverse effects. So we would be wrong to look to the old technology of political parties as we once did in the past.
Instead, resulting voter apathy and the narrowing of policy differences between existing parties allows us to use existing political parties in a completely novel way. Because instead of splitting the vote, as a political party does, the simple adoption of SP by individual citizens signifies their willingness to vote for ANY political party - within reason - that adopts SP. Adoption, therefore, represents each individual's commitment on how they will vote in future elections. And nothing concentrates a politician's mind like a citizen's threat to vote for another candidate.
Now, we should remember that in most countries it takes only a relatively small number of people to influence the 'swing' or 'floating vote'. The target, therefore, is to get that critical mass of people in each electoral constituency in each country to adopt SP. Because SP is to be implemented only when all, or virtually all, nations do likewise, no one - including politicians - has anything to loose by adopting it. And if enough of us do so, politicians will be powerless to ignore us. Because when political parties and prospective MPs around the world realise that a critical proportion of the electorate is prepared for any party or candidate, within reason, that adopts SP, they are going to find adoption rather difficult to resist. They too, will have no option but to succumb to adopting SP for fear of what might happen if they don't. And this makes it not unlikely that more than one party, or even all mainstream parties, might adopt it.
This is why I refer to SP as a new 'political tool' with which the world's peoples can instead force politicians to compete with one another to adopt SP.
The massive increase in the numbers attending the World Social Forum suggests that our movement must now move from focussing on problems to concerted promotion of solutions which are adequate to meeting the immense challenge which 'globalisation' presents. Noam Chomsky said of SP: 'Can it work? Certainly worth a serious try'. So it is my hope that civil society groups such as Attac will choose to investigate SP to see how they can use it to realise their objectives.
John Bunzl
The Simultaneous Policy Organisation,
Director
February 2002
PO Box 26547, London SE3 7YT , UK
www.simpol.org
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