DEFINING STRUGGLE OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

The debates, dialogues, and street protests of Seattle '99 brought into sharp focus a deepening struggle grounded in two sharply divergent worldviews that is emerging as the defining contest of twenty-first century politics. On one side are the forces of corporate globalization advanced by an alliance between the world's largest corporations and most powerful governments. This alliance is backed by the power of money and its defining project is to integrate the world=s national economies into a single borderless global economy in which the word's mega-corporations are free to move goods and money anywhere in the world without governmental interference to whatever locality affords the best opportunity for profit. In the name of increased efficiency the alliance seeks to privatize public services and assets and strengthen safeguards for investors and private property. In the eyes of its proponents, corporate globalization is the result of inevitable and irreversible historical forces driving a powerful engine of technological innovation and economic growth that is strengthening human freedom, spreading democracy, and creating the wealth needed to end poverty and save the environment.

On the other side are the forces of a newly emerging global movement advanced by a planetary citizen alliance of civil society organizations. Since its defining commitments are to life and democracy, some call it the global movement for a living democracy. This alliance is self-organizing and melds together the most important social movements of our time. It is a movement of a million leaders, each contributing ideas and initiatives toward shaping the whole. In the eyes of its members, corporate globalization is neither inevitable nor beneficial, but rather the product of intentional decisions and policies promoted by the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the IMF, global corporations, and politicians who depend on corporate money. They believe corporate globalization is enriching the few at the expense of the many, replacing democracy with rule by corporations and financial elites, destroying the real wealth of the planet and society to make money for the already wealthy, and eroding the relationships of trust and caring that are the essential foundation of a civilized society.

Facing a challenge to its authority, the corporate establishment has responded to the popular resistance in the classic fashion of authoritarian rulers throughout history. It mobilized its police powers to brutalize the protestors. To justify this action it mobilized its captive media to portray the victims of this assault as hot headed, ill-informed, isolationist, rock throwing vandals engaged disrupting legitimate democratic processes to advance their own selfish special interest agenda of closing national borders, ending trade, and consigning the poor to perpetual misery. Such people obviously merit no respect or hearing and by inference deserve to be beaten, gassed, and shot by police and military units to preserve the peace and order for decent people. It was a deeply troubling reminder of the sorry state of the corporate news media in America, as it completely missed the real Seattle story.

In truth, the Seattle demonstrations announced the birth of perhaps the most truly international movement in human history--a movement with a well developed analysis, a deep commitment to economic justice, and an informed and articulate membership for whom concern for issues relating to trade is incidental to their concerns for human and planetary life and their commitment to the democratic ideal that every person has the right to a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.

With the exception of a few fringe misfits and vandals, the vast majority of the protestors have been non-violent, well-informed, committed to peace and justice for all, and are on the streets only because a corrupted political system and a captive media leave them few alternatives. Furthermore, for every person on the streets, there were tens of thousands of sympathizers who were there in spirit. For each consequential demonstration there were hundreds of teach-ins, seminars, and study groups through which people were educating one another in the issues and mobilizing to work for change. For every corporate media outlet that missed the point of the demonstrations, there were hundreds of independent newsletters, magazines, e-mail list-serves, audio and video streaming Internet sites, and micro-radio transmitters communicating the real story.

In the end the disinformation campaigns and police brutality of the corporate establishment have greatly strengthened the movement. Television shots of police battalions in Darth Vader costumes ruthlessly beating, gassing, and shooting those engaged in the nonviolent expression of their right to speech and assembly awakened many Americans to the fact that once you scratch the surface of American democracy you find a police state. The experience of being ruthlessly beaten and gassed by police units, arrested on trumped up charges, handcuffed, thrown in jail, and denied basic rights to legal counsel and needs like food, water, medicines, and bathroom facilities has also raised the consciousness of many well-educated white Americas to the daily experience of many Americans of color in their relations with the "justice" system. It is no coincidence that judicial and prison reform is moving rapidly toward the top of the movement's agenda in America along, with a commitment to bridging the racial divide to create true solidarity among people of all colors.

This commitment is one element of a profound political shift emerging in America. Seattle '99 brought together people of faith, union members, youth, environmentalists, gays and lesbians, indigenous peoples, peace and human rights activists, small farmers, organic food advocates, small business owners, independent media representatives, and many others. Teenagers marched with octogenarians, millionaires with the homeless.

Each had come to realize that whatever their concern, it was at risk under a regime of corporate rule. Their shared quarrel was not with trade, but with the use of trade rules to strengthen corporate rights and power at the expense of people and planet. Underlying the cacophony of voices was a unifying commitment to democracy and life. All were drawn together by a realization that unless they joined in common cause to build a truly democratic world that works for all, they would find themselves living in a world that works for no one. It was an important step in a grand convergence of social forces beyond identity and single-issue politics toward a politics of the whole.

The new politics of the twenty-first century involves a significant rethinking of the issues that defined the political struggles of the twentieth century in which the ideologies of communism and socialism played a central role. Neither communism nor socialism, however, attempted to end the concentration of economic power embodied in the corporation. Rather they attempted to socialize the corporation's ownership to make it an instrument of state control. Both honored materialism and financial values over life values and recklessly exploited the environment in the pursuit of material prosperity.

By contrast, the predominant call of the living democracy movement, as reflected in the themes of its protest actions, is not to socialize the corporation, but rather to exclude or dismantle it--to get it out of politics and deny its penetration of national and local economies. The movement is also more truly international in its conception and execution, with individuals and groups throughout the world using the most advanced electronic communication technologies to share information and coordinate their actions.

Over the past twenty years a few corporations have come to so dominate economic life that we tend to lose sight of the fact that the publicly-traded, limited-liability corporation is only one of many possible ways to organize business enterprises--a distinction that is key to thinking about the more equitable, locally rooted economies of a post-corporate world. As we must first imagine that which we would create, let us to envision something of the world that truly honors life and democracy as defining values.

Although turning the world away from our current destructive path will not be easy, the above scenario presents a fully possible dream that can be fully accomplished within the limits of existing knowledge and technology. We lack only the collective wisdom. Perhaps the living democracy movement marks a critical step toward our awakening to that wisdom.

The year is 2050. America has come a long way since the turn of the millennium. When I turned on the morning news today, there was a report on the latest Social Health Index results followed by a panel discussion of local, national, and global initiatives intended to improve its underlying indicators, with suggestions as to how people can get involved. Yesterday, a similar report covered the Living Planet Index.

It now seems incredible that 50 years ago, this valuable air time was devoted to reporting on the day's stock market performance. The social fabric and the planetary life support systems were collapsing--but all the media seemed to care about was corporate profits and stock prices. Of course, those were the days when most of America's media were controlled by four massive corporate conglomerates: General Electric (NBC), Time Warner (CNN), Disney (ABC), and Westinghouse (CBS) and even public radio depended on corporate sponsors.

Seattle 1999--when protesters shut down a meeting of the World Trade Organization--was a turning point. People still refer to it. People were waking up to the fact that the more rights and freedoms corporations have, the fewer rights and freedoms real people have. Millions of people began to realize that it was a choice between democracy and corporate rule and if they wanted democracy they would have to get serious about reclaiming their political and economic rights.

Following Seattle, more and more people took to the streets in protest. Eventually, the corporate elites found that they could meet only behind police barricades. This turned the abstraction of an elite-ruled corporate police state into a powerful visual image, which drew yet more people into the struggle. Public pressures built to the point that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the WTO were all dismantled, Third World debts were canceled, and rule-making responsibility for the global economy was assigned to the United Nations.

The real breakthrough for the United States was a the passage of legislation designed to get bribery out of politics--the result of possibly the most dramatic citizen protest ever held in America. Two million people descended on Washington, D.C., surrounded the Capitol, and refused to leave until Congress passed sweeping campaign finance reform legislation that prohibited individual political contributions larger than $100, barred corporate political involvement of any kind, provided public funding for election campaigns, and required media using the public airwaves to provide free broadcast time for all qualified candidates. This set the stage for a string of legislative victories ending corporate welfare, revoking special corporate rights and privileges, breaking up concentrations of corporate power, guaranteeing every person the right to a means of livelihood, giving workers control over their pension funds, and implementing reforms to help workers obtain ownership stakes in the organizations on which their livelihoods depend. Labor unions began to organize worker and community buyouts, in part with workers' pension funds.

At the same time, a deep cultural shift was taking place. Voluntary simplicity was in; conspicuous consumption was out. People realized that advertisers were manipulating their values and self-images so that they would feel compelled to devote their energies to earning money in order to buy expensive merchandise that gave them no real satisfaction. It is as if society started acquiring a collective immunity to advertising. Many people turned off their televisions and became more mindful consumers, buying only what they really needed, seeking good value, and giving preference to goods and services provided by local, independent businesses. Now, most people find that they need to work only 20 to 25 hours a week to meet their financial needs. The rest of the time, they devote themselves to things that give them real satisfaction, such as gardening, family, and community service.

As people recognized that most advertising is socially pernicious, they passed legislation to place strict limits on the advertising expenditures that corporations are allowed to deduct as business expenses. The pollution of both private and public spaces with advertising has largely been eliminated.

Nearly all businesses are now human scale, which in practical terms means that they have no more than 500 workers each, and nearly all are owned by persons who have an immediate nonfinancial stake in them--employees, customers suppliers, or members of the communities in which the businesses are located. The giant corporations that sparked Seattle 1999 have since mostly gone the way of the dinosaurs and smallpox.

It's amazing what human-scale firms were able to do once society decided it wanted economic activities to be deconcentrated and localized. Start with the basics of food, clothing, housing, education, and health care. Local firms now easily meet most such needs. With regard to food we are finding that using a combination of green houses and hydroponics we can keep local markets supplied with many fresh vegetables even in the winter season.

For larger projects, such as the manufacture of high-speed trains, we are learning to make very effective use of manufacturing networks, a concept pioneered in the previous century in Italy and Denmark. It involves dozens of smaller firms forming network alliances within which they divide up the tasks involved in creating a product according to their respective skills.

People discovered that in fact most production tasks had already been broken down and distributed among many firms--most of which were being squeezed dry by the big firms that monopolized control of technology, markets, and finance. Thus, the late 20th century practice by which large corporations contracted out most manufacturing work to smaller producers actually helped prepare the way for the move to manufacturing networks. As the big guys were stripped of their monopoly powers, the formerly captive contractors decided to organize themselves into cooperative networks. These networks have developed such sophisticated management methods that there is now scarcely any product or project that cannot be handled by networks of human-scale firms. This approach allows for extraordinary flexibility with a high degree of employment stability and security.

The breakup of corporate conglomerates and the selling off of local branches and subsidiaries restored the practice of community banking--local community banks and credit unions dedicated to financing local homes and businesses. Most communities now also have locally owned newspapers and radio and TV stations. Many community based media outlets support themselves with a mixture of local advertising revenues and public contributions and in turn offer a mix of commercial, national public, and local broadcast offerings appropriate to community needs. Local family farms are flourishing using predominantly organic methods. Previously depressed communities--including inner cities and small rural villages--have come alive with thriving local economies. Unemployment is largely unknown. Community currencies are common. The combination of economic security, low unemployment, and strong community ties has virtually eliminated crime, mental illness, and welfare expenditures. Most of the old prisons stand empty. Some have been turned into history museums.

In the end, what we have created looks remarkably like a classical market economy of small buyers and small sellers. We call our version a mindful market economy, because we recognize the importance of mindfulness in all our economic choices--from the choice of our own employment to the nature of our production processes to the products we produce and buy. It goes beyond being mindful of our personal needs to include a mindfulness of the impact of our individual and collective choices on society and the planet.

Once freed from their international debts and the dictates of the U.S. dominated Bretton Woods institutions, countries of the South began to reshape their domestic economies along similar lines. As countries reoriented their economies toward local production using local resources to meet local needs, the total value of world trade fell significantly, reducing the environmental costs of moving so many goods around the world and reducing dependence on global corporations. Countries and communities now mostly trade their surplus production for things they cannot reasonably produce themselves. Of course we in America still import coffee and tea and some exotic fruits. It is now the recognized right of each community and nation to decide what and how much it will trade, with whom, and under what circumstances.

As economies have localized and people have re-established a sense of connection to community and place travel has also declined and become far less frenetic and more interesting. Most travel now centers on learning and international exchange. A one to two year around the world journey is a rite of passage for young people approaching adulthood.

An extended journey at mid-life is also common as a time to reflect and gain inspiration for the next stage of one's life. With cheap oil reserves exhausted there is little air travel. As a result many are rediscovering the joy of the journey itself--taking time to make new friends and stay over with a family here and there to better experience other ways of life. International friendships are sustained over the years by electronic communication. Intercontinental travel by solar and wind powered ships is quite popular. Overland travel is primarily by hiking, biking, and train. Many young people travel as members of performing arts groups, sharing their own culture with others along their route in return for local hospitality. With global media corporations and advertisers removed from the scene there has been a wonderful rebirth of cultural diversity that greatly enriches the travel experience.

Personal economic security and deep international friendships have turned international competition into international cooperation--especially in the sharing of information, experience, technology, and culture. As human-scale firms are primarily involved in local markets they have relatively little interest in creating intellectual property rights monopolies. Most people take pride in having created something others find of value, especially beneficial technologies, and are inclined to freely share their innovations.

As Americans realized that they could enrich their lives by consuming less, our dependence on the labor and resources of the rest of the world declined dramatically. With no further need to maintain a global corporate economic empire and no enemies on our borders, the U.S. military has been trimmed back to a small force whose primary mission is to participate in United Nations peacekeeping missions. Peace has been breaking out since all over the world. Enjoying free access to beneficial technologies from around the world and freed of the burdens of foreign debt and other forms of foreign control and extraction, what were formerly known as Third World countries have experienced dramatic improvements in their living standards.

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David C. Korten is the author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World. He is a co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, publisher of YES! A Journal of Positive Futures <www.yesmagazine.org>, and founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum. This piece was written for a booklet published by Kohouteck, a British media collected concerned with education about economic globalization in 2000 following the historic Seattle WTO protest in 1999..