Attac London Seminar

‘Towards Global Solidarity in Confronting Financial Globalisation’

University College, London, 19^th October 2002

First of all, thank you very much to Attac London for organising this event and for inviting me to speak to you about the Simultaneous Policy and the role it might play in building global solidarity.

Indeed, building global solidarity is, I believe, the name of the game if we are to regain democratic control of the destructive forces of corporate globalisation. For the so-called ‘strength in diversity’ the Global Justice Movement often prides itself on is, in reality, not its strength but its weakness. For whilst a fragmented movement may make it difficult for governments and their corporate masters to control or undermine, that fragmentation is a fatal weakness when it comes to the all-important issue of finding and delivering solutions. Indeed, when it comes to making the vital transition from a movement characterised by protest to one focused on constructive solutions, movement solidarity is what we need most.

Now I am not suggesting that ‘solidarity’ should mean that all the thousands of NGOs and activists groups should band together into one huge organisation – far from it. For what is needed is not monolithic organisational unity but rather for our movement to find a common ‘tool’ or ‘technology’ which all can use to harmonise their political action on a global scale while, at the same time, continuing and maintaining their very valid individual campaigns; what we need, therefore, is not movement homogeneity, but, rather, a practical common technology which provides for a synthesis of movement unity and diversity. And I would respectfully suggest the Simultaneous Policy – or ‘SP’ for short – to be just such a technology. For SP can provide all factions of our movement and the general public with a unique vehicle through which to develop a range of measures to re-regulate global capital markets and transnational corporations, to then gradually force politicians around the world to adopt those measures in principle and then, finally, to get them implemented by all, or virtually all, nations simultaneously.

Outlandishly ambitious this may sound, but to understand SP’s potential for creating movement solidarity, all factions of our movement first need to distinguish between ‘solutions’ and ‘barriers to solutions’. After all, the Global Justice Movement is not short of solutions, from Localization to Monetary Reform, from Contraction and Convergence on global warming to increased taxation and regulations on transnational corporations, or from an ‘Earth Democracy’ to some kind of ‘Planetary Contract’. Indeed, almost everyday I hear of some new so-called ‘solution’. But what these ‘solutions’ mostly tend to ignore is the all-important barrier which comprehensively prevents them from being implemented. So what is this barrier and how does it stand in our way? Well, essentially, the key barrier to the implementation of any of these solutions is destructive competition; a destructive vicious circle of competition between nation states.

Let me explain:

If, for example, an individual nation – or even the EU – were minded to unilaterally implement higher taxes or regulations on corporations or financial markets, what would happen? As the recent run-up to the Brazilian elections showed, any country that looks like it might elect a party promising to increase the costs of business will be confronted by capital flight, devaluation, inflation, unemployment if not outright economic collapse. Since virtually all the policies called for by the Global Justice Movement would undoubtedly increase the costs of business, capital and corporations will necessarily take evasive action by moving production, investment and jobs elsewhere. And although some may think this an evil conspiracy on the part of corporate executives and fund managers, lets be clear that they effectively have no choice. Because not doing so would mean losing out to companies and investors that do, thus inviting a fall in their profits, their share price and, ultimately, the threat of a hostile takeover.

Net result?: Unilateral national action unavoidably means losing out. So although the reforms the Global Justice Movement is calling for may be desirable in principle, they are, effectively, unworkable in a globally competitive world. And that is why no political party nor nation, nor even the EU, is likely to take them up.

Furthermore, when business has made the public aware that increasing corporation taxes or imposing higher environmental standards or any other such policy ultimately means losing jobs, any public support which may have been painstakingly built up by activists or NGOs will quickly unravel. With businesses fearing a loss of profits, the public and unions fearing a loss of jobs and politicians fearing a consequent loss of votes, there is – I think you can see – no chance whatever of these so-called ‘solutions’ being implemented on a unilateral basis by a single country or even by the EU.

And if, contrary to what I have said, nations do somehow manage to implement such policies, their effectiveness must necessarily be watered down to avoid any threat of significant competitive disadvantage, thus rendering them as good as useless. Take the Kyoto protocol for example where we have a miserable 5% target reduction in emissions when all the time we know that a 50 or 60% reduction is needed! It’s only 5% because anything higher would mean risking serious uncompetitiveness with countries like the USA who want a free ride. So the key barrier to implementation of such policies – and, indeed, of just about any solution you care to think of - is that their unilateral implementation will make any nation uncompetitive in the global market. And for campaigners, that effectively means that while we may achieve some incremental successes, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that they can ever be adequate.

At the risk of depressing you further, there is, I’m afraid, another spin-off barrier arising from this threat of uncompetitiveness which our politicians face and which we cannot ignore: the barrier of fear. For even when campaigners may have convinced politicians that this or that new policy or tax can be implemented in such a way that no avoidance by corporations, currency or financial market traders is likely, it is still a very brave politician who will stake his career and the fortunes of his party and country on implementing it, particularly when its so much easier to give all manner of excuses, none of which campaigners can incontrovertibly refute. Some of you may complain that politicians have no balls. Well, if they haven’t, isn’t it better we recognise the fact, seeing it is another practical barrier we have to overcome, rather than sticking our heads in the sand and hoping that politicians, if only we lobby them hard enough, can save the day? For to ask for potency from the impotent is, I suggest, a waste of our time.

So whether you are an animal rights campaigner seeking more humane, but more costly and therefore less competitive, trapping devices or whether you’re a campaigner for higher corporate regulations or environmental standards, we all, I’m afraid, face these seemingly insurmountable barriers. If we fail to find a way round them, there is, I suggest, little hope of getting the world off its present suicidal course.

So what to do?

In a globally competitive world where unilateral action cannot be contemplated for fear of adverse market reaction or job losses, global simultaneous implementation – all or virtually all nations acting simultaneously, as the Simultaneous Policy, ‘SP’, advocates - therefore provides the only secure basis upon which restorative policies can now be safely contemplated and implemented. But SP’s stipulation of ‘all or virtually all nations simultaneously’ should not be taken as a rigid condition ‘cast in stone’. Because it is just this basis which allows governments and people to say ‘Yes’ to Tobin, ‘Yes’ to a Kyoto with teeth, and ‘Yes’ to signifiant restrictions and taxes on TNCs, etc instead of saying ‘No’. By removing the key objection to being the first to ‘go it alone’ - by removing the risk and fear of uncompetitiveness - SP actually 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’s no way for governments to wriggle out. All excuses evaporate. It’s a system which unmasks all those seeking to hide behind theoretical impossibilites. I can’t wait to see what follows." But I stress that SP is not itself the solution – it is a technology or vehicle through which all your solutions can ultimately come to be implemented. SP would, in very simple terms, therefore consist of a harmonised list of all the policies the Global Justice Movement is presently calling for; it would consist of all those policies where unilateral implementation might risk uncompetitiveness.

And this new technology is urgently needed. For the existing technology – party politics – has, as I have hinted, already 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". Politicians have thus become but the pseudo-democratic puppets of globally mobile capital; the pawns in a game of destructive global competition. And as such, we should also not be fooled into believing that party politics within an expanded EU will provide a way out either. For 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 foolish to look to the old technology of political parties as we once did in the past. We would indeed be foolish to seek our objectives by forming ourselves into a new political party.

Instead, voter apathy and the narrowing of policy differences between existing parties which results from politicians’ submission to market demands paradoxically allows us to exploit existing political parties in a completely novel and effective way. Because instead of splitting the vote as a new party would, the adoption of SP by individual citizens, NGO members and activists instead simply signifies their personal commitment on how they will vote in future elections. So when you adopt SP, you are, if you like, voting for a policy, and not for a politician. Your adoption of SP therefore signifies your willingness to vote for ANY existing political party – within reason – that also adopts SP.

Now we should remember that in many 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 number’ of people in each electoral constituency in each country to adopt SP. (And as we have seen in the recent U.S. Presidential Election, and in increasing numbers of marginal constituencies in the UK, that ‘critical number’ can be extremely small indeed!) Because SP is to be implemented only when all, or virtually all, nations do likewise, no one – including politicians - has anything to lose by adopting it. And if enough of us do, politicians will be powerless to ignore us. Because when political parties and prospective Members of Parliament around the world realise that a critical proportion of the electorate is prepared to vote 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 by adopting SP themselves for fear of what might happen if they don’t. And as Ralph Nader is once reported to have said, "nothing concentrates a politician’s mind like a citizen’s threat to vote for another candidate". All this of course makes it not unlikely that more than one party, or even all mainstream parties, might adopt it because if they fail to do so, they consign themselves to almost certain electoral defeat.

To illustrate this a little better, lets fast-forward our imaginations to a future U.S. Presidential election. And lets suppose, that by that time, global problems have deteriorated further and adoption of SP around the world is growing: a number of political parties have adopted in some countries and pressure for adoption is mounting. Lets also suppose that, like in 2000 when support for Rebublicans and Democrats was so evenly split that the whole election was hanging on the decision of about 2000 voters in Florida, we have a similar situation. By then, we've also succeeded in getting about 5000 people in Florida to adopt SP and a similar critical number in the other key U.S. states. Then, about two weeks in advance of the election, the U.S. Simultaneous Policy Organisation issues a press release announcing that all U.S. adopters of SP will be voting for WHICHEVER of the Republican or Democrat candidates adopts SP first. Whichever is first gets all the SP votes. Now put yourself into the shoes of the sitting President, George W. Bush, for example, and consider your options: "If I don't adopt SP but my Democrat opponent does, well, I just lost myself the Presidency. But if I do adopt SP, I don't risk anything because I don't have to implement it until virtually all nations do likewise." Ask yourself what you'd do.

So this is why I refer to SP as a ‘new political technology’. Because SP has all the effectiveness of a political party without actually needing to be one. In fact, you could say that SP is potentially more effective than a political party because it does not require a majority for its policy to be adopted; it only requires the ‘critical number’ needed to swing an election one way or the other. Furthermore, the SP technology can be adapted for use in both ‘first past the post’ and proportional electoral systems as well as by Green Parties who broadly share our common aims. Indeed, SP has the potential to turn the destructive global competition of ‘globalisation’ on its head. Instead of the global economy forcing the nations and peoples of the world to compete with one another economically, the world’s peoples can instead force politicians to compete with one another to adopt SP.

Obviously time does not allow me to say more about SP now and I realise this talk may have provoked more questions than provided answers. But I hope the positive reaction my book has received might encourage you to find out more. After all, SP in no way replaces or negates the existing and very necessary activities of NGOs and activist groups like Attac. On the contrary, it is entirely complementary to, and supportive of, them.

I suggest that the global justice movement must now move from protesting agianst problems to adopting a common technology capable of bringing about solutions adequate to meeting the immense challenges we face. I therefore invite all individuals and groups – all of you here today who have not already adopted SP - to investigate SP further and to cooperate with International Simultaneous Policy Organisation in building global solidarity towards achieving our common objectives. For I ask you: If activist groups and NGOs cannot co-operate together, why should we expect governments or politicians to be any better? It is we – all of us – who must set the example and show that it is through co-operation – and not through competition - that we will, together, take back the future of our world.

Thank you.

John Bunzl – Director. October 2002.

International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)

P.O. Box 26547, London SE3 7YT, UK.

Website: www.simpol.org E-mail: info@simpol.org

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