Systemic Alternatives

DEGLOBALIZATION
Notes for the Debate

systemicalternatives.org
© 2014 Systemic Alternatives

Coordinated by Attac France, Focus on the Global South, and Fundación Solón

Supported by CCFD, DKA, and Fastenopfer

Text by Pablo Solón

Editing by Megan Morrissey

 Notes for the debate

Deglobalization
World integration for people and nature

What is deglobalization?
To answer that question, we must first be clear on our definition of globalization. Dr.
Nayef R.F. Al-Rodhan has compiled around one hundred definitions of globalization
in his paper, “Definitions of Globalization: A Comprehensive Overview and a
Proposed Definition.”1 The majority tend to define the term as a process of worldwide
integration at different levels (social, economic, cultural, and in terms of infrastructure,
communications, ideas, worldviews, etc.). In this regard, globalization is a process of
increasing interdependence and integration toward a world society.

Taking as a reference these definitions of “globalization,” the common approach to

“deglobalization” is that it is a “process of diminishing interdependence and integration
between certain units around the world, typically nation-states.”2 In other words,
“deglobalization” would be a call to isolation or to revert from the increasing integration
of the world.

The concept of deglobalization that we will use in this text departs from a very different
definition of globalization. Walden Bello, founder of Focus on the Global South,
who coined the term “deglobalization” in 2001, has explained globalization as “the
accelerated integration of capital, production and markets globally, a process driven by
the logic of corporate profitability.”

[Walden Bello] Deglobalization is not a synonym for withdrawing from the

world economy. It means a process of restructuring the world economic and
political system so that the latter builds the capacity of local and national
economies instead of degrading it. Deglobalization means the transformation
of a global economy from one integrated around the needs of transnational
corporations to one integrated around the needs of peoples, nations, and
communities.3

The challenge of deglobalization is to understand, stop and dismantle the global empire
that corporations and elites are building and to develop alternatives to confront and
replace that process of capital capture in the world.
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Understanding
The first step of deglobalization is to understand and deepen the analysis of the
process of globalization. Walden Bello has devoted most of his writing to this task. In
his view, globalization has had two phases, the first lasting from the early 19th century
until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and the second from the early 1980s
until today. The intervening period was marked by the dominance of national capitalist
economies, a significant degree of state intervention, and an international economy with
strong constraints on trade and capital flows. 4

The present phase of globalization is a process of neoliberal globalization that had a

period of deep advances with the “Washington Consensus” - the IMF, the World Bank
and the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994 - and now we
are seeing a period of shocks and crises that complicate but do not stop the advance of
neoliberal globalization. The Mexican crisis in 1994, the Asian Financial crisis of 1997,
the deep recession in Argentina in 1998-2002, the collapse of the Third Ministerial
Conference of the WTO in Seattle 1999, the defeat of the Free Trade Agreements of the
Americas in 2005 and the continuing crisis of 2007 that began in the United States and
spread to Europe and now is marring the emerging economies - these are the “new
normal” of this process of globalization. The process is charactarized by a slowdown of
the global economy and in particular of trade in goods while speculative financial capital
continues to expand together with a higher concentration of capital in the hands of
corporations and elites.

The globalization that once was presented as “the end of the story” now confronts the
reality that many boundaries of our Earth system, like climate and biodiversity, are
being exceeded dramatically. Globalization is moving from the “Washington Consensus”
to a new phase of reconfiguration of capitalism - adapting to a situation of permanent
chronic crisis, trying to increase the rate of profit of capital, through: a) dismantling
the welfare state, in particular in Europe, b) a new wave of privatization through Public
Private Partnership, c) an intensification of resource grabbing and displacement of rural
populations, d) a “green consensus” to push for the finacialization of nature and the
creation of new market mechanisms around nature (REDD, Climate Smart Agriculture,
Biodiversity offsetting, trade liberalization of environmental goods and services, etc.),
e) more financial speculation with dramatic cases like the vulture funds in Argentina,
f) the development of new technologies like geo-engineering, synthetic biology and
others to make business out of the reality of the climate and environmental crises, and
g) more ambitious national, regional and global trade and investment liberalization like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP), free trade agreements (FTAs), and new Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), with
the push for the revival and expanding of the WTO into new areas, and finally South-
South economic agreements.

All of these aspects and others require a deep analysis from the perspective of
deglobalization. For example, the increasing control of Transnational Corporation of
Global Value Chains or the development of new south-south cooperation agreements
that promote the expansion of TNCs in emerging economies.

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One of the particularities of deglobalization compared to buen vivir (“living well”),
localization, the Rights of Mother Earth or the commons is that its emphasis is on the
analysis of the process of globalization of capitalism. It does not seek to promote an
undeniable truth, but poses key questions to deepen our understanding, strategies and
alternatives.

Deconstruction
The second track of deglobalization is deconstruction.

[Walden Bello] Breaking with the past is a far more complicated affair when
it comes to global economic governance. In social change, new systems
cannot really be effectively constructed without weakening the hold of old
systems, which do not take fundamental challenges to their hegemony lightly.
(…) A strategy of deconstruction must necessarily proceed alongside one of
reconstruction.5

One of the keys of deglobalization is to delegitimize, stop, exploit the contradictions,

derail and put an end to the key organizations of globalization. In this regard, people
have made a great effort to support different campaigns and initiatives around the
IMF, the World Bank and regional banks, as well as the WTO and trade and investment
agreements.

The process of deconstruction has had important victories like the defeat of the Free
Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) or the mobilization against the Ministerial
Conference of the WTO in Hong Kong in 2005, after which the WTO got stuck for
several years until Bali in 2013. Nonetheless, the lesson after all these years is that
these organizations have a great capacity to adapt and revive themselves, capturing
elements of the criticism and of the new circumstances and with that, re-launch their
offensive. For example, this is the case of the World Bank, which after several defeats
in processes of privatization of water utilities, has now repackaged that old aim with
a more clever and dangerous proposal called Public Private Partnerships, which have
spread all over Asia and other regions. Also, the defeat of the FTAA and the stalemate of
the WTO negotiations for several years have led them to promote more bilateral FTAs,
regional FTAs only with “friendly” governments, and to promote an early harvest in the
WTO with the Trade Facilitation agreements that is still in the balance until it is ratified.
Another example is the attempt to try to capture the climate crisis through the “green
economy,” launching complementary initiatives in the World Bank, the WTO, the United
Nations and the G7.

The strategies of deconstruction of international organizations from civil society

movements that worked in the past don’t have the same effect in the current
circumstances, and they need to be re-imagined and also re-launched at national,
regional and global levels. The process of crisis/deepening globalization has had an
impact on the trajectories of social movements around the world. The emergence of new
movements like Occupy, the indignados and the Arab Spring was very important, but it
has had temporary outcomes, and in some cases like Egypt, very contradictory results.

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In general, we can say that global organized social movements around the world face
numerous challenges, with some not getting stronger and other initiatives like the
World Social Forum in decline.

The election of progressive governments in Latin America linked to or supported by

social movements has helped in the promotion of different initiatives of deconstruction
in international organizations but the fact that many social organizations have lost
their autonomy in relation to these governments and their vision, that in reality is
constrained to state capitalism, has in the end weakened social movements in these
countries.

Also, the tension between those that want to reform and those that want to derail these
institutions of globalization has increased in the last few years. The key questions in
networks like Our World is Not for Sale are if the strategies are going to be decided
thinking based on arguments that can influence negotiators and governments or on
proposals that can galvanize the building up of strong social movements. In the same
line, it is necessary to review the strategy of support for developing countries or the
South in general against the developed countries (or the North) because behind the
developing world and the so-called South - who are benefiting mainly are new elites and
corporations, including those that are state owned but behave as private corporations
when it comes to natural resources, employment and competition.

This process is even more complex and diverse if one looks at the regional, national and
local levels. In this context, the track of deconstruction of deglobalization has to learn
with the social movements exploring new possibilities to strengthen concrete struggles
and promoting new processes of convergence that go beyond particular campaigns
addressing the specific issues of trade, climate, finance and others from a perspective of
changing the system.

14 principles of deglobalization
by Walden Bello
(Additions to the 2009 version of the 11 principles of deglobalization are in bold)

1. Production for the domestic market rather than production for export markets
must again become the center of gravity of the economy.
2. The principle of subsidiarity should be enshrined in economic life by encouraging
production of goods at the level of the community and at the national level if this
can be done at reasonable cost in order to preserve community.

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3. Trade policy — that is, quotas and tariffs — should be used to protect the local
economy from destruction by corporate-subsidized commodities with artificially
low prices.
4. Industrial policy — including subsidies, tariffs, and trade — should be used to
revitalize and strengthen the manufacturing sector.
5. Long-postponed measures of equitable income redistribution and land redistribution
(including urban land reform) must be implemented to create a vibrant internal
market that would serve as the anchor of the economy and produce local financial
resources for investment.
6. De-emphasizing growth, emphasizing upgrading the quality of life, and maximizing
equity will reduce environmental disequilibrium.
7. The power and transportation systems must be transformed into decentralized
systems based on renewable sources.
8. A healthy balance must be maintained between the country’s carrying capacity
and the size of its population.
9. Environmentally congenial technology must be developed and diffused in both
agriculture and industry.
10. A gender lens must be applied in all areas of economic decision making so as
to ensure gender equity.
11. Strategic economic decisions must not be left to the market or to technocrats.
Instead, the scope of democratic decision-making in the economy should be
expanded so that all vital economic issues — such as which industries to develop
or phase out, what proportion of the government budget to devote to agriculture,
etc. — become subject to democratic discussion and choice. This will entail the
demystification of economics and a return to its origins as political economy
and moral economy.
12. Civil society must constantly monitor and supervise the private sector and the state,
a process that should be institutionalized.
13. The property complex should be transformed into a “mixed economy” that includes
community cooperatives, private enterprises, and state enterprises, and excludes
transnational corporations.
14. Centralized global institutions like the IMF and the World Bank should be replaced
with regional institutions built not on free trade and capital mobility but on
principles of cooperation that, to use the words of Hugo Chavez in describing the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), “transcend the logic
of capitalism.6

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Alternatives
In his latest book, Capitalism’s Last Stand? (2013), Walden Bello has expanded the
original 11 principles to “14 key principles of the deglobalization perspective.”

The heart of the deglobalization approach is in those principles that advocate for a new
kind of process of global integration that strengthens the capacity of local and national
economies instead of degrading it for the benefit of transnational corporations. In this
path, deglobalization shares the principle of subsidiarity that is proposed by other
alternatives like “localization,” but its center of gravity is much broader and concerned
with how to change capital-driven globalization.

In Capitalism’s Last Stand? Bello mentions several of what he calls the “Micro-level
alternatives”: Participatory budgeting, the Mondragon experiment (workers co-
operatives in Spain), Community currency systems, Community renewal energy
ventures, Organic farming and fair trade networks and Microcredit.

His general comment about these “Micro-level alternatives” is that “while boasting
of successes –and these are not insignificant- many of these alternatives to corporate
enterprises operating in a market system have faced great difficulties either in
sustaining themselves or in living up to their original objectives.” After highlighting
some of the problems like the capture of the organic food sector by corporations, the
limits and contradictions of microcredits and co-operatives, Bello affirms that the aim of
deglobalization is to “not to coexist with but rather to supplant the prevailing corporate
driven market.”7

In this regard, deglobalization is more in line with initiatives like Food Sovereignty
from the global peasants’ movement La Via Campesina (with 200 million members
worldwide) that tend to act and respond at local, national and global levels. In the
publication, “Derailers’ Guide to the WTO and the Free Trade Regime” (2013) by
Focus on the Global South, Shalmali Guttal and Mary Ann Manahan highlight several
experiences of food sovereignty like the Sisters Garden Plot (SGP) in South Korea, The
Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
programs in Europe and North America, the initiative of peasants’ organizations allied
with nuns in Colombia to promote peasant family markets, the initiative of hawkers in
Calcutta in India, the Alter Trade Negros in the Philippines, and many others.

[Focus on the Global South] Deglobalization and food sovereignty are

complementary “meta-narratives” of resistance and change that challenge
the hegemony of the “one-size-fits-all” development model promoted by both
neoliberalism and outdated bureaucratic state socialism.8

Deglobalization has also inspired initiatives that have to do with rethinking and
reshaping how national economies should address globalization. Some examples
include the withdrawal of Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador from the World Bank’s ICSID
(International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes), the provisions in the 2009
Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia that denounce all BITs, the process of

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revision, denouncement or non-renewal of BITs in some countries, the replacement
of Bolivia’s FTA with Mexico in 2010 with an agreement only on goods and services
that does not include chapters on Intellectual Property, Investment, Government
Procurement and others. Also, deglobalization is behind the “Statement: To confront the
climate emergency we need to dismantle the WTO and the free trade regime”9 (2013)
supported by several social organizations as one of the first responses that challenges
the impact of globalized trade in climate.

And finally, one of the most recent and comprehensive “living documents” that is
inspired by deglobalization is the “Economy for Life” document that was debated
and enriched in the alternative peoples summit to the WTO in Bali (2013).10 This text
includes many proposals regarding how to confront globalization at different levels.

As happens with all progressive approaches, its development has gone far beyond some
of its original proposals.

Economy for Life

(fragments)

Replace the paradigm of development with the paradigm of redistribution and

equity. To address the basic needs of more than half of the world’s population and end
the disruption of the vital cycles of the Earth system, global and national economies
have to redistribute wealth to reduce asymmetries under the limits of nature. Some
sectors and countries still need to improve their well-being while others need to reduce
their overconsumption and waste.
Take control over, in a democratic and conscious way, the key means of production,
finance and trade and establish mechanisms of complementarity, solidarity and
redistribution penalizing the over-accumulation of wealth and the destruction of
ecosystems.

Bring producers of goods, providers of services and people closer together,

promoting self-management, self-emancipation, solidarity and social interaction
in harmony with nature. ...promote local production and consumption of durable
goods to satisfy the fundamental needs of the people and avoid the transport of goods
that can be produced locally.

End the system of overconsumption, luxury and waste driven by large corporations.

Transform trade into a vehicle for complementarity and not for competition and
profit. Trade should be guided by the need of the people and not by the greed of TNCs,
interchanging in the market what a community, region or country produces in excess,
after satisfying its local needs or what they cannot produce locally. This involves giving
priority to the value of use of all produced goods over their value of exchange... trade
rules have to be asymmetric: more beneficial for the weakest and more demanding
for the strongest.

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Society has to own and democratically control the financial system. Implement
an international monetary system based on a new system of reserves, including the
creation of regional reserve currencies in order to end the supremacy of the dollar...

Socialize the money that currently is under the control of central banks that respond
to private interests and not social demands. Implement a global mechanism of state
and citizen control of banks and financial institutions. Prohibit hedge funds, derivatives
and other toxic products.

Establish progressive taxes as a means for redistribution and to end the

concentration of wealth in a few hands. These measures should include taxes to high
incomes, movements of capital, luxury goods and profits, financial transaction taxes,
taxes on fossil fuels and other polluting activities and the elimination of tax havens.

Cancel the debt of countries that were imposed to the people to fulfill corporate
and private interests. Establish systems of democratic, accountable, fair, sovereign
borrowing and lending that serves the people and nature.

Dismantle Transnational Corporations’ power in order to achieve equity and justice.

Return to society the private property controlled by elites, TNCs, big banks‘, national
corporations’ and ‘sub-national corporations’.

Democratize the management of public state owned enterprises. Encourage public

service managers, staff, unions and consumer/social organizations to collaborate to
this end and to sanction corruption and nepotism practices.

Dismantle the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank (WB) and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). New multilateral organizations to deal with
the issues of finance, trade and credit have to be developed under a new multilateral
scheme that looks for all aspects of our Earth community.

The critiques
Excluding those critics that depart from the misconception that deglobalization
promotes autarchy and isolation, activist academics like Patrick Bond have criticized
some of the formulations of the book Deglobalization written by Walden Bello in 2002.

[Patrick Bond] Is there not a more expansive way to address deglobalization, by

departing from a dual-reformist notions of globalized-regulation and utopian-
localized strategies? Would it be so difficult for intellectual leaders like Bello
to mention the prospect of revolution–namely, defense of a takeover and total
transformation of state power, in the manner carried out so often historically, but
so rarely taken to fruition?

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Wouldn’t nurturing the economy and society of such a radical Third Worldist
state presume the expropriation of key local/national assets and an immediate
rejigging of the local/national economy towards meeting needs which had not
been met previously? Would this revolutionary state not also automatically
reject the World Bank/IMF and WTO, the French/British water companies,
the international property rights restrictions on medicines, and most other
international capitalist relationships, as a short-medium term strategy? In
turn, would this not require capital controls, default on the odious debts left by
previous regimes, and import/export management (of a very different type than
was practiced under previous bourgeois Third World nationalist regimes)?

This could be one half of the future of the idea of deglobalization. The other half
is the struggle to implement “decommodification” at home by way of transitional
demands flowing directly from organic social and labour struggles.11

Deglobalization cannot fully flourish without capturing national power by social forces
and replacing neoliberal or reformist governments. The experiences of progressive
governments in Latin America show that national governments are key to move an
alternative agenda but there is the risk that the system can co-opt them. Without
peoples power there is no possibility of deep deglobalization.

Some of the other critiques have been addressed in other texts by Focus on the Global
South like the “Derailers’ Guide to the WTO” and also in more collective documents
like “Economy for Life” that highlight the fight against privatization, commodification,
financialization and the need to break with the institutions that promote them. But there
is surely more to be done in this process of collective construction.

The future of the debate

Deglobalization has to harvest and learn from the different experiences and initiatives
that it has inspired. Today, the concept is richer than a short list of principles that
need to be further developed and actualized. Some recent proposals like “a healthy
balance between the country’s carrying capacity and the size of its population”12 must be
clarified and developed to avoid unnecessary debates that can move us away from the
main contributions of deglobalization. The center of gravity of trade and investment
of deglobalization has to be further developed, taking into account the changes in the
current processes of globalization. The political component of deglobalization has to go
beyond proposals of just “more democratic decision-making.”

Probably the most important debate around deglobalization is in relation to that

“mixed economy that includes community cooperatives, private enterprises, and state
enterprises, and excludes transnational corporations.” Economic pluralism is key, but
the exclusion of TNCs does not automatically mean that those “mixed economies” will
be shrug off the logic of capital. The key question that remains to be answered is how to
build plural economies at national and global levels that are not driven by capital.

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Expressions that suggest that initiatives like the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of
Our Americas (ALBA) have transcended the logic of capitalism are not accurate, even
though they have included progressive attempts to develop processes of integration
based on complementarity and not competition. We must learn from the successes and
failures of these experiences.

Finally, the deglobalization movement has different voices with different views that
need to strengthen their interactions with other alternatives that, from different roots,
are challenging contemporary capitalist globalization.

Notes
1. Dr. Nayef R.F. Al-Rodhan, “Definitions of Globalization: A Comprehensive Overview
and a Proposed Definition,” 2006. www.academia.edu/2969717/Definitions_of_
Globalization_A_Comprehensive_Overview_and_a_Proposed_Definition-_The_
International_Relations_and_Security_Network_ETH_Zurich_June_19_2006
2. See Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deglobalization
3. Focus on the Global South, The Paradigm: Deglobalization systemicalternatives.
org/2014/02/14/the-paradigm-deglobalisation/
4. Walden Bello, Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy, 2002.
5. Ibid.
6. Walden Bello, Capitalism’s Last Stand?, 2013.
7. Ibid.
8. Focus on the Global South, Derailers’ Guide to the WTO and Free Trade Regime 2.0,
2013. focusweb.org/content/derailers-guide-wto-and-free-trade-regime-20
9. See Climate Space: climatespace2013.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/statement-to-
confront-the-climate-emergency-we-need-to-dismantle-the-wto-and-the-free-trade-
regime/
10. See SMAA website: smaa.asia/economy-for-life-in-our-earth-community/
11. Patrick Bond, ““Deglobalization”? Sure but… “, 2003.
12 Ibid.

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