POLITICS: Socialists Look for Ways to Globalise Progress

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 25 1999 (IPS) - Globalisation must not entail the further submission of the poorest countries, declared Pierre Mauroy, former prime minister of France, upon opening the Socialist International (SI) Council on Friday.

Mauroy indicated that globalisation has permitted economic improvements in several countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as the spread of democracy and values of peace and social justice, “which are part of the socialist ideology.”

But Mauroy stressed that globalisation has also reinforced social and regional inequalities and the vulnerability of developing countries confronted with international crises.

“The number of ‘less-advanced nations’ jumped from 20 in 1971 to 48 in 1997 – 32 of which are in Africa,” stated Mauroy. “It is unacceptable that 80 percent of the world’s consumption is monopolised by just 20 percent of the population,” emphasised the French leader.

With over 140 political party representatives in attendance, some of the luminaries of the socialist world included Massimo D’Alema, prime minister of Italy; Felipe Gonzalez, former president of the Spanish government; and Hens Sischer, Austria’s president of parliament.

Mauroy, president of the SI, opened the meeting, which ends Saturday, by declaring his strong support for the South American leftist presidential candidates Fernando de la Rua of Argentina, Ricardo Lagos of Chile, and Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay.

Mauroy said he hoped this year’s elections in the three Southern Cone countries will result in socialist victories, tipping the regional balance of power – which currently leans toward the centre or right-wing.

At the conference, representatives from labour, socialist and social-democratic parties from throughout the world debated the contents of the Global Progress Commission’s report – a plan for the SI’s ideological rennovation – with an eye on the Twentieth Congress of the SI to be held this November in Paris.

Gonzalez, who presided over the drafting of the report, defined the document as “a new platform of ideas” for socialism’s entry into the next century.

The SI proposed to regulate globalisation through reforming multilateral financial organisations, as well as creating an Economic Security Council within the United Nations to build a strategy for governing the world economy.

Mauroy said it would take time to implement the SI’s proposals for reversing the negative impacts of globalisation. But he believes that the current trend in favour of the socialist ideal will deepen among the world’s electorates.

The Chilean presidential candidate Lagos, who was also part of the Commission for Global Progress, maintained that the so-called Washington Consensus “has been exhausted,” because nearly the entire region applied its neo-liberal recipe and has demonstrated that “it was insufficient.”

“We need a new agenda with our priorities,” said Lagos, “One that allows us to make economic progress and stability compatible with the same values we’ve always had: solidarity, justice, liberty and equality,” he added.

Mauroy explained that “the failure of communism does not mean that we abandoned our critiques of liberalism,” and stated that “the market itself does not produce values or projects.”

Gonzalez believes that it is necessary for the socialist political leaders to engage in self-criticism.

“We are living through world change that is extremely profound and disconcerting. Economy and finances are globalised while politics shrink. I don’t think we have kept up with change,” he challenged.

The former president of Spain underscored that every day, financial capital moves a total that is equivalent to double the amount of wealth produced by the African continent in a year. Faced with that reality, politics become localised, he said. “This is a serious imbalance” that impedes change.

“Our challenge is to globalise progress while confronting economic globlisation,” maintained Gonzalez.

He added that “over the last 20 years, world trade grew four percent per year, while the financial system grew to 48 times its original size.”

Gonzalez said that any change must be made upon a foundation of consolidated economic stability. “Healthy macroeconomics are no longer debated, because fiscal deficit or inflation are not of the left or the right-wing.”

“As Octavio Paz (the Mexican author) said when the Berlin Wall came down, ‘the fact that the solutions failed does not mean that the questions were not valid,’ and it is because of these questions that the socialist family continues to grow,” concluded Gonzalez.

The number of SI parties has doubled in the last 15 years. Though the organisation has a marked European influence (13 European countries have socialist governments), several parties from other regions of the world have joined the SI in recent years.