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In January 2001, protesters demonstrated in Davos, Switzerland, at the
WEF meeting. On May Day 2001, protests were organised in many centres of the
world against the multinationals, closing down branches of McDonald’s,
Starmart and KFC. In April 2001, when protesters converged on Quebec for the
Summit of the Americas, Canada’s federal government spent US$46 million
building a 3m­high wall around the city centre.
And in July 2001, demonstrations in Genoa at the G8 Summit became violent,
with hundreds injured and one dead. After the summit, the leaders of the G8
issued a statement saying that, ‘globalisation must work for the poor nations’. 25
Reform or Destroy?
The triumph of capitalism is that the global institutions of economic
colonisation have quietly held sway through many decades, ensuring that the
world is run for the benefit of the extremely wealthy few. In his book Open
Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, financial speculator George Soros argues
that the global corporations should be reformed, but says his plan must remain
a secret. 26 On the other hand, Martin Khor, of the United Nations Third World
Network, argues that there are no benefits to globalisation:
‘We cannot just talk of sharing better the benefits of globalization. We have to
fight the system of the globalisation we have today.’ 27
When politicians like Tony Blair and Helen Clark speak of the inevitability of
globalisation and a borderless society, it leaves us trapped in an intellectual culde­sac.
But theirs is not the last word. There is nothing natural or inevitable
about an economic order that restricts half of the world’s 6 billion people to an
income of less than US$2 a day.