Antisystemic Movements

Themes of Protest

There are five principal themes of protest within contemporary anticapitalist, antisystemic movements: (1) trade regulation, (2) environmental degradation, (3) labor conditions, (4) militarism (especially in the guise of the “War on Terror”), and (5) human rights. Implicit within each campaign theme is the recognition that as each of these areas is becoming increasingly globalized, so too must counterhegemonic protest. The overlying theme is therefore the delivery of social, political, and economic justice to those who have been or may be threatened by the globalization of a particularly fundamentalist form of free market capitalism.

Patterns and Aspects of Protest

ASMs campaign on a huge variety of issues, from trade unions to organizations of indigenous peoples, whose very existence is threatened by the process of capitalist globalization. A strong commitment is maintained to a nonhierarchical “politics of difference” within and between antisystemic strategies and movements. Of particular importance is the emphasis that anticapitalist groups have placed on the global scope of resistance, while acknowledging that small-scale actions in groups’ own locales contribute to a greater political-economic struggle.

Because of the failures of previous ASMs to enact systemic transformation through the capture of state power, current antisystemic movements emphasize the need to develop participatory forms of democratic practice “from the ground up.” Political power is thus concentrated at the lowest possible level, flowing upward only through the establishment of consensus through a loose network of affiliations and coalitions. Contemporary ASMs have also concentrated on constructing transnational connections between developed and developing world movements. The declared objective is the construction of forms of global civil society to combat exploitation of the global poor through the transnationalization of production and its concomitant creation of a class-conscious, transnational capitalist elite, especially in the post–Cold War era.

Most ASMs aim at political empowerment through the promotion of an agenda of constructive change in the global political economy. By encouraging participation in mass protests and other campaigns, there is an educative agenda that encourages activists to learn more about their world, the workings of the transnationalized networks of finance and production, and those anticapitalist movements and campaigns in operation in other areas of the world, thereby building consciousness of the global nature of the ASM agenda.

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