Antiglobalization Movements and Critics

The Origins of Antiglobalization Movements

Popular opposition to free trade has a long pedigree going back to mercantilist opposition to its invention and heated political struggles over tariffs and trade not least in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, antiglobalization refers specifically to opposition to neoliberalism and can be traced back to the 1980s in South America, where the so-called Washington Consensus program of economic reform developed. The revolutions of Eastern Europe in 1989 and the Zapatista uprising pressing for land reform and autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico, which began January 1, 1994, the day the North Atlantic Trade Association came into force, are also considered significant sources of inspiration for antiglobalization movements. However, only during the late 1990s did the antiglobalization movement form as a transnational network of organizations staging high-profile events. Major landmarks for antiglobalization movements include the attempt to disrupt the 50th anniversary of the World Bank in Madrid in 1994 (“50 Years Is Enough”); the so-called Global Street Party that encircled the site of the 1998 G-8 summit held in Birmingham, United Kingdom, with the motto “Our Resistance Is as Transnational as Capital”; the Global Action Day on July 18, 1999, planned by a diverse collection of civil society groups to take place simultaneously in 43 countries; and the so-called Battle of Seattle in 1999, demonstrations surrounding the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference. The World Social Forum was held annually under the motto “Another World Is Possible.”

Eventually this series of events matured in the discourse of supporters as well as opponents into a self-consciously global movement around the turn of the millennium. The network that organized many of the biggest events during this period, Peoples' Global Action, defined itself later as “one of the principal instigators of the new global, radical, anticapitalist movement, which today is challenging the legitimacy of the global governance institutions.” The global protests in 2011 following the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City are examples of the continuing expansion of antiglobalization movements in the 21st century. These massive protests in cities around the world were aimed at the economic control of transnational corporate capitalism.

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