In the Addis talks over tackling tax dodging, and in the EU-IMF talks on Euro-austerity, the powerful have shown a really nasty side this month. That’s great news.
How can I say that when we see the suffering that this will cause? How could be I so heartless as to see the opportunity in the crisis? Of course I don’t mean that the suffering is a price worth paying, or even that suffering should be necessary to social change. I only mean this: the suffering has been happening. What has been happening less is the powerful showing how deliberate their actions are. Now we see it. It’s the difference between brutality that has been caught on a cameraphone and broadcast on youtube, and brutality hidden behind a wall. Events in Addis and in Athens show how business as usual works, who dominates it, and its emptiness. It’s not hidden anymore. As Gandhi noted, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. We’ve got to stage three.
In the EU-IMF talks on Euro-austerity, we know that terms have been imposed on Greece that aren’t deliverable. We know this because the IMF’s own documents say so. In the Addis talks, we know that the reason we don’t have a global tax body to tackle tax dodging is because the rich countries blocked it – not that people looked at it and decided on a better way, but that poor countries proposed it and rich countries blocked it. We may wish that the powerful were not like that – but if they are it is better that we know that they are. What Addis showed is there is no reliable “global leadership” from the great powers of the North. Southern government assertiveness, backed up by South-North civil society solidarity, will be key. That’s how we stopped the steamroller of the WTO.
As we look at how to tackle inequality and how to combat climate change, it is clear that we are not all on the same side. Sometimes pushing a rock up a hill is hard because it’s a rock and it’s a hill. But sometimes it’s even harder because someone at the top is trying to push that rock back down the hill.
But what’s also clear is this. The powerful don’t usually like having to show the force behind their power except when they actually have to. As social theorists from Gramsci to Chomsky have pointed out, things run much smoother for those in power when there is a semblance of process and consent. That the type of power shown over the Addis talks and the Greece talks has been so nakedly brutal is paradoxically a sign of its weakness. This is what Martin Luther King noted in the struggle for civil rights. We’re relearning it now.
This isn’t an argument for exclusivism. I’ve just come back from meeting on inequality and climate change that brought together Naomi Klein and the Vatican. That’s quite a broad movement. As different issue groups converge in common cause, as unions and environmentalists, faith groups and feminists, grassroots movements and NGOs, all link up, the power from below is building. And one day the establishment will organise stamps and holidays to celebrate the victories for tax justice, climate action and the reversal of inequality, just as now they do for yesteryear’s victories that they fought just as hard to prevent, and lost. Remember the powerful resisted civil society on slavery, suffragettes, colonialism, apartheid and civil rights.
NGOs need to stop saying “this is a crucial year” or “this is a key meeting”, and get back to the business of organising. Justice won’t come today just because there is a meeting, or a moment. But it can come tomorrow, when there is momentum from a movement. That movement is growing. And it’s becoming smarter, clearer-eyed about who is in the way. And that’s great news.
