ATTAC - An Action Oriented Education Movement

BERLIN FREE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT FOR POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
OTTO SUHR INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE
6TH SEMESTER

ATTAC - An Action Oriented Education Movement

von: Tobias Goldschmidt

1. INTRODUCTION 4

2. HISTORY OF ATTAC 5

2.1. PRECONDITIONS OF ATTAC`S VIBRANT SUCCESS 5
2.2. LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE: DISARMING THE MARKETS! 6
2.3. CIVIC ACTIVISM - SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, GENOA, PORTO ALEGRE 7

3. INTERNAL ORGANIZATION 9

3.1 MEMBERS 10
3.2 ATTAC RATSCHLAG (ATTAC GENERAL CONVENTION) 10
3.3 ATTAC KOORDINIERUNGSKREIS (COORDINATIVE COUNCIL) 11
3.4 ATTAC RAT (ATTAC COUNCIL) 11

4. THE AGENDA 12

5. ATTAC`S FUTURE – CHANCES AND CHALLENGES 14

ANNEX 16

REFERENCE LIST 20





1. Introduction

With great diversity of organizational form, issue focus, and tactics, global civil society has injected considerable dynamism and innovation into contemporary world politics (Scholte 2001, 27). In the last years Attac has been one of the fastest growing civil society groups in Europe. As it relies on modern forms of communication, it can be considered as well a product of globalization as a countermovement to globalization. In this paper I am firstly going to present Attac`s history. That’s why I will set out with an overview of the history of Attac as an European -mainly French- movement. As Attac is a movement, which is very different from country to country, I decided to focus on Attac Germany in the second part of this paper. I will introduce the reader as well to Attac Germany’s organizational structure as to its political agenda. Who is active for Attac and why has it been so overwhelmingly successful in the previous years? Finally I will try to point out the major challenges Attac will have to face in the next years.

As the Attac movement is quite a recent phenomenon there is not as much literature available on it as it is for other issues. I will therefore mainly rely on newspaper articles and the World Wide Web, which is the most important method of internal and external communication for Attac. Before I start, it might be helpful to state that Attac is neither as strictly organized as a conventional NGO nor as protest-oriented and unsteady as social movements tend to be. At the same time it is more than a loose network or an umbrella organization. A green paper about Attac´s self-conception stresses that Attac, as a new type of organization, for which sociologists do not yet have a name, will try to offer room for political education and experiences in which people of different political backgrounds have a chance to discuss leftist politics and to coordinate actions and activities (Attac Selbstverständnispapier, 2001). For this reason I will follow Eskola, Kolb and Greffrath in understanding Attac as an action-oriented education movement in this paper (Eskola and Kolb 2002, 28; Greffrath 2003, 115).

2. History Of Attac

2.1. Preconditions of Attac`s vibrant success

In the previous years Attac has grown enormously. This isn’t only due to the huge media attention, which the frequent demonstrations against institutions like the WTO, IMF and World Bank attracted, but also to four other important preconditions: When Attac France was founded in 1998 the international atmosphere offered a window of opportunity. The recent financial crisis in South Asia, the economical problems in Latin America and Russia as well as the publication of several books that were very critical with the market-fundamentalism of neo-liberal globalization (George 1994; Forrester 1996) had introduced the problems of globalization to the public sphere. Another important precondition of the emergence of Attac was that right at the beginning many prominent personalities decided to become engaged in the movement. Writers like Susan George and Viviane Forrester, musicians like Manu Chao and peasant organization leaders like Jose Bové were all well known. Also the infrastructural and financial support of the French trade unions helped to found the organization and to promote its agenda. The French leftist monthly Le Monde Diplomatique has been of even greater importance. It has been an important transnational forum for globalization-critical discourses and has moreover supported the foundation of Attac not only financially but also intellectually. During the nineties there were two major waves of popular protests in France, which can also be considered a main precondition for the foundation of Attac and its great success in the first years. In 1995 the movement de décembre managed to assemble millions of people in the streets demonstrating against Prime Minister Juppé`s plan to privatize parts of the public sector and parts of the pension scheme. Two years later another wave of protests rolled through France. This time thousands of people demonstrated against a Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), which had been negotiated in the OECD since 1995. In France civil society pressure was so tough that France withdrew from the OECD consultations on the MAI in 1998. This success can definitely be considered grist on the mills of the foundation of Attac (Eskola 2002, 27f.).

2.2. Le Monde Diplomatique: Disarming the Markets!

The storm that has hit the money markets in Asia and affected the rest of the world is part of a wider danger. That is financial globalisation, which has become a law unto itself with its own powers, embodied by institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD and the World Trade Organisation. Together, they threaten the power base of real states in the real world. (Ramonet, 1997)

When Ignacio Ramonet, main editor of the left-wing monthly paper Le Monde Diplomatique wrote his article Disarming the Markets in December 1997 he certainly didn’t know that he was initiating the foundation of an organization counting more than 90.000 registered members only seven years later (Schäfers 2004, 50). Under the impression of the South-East-Asian financial crises Ramonet foresaw the decline of sovereign nation states accompanied by universal social insecurity. In his article he argued that the institutions of neo-liberal globalization, that is to say the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank and the OECD, together with the mainstream media are singing the praise of the liberalization of the markets. He feared that a supranational state without a society could emerge and therefore called for disarmament of the markets. In order to do so he proposed to close down tax havens, to impose a tax on unearned money, and to introduce the Tobin Tax. To promote this he asked his audience: Why not set up a new worldwide non-governmental organization, Action for a Tobin Tax to Assist the Citizen (Attac)? With the trade unions and the many social, cultural and ecological organizations, it could exert formidable pressure on governments to introduce this tax at last, in the name of universal solidarity. (ibid.)

[...]