The Bamako Appeal
A group of about 80 anti-globalization intellectuals and political activists, including Marxist economists and organizers, came together to meet on Jan. 18-19, 2006 in Bamako just before the polycentric World Social Forum opened. The gathering, which was not an official WSF activity but whose invitees also participated in many WSF discussions, issued a statement at the end of the meeting: the Bamako Appeal.
Among the 80 people participating in the pre-WSF discussions were Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua and Babacar Diop Buuba, both university professors in Dakar, Senegal; former member of the European Parliament Miguel Urbano Rodrigues of Portugal; Chilean political journalist Marta Harnecker; Lebanese-French editor Leila Ghanem; and the organizer of the rebelion.org website Luciano Alzaga.
Also there were Wen Tiejun and Jinhua Dai of Peking University; editor-in-chief Isobel Monal of the Cuban magazine
More than five years of worldwide gatherings of people and organizations who oppose neo-liberalism has provided an experience leading to the creation of a new collective conscience. The social forums — world, thematic, continental or national — and the Assembly of Social Movements have been the principal architects of this conscience. Meeting in Bamako on Jan. 18, 2006, on the eve of the opening of the Polycentric World Social Forum, the participants during this day dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference have expressed the need to define alternate goals of development, creating a balance of societies, abolishing exploitation by class, gender, race and caste, and marking the route to a new relation of forces between North and South.
The Bamako Appeal aims at contributing to the emergence of a new popular and historical subject, and at consolidating the gains made at these meetings. : It seeks to advance the principle of the right to an equitable existence for everyone; to affirm a collective life of peace, justice and diversity; and to promote the means to reach these goals at the local level and for all of humanity.
In order that an historical subject come into existence – one that is diverse, multipolar and from the people, – it is necessary to define and promote alternatives capable of mobilizing social and political forces. The goal is a radical transformation of the capitalist system. The destruction of the planet and of millions of human beings, the individualist and consumerist culture that accompanies and nourishes this system, and its imposition by imperialist powers are no longer tolerable, since what is at stake is the existence of humanity itself. Alternatives to the destructiveness of capitalism should be nourished by the long tradition of popular resistance and also take into account all the short steps forward indispensable for the daily life of the system’s victims.
The Bamako Appeal, built around the broad themes discussed in subcommittees, expresses the commitment to:
(i) Construct an internationalism joining the peoples of the South and the North who suffer the ravages engendered by the dictatorship of financial markets and by the uncontrolled global deployment of the transnational firms;
(ii) Construct the solidarity of the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas confronted with challenges of development in the 21st century;
(iii) Construct a political, economic and cultural consensus that is an alternative to militarized and neo-liberal globalization and to the hegemony of the United States and its allies.
I. The principles
1. Construct a world founded on the solidarity of human beings and peoples Our epoch is dominated by the imposition of competition among workers, nations and peoples. However, the principle of solidarity has played an historic role clearly more constructive for the efficient organization of intellectual and material production. We want to give to this principle of solidarity the place it deserves and diminish the role of competition.
2. Construct a world founded on the full affirmation of citizenship and equality of the sexes The politically active citizen must ultimately become responsible for the management of all the aspects of social, political, economic and cultural life. It is the condition for an authentic affirmation of democracy. Without this, the human being is reduced by the laws imposed on him to a provider of labor force, an impotent spectator confronted with decisions from those in power, a consumer propelled toward the worst waste. The affirmation, in law and in deed, of the absolute equality of sexes is an integral part of authentic democracy. One of the conditions of this democracy is the eradication of all forms of the patriarchy, either admitted or hidden.
3. Construct a universal civilization offering in all areas the full potential of creative development to all its diverse members For neo- liberalism, the affirmation of the individual – not that of the politically active citizen – allows the spread of the best human qualities. The capitalist system’s unbearable isolation, imposed on this individual, produces its own illusory antidote: imprisonment in the ghettos of alleged common identities, most often those of a para- ethnical and or para-religious type. We want to construct a universal civilization which looks to the future without nostalgia. In this construction, the citizens’ political diversity and that of the cultural and political differences of nations and peoples become the means of giving to individuals a reinforced capability of creative development.
4. Construct socialization through democracy Neo-liberal policies aim to impose as the sole method of socialization the force of the market, whose destructive impact on the majority of human beings no longer needs to be demonstrated. The world we want conceives socialization as the principle product of democratization without boundaries. In this framework, in which the market has its place, but not the predominant place, economy and finance should be put at the service of a societal program; they should not be subordinated to the imperatives of dominant capital that favor the private interests of a tiny majority. The radical democracy that we want to promote reestablishes the creative force of political innovation as a fundamental human attribute It bases social life on the production and reproduction of an inexhaustible diversity, and not on a manipulated consensus that eliminates profound discussions and weakens the dissidents trapped in the ghettoes.
5. Construct a world founded on the recognition of the non- market-driven law of nature and of the resources of the planet and of its agricultural soil
The capitalist neo-liberal model aims at submitting all aspects of social life, almost without exception, to the status of a commodity. The process of privatization and marketization to the ultimate degree brings with it devastating results on a scale without precedent in human history: the threat to the fundamental biogeochemical processes of the planet; destruction of biodiversity through the undermining of ecosystems, the waste of vital resources (oil and water in particular); the annihilation of peasant societies threatened by massive expulsion from their land. All these areas of society-nature metabolism must be managed as the common wealth and in accordance with the basic needs of all of humanity. In these areas, the decisions must be based not on the market but on the political powers of nations and peoples.
6. Construct a world founded on the recognition of the non-market-driven status of cultural products and scientific acquisitions, of education and of health care Neo-liberal policies lead to turning cultural products into commodities and to the privatization of the most important social services, notably those of health and education. This option is accompanied by the mass production of low quality para-cultural products, the submission of research to the exclusive priority of short- term profits, the degradation of education and health care for the poorest sectors of the people, including even their exclusion. The reinstatement and expansion of these public services should reinforce the satisfaction of needs and rights essential to education, health care and providing food.
7. Promote policies that closely associate democracy without pre- assigned limits, with social progress and the affirmation of autonomy of nations and peoples Neo-liberal policies deny the specific needs of social progress – a product that some claim is produced spontaneously by the expansion of the markets – like the autonomy of nations and peoples, necessary to the correction of inequalities. In these conditions, democracy is emptied of all effective content, made vulnerable and delicate in the extreme. To affirm the objective of an authentic democracy demands giving to social progress its determining place in the management of all aspects of social, political, economic and cultural life. The diversity of nations and of peoples produced by history, in all its positive aspects as with the inequalities that accompany it, demands the affirmation of their autonomy. There does not exist a unique recipe in the political or economic spheres that would permit any bypassing of this autonomy. The path toward building equality goes through the diversity of means to carry it out.
8. Affirm the solidarity of the people of the North and the South in the construction of an internationalism on an anti-imperialist basis The solidarity of all the peoples – of the North and of the South – in the construction of a universal civilization cannot be founded on the illusory affirmation that it is possible simply to ignore the conflicts of interest opposing different classes and nations that make up the real world. This solidarity must bypass the rules and values of capitalism and imperialism, which is inherent to capitalism. The regional organizations of the alternative globalization must be placed in the perspective of the strengthening the autonomy and the solidarity of nations and of peoples on the five continents. This perspective is in contradiction with that of the present dominant models of regionalization, conceived as the building blocks of the neo-liberal globalization. Fifty years after Bandung, the Bamako Appeal expresses also the requirement of a Bandung of the peoples of the South, victims of the spread of really existing capitalism, of the rebuilding of a front of the South able to hold in check imperialism of the dominant economic powers and U.S. military hegemony. The anti-imperialist front does not oppose the peoples of the South to those of the North. On the contrary, it constitutes the basis of a global internationalism associating them all together in the building of a common civilization in its diversity.
II. Purposes in the long term and proposals for the immediate action
In order to progress from a collective conscience to the building of collective, popular, plural and multipolar actors, it has always been necessary to identify precise themes to formulate strategies and concrete proposals. The themes of the Bamako Appeal deal with the following 10 fields, including both long- term goals and proposals for immediate action:
1. the political organization of globalization;
2. the economic organization of the world system;
3. the future of peasant societies;
4. the building of a workers’ united front;
5. the regionalization for the benefit of the peoples;
6. the democratic management of the societies;
7. the equality of gender;
8. the management of the resources of the planet;
9. the democratic management of the media and the cultural diversity;
10. the democratization of the international organizations.
The Bamako Appeal is an invitation to all the organizations of struggle representative of the vast majorities that comprise the working classes of the globe, to all those excluded from the neoliberal capitalist system, and to all people and political forces who support these principles–, to work together in order to put into effect the new collective conscience, as an alternative to the present system of inequality and destruction.
Forum for another Mali, Third Word Forum, World Forum for Alternatives, ENDA (Supported by Assembly of Social Movements at the WSF in Caracas)