Writings Comments Architecture

Building an Alternative Democratic Global Architecture

By Troy Davis to mobilize-globally@yahoogroups.com

Thursday, 30 August 2001

I agree 1000% with the philosophical premise of Al Kuhn about how to deal with the fence around the WB/IMF in Washington DC.

Put in more conceptual terms, basically this is the recognition that WE are the sovereign people with inalienable rights and "inherent dignity" as the UN Charter starts with and we have to recognize that today WE have a tremendous power which we are not yet aware of.

This is because this power is brand new and it is still diffuse. It is like normal light, when to be really effective, we need to focus it like a Laser. Then we can do anything.

This power is the simple recognition that all national and global institutions ULTIMATELY derive their power FROM OUR TACIT/IMPLICIT or EXPLICIT CONSENT.

So the real post-Genoa strategy should be NOT to fight them, but to IGNORE them.

But this would not be enough because a vacuum would ensure and either they would fill it again in an even worse and illegitimate manner, or some more authoritarian structures might be built.

What we need to do is BUILT ALTERNATIVE GLOBAL STRUCTURES to which we freely give our own allegiance.

Institutions based on basic principles of human dignity and human rights, on democracy, transparency and accountability.

So the real challenge for the world is HOW we can build such global democratic institutions, and WHAT blueprint would work best?

This has the added advantage of being a positive project which could draw in millions more people who have not been involved so far, because it is a construction project rather than a destruction one.

To fight and resist something is ironically to give it more power. Now that the beast is exposed, we need to move on to the next stage which is to build an alternative global political architecture. If we keep on simply opposing present institutions, we are actually strengthening them, also because it prevents us from focusing on positive alternatives which the population at large could participate in.

This positive construction strategy has many advantages:

- it uses the existing power structure to our advantage and turns their own rhetoric against them

- it is unattackable by anyone except the most hardened dictators, it is like judo using the strength (or weak spots) of the opponent. That weak spot is that national leaders all use the rhetoric of democracy to justify their unrepresentative power in global bodies (when in reality they were only elected, some barely, to manage at national level), so how can Blair and Co. critique an attempt to use democracy as a fundamental principle to organize global society?

- it is likely to generate huge enthusiasm because it a concrete, practical, pragmatic continuation of the present movement, focusing on building what can eventually (though quite quickly) replace existing institutions (or in practice, make all existing global institutions accountable to a global democratic body like a world parliament)

- it is a coherent post-Genoa strategy which focuses on the common thread of the movement so far: increasing democracy at all levels

- it fits perfectly with the religious/spiritual beliefs of most people who believe that to resist something is to feed it, and who are more likely to join a positive global brainstorming effort

- it is a truly bipartisan strategy and cannot even be easily attacked by conservatives or right-wingers since it is based on the same principles which they use now (democracy, sovereignty of the people, rule of law etc.)

Troy

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