with social justice. The anti-globalization label gave way to the notion
of another globalization, or alter-globalization. The rapid evolution
of alternative summits was telling in this respect. Initiated in the 1980s
as relatively quiet parallel summits that challenged the restrictive
character of the formal gatherings of the world’s elites, leftist meetings
soon developed into genuine counter-summits that brought protesters
to the streets. This more militant form of action culminated at the WTO
Seattle meeting in 1999, which constituted something like the high-
water mark of the anti-globalization movement. At about the same
time, in the wake of a counter-summit to denounce the 1999 World
Economic Forum in Davos, a truly alternative summit was conceived,
the World Social Forum, which first met in Porto Alegre in January
- A more affirmative purpose then emerged, to replace the sheer
protest against globalization by a commitment to define and pro-
mote global justice from a progressive perspective.^27
The general idea became to improve rather than merely to reject
global capitalism. To a large extent, the moderate stance that pre-
vailed was the one defended by civil society organizations in UN-
sponsored conferences as of the beginning of the 1990s. The political
strategy advocated by these organizations had always privileged
negotiation rather than confrontation. In terms of objectives, their
approach centered on the need to put the fight against poverty at the
heart of international development policies. Besides fostering growth
and justice, they claimed, the reduction of poverty would contribute
to attenuate a whole range of threats, including interethnic conflicts,
terrorist violence, environmental degradation, crime, racial hatred,
and pandemics.
The global left thus entered the twenty-first century more united
and more assertive than it had been in two decades. As old references
to socialism or to collective and national self-reliance more or less
vanished, progressives strove instead for a “fair” world economy.^28
Fairness, in this perspective, implied closing the widening gap between
the richest and the poorest, and addressing the “inequality pre-
dicament” that prevented “social justice and better living conditions
(^27) Ibid., pp. 130–31.
(^28) World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization,A Fair
Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, Geneva, International Labour
Office, 2004; Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton,Fair Trade for All: How
Trade Can Promote Development, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Twenty-first-century rapprochement 173