TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE/241which women played a central role - that women began to reduce the
gap that prevented them from enjoying full equality with men. Now
that the World Bank itself is cynically promoting women as capitalist
trailblazers, it is crucial that women in the North and South fight for
their emancipation based on an agenda that they themselves decide.
Who can Implement the Measures Needed to Fulfil these
Priority Objectives?
Can the Bretton Woods institutions do so? The G7? The financial
markets? The multinationals?
Is it not risky to rely on them? Would it not be wiser to look towards
those 'from below', towards the vast array of social movements in the
North, South and East that are putting up resistance to the decline in
living conditions for the overwhelming majority of the world's
population? Should we not also turn to political institutions
(parliament, government, and so on) and those holding office to
demand that they apply policies that make a radical break with neo-
liberalism?
This raises the question of political power. How is it wielded? How
and by whom is it controlled? What choices are made? How? Based
on what interests? What institutions are needed to apply which
policy?
Should the relevant authorities not apply restrictive measures
against the powerful few that have led humankind into a downward
spiral for living conditions (including environmental conditions) and
democratic rights?
Why do politicians renege on their responsibilities to their voters
and more or less actively give themselves over to the imperatives of
profit maximisation?
Frangois Chesnais hits the nail on the head when he writes:
It is difficult to see how humanity will be able to avoid measures
involving the expropriation of capital. New methods for doing so
will have to be invented, keeping in mind all the lessons of the
twentieth century. It may well be that we have once again under
estimated both the flexibility of the current system of domination
and the talent of those who run it. As far as a few basic objectives
are concerned, events may indeed prove otherwise but it seems
unlikely that the G7 governments will soon re-establish their