Davos 2000: Global Conspiracy or Capitalist Circus?

By Walden Bello*

Davos is not a conspiracy. It is, in fact, partly a circus, as is evident from these precious vignettes from the 30th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum:

- Bill Gates, the Microsoft CEO, telling Steve Case, head of AOL, to get his priorities right, and these were the "health and education of people," particularly in the developing world.

- Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash claiming that the 20th century's worst blunder was the German General Staff's giving V.I. Lenin a one-way train ticket from Zurich to St. Petersburg in 1917.

- Liberal economist Lester Thurow of MIT defending President Truman's decision to drop the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as not being a blunder.

- US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers claiming that "the US was not an empire."

- US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright seconding Summers.

- Indonesian President Abdurahman Wahid asserting that "I'm president because I'm poor."

- World Bank President James Wolfensohn stating he would probably be contented being poor if he were a Bhutanese.

- Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo claiming that Mexican industry is "much cleaner today" owing to NAFTA.

- World Economic Forum President Klaus Schwab telling his corporate audience that "carbon emissions generated by your arrival in Davos and your accommodation here will be compensated for by the planting of the necessary number of trees in Mexico."

- Nick de Rosa, Senior Vice President of Monsanto, the standard bearer of genetically modified food, stating that business "first ignores NGOs, then despises them, then reluctantly listens to them, before finally heeding their messages."

- European expat and Stanford scholar Josef Joffe asserting that the California way of life is the best way for a world of relentless change and transformation.

- One of WFP head honcho Klaus Schwab's staff saying that the best thing about Davos 2000 was not the presence of the rich and powerful but "those wonderful, tough, and user-friendly Made-in- China" conference bags.

One missed Philippine Actor-President Joseph Estrada among the cast of characters of this annual ritual, but the organisers probably felt that his presence might have pushed the merely comical into the farcical.

Consensus Building

But the circus-like elements of the World Economic Forum, which drew over 2000 participants from the corporate world, governments, media, and elite universities, masked a more serious purpose, which was the forging of ideological consensus among the world's elite to respond to crisis of corporate-led globalisation. Seattle was the cataclysm that hung like a pall in this conference. From British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Bill Clinton to Larry Summers to Ernesto Zedillo, the collapse of the World Trade Organisation's Third Ministerial was referred to endlessly as a wake up call for the global elite.

"Globalisation is the wave of the future. But globalisation is leaving the majority behind. Those voices spoke out in Seattle. It's time to bring the fruits of globalisation and free trade to the many." This was the politically correct line in Davos 2000, and a measure of how successful the rhetoric has been internalised is that the line was blurted out dutifully by such unlikely figures as Bill Gates, Steve Case, and Nike CEO Phil Knight. Amartya Sen, the 1999 Nobel winner for his work on poverty, was the unwitting source of most of the quotes of the week.

American Triumphalism

There were, however, not a few obstacles in the way of consensus, and one of this was that, after paying obeisance to social responsibility, the Americans would invariably launch into triumphal declamations on their brand of democracy and their "New Economy." Liberalise and deregulate and globalise or you won't be competitive and you'll fall farther behind – this was the message from America Inc. that came through, not just to the sprinkling of developing country officials and corporate elites but to the Europeans and the Japanese, who were subdued throughout and, when highly visible as speakers or commentators, came across as defensive, like Christian Sautter, France's top economic official, or Haruhiko Kuroda, the most senior Japanese Finance Ministry official in attendance. As for the Germans, who are now struggling with their worst post-war corruption scandal, they had such a low profile that it was noticed.

At times, in fact, the Americans seemed to be talking to just one another, as if they were on David Letterman's or Jay Leno's talk show. After witnessing the panel "Winning Strategies for the Internet Race, "which featured Bill Gates, Steve Case, Michael Dertouzos of MIT, and Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom, one European journalist commented: "But why did they bother to come to Davos? They could have held this tete-a-tete in New York."

Indeed, during Madeline Albright's speech on Sunday, there were times when she appeared not to be able to distinguish between an international audience and one in Peoria, Illinois, as when she urged them not to begrudge that one penny of every dollar in the US government budget that went to foreign aid. One listener exclaimed quietly "that was a terrible splicing job. I would fire her speechwriter."

The British Moment

Heavy-handed American triumphalism explains why their British cousins (as Winston Churchill would put it) came across as the best communicators of the post-Washington Consensus line of a new partnership among government, business, and civil society to incorporate the losers of the globalization process. Basking in a British economy that is in good shape yet without that arrogant aura of global power always surrounding the Americans, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was able to nuance the new political line for the non-Americans in Davos and package it in a manner that even some American CEOs --the liberal ones--found appealing.

"Alongside the advance of global markets and technologies," said Blair," we are seeing a new search for community, locally, nationally and globally that is a response to change and insecurity, but also reflects the best of our nature and our enduring values. With it is coming a new political agenda--one that is founded on mutual responsibility--both within nations and across the world.

He continued: "We have the chance in this century to achieve an open world, an open economy, and an open society with unprecedented opportunities for people and business. But we will succeed only if that open society and economy is underpinned by a strong ethos of mutual responsibility--by social inclusion within nations, and by a common commitment internationally to help those affected by genocide, debt, and environment.

"I call it a Third Way," Blair declared with passion. "It provides a new alternative in politics--on the centre and centre-left, but on new terms. Supporting wealth creation. Tackling vested interests. Using market mechanisms. But always staying true to clear values--social justice, democracy, cooperation… From Europe to North America, Brazil to New Zealand, two great strands of progressive thought are coming together. The liberal commitment to individual freedom in the market economy, and the social democratic commitment to social justice through the action of government, are being combined."

Now, whatever else that was, it was an inspired exercise in the manufacture of ideology, and one that Blair's pal, Bill Clinton, could never hope to match. It gave me, for one, an insight into why this British leader has such a strong hold on many British NGOs.

Managed Pluralism

Ideology creation and legitimation is not a simple exercise, however. The implicit rules call for the opposition to be heard, though under managed conditions. Thus, a few representatives of the NGO community were invited to be part of panels. These included Vandana Shiva, the Indian feminist scientist; Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth US; Thilo Bode of Greenpeace International; Martin Khor, head of Third World Network; John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO chief; and Vicky Tauli Corpuz, an indigenous peoples' leader.

Dialogue was the stated purpose, but one suspects that many executives attended these sessions for the same reason people go to the zoo: to observe the habits of the much feared creatures that the Economist claimed often had a better grasp of facts and figures than the corporations with their hundreds of highly paid publicists. Seeing the enemy up, close, and personal somehow made him or her more manageable.

There were unstated rules, though, for the NGO representatives present: they had to be civilized and respectful of "diverse" views and above all grateful they were invited. It was instructive to see what happened when one broke those rules, as I did on Sunday, when, from the floor, I told Madeline Albright about my amazement at her rewriting of history and reminded her that US State Department and US business support was instrumental in keeping Ferdinand Marcos in power for 20 years. I then went on to ask what the implications were for the US's campaign for "good governance" in the developing world of the corruption scandal engulfing Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Party in Germany. At that point, the chair, John Bryan, CEO of Sara Lee Corporation, tried to cut me off, a gesture that came across as chivalrous concern for his friend Albright. And Albright never answered the question.

Which was a mistake. A number of people, some of them American CEOs, came up to me afterwards expressing disappointment at Albright for avoiding the question. Fair play had been violated and that was a no-no.

But it was a momentary lapse, and for the most part the consensus-building cum group-therapy that was the Davos experience proceeded smoothly. The discordant voices on the left like Greenpeace and on the right like the unreconstructed free marketeer Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic Chamber of Deputies, were given their brief opportuniy to exercise free speech, and the bandwagon rolled on.

Towards "Compassionate Capitalism"?

Deeply disturbed by Seattle and the din of the rising global resistance to corporate-led globalisation, the captains of business, industry, and establishment culture, like Hans Castorp in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, came to Davos to draw on the intellectual and moral reserves of their caste. The spark of the last few days will be carried down to the valleys by a thousand CEOs and from it will evolve in the next few months the grand strategy and tactics of the response to Seattle: "Compassionate Globalisation" or "Compassionate Capitalism."