Proposals for the october 2015 meetings (draft)

A The global frame, the longer view 

1. Bandung and the Movement of Non Aligned Countries (NAM) 

The Conference of Bandung declared the will of the Asian and African nations to reconquer their  sovereignty and complete their independence through a process of authentic independent consistent  development to the benefit of all labouring classes. In 1955 most of the Asian and Middle East countries  had reconquerred their sovereignty in the aftermath of World War II, while movements of liberation were  in struggle elsewhere, in Africa in particular to achieve that goal.  

As recalled by the leaders of Bandung the conference was the first international meeting of « non  European » (so called « coloured ») nations whose rights had been denied by historical  colonialism/imperialism of Europe, the US and Japan. In spite of the differences in size, cultural and  religious backgrounds and historical trajectories, these nations rejected together the pattern of colonial and 

semi colonial globalisation that the Western powers had built to their exclusive benefit. But Bandung also  declared the will of Asian and African nations to complete the reconquest of their sovereignty by moving  into a process of authentic and accelerated inward looking development which is the condition for their  participating to the shaping of the world system on eaqual footing with the States of the historic  imperialist centres.  

As President Soekarno said in his address, the conference associated countries which had made different  choices with respect to the ways and means to achieve their developmental targets. Some (China, North  Vietnam, North Korea) had chosen what they named « the socialist road », inspired by Marxism. Other  conceived national and popular specific ways combined with social progressive reforms (what could be  named « national/ popular » projects ; Soekarno’s Indonesia, Nehru’s India, Nasser’s Egypt and later  many other countries are exemples). All these countries gave priority to the diversification and  industrialisation of their economies, moving out of their confinement to remain producers/exporters of  agricultural and mining commodities. All of them considered that the State had to assume a major  responsability in the control of the process. They also considered that their targets (in particular their  moving into the industrial era) could eventually conflict with the dominant logics of the global system ;  but that they were in a position which allowed them to succesfully compel the global system to adjust to  their demands. Yet a number of countries which joined NAM did not adopt a definite position with  respect to that matter, and considered possible pursuing development in the frame of the deployment of  the global system. 

What ought to be recalled here is that all the countries of Asia and Africa benefited from the very  existence of NAM, whatever had been their choices. Political solidarity initiated by Bandung paid, in  economic terms. A country like Gabon for instance would not have been able to capture a good part of the  oil rent if not OPEC and NAM which made it possible. The stress was therefore put on that political  solidarity and NAM countries supported unanimously the struggles (including armed struggles) of the  peoples of remaining colonies (Portuguese colonies, Zimbabwe), and against apartheid in South Africa  and occupied Palestine. 

The history of NAM until the 1980s has been the history of internal political and social struggles within  each country precisely around the axis as defined above : what is an alternative efficient strategy for political, social and economic meaningful development ? These struggles combined with the conflicts  operating in the international arena, mainly the East/West conflict. Yet in no way should the initiatives  taken in Bandung and their deployment by NAM be considered as a misadventure of the Cold War, as  presented by the Western medias, yesterday and to day. The Soviet Union sided with NAM and to various  degrees supported the struggles conducted in Asia and Africa, particularly in response to the Western  economic and sometimes military agressions. The reason for that is simply that Soviet Union and China  were also excluded from the eventual benefit of participating to a truly balanced pluricentric pattern of  global system. In contrast the Western powers fought NAM by all means. Therefore the view expressed  by the Western medias that NAM has lost its meaning with the end of the cold war, the breakdown of Soviet Union in 1990 and the move of China out of the Maosit road, is meaningless : the challenge that  unequal globalisation represents remains. Bandung and NAM were fought by the imperialist countries.  Coups d’Etat were organised by local reactionnary forces, supported by foreign interventions that put an  end to a number of Bandung inspired State systems and national popular experiences (in Indonesia, Egypt,  Mali, Ghana and many other countries). The growing internal contradictions specific to the concept of  historical soviet and maoist socialisms, as well as the contradictions specific to each of the various  national popular experiences prepared the ground for the counter offensive of the imperialist Triad. 

The achievements during the Bandung and NAM era have been tremendous and historically positive,  whatever have been their limits and shortcomings. The view that « Bandung failed », as expressed in the  Western medias, is simply non sense. Yet what ought to be said in this respect is that Bandung and  NAM’s systems, in spite of their achievements, were not able to move beyond their limits and therefore  gradually lost breath, eroded and finally lost their content. 

 

2. A world without Bandung and NAM (1980-2010) 

In Algiers in 1974 NAM formulated a consistent and reasonable programme (the New International  Economic Order) that invited the countries of the North to adjust to the needs requested for the pursuing  of the development in the South. These proposals were entirely rejected by the Western powers. The  targets of the counter offensive of the imperialist triad were formulated in 1981 at the Cancun G7 meeting,  when Reagan declared that « we know what they need better than they do themselves ». He meant  unilateral structural adjustments, dismantling of the national productive systems, privatisations and  opening to financial plunder and pillage of natural resources, i.e. the « Washington consensus ». 

No need to recall the tragic consequences associated to the deployment of the new imperialist global order  for the societies of the three continents : on the one hand the super exploitation of cheap labour in  delocalised industries controlled by multinationals and sub contracting locally owned industries and  services, on the other hand the plunder of the local natural resources to the exclusive benefit of  maintaining affluence and waste in the societies of the North. These resources do not consist only of oil,  gas and minerals, but include growingly agricultural land (« land grabing »), forest, water, atmosphere and  sun. In that respect the ecological dimention of the challenge has now come to the forefront. Such a  pattern of « lumpen development » has generated a dramatic social disaster : growing poverty and  exclusion, transfer of rural disposessed to shanty towns and miserable informal survival activities,  unemployment, particularly of youth, opression of women etc. National consistent productive systems  which had started to be constructed in the Bandung era are systematically dismantled, embryos of  reasonable public services (health, education, housing, transport) destroyed. 

Protest against these miseries is not enough. The processes which have created these regressions need to  be understood ; and no efficient response to the challege can be formulated without a rigorous analysis of  the transformations of capitalism in the centres of the system, i.e. the processes of concentration of capital  and centralisation of its control, of financialisation. In such circumstances the conventional means of  measuring development have lost meaning : a society striken by this pattern of lumpen development can  still enjoy in some cases high rates of growth, based on plunder of resources, associated to a trickle down effect restricted to the enrichment of a small minority. Simultaneously the centralised control of the  productive system by financialised monopoly capital has resulted into its control of political life by  oligarchies, anihilating the meaning of representative democracy. 

Yet, in the frame of that global disaster, some societies of the South have been able to take advantage of  the new global order of deepened globalisation, and even seem to be « emerging » in that frame as  successfull exporters of manufactured goods. These successes feed in their turn the illusion that such a  process, respectful of the fundamentals of capitalist accumulation and globalised markets, can be  maintained. An analysis of the growing conflicts between these successful emerging economies and the  imperialist triad (over the the access to natural resources in particular) needs to be considered, as well as  an analysis of the internal imbalances associated to these processes. 

The social disaster produces a no less dramatic political disaster. NAM had succeeded in the past to  maintain a degree of polycentrism in the management of international politics, which has been destroyed  by globalised neo liberalism. The legitimacy of the international community represented by the UN, NAM,  G77 plus China, has been abolished to the benefit of a self appointed so called “international community”  restricted to the G7 and a small number of selected “friends” (in particular Saudi Arabia and Qatar, not  exactly models of democratic republics!). Financial, economic and eventually military interventions are  orchestrated by this so called “international community”, denying again the sovereign rights of all the  peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

 

3. Towards a revival of the Bandung spirit and reconstruction of a front of countries Non  Aligned on globalisation 

The first wave of revival of States and nations of Asia and Afica which shaped major changes in the  history of humankind organised itself in the Bandung spirit in the frame of countries Non Aligned on  colonialism and neo colonialism, the pattern of globalisation at that time. Now, the same nations, as well  as those of Latin America and the Caribbean, are challenged by neo liberal globalisation, which is no less  imbalanced by nature. Therefore they must unite to face the challenge successfully as they did in the past.  They will, in that perspective, feed a new wave of revival and progress of the three continents. 

NAM united together nations of Asia and Africa only. States of Latin America, with the exception of  Cuba, abstained from joining the organisation. Reasons for that failure have been recorded: 1) Latin  American countries were formally independent since the beginning of the 19 th century and did not share  the struggles of Asian and African nations to reconquer their sovereignty, 2) the US domination of the  continent through the Monroe doctrine was not challenged by any of the State powers in office (except  Cuba); the Organisation of American States included the master (the US) and was qualified for that reason  by Cuba as “the Ministry of colonies of the US”, 3) the ruling classes, of “European extract”, looked at  Europe and the US as models to be copied. For those reasons the attempt to build a “Tricontinental” did  not succed: it was joined only by movements in struggle (often armed struggle), but rejected by all State  powers on the continent at that time. 

That has changed: 1) the countries of Latin America and the Carribean have recently established their own  organisation (CELAC, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), excluding the US and  Canada, and therefore formally rejected the Monroe doctrine, 2) the new popular movements have created  a consciousness of the plurinational character of their societies (Indian American, Eropean extract, African  ancestors), 3) these movements have also initiated strategies of liberation from the yoke of neo liberalism,  with some success that may surpass in some respects what has been achieved elsewhere in the South.  Therefore the revival of NAM must now include them and become a Tricontinental front.

The axis around which States and nations of the three continents should organise their solidarity in  struggle can be formulated as building a common front against neo liberal unbalanced imperialist  globalisation. 

We have seen that the States which met in Bandung hold different views with respect to the ways and  means to defeat imperialist domination and advance in the construction of their societies; yet they were  able to overcome those differences in order to face successfully the common challenge. Same to day.  Ruling powers in the three continents as well as popular movements in struggle differ to a wide extent on  the ways and means to face the renewed same challenge.  

In some countries “sovereign” projects are developed which associate active State policies aiming at  constructing systematically a national integrated consistent modern industrial productive system,  supported by an aggressive export capacity. Views with respect to the degree, format and eventual  regulation of opening to foreign capital and financial flows of all kinds (foreign direct investments,  portfolio investments, speculative financial investments) differ from country to country and from time to  time. Policies pursued with respect to the access to land and other natural resources also offer a wide  spectrum of different choices and priorities. 

We find similar differences in the programmes and actions of popular movements in struggle against the  power systems in office. Priorities cover a wide spectrum : democratic rights, social rights, ecological care,  gender, economic policies, access of peasants to land etc. In some few cases attempts are made to bring  together those different demands into a common strategic plan of action. In most cases little has been  achieved in that perspective. 

Such a wide variety of situations and attitudes do create problems for all ; and may even generate conflicts  between States and /or between partners in struggle. 

 

B. Proposals for the October 2015 meetings in Indonesia 

The meetings which will be held in Indonesia in October 2015 to celebrate the 60 th anniversary of  Bandung offer an exceptional opportunity to discuss the issues raised in part A of this document. It would  be good if all major difficult questions could be covered. The debates should be open to different views  and proposals, keeping in mind the target which is to contribute in a constructive spirit to the revival of  Non Alignment on Globalisation. 

The proposals that follow do not cover all these issues of course, but only a selection of some among the  major of them.  

The networks interconnected in the frame of the World Forum for Alternatives and the Third World  Forum would organise end of October three Round Tables, with 5 speakers for each RT, provided that the  organisors can finance their travel (the speakers could be invited in their capacity as “key note speakers”  or “invited speakers”). We shall select in due time these speakers. In addition to their participating in our  RT those speakers would certainly welcome being invited to participate in other debates organised in  Indonesia at that time. 

The issues discussed should consider relevant flash back to the era of Bandung and benefit from lessons of  the past. Nonetheless the focus should be on the status of present challenges and possible responses  contributing to moving ahead. Attention should be given to the positions expressed at recent conferences  of NAM, Algiers may 2014 in particular. While the content of the questions raised in each of those RT  will be finalised later, we provide in the following paragraphs some indication with respect to the issues considered. Issues are only mentioned without attempt to articulate them into an integrated programme of  action. Such exercise would pre-empt the conclusions of the expected rich debates to come. 

 

ROUND TABLE 1: Constructing the political solidarity between States, nations and peoples of Asia,  Africa , Latin America and the Caribbean 

1)History of NAM has proved that the political solidarity deployed by countries of the South had  produced results. The colonial legacies denounced at Bandung have been cleared, except for Palestine. An  effort is therefore required to reconstruct the front of solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

2) The major challenge to day is represented by the deployment of the US/NATO/Japan strategy aiming at  establishing their military control of the Planet, the military menaces and interventions conducted to that  effect, and the false “legitimacy” given to these interventions by the so called “international community”,  in fact restricted to the imperialist powers. Beyond the analysis of the disastrous results of these  interventions, resulting into the destruction of whole societies (Iraq, Lybia, Syria are sad exemples of such  results), a debate should be conducted to assess the responses (or lack of response) that the community of  States of the three continents have given to that central challenge. Defeating that strategy of military  control of the planet conditions the success of an alternative reorganisation of the political world system,  guaranteeing the rights of nations to choose freely their own path of development and ensuring peaceful  coexistence among them. A number of problems relate to that central question, such as the struggle for the  dismantling of the US military bases, an assessment of what is meant by “the struggle against terrorism”,  state terrorism etc. 

3)NAM, along with the G77 plus China, had initiated successfully the adoption by the UN of Charters  formulating rights of peoples, as well as the right to development. Suggesting proposals aiming at  reinforcing the ways and means to have those rights actually implemented is required. 

4)NAM, along with the G77 plus China should also consider deploying systematic efforts to re-establish  the legitimacy of UN as representative of the international community. 

5)NAM, G77 plus China, CELAC (The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and the  African Union, should coordinate their efforts. Proposals to institutionalise their cooperation (common  secretariat? , task forces?) are welcome.  

6)Conflicts between countries of the three continents with respect to their continental and maritime  boundaries cannot be ignored. Our debates should perhaps focus on proposals to create institutional  frames offering ways and means to clear these conflicts and avoid their being manipulated by imperialist  powers with a view to destroying the solidarity among us. 

 

ROUND TABLE 2 : Advancing the construction of alternative sovereign, popular and democratic  projects in the three continents 

1)We should start by drawing the lessons from the historical experiences of NAM countries which attempted to  build national/popular inward looking economies as referred to in part A of this document. The major  shortcoming in all these experiences (as well as in the socialist experiences of the 20 th century) lays in their  disregard for the fundamental importance of inventing ways ensuring the progressive advance of higher forms  of democracy which condition in their turn any meaningful efficient management in both the economic and  political fields. This shortcoming generated depolitisation which was engulfed by the rise of passeist illusions that constitute a major obstacle to the required alternative based on a renewed concept of a “sovereign project”  in keeping with the challenges of our contemporary world. 

2)The very notion of the "sovereign project" must be a subject for discussion. Given the level of penetration  of transnational investments in all sectors and in all countries, one cannot avoid the question: what kind  of sovereignty is being referred to? 

The global  conflict  for access  to  natural  resources is  one  of  the main  determinants  of  the  dynamics  of  contemporary  capitalism.  The  dependence  of  the North  for  numerous  resources  and  the  growing  demands  of  China  constitute  a  challenge  for  South  America,  Africa  and  the  Middle  East  which  are  particularly well endowed with resources and shaped  by  the history of  the pillage of  those resources.  Can  we  develop  national  and  regional  policies  in  these  domains  as  the  beginning  of  a  rational  and  equitable global management of resources that would benefit all peoples? Can we develop new relations  between  China  and  the  countries  of  the  South  that  subscribe  to  such a  perspective,  linking  access  to  these resources by China with support for the  industrialisation of the countries concerned (that which  the so-called "donors" of the OECD refuse to do)?  

An  independent  national  policy  remains  fragile  and  vulnerable  if  it  does  not  have  real  national  and  popular  support,  which  requires  it  to  be  based  on  economic  and  social  policies  that  ensure  that  the  popular classes are beneficiaries of "development." That is the condition of the social stability required  for  the  success of  the  sovereign project against  the political de-stabilization  of  the imperialist project,.  We must therefore examine the nature of relationships between existing or potential sovereign projects  and  the social bases of  the system of power: a national, democratic and popular project, or an illusory  project of national capitalism?  

Can non-continental countries develop sovereign projects? What are their limits? What forms of regional  coming together could facilitate such progress ? 

3)Preparations for the future, even if far away, begin today. What model of society do we want? Founded  on  what  principles?  The  destructive  competition  between  individuals  or  the  affirmation  of  the  advantages  of  solidarity?  The  liberty  that  gives  legitimacy  to inequality  or  the  liberty  associated  with  equality?  The  exploitation  of  the  planet's  resources  without  regard  for  the  future  or  by  taking    into  consideration the precise measure of what is  needed for the reproduction of the conditions of life on the  planet? The future must be seen as the realization of a higher stage of universal human civilization, not  merely a more "fair" or more "efficient" model of civilization as we know it (the "modern" civilization of  capitalism).  In  order  to  avoid  the  risk  of  staying  on  the  ground  of  wishful  thinking,  a  remake  of  the  utopian  socialism  of  the  19th  century,  we  should  ensure  answers  on  the  following  topics:  1)  What  anthropological and sociological scientific knowledge today interrogates the “utopias” formulated in the  past? 2)What is our new scientific knowledge about  the conditions  for  the reproduction of  life on  the  planet? 

4)In  summary: is  the  target  catching  up  with  the  affluent  societies  as  they  are  to-day,  such  as  the  US  (target for China), Germany, Japan, or even small European rich countries (targets for others)? Are such  targets desirable and possible? Or is the target more ambitious: create the conditions for our societies of  the three continents contributing to the invention of a higher stage of human civilisation?

 

ROUND TABLE 3 : Return to the agrarian question; facing the challenge of growing unequality in  the access to land  

1)We consider that a special attention must be given to the agrarian question in Asia, Africa and Latin  America. The reason is that neo liberal globalisation pursues a massive attack on peasant agriculture on  the three continents (the well known process of “land grabing”). Complying with this major component of  current globalisation leads nowhere but simply to the massive pauperisation/exclusion/destitution of  hundreds of millions of human beings across the three continents. That would therefore put an end to any  attempt of our societies to move up in the global society of nations. Therefore any meaningful alternative  pattern of development must be based on the opposite principle, the right of access to land to all peasants,  as equally (or at least as less unequally) as possible in order to be a component in building a consistent  sovereign productive modern system, associating industrial growth and food sovereignty. 

2)Modern capitalist agriculture, represented by both rich family farming and/or by agribusiness  corporations, is now looking forward to a massive attack on third world peasant production. Capitalist  agriculture governed by the principle of return on capital, localised in North America, in Europe, in the  South cone of Latin America and in Australia, employs only a few tens of millions of farmers, but their  productivity is the highest recorded at global level. On the other hand, peasant-farming systems still  constitute the occupation of nearly half of humanity – i.e. three billion human beings. What would happen  should “agriculture and food production” be treated as any other form of production submitted to the rules  of competition in an open-deregulated market ? Would such principles foster the accelerating of  production ? Indeed one can imagine some fifty million new additional modern farmers, producing  whatever the three billion present peasants can offer on the market beyond they ensuring their own (poor)  self-subsistence. The conditions for the success of such an alternative would necessitate the transfer of  important pieces of good land to the new agriculturalists (and these lands have to be taken out of the hands  of present peasant societies), access to capital markets (to buy equipments) and access to the consumers  markets. Such agriculturalists would indeed “compete” successfully with the billions of present peasants.  But what would happen to those? Billions of “non-competitive” producers would be eliminated within the  short historic time of a few decades. 

The major argument presented to legitimate the “competition” doctrine alternative is that such  development did happen in XIXth century Europe and finally produced a modern-wealthy urban industrial-post industrial society as well as a modern agriculture able to feed the nation and even to export.  Why should not this pattern be repeated in the contemporary Third World countries ? The argument fails  to consider two major factors which make the reproduction of the pattern almost impossible now in third  world countries. The first is that the European model developed throughout a century and a half along  with industrial technologies which were intensive labour using. Modern technologies are far less. And  therefore if the new comers of the third world have to be competitive on global markets for their industrial  exports they have to adopt them. The second is that Europe benefited during that long transition from the  possibility of massive out migration of their “surplus” population to the Americas.  

Can we imagine other alternatives based of the access to land for all peasants ? In that frame it is implied  that peasant agriculture should be maintained and simultaneously engaged in a process of continuous  technological/social change and progress. At a rate which would allow a progressive transfer to non rural  employment in keeping with the gradual building of a consistent modern industrial productive system.

Such a strategic target implies policies protecting peasant food production from the unequal competition  of modernised agriculturalists – agro-business local and international. It questions the patterns of  industrial – urban development, which should be less based on export oriented priorities, themselves  taking advantage of low wages (implying in their turn low prices for food), and be more attentive to a  socially balanced internal market expansion. Simultaneously such a choice of principle facilitates  integrating in the overall scheme patterns of policies ensuring national food sovereighnty, an  indispensable condition for a country to be an active member of the global community, enjoying the  indispensable margin of autonomy and negotiating capacity. 

3)The record of the Bandung era in this respect offers a mixed picture. In China and Vietnam access to  land has been guaranteed to all peasants in that spirit. But that has not been the case elsewhere. Some  more radical national/popular experiences have indeed implemented land reforms which limited the  processes of destruction of peasant agricultural systems. But in general, and more particularly in Latin  America, this sad process continued. 

Proposals for the october 2015 meetings (draft)

A The global frame, the longer view 

1. Bandung and the Movement of Non Aligned Countries (NAM) 

The Conference of Bandung declared the will of the Asian and African nations to reconquer their  sovereignty and complete their independence through a process of authentic independent consistent  development to the benefit of all labouring classes. In 1955 most of the Asian and Middle East countries  had reconquerred their sovereignty in the aftermath of World War II, while movements of liberation were  in struggle elsewhere, in Africa in particular to achieve that goal.  

As recalled by the leaders of Bandung the conference was the first international meeting of « non  European » (so called « coloured ») nations whose rights had been denied by historical  colonialism/imperialism of Europe, the US and Japan. In spite of the differences in size, cultural and  religious backgrounds and historical trajectories, these nations rejected together the pattern of colonial and 

semi colonial globalisation that the Western powers had built to their exclusive benefit. But Bandung also  declared the will of Asian and African nations to complete the reconquest of their sovereignty by moving  into a process of authentic and accelerated inward looking development which is the condition for their  participating to the shaping of the world system on eaqual footing with the States of the historic  imperialist centres.  

As President Soekarno said in his address, the conference associated countries which had made different  choices with respect to the ways and means to achieve their developmental targets. Some (China, North  Vietnam, North Korea) had chosen what they named « the socialist road », inspired by Marxism. Other  conceived national and popular specific ways combined with social progressive reforms (what could be  named « national/ popular » projects ; Soekarno’s Indonesia, Nehru’s India, Nasser’s Egypt and later  many other countries are exemples). All these countries gave priority to the diversification and  industrialisation of their economies, moving out of their confinement to remain producers/exporters of  agricultural and mining commodities. All of them considered that the State had to assume a major  responsability in the control of the process. They also considered that their targets (in particular their  moving into the industrial era) could eventually conflict with the dominant logics of the global system ;  but that they were in a position which allowed them to succesfully compel the global system to adjust to  their demands. Yet a number of countries which joined NAM did not adopt a definite position with  respect to that matter, and considered possible pursuing development in the frame of the deployment of  the global system. 

What ought to be recalled here is that all the countries of Asia and Africa benefited from the very  existence of NAM, whatever had been their choices. Political solidarity initiated by Bandung paid, in  economic terms. A country like Gabon for instance would not have been able to capture a good part of the  oil rent if not OPEC and NAM which made it possible. The stress was therefore put on that political  solidarity and NAM countries supported unanimously the struggles (including armed struggles) of the  peoples of remaining colonies (Portuguese colonies, Zimbabwe), and against apartheid in South Africa  and occupied Palestine. 

The history of NAM until the 1980s has been the history of internal political and social struggles within  each country precisely around the axis as defined above : what is an alternative efficient strategy for political, social and economic meaningful development ? These struggles combined with the conflicts  operating in the international arena, mainly the East/West conflict. Yet in no way should the initiatives  taken in Bandung and their deployment by NAM be considered as a misadventure of the Cold War, as  presented by the Western medias, yesterday and to day. The Soviet Union sided with NAM and to various  degrees supported the struggles conducted in Asia and Africa, particularly in response to the Western  economic and sometimes military agressions. The reason for that is simply that Soviet Union and China  were also excluded from the eventual benefit of participating to a truly balanced pluricentric pattern of  global system. In contrast the Western powers fought NAM by all means. Therefore the view expressed  by the Western medias that NAM has lost its meaning with the end of the cold war, the breakdown of Soviet Union in 1990 and the move of China out of the Maosit road, is meaningless : the challenge that  unequal globalisation represents remains. Bandung and NAM were fought by the imperialist countries.  Coups d’Etat were organised by local reactionnary forces, supported by foreign interventions that put an  end to a number of Bandung inspired State systems and national popular experiences (in Indonesia, Egypt,  Mali, Ghana and many other countries). The growing internal contradictions specific to the concept of  historical soviet and maoist socialisms, as well as the contradictions specific to each of the various  national popular experiences prepared the ground for the counter offensive of the imperialist Triad. 

The achievements during the Bandung and NAM era have been tremendous and historically positive,  whatever have been their limits and shortcomings. The view that « Bandung failed », as expressed in the  Western medias, is simply non sense. Yet what ought to be said in this respect is that Bandung and  NAM’s systems, in spite of their achievements, were not able to move beyond their limits and therefore  gradually lost breath, eroded and finally lost their content. 

 

2. A world without Bandung and NAM (1980-2010) 

In Algiers in 1974 NAM formulated a consistent and reasonable programme (the New International  Economic Order) that invited the countries of the North to adjust to the needs requested for the pursuing  of the development in the South. These proposals were entirely rejected by the Western powers. The  targets of the counter offensive of the imperialist triad were formulated in 1981 at the Cancun G7 meeting,  when Reagan declared that « we know what they need better than they do themselves ». He meant  unilateral structural adjustments, dismantling of the national productive systems, privatisations and  opening to financial plunder and pillage of natural resources, i.e. the « Washington consensus ». 

No need to recall the tragic consequences associated to the deployment of the new imperialist global order  for the societies of the three continents : on the one hand the super exploitation of cheap labour in  delocalised industries controlled by multinationals and sub contracting locally owned industries and  services, on the other hand the plunder of the local natural resources to the exclusive benefit of  maintaining affluence and waste in the societies of the North. These resources do not consist only of oil,  gas and minerals, but include growingly agricultural land (« land grabing »), forest, water, atmosphere and  sun. In that respect the ecological dimention of the challenge has now come to the forefront. Such a  pattern of « lumpen development » has generated a dramatic social disaster : growing poverty and  exclusion, transfer of rural disposessed to shanty towns and miserable informal survival activities,  unemployment, particularly of youth, opression of women etc. National consistent productive systems  which had started to be constructed in the Bandung era are systematically dismantled, embryos of  reasonable public services (health, education, housing, transport) destroyed. 

Protest against these miseries is not enough. The processes which have created these regressions need to  be understood ; and no efficient response to the challege can be formulated without a rigorous analysis of  the transformations of capitalism in the centres of the system, i.e. the processes of concentration of capital  and centralisation of its control, of financialisation. In such circumstances the conventional means of  measuring development have lost meaning : a society striken by this pattern of lumpen development can  still enjoy in some cases high rates of growth, based on plunder of resources, associated to a trickle down effect restricted to the enrichment of a small minority. Simultaneously the centralised control of the  productive system by financialised monopoly capital has resulted into its control of political life by  oligarchies, anihilating the meaning of representative democracy. 

Yet, in the frame of that global disaster, some societies of the South have been able to take advantage of  the new global order of deepened globalisation, and even seem to be « emerging » in that frame as  successfull exporters of manufactured goods. These successes feed in their turn the illusion that such a  process, respectful of the fundamentals of capitalist accumulation and globalised markets, can be  maintained. An analysis of the growing conflicts between these successful emerging economies and the  imperialist triad (over the the access to natural resources in particular) needs to be considered, as well as  an analysis of the internal imbalances associated to these processes. 

The social disaster produces a no less dramatic political disaster. NAM had succeeded in the past to  maintain a degree of polycentrism in the management of international politics, which has been destroyed  by globalised neo liberalism. The legitimacy of the international community represented by the UN, NAM,  G77 plus China, has been abolished to the benefit of a self appointed so called “international community”  restricted to the G7 and a small number of selected “friends” (in particular Saudi Arabia and Qatar, not  exactly models of democratic republics!). Financial, economic and eventually military interventions are  orchestrated by this so called “international community”, denying again the sovereign rights of all the  peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

 

3. Towards a revival of the Bandung spirit and reconstruction of a front of countries Non  Aligned on globalisation 

The first wave of revival of States and nations of Asia and Afica which shaped major changes in the  history of humankind organised itself in the Bandung spirit in the frame of countries Non Aligned on  colonialism and neo colonialism, the pattern of globalisation at that time. Now, the same nations, as well  as those of Latin America and the Caribbean, are challenged by neo liberal globalisation, which is no less  imbalanced by nature. Therefore they must unite to face the challenge successfully as they did in the past.  They will, in that perspective, feed a new wave of revival and progress of the three continents. 

NAM united together nations of Asia and Africa only. States of Latin America, with the exception of  Cuba, abstained from joining the organisation. Reasons for that failure have been recorded: 1) Latin  American countries were formally independent since the beginning of the 19 th century and did not share  the struggles of Asian and African nations to reconquer their sovereignty, 2) the US domination of the  continent through the Monroe doctrine was not challenged by any of the State powers in office (except  Cuba); the Organisation of American States included the master (the US) and was qualified for that reason  by Cuba as “the Ministry of colonies of the US”, 3) the ruling classes, of “European extract”, looked at  Europe and the US as models to be copied. For those reasons the attempt to build a “Tricontinental” did  not succed: it was joined only by movements in struggle (often armed struggle), but rejected by all State  powers on the continent at that time. 

That has changed: 1) the countries of Latin America and the Carribean have recently established their own  organisation (CELAC, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), excluding the US and  Canada, and therefore formally rejected the Monroe doctrine, 2) the new popular movements have created  a consciousness of the plurinational character of their societies (Indian American, Eropean extract, African  ancestors), 3) these movements have also initiated strategies of liberation from the yoke of neo liberalism,  with some success that may surpass in some respects what has been achieved elsewhere in the South.  Therefore the revival of NAM must now include them and become a Tricontinental front.

The axis around which States and nations of the three continents should organise their solidarity in  struggle can be formulated as building a common front against neo liberal unbalanced imperialist  globalisation. 

We have seen that the States which met in Bandung hold different views with respect to the ways and  means to defeat imperialist domination and advance in the construction of their societies; yet they were  able to overcome those differences in order to face successfully the common challenge. Same to day.  Ruling powers in the three continents as well as popular movements in struggle differ to a wide extent on  the ways and means to face the renewed same challenge.  

In some countries “sovereign” projects are developed which associate active State policies aiming at  constructing systematically a national integrated consistent modern industrial productive system,  supported by an aggressive export capacity. Views with respect to the degree, format and eventual  regulation of opening to foreign capital and financial flows of all kinds (foreign direct investments,  portfolio investments, speculative financial investments) differ from country to country and from time to  time. Policies pursued with respect to the access to land and other natural resources also offer a wide  spectrum of different choices and priorities. 

We find similar differences in the programmes and actions of popular movements in struggle against the  power systems in office. Priorities cover a wide spectrum : democratic rights, social rights, ecological care,  gender, economic policies, access of peasants to land etc. In some few cases attempts are made to bring  together those different demands into a common strategic plan of action. In most cases little has been  achieved in that perspective. 

Such a wide variety of situations and attitudes do create problems for all ; and may even generate conflicts  between States and /or between partners in struggle. 

 

B. Proposals for the October 2015 meetings in Indonesia 

The meetings which will be held in Indonesia in October 2015 to celebrate the 60 th anniversary of  Bandung offer an exceptional opportunity to discuss the issues raised in part A of this document. It would  be good if all major difficult questions could be covered. The debates should be open to different views  and proposals, keeping in mind the target which is to contribute in a constructive spirit to the revival of  Non Alignment on Globalisation. 

The proposals that follow do not cover all these issues of course, but only a selection of some among the  major of them.  

The networks interconnected in the frame of the World Forum for Alternatives and the Third World  Forum would organise end of October three Round Tables, with 5 speakers for each RT, provided that the  organisors can finance their travel (the speakers could be invited in their capacity as “key note speakers”  or “invited speakers”). We shall select in due time these speakers. In addition to their participating in our  RT those speakers would certainly welcome being invited to participate in other debates organised in  Indonesia at that time. 

The issues discussed should consider relevant flash back to the era of Bandung and benefit from lessons of  the past. Nonetheless the focus should be on the status of present challenges and possible responses  contributing to moving ahead. Attention should be given to the positions expressed at recent conferences  of NAM, Algiers may 2014 in particular. While the content of the questions raised in each of those RT  will be finalised later, we provide in the following paragraphs some indication with respect to the issues considered. Issues are only mentioned without attempt to articulate them into an integrated programme of  action. Such exercise would pre-empt the conclusions of the expected rich debates to come. 

 

ROUND TABLE 1: Constructing the political solidarity between States, nations and peoples of Asia,  Africa , Latin America and the Caribbean 

1)History of NAM has proved that the political solidarity deployed by countries of the South had  produced results. The colonial legacies denounced at Bandung have been cleared, except for Palestine. An  effort is therefore required to reconstruct the front of solidarity with the Palestinian people. 

2) The major challenge to day is represented by the deployment of the US/NATO/Japan strategy aiming at  establishing their military control of the Planet, the military menaces and interventions conducted to that  effect, and the false “legitimacy” given to these interventions by the so called “international community”,  in fact restricted to the imperialist powers. Beyond the analysis of the disastrous results of these  interventions, resulting into the destruction of whole societies (Iraq, Lybia, Syria are sad exemples of such  results), a debate should be conducted to assess the responses (or lack of response) that the community of  States of the three continents have given to that central challenge. Defeating that strategy of military  control of the planet conditions the success of an alternative reorganisation of the political world system,  guaranteeing the rights of nations to choose freely their own path of development and ensuring peaceful  coexistence among them. A number of problems relate to that central question, such as the struggle for the  dismantling of the US military bases, an assessment of what is meant by “the struggle against terrorism”,  state terrorism etc. 

3)NAM, along with the G77 plus China, had initiated successfully the adoption by the UN of Charters  formulating rights of peoples, as well as the right to development. Suggesting proposals aiming at  reinforcing the ways and means to have those rights actually implemented is required. 

4)NAM, along with the G77 plus China should also consider deploying systematic efforts to re-establish  the legitimacy of UN as representative of the international community. 

5)NAM, G77 plus China, CELAC (The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and the  African Union, should coordinate their efforts. Proposals to institutionalise their cooperation (common  secretariat? , task forces?) are welcome.  

6)Conflicts between countries of the three continents with respect to their continental and maritime  boundaries cannot be ignored. Our debates should perhaps focus on proposals to create institutional  frames offering ways and means to clear these conflicts and avoid their being manipulated by imperialist  powers with a view to destroying the solidarity among us. 

 

ROUND TABLE 2 : Advancing the construction of alternative sovereign, popular and democratic  projects in the three continents 

1)We should start by drawing the lessons from the historical experiences of NAM countries which attempted to  build national/popular inward looking economies as referred to in part A of this document. The major  shortcoming in all these experiences (as well as in the socialist experiences of the 20 th century) lays in their  disregard for the fundamental importance of inventing ways ensuring the progressive advance of higher forms  of democracy which condition in their turn any meaningful efficient management in both the economic and  political fields. This shortcoming generated depolitisation which was engulfed by the rise of passeist illusions that constitute a major obstacle to the required alternative based on a renewed concept of a “sovereign project”  in keeping with the challenges of our contemporary world. 

2)The very notion of the "sovereign project" must be a subject for discussion. Given the level of penetration  of transnational investments in all sectors and in all countries, one cannot avoid the question: what kind  of sovereignty is being referred to? 

The global  conflict  for access  to  natural  resources is  one  of  the main  determinants  of  the  dynamics  of  contemporary  capitalism.  The  dependence  of  the North  for  numerous  resources  and  the  growing  demands  of  China  constitute  a  challenge  for  South  America,  Africa  and  the  Middle  East  which  are  particularly well endowed with resources and shaped  by  the history of  the pillage of  those resources.  Can  we  develop  national  and  regional  policies  in  these  domains  as  the  beginning  of  a  rational  and  equitable global management of resources that would benefit all peoples? Can we develop new relations  between  China  and  the  countries  of  the  South  that  subscribe  to  such a  perspective,  linking  access  to  these resources by China with support for the  industrialisation of the countries concerned (that which  the so-called "donors" of the OECD refuse to do)?  

An  independent  national  policy  remains  fragile  and  vulnerable  if  it  does  not  have  real  national  and  popular  support,  which  requires  it  to  be  based  on  economic  and  social  policies  that  ensure  that  the  popular classes are beneficiaries of "development." That is the condition of the social stability required  for  the  success of  the  sovereign project against  the political de-stabilization  of  the imperialist project,.  We must therefore examine the nature of relationships between existing or potential sovereign projects  and  the social bases of  the system of power: a national, democratic and popular project, or an illusory  project of national capitalism?  

Can non-continental countries develop sovereign projects? What are their limits? What forms of regional  coming together could facilitate such progress ? 

3)Preparations for the future, even if far away, begin today. What model of society do we want? Founded  on  what  principles?  The  destructive  competition  between  individuals  or  the  affirmation  of  the  advantages  of  solidarity?  The  liberty  that  gives  legitimacy  to inequality  or  the  liberty  associated  with  equality?  The  exploitation  of  the  planet's  resources  without  regard  for  the  future  or  by  taking    into  consideration the precise measure of what is  needed for the reproduction of the conditions of life on the  planet? The future must be seen as the realization of a higher stage of universal human civilization, not  merely a more "fair" or more "efficient" model of civilization as we know it (the "modern" civilization of  capitalism).  In  order  to  avoid  the  risk  of  staying  on  the  ground  of  wishful  thinking,  a  remake  of  the  utopian  socialism  of  the  19th  century,  we  should  ensure  answers  on  the  following  topics:  1)  What  anthropological and sociological scientific knowledge today interrogates the “utopias” formulated in the  past? 2)What is our new scientific knowledge about  the conditions  for  the reproduction of  life on  the  planet? 

4)In  summary: is  the  target  catching  up  with  the  affluent  societies  as  they  are  to-day,  such  as  the  US  (target for China), Germany, Japan, or even small European rich countries (targets for others)? Are such  targets desirable and possible? Or is the target more ambitious: create the conditions for our societies of  the three continents contributing to the invention of a higher stage of human civilisation?

 

ROUND TABLE 3 : Return to the agrarian question; facing the challenge of growing unequality in  the access to land  

1)We consider that a special attention must be given to the agrarian question in Asia, Africa and Latin  America. The reason is that neo liberal globalisation pursues a massive attack on peasant agriculture on  the three continents (the well known process of “land grabing”). Complying with this major component of  current globalisation leads nowhere but simply to the massive pauperisation/exclusion/destitution of  hundreds of millions of human beings across the three continents. That would therefore put an end to any  attempt of our societies to move up in the global society of nations. Therefore any meaningful alternative  pattern of development must be based on the opposite principle, the right of access to land to all peasants,  as equally (or at least as less unequally) as possible in order to be a component in building a consistent  sovereign productive modern system, associating industrial growth and food sovereignty. 

2)Modern capitalist agriculture, represented by both rich family farming and/or by agribusiness  corporations, is now looking forward to a massive attack on third world peasant production. Capitalist  agriculture governed by the principle of return on capital, localised in North America, in Europe, in the  South cone of Latin America and in Australia, employs only a few tens of millions of farmers, but their  productivity is the highest recorded at global level. On the other hand, peasant-farming systems still  constitute the occupation of nearly half of humanity – i.e. three billion human beings. What would happen  should “agriculture and food production” be treated as any other form of production submitted to the rules  of competition in an open-deregulated market ? Would such principles foster the accelerating of  production ? Indeed one can imagine some fifty million new additional modern farmers, producing  whatever the three billion present peasants can offer on the market beyond they ensuring their own (poor)  self-subsistence. The conditions for the success of such an alternative would necessitate the transfer of  important pieces of good land to the new agriculturalists (and these lands have to be taken out of the hands  of present peasant societies), access to capital markets (to buy equipments) and access to the consumers  markets. Such agriculturalists would indeed “compete” successfully with the billions of present peasants.  But what would happen to those? Billions of “non-competitive” producers would be eliminated within the  short historic time of a few decades. 

The major argument presented to legitimate the “competition” doctrine alternative is that such  development did happen in XIXth century Europe and finally produced a modern-wealthy urban industrial-post industrial society as well as a modern agriculture able to feed the nation and even to export.  Why should not this pattern be repeated in the contemporary Third World countries ? The argument fails  to consider two major factors which make the reproduction of the pattern almost impossible now in third  world countries. The first is that the European model developed throughout a century and a half along  with industrial technologies which were intensive labour using. Modern technologies are far less. And  therefore if the new comers of the third world have to be competitive on global markets for their industrial  exports they have to adopt them. The second is that Europe benefited during that long transition from the  possibility of massive out migration of their “surplus” population to the Americas.  

Can we imagine other alternatives based of the access to land for all peasants ? In that frame it is implied  that peasant agriculture should be maintained and simultaneously engaged in a process of continuous  technological/social change and progress. At a rate which would allow a progressive transfer to non rural  employment in keeping with the gradual building of a consistent modern industrial productive system.

Such a strategic target implies policies protecting peasant food production from the unequal competition  of modernised agriculturalists – agro-business local and international. It questions the patterns of  industrial – urban development, which should be less based on export oriented priorities, themselves  taking advantage of low wages (implying in their turn low prices for food), and be more attentive to a  socially balanced internal market expansion. Simultaneously such a choice of principle facilitates  integrating in the overall scheme patterns of policies ensuring national food sovereighnty, an  indispensable condition for a country to be an active member of the global community, enjoying the  indispensable margin of autonomy and negotiating capacity. 

3)The record of the Bandung era in this respect offers a mixed picture. In China and Vietnam access to  land has been guaranteed to all peasants in that spirit. But that has not been the case elsewhere. Some  more radical national/popular experiences have indeed implemented land reforms which limited the  processes of destruction of peasant agricultural systems. But in general, and more particularly in Latin  America, this sad process continued.