Awakener of conscience.

BERNARD CASSEN (above), Director General of Le Monde Diplomatique, architect of the Porto Alegre World Social Forums and founder of the ATTAC movement for economic justice, described 'liberal globalization as a social failure that accentuates inequalities', and maintained that such bodies as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO and the OECD recognized that it was not working.

'What we have been experiencing is a disconnection between the world of politics and the world of economics and finance,' Cassen said. Citizens could vote in elections but had no say in global economic matters. 'You can vote for anything you like, except for the world's economic and financial structures.' Here there was no democratic tradition. Politicians, in his perception, had surrendered power to the financial markets. 'The market rules and not the electorate.'

It was no wonder, he said, that people stopped voting when the French Prime Minister could say there was nothing he could do when a company closed down because it could only achieve a profit of eight per cent instead of the 'normal' return of 15 per cent. Only 20 per cent of the electorate of the new member states of the European Union had voted in the recent European elections, just two months after the expansion of the EU.

The ATTAC movement had a role as 'an awakener of conscience', he said. 'We are for another kind of globalization'. The World Social Forums were a 'participatory democracy'. Individual action was important, such as consumer boycotts, but 'it is only collective action that can really change things'.