Our ideas

Attac is a movement opposing neo-liberal globalization

Neo-liberal globalization, based on the ‘liberalization’ of trade and financial markets, started at the end of the 1970s and has led to the total domination of financial markets on society as a whole. It is an instrument designed to further the enrichment of a tiny minority of investors at the expense of the rest of the population and the planet. Its effects are detrimental to

Social rights

neo-liberal globalization facilitates the shipping of businesses and jobs out of the country and fosters the worldwide competition between workers and, consequently, their precarization ;

It covers up tax evasion thanks to tax havens and sets in motion the competition between national tax systems and thus the reduction of public services.

The planet

Neo-liberal globalization makes it possible for transnational companies to spread their production on the surface of the globe based solely on costs, so that the various parts of a product can be manufactured at different locations on the planet, generating thousands of miles of transport;

It sets up a competition between national environmental regulations and thus pushes them to the lowest possible level;

It tends to commercialize all aspects of society and thus extends endlessly the consumer and growth society.

North South solidarity

As it organizes tax evasion, neo-liberal globalization imposes a new form of colonialism through corruption of elites in countries of the South;

Through free trade it imposes competition between farmers in the South and the large agro-business owners of the North ;

Via the debt mechanism, it allows the World Bank and the IMF to impose massive deregulation policies on developing countries.

Democracy

WTO, IMF, World Bank and the European Union set up new global economic rules outside any democratic debate: most international negotiations on trade or financial regulation occur away from the people;

Neo-liberal globalization promotes the concentration of information dissemination in the hands of a few media and internet conglomerates.

The commercialization of all spheres of society reduces people to mere consumers at the expense of their citizenship.

And so, over the past 30 years we have witnessed a substantial enrichment of capital holders to the detriment of the vast majority of wage earners, together with a continued deterioration of the condition of our planet.

In the OECD countries, the proportion of wage earners in the producing sectors has declined by 10% while the return to capital has risen since the mid-1970s. In the United States, for instance, 60% of the growth recorded since 1980 has been captured by the wealthiest 1%.