The Other Davos: The Globalization of Resistance to the World Economic System

Each year, the Swiss mountain resort Davos is host to the meetings of the World Economic Forum. To this informal gathering of the most powerful business and financial magnates in the capitalist world are invited political leaders, cultural and religious organizations and even some trade unionists. The aim is to define global economic strategies.

In 1999, a counter-Davos gathering brought together on the same date dissident social movements from across five continents: Brazil’s Landless People’s Movement; the Trade Union Congress of South Korea; the National Peasant Federation of Burkina Faso; the Quebec Women’s Movement and the French Movement of the Unemployed. They met with a number of eminent economists, sociologists, historians and political scientists. The aim was to demonstrate, by means of very different analyses and the putting forward of concrete alternatives, their opposition to the dominant ideology of neo-liberalism and the dictatorship of capitalism over global society. This book is a compilation of these discussions whose impact has already resonated around the world.

François Houtart is Professor Emeritus of Louvain University, Belgium.

François Polet is a sociologist and researcher at the Tricontinental Centre.