ATTAC: a transnational social movement?

Abstract

At the end of the 1990s, manifestations of opposition to the financialisation of the economy and neoliberal policies emerged in several host countries of international organisations, resulting in the beginning of a new movement self-named alterglobalism (from the French "alter-mondialisation"). The World Social Forum (2001) project was born from these increasingly and continuous manifestations and protests. The altermundialisation movementwas presented by much of the literature as a new, plural, non-hierarchical, transnational, transclassist and post-material movement. This article proposes to problematise these features through the analysis of the case of the ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Support to Citizens), one of the entities most involved and identified with the movement. To this end, this paper investigates in an articulated way the association's political program; its composition and form of organization in the light of the ongoing transformations with the advance of neoliberalism.Without losing sight of the importance of the altermundialiste confluence in the legibility of the ATTAC constitution and performance process, the analysis of its case puts in evidence: a) the strong social homogeneity of the association; b) the relationship with "traditional" organizational structures, such as the trade union;c) the dynamics of the internal structure, which very often contrasts with the discourse of horizontality; d) the importance of reconfiguring labour relations in the mobilisation of its members; e) the strong national base of its performance.