Attac Norway: A Cross-Political Project against Global Capitalism.

Preface.

Why not set up a worldwide non-governmental organisation, Action for a Tobin Tax to Assist the Citizen (ATTAC)? With the trade unions and the many social, cultural and ecological organisations, it could exert formidable pressure on governments to introduce this tax at last, in the name of international solidarity. (Ramonet: 1997)

By ending an article concerning the problems caused by the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98 with the above plea, Ignacio Ramonet, senior editor with the French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique, may have made preparations for the most important and, certainly, the fastest growing, political grass-root movement since the seventies. Attac (Association pour la taxation des transaction financiers pour l'aide aux citoyens, or, Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens) was founded in France shortly after the article was published, after an overwhelming amount of letters and E-mails were received at the newspaper's offices in response to the plea. (Clinell: 2001)

Since Attac in France was established on June 3rd 1998, the organisation has grown to about 30 000 members in France alone, while at the same time expanding into other countries, making it a serious, if untraditional, political actor wherever it is located. Starting with a wide, largely non-specific, agenda, Attac's aim has been to criticise the negative consequences of neo-liberal economic globalisation, an agenda that has proved itself to be both popular and controversial, and has manifested itself socially in various guises over the last few years, from the violent protests in Seattle, to the more civilised act of establishing research-groups to study the issues arising around economic globalisation.

The aim of this dissertation is to do a discursive analysis of Attac, on several levels, with the specific case study of Attac in Norway. On a macro level, I want to look at Attac's agenda, and in doing so, focus on how this organisation differs from the image of the protestors presented by the mainstream media, consisting as it does, of a diverse set of engaged individuals and interest groups, acting on a more legitimate political level than what is often portrayed by the media. This shift of focus is particularly evident in Attac's resolutely non-violent political platform, and in how various, often conflicting, interest groups are represented, and work side by side within Attac's agenda. By looking at the interaction between the different interest-groups represented in Attac, the focus of this text will move from a macro to a micro-level, and the case study I will concentrate on is the newly established Norwegian adaptation of Attac. Because of the organised and peaceful nature of Attac my discussion will not so much be preoccupied with the methods Attac use for protesting, as it will focus on the actual issues that are being debated by Attac, in the context of Norway's political discourse.

In the context of Attac in Norway a number of questions, paradoxes and problems arise. Without going into detail here in the preface, issues such as the rather fierce Norwegian debate concerning EU-membership, a slightly different political landscape, in terms of what is considered radical and what is considered conservative than in the rest of Europe, a strong but, also possibly, ill-defined national identity and the power of using the right terminology in the quest for political support come to the forefront of any organised attempt at uniting forces in the struggle against global capitalism from Norway. I would, however, like to stress that I am not trying to give an exhaustive account of issues such as the Norwegian national identity or the Norwegian political discourse. The aim of this text is, merely, to identify and discuss some of the factors in Norwegian society relevant to Attac and the organisation's agenda as it is establishing itself in this context. The discursive approach differs from traditional methodology in that it does not favour statistical analysis or a testing of hypotheses against collected data. Rather, the approach I will be taking, is an attempt to move beyond the concrete and towards a perspective favouring society, politics and culture as a complex set of interrelated and continually developing processes. The world is in constant flux, and should also be looked at as such.

Because I am using the Norwegian political discourse both as a tool and as a conclusion, my analysis will draw upon a variety of empirical sources, ranging from relevant literature, via newspaper and periodical articles through to personal interviews with some of the actors in the context of Attac Norway.

The first section of this text will, then, deal with the wider issues concerning the rise of Attac internationally, the underlying principles and arguments of the organisation, and an indication of positive and negative aspects of the way the organisation is structured, as well as a brief historical contextualisation of Attac. This section will also deal, a little more specifically with one of Attac's main causes; the establishment of a Tobin-tax, or a tax on all currency transactions, as this is a subject that has proved to be particularly relevant in Norway, where the government is, in fact, positive to a move towards a regulation of the world's currency market.

As mentioned above, the next sections will follow on from the wider issues, looking at the case study of how Attac is currently working to situate itself in, and outside of, the Norwegian political landscape. Because the issues and problems that arise by Attac being situated in the middle of the debate on whether Norway should be a member of the European Union or not are so complex and intertwined with each other, the structure of these chapters will not be a linear one. Rather, I will try to present the main lines of conflict first, as they were focused upon in the Norwegian media at the time of Attac Norway's birth, in order to the go deeper into a discussion of how and why an organisation with Attac's agenda and structure has a very difficult, but also potentially manageable, task ahead of itself in the Norwegian context. The discursive approach to discussing Attac's role in Norwegian politics will be apparent also in this section of the dissertation, where the discourse of political terminology will be focused upon, in relation to Attac as well as in relation to the Norwegian EU-debate and the issue of a Norwegian national identity. As I will, at a later stage outline, all of these elements are, at various levels, interconnected, making it hard to distinguish their relevant debates from each other, while they at the same time, separately, present both opportunities and obstacles to Attac's political agenda in Norway.

In the conclusion of this text I will look back at the previous sections and reflect upon the various elements that complicate Attac's situation, and also the issues that can offer an explanation as to why this particular organisation has developed to become a voice for the many different interest groups that show a concern over today's global economy. I will also, with regard to the findings of the case study, assess how Attac's international platform functions outside of France where it was originally written. Does the 'French' resistance to globalisation, frequently aimed at what are considered both economical and cultural threats from the Anglo-Saxon world, easily transfer to a country in which the political climate is radically different than the French, or will Attac's platform simply allow for nationalist, protectionist forces in other environments, in this case, the Norwegian environment, to thrive?

Towards the end of this text I will also move the discussion into what, in my opinion, Attac could potentially do to overcome some of the problems they are faced with in the Norwegian political climate. My argument, as I will go into more detail on in the conclusion, is that Attac Norway should, for various reasons try to transcend the discourse of national politics and concentrate, rather, on what can best be described as a more cosmopolitan perspective on global capitalism. In the context of the a Norwegian national identity which, as I will explain, is to a great extent based on resistance towards external political, economic and cultural forces, global capitalism should not be resisted by using negative nationalism; a more promising approach could be to focus on the need for transnational solidarity in the face of the global economy.

This text will, however, not be about taking sides, or about judging the validity of Attac's, or its critics', arguments, as these arguments are based in political values as much as in empirical facts. I will, however, attempt to analyse the political and social discourses Attac's policies relate to, in order to critically evaluate the aspects of the debate where the various interests conflict the most, not to make qualitative judgements, but to seek a greater understanding of how the face of politics, in this case in Norway, can be changing. Is it true, as much literature on the new social movements protesting against global capitalism claims, that today's citizens are preoccupied with the bigger, global issues, rather than the domestic, national agendas? In my case study, the evidence seems to indicate an increased complexity in people's political horizons, mixing national and global issues with regional and local ones. The complexities that arise around the conflict between a local identity and a global perspective are what I want to seek an understanding of in this text. The form resistance to global capitalism takes is far from uniform, just as the functions, qualities or consequences of neo-liberal capitalism lie, very much, in the eye of the beholder. The case study used in this text will, hopefully, shed some light on the difficulties faced when protesting against global phenomena on a local, and even national, level.

1. Attac - Grass-root Politics on a Higher Level.

1.1 Why Attac, and Why Now?

When a selection of academics, labour union leaders, journalists, student unions, farmers' unions and other, related interest groups founded Attac in 1998, the founders agreed upon a collection of ideas. Attac would criticise the dominant belief in neo-liberalism and, rather, look for alternative solutions to society's problems. The organisation would also, as the below quote on how Attac should be a convergence of networks shows, work as a kind of a meeting point for various interest groups with a critical attitude to what is seen as neo-liberal globalisation.

…the oppositions to neo-liberal politics are concentrated on different targets, and different countries and regions of the world often do not share the same priorities,: IMF structural adjustment plan, weight of public or private debt, international agreements like NAFTA or IMA, WTO, unequal North-South exchanges, etc... It is not the ambition of our international movement to replace that diversity. We wish to collaborate with existing networks in order to favour the convergence of popular and democratic mobilizations. Indeed, thanks to such a convergence, we will be able to show a capacity of resistance and of alternatives to the neo-liberal "globalization". (www.attac.org)

The convergence of existing networks is, in fact, one of the major reasons why Attac seems to present a new, fresher, approach to politics. While the representation of various interests, at the moment seems to be the organisations great strength, a closer look, as I will come back to in the case study, also proves that it may come to be one of the organisations weakest points.

The rhetoric used in Ramonet's initial article has echoes in the recent publications of Naomi Klein and Noreena Hertz, but rather than describing a social movement as it develops and interacts with mainstream society, Ramonet and the instigators to ATTAC were calling out for this social movement to emerge, as a result of what they saw as the unfair and undemocratic logic of neo-liberal global capitalism. (Hertz: 2001) (Klein: 2000) (Ramonet: 1997) A key concept behind the article is the belief that power, political, economical or social, no longer resides in democratically elected institutions; power has (been) moved away from politicians towards corporations and supra-national institutions such as the WTO.

"The WTO… is now an institution with supranational powers, subject to none of the checks and balances of parliamentary democracy." (Ramonet: 1997)

The loss of democratically elected power is a reoccurring theme throughout Attac's now widespread organisational network, reflecting, but not unconditionally accepting, the protests against global capitalism seen most recently at the EU-summit in Gothenburg and the G8-summit in Genova, where one protestor died after being shot by the police. In fact, Attac seems to be developing into becoming a more acceptable, if not mainstream, form of organised protests against neo-liberal capitalism than what is often portrayed by the media as a non-organised gathering of hooligans and guerrilla-style activists. In this section of the text, I want to look more closely at Attac's way of forwarding their agenda, starting at the beginning with a very brief historical account of what happened when Attac France began to take shape, and what it is the driving forces behind the organisation want to achieve.

The fact that Attac finds a right to life can be seen as evidence of a growing sense among people that the forces of globalisation have weakened traditional politics. As Hertz, Klein, and a whole multitude of recent publications state, big corporations are seen as having real power, while the power of elected politicians has all but disappeared. Kalle Lasn, the founder of Adbusters magazine, and a prominent critic of the commercialisation of politics describes the conditions in the US;

…the American reality is very different from its brand image. America TM has been subverted by corporate agendas. Its elected officials bow before corporate power as a condition of their survival in office. A collective sense of powerlessness and disillusionment has set in. A deeply felt sense of betrayal is brewing. (Lasn: 1999; xii)

While the lack of power elected politicians are stuck with at the face of global corporations most definitely plays a part in the reasons for why an organisation such as Attac can grow with the speed it has, another, very real problem, seems to be the fact that politics, as a whole, have taken a fairly sharp turn to the right over the last 30 years. Politicians, in general, do not speak of regulating the economy, they speak of the possibilities offered by fair and equal opportunities, and of how everyone should take advantage of the access to the global markets globalisation has created. The apathy displayed by electorates in most countries recently may tell us more than any analysis of new social movements can do; people do no longer feel that politicians speak their cause. When voter-turnout in the last British general election fell below 60% this was, more or less as expected. But as long as politicians do not look into the reasons for such a low voter-turnout, people increasingly feel the need to get their message across through other channels, possibly offering an explanation for the upswing of large-scale protests and demonstrations at every opportunity over the last few years. In many ways, Attac are attempting to fill that void, emphasising their connection with the grass-root actions of everyday people, while trying to establish some sort of critical dialogue with politicians and business-leaders. Looking at the politics of most political parties in the western world, it would be easy to agree with Fukuyama who, in 1992 proclaimed the end of history. Capitalism is, in most parts of the world, uncontested as a social model. More worryingly for Attac, capitalism has also, over the course of the last 25 years become increasingly unregulated. In this sense, it is not capitalism as such Attac are criticising, they are criticising the system that allows capitalism to be the be all end all, without any restrictions or social responsibilities. (Fukuyama: 1992)

An underlying factor in how Attac has managed to grow so quickly is the way organisational networks in the political world have been coupled with electronic networks, via Attac's successful use of the Internet as a tool for communicating, mobilising and informing. By logging on to Attac's main website (www.attac.org), a user in any part of the world has access to information about the organisation in a wide range of languages, as well as direct access to the homepages of the various national factions of Attac. Without overestimating the role of the Internet in the struggle against global capitalism, it must be said that new media have, at least, made life a lot easier for grass-root movements. The Internet is a cheap tool for communicating with a, potentially, widespread and large, audience. The hype surrounding the Internet in its first few years was also, very much, linked to a belief in freedom of speech and extreme democracy. As such, it was only natural for protest organisations without direct access to mainstream media would publish material and promote themselves through this new channel. Attac use, for example, E-mail as their main form of communication with the members, and members, and others who may be interested, can, through the website, read up on research relevant to Attac's agenda, and find out about planned protests and other events. The possibilities of organising via the Internet, without having to call meetings and print and distribute flyers and posters certainly makes a difference in the way organisations like Attac can, and do, work.

The reasons for why Attac has emerged, and why it has happened over the last three years are many, but it is clear that Attac could not have developed quite so rapidly, in the transnational manner that it has, without the use of new media. Another reason is that the current mood amongst people who are not content with the current global situation is to try to influence and induce change on several levels of authority and power, not only locally, but also internationally, as seen in relation to the huge protests in Seattle, London, Prague, and more recently, Gothenburg and Genoa. Attac's supporters are unhappy with the system, and because of this, they aim to criticise all the various elements that together make up the system. This form of wide system-critique, is one of the reasons why Attac has room to incorporate people with very different views on why the system is not working. It is, however, also one of the reasons why representatives for Attac must be very accurate in their formulations when speaking publicly, so as not to provoke internal conflicts on matters not related to Attac's main agenda.

1.2 Attac - Converging International and Local Networks.

"Simply a question of taking back, together, the future of our world." (www.attac.org)

One quality that makes Attac a unique movement is the way the two, normally separate, phenomena of top-down and bottom-up social mobilisation exist in a complex inter-related structure within one organisation. While it can be said that the initiative taken to establish Attac was, in some ways, a traditional move from a group of political, cultural and academic elites, actions, demonstrations and other, ad-hoc, movements in France and elsewhere in the recent years indicate a strong tendency amongst the political grass-root, normal people, to want to voice their political opinions through other channels than general elections. In this section of the text, however, I want to focus on how grass-root movements and the so-called elites are striving to merge into one diverse but powerful force in resistance to what they consider to be exploitative economic globalisation.

A central feature in Attac's work is the establishment of a scientific council, consisting of several different research committees, each focusing on a particular issue, working to come up with concrete proposal of how to achieve a more democratic economic globalisation.

"The purpose of the scientific council is to produce and disseminate information on the nature of financial transactions in order to promote and direct all levels of action with the view to reclaiming, by citizens, the power that finance exercises over world politics, economics, and society and culture. " (www.attac.org)

Members of the scientific council are available for lectures and to participate in debates or other events the local factions of Attac are encouraged to organise. This kind of activity is, of course, closely tied up to the preoccupation Attac has with opening up the world of academic research to the people and to encourage political debate across traditional social boundaries. An article in The Guardian refers, in fact, to how the organisation calls itself "a popular education movement turned towards action". (The Guardian: 2001[a]) Such ideals do, of course, have quite a long tradition in France, starting when Sartre played an active part in the student protests of 1968, via when Bordieu engaged with the striking railway-workers in 1995. (Clinell: 2001)

As mentioned above, the various research committees work with different subjects, and, according to Attac's own website, new committees are continually under development. Four subjects currently being focused upon by research committees as outlined on www.attac.org are;

- Taxation on currency markets.

- Laundering of money and fiscal havens.

- Governments' use of pension funds to speculate in the currency market.

- Appropriation of life by private interests. (Copyrights on genes etc.) (www.attac.org)

Another subject the scientific council is working on in France is a dictionary focusing on how neo-liberal content has come to be associated with positive words like development and progress, while those who oppose or criticise such developments are said to be reactionary or nationalists. (Clinell: 2001) The control of relevant terminology is an issue, which has proved to be a key factor in relation to the establishment of Attac in Norway, as well as for Attac internationally.

Because Attac is such a young organisation, and because politicians have seen the amount of attention and media coverage its growth has generated, one danger is that the organisation will be seized by already existing political actors and institutions, something which has been particularly evident in the Scandinavian countries, where the governments of both Norway and Sweden have welcomed Attac with, relatively, open arms, Attac's regulations specify how it can not support anyone in an election, and likewise, how anyone who stands as a candidate in an election can not use his/her membership in Attac in order to win votes.

As a consequence of Attac being founded in France, its organisational structure carries strong resemblances to how grass-root politics have been carried out in that specific country throughout the last century. The political left in France has traditionally had a complexly networked organisational structure, similar to the coordinated but decentralised structure now in use by Attac. Local factions of Attac find local issues to protest against and deal with, keeping the principles of Attac's international platform in mind. One example mentioned by Clinell is how a local section of Attac has been campaigning for legislation reforms after an accident involving an oil tanker caused an environmental crisis off the coast of Brittany. (Clinell: 2001) Such a structure seems, so far, to work quite well in France. In my case study, however, I want to focus on how Attac manifests itself, and situates itself in a different political climate; that of Norway. I will look at what is lost in the translation of Attac's organisation to the Norwegian political landscape, at some of the key issues arising in relation to Attac's agenda, but also at the potential Attac has to make an impact in the Norwegian political landscape.

Before I go on to the case study, however, I want to take a closer look at one of the main issues on Attac's agenda, the establishing of a tax on currency transactions, also known as the Tobin-tax. The tax is one of the issues emphasised most strongly by Attac. In order to gain a greater understanding of how Attac as an organisation plans to work, but also of what kind of alternatives the organisation wants to present, it will be useful to engage briefly in the debate surrounding this controversial taxation.

1.3 Sand in the Wheels - the Tobin-tax.

One of Attac's aims is to come up with realistic alternatives to the dominant ideology of neo-liberal capitalism. A concrete suggestion, aimed at providing such an alternative, has been the revived interest in a Currency Transaction Tax (CTT), a tax on all currency transactions in the form of a small percentage of the amount transferred. The idea of a CTT has often been associated with economics Nobel Laureate James Tobin who in 1972 suggested that such a tax could be helpful in stabilising the increasingly global economy, especially in the aftermath of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in the seventies. (Rime: 2001) Tobin's suggestion was largely ignored throughout the seventies and eighties, but has received renewed interest and attention following the devaluation of the British Pound in the early nineties and, in particular, the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98.

Within the zeitgeist of an ever-present globalisation, debates concerning global governance, global institutions and legislation overseeing the global economy have emerged as important and controversial political topics. A report on the subject of a CTT from the Institute for World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED) in Bonn states that a CTT, or a Tobin-tax, as it has come to be known, would only be a part of the new financial architecture discussed in forums such as the G7/G8 summits, and in various publications from the UNDP. A CTT could help stabilise financial markets, and, thus national economies, but as the WEED report states, the taxation would have to be low enough so as not to deter international trade altogether, rather to minimize the potential profits of short-term speculative and destabilising currency transactions. While Tobin's original suggestion was for a 1% taxation, contemporary advocates of a CTT talk of a much lower rate, possibly less than 0,5%. (www.weedbonn.org)

The consequences of a Tobin-tax would then be a reduction in what some economists have called the excess liquidity of the financial markets, the extreme mobility of capital. A CTT would, it is believed, reduce the profitability of the very short-term transactions, also known as round trip financial flows. By reducing the profitability of round trip financial flows, the tax's advocates believe that the volatile conditions that allowed for, for example, the Asian financial crisis to happen, can, in the future, be avoided. One investor who, self-admittedly, played a major part in the events leading up to when the British Pound had to be devalued, George Soros, now claims to support the introduction of some form of a CTT. (www.observer.co.uk [a]) His reasoning for this is simply that the very logic of capitalism does not allow for social consequences to be taken into consideration, capitalism is simply about making more money. The difference between Soros and many others who support the introduction of a Tobin-tax is that Soros, in fact, does not see anything wrong in making money, even when it does affect others in a negative way.

I have not even a shadow of remorse for making a profit out of the devaluation of the pound. ... I didn't speculate against the pound to help England. I didn't do it to hurt England. I did it to make money. (www.observer.co.uk [a])

According to Soros, then, financiers like himself need to be regulated. This view is an uncommon one amongst economists and financiers, in fact, Christoffer R. Klyve, the secretary for Attac Norway, explains how one of the problems met when discussing the Tobin-tax with anyone opposing it is very complex, as the argument for a Tobin-tax is based on a completely different ideological foundation than the argument against it. (Klyve: 2001) Those who are positive to such a tax, like Attac, are concerned with the positive social side effects of a more stable economy and with how the revenues from the tax can be used to aid developing countries. Those who oppose the tax, however, are generally more concerned with what effects a CTT would have on the global free market. The perspective put forward by Dagfinn Rime in a lecture in relation to his doctoral defense; "Sand in the wheels: Is it desirable and feasible to introduce a tax on currency trading?" was a clear example of how the rhetoric of economics has not yet merged with the more socially minded rhetoric of politics. Rime's critical evaluation of the foreign exchange market concluded that, at present, a CTT would not necessarily be the most efficient way to regulate and stabilise the economy. While Rime presented a range of arguments regarding why the global economy is not necessarily volatile only because of inefficiencies and weaknesses in its structure, such as the fact that national financial problems are often caused by the fact that political leaders make the wrong decisions or other domestic inefficiencies, Rime's overall perspective was, however, firmly based in that of an economics scholar. (Rime: 2001)

His aim was to establish whether a Tobin tax would be useful for the economy, not to look for social consequences of a CTT. The point here is not to criticise the lack of social engagement in Rime's lecture, rather to illustrate the fact that the whole debate concerning the introduction of a CTT exists on two, almost mutually exclusive, levels; at one level, those who support the tax discuss its social consequences; at another level, those who oppose it, or are, at least, critical to it, discuss whether it would be beneficent to capitalism as a system to introduce such taxation.

Difference in the point of departure for political opinion is one of the issues I will focus upon in the next section of this text, the case study of Attac Norway. Another, important question that arises in relation to the Tobin tax is that of the power and use of terminology to describe society, social change and political issues. As I will also return to, Attac aim to regain some of the terminology they feel have been lost to neo-liberalism, words such as development and progress. Would a CTT work as an obstacle to the progress of the global market, or would the stabilising effects and revenues be progress on a social level? Judging by the current public debate, it is seen as both, complicating matters further for both arguments.

2. Attac Norge/Attac Noreg/Attac Norway.

2.1 Conflict from the start?

The road from when the weekly newspaper Morgenbladet took the initiative to establish Attac in Norway to the founding meeting at Folkets Hus, Oslo, on May 31st 2001 was, in many ways, a long and winding one. There has, for a while, been a sense of rivalry between the two major radical newspapers in Norway, Morgenbladet and Klassekampen. While Morgenbladet considers itself to promote ideas of a progressive radical nature, Klassekampen, on the other hand, sees itself as a representative for true radical ideas. Since Attac in Norway was not established before a few years after the organisation's beginning in France, these two rivalling institutions in the, so-called, radical wing of the Norwegian political landscape suddenly became very eager to become the official newspaper representing this new development, much in the same way that the British tabloids bickered over which was the official Big Brother-newspaper. For a while, the rivalry between the two newspapers looked like it could cause problems for the establishing phase of Attac Norway, but these problems were overcome, and Attac Norway was officially established on the 31st of May, 2001. A perhaps unorthodox observation, in this context, was that by the time the Norwegian national organisation Attac was established, local factions in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim had already existed for some time.

The newspaper feud seemed to try to provoke the internal differences of Attac into conflict, and did, to a certain extent, succeed in doing so. It could, of course, also be argued that the media was merely performing its function by reporting about conflicts relevant to the establishment of Attac Norway. These conflicts were, however, more or less overcome, or at least, pushed aside for the time being, when the founding meeting agreed upon Attac Norway's official political platform.

One major point of disagreement was what stand, if any, Attac should take on the question of Norwegian EU-membership. After prolonged discussion, the founding meeting of Attac Norway agreed to include the following sentence in its platform;

On the question of the EU, Attac Norway will not take a stand in the debate over Norwegian membership in the European Union. This will, however, not deter Attac Norway from criticising the policies of the EU. (www.attac.no)

The perception of how these problems were overcome do, however, differ. Christoffer R. Klyve argues that the conflicting parties came to a compromise in Attac Norway's official platform, following the advice given by Bernard Cassen in an interview with Klassekampen; "Stick to what unites, forget what divides." (www.klassekampen.no[a]) (Klyve: 2001) Erling Fossen, an author and writer for Morgenbladet, who played a fairly high-profile part in this conflict, argues, however, that those who did not agree with the proposal for a platform put forward by the interim-board were simply excluded from further participation in the elected board. (Fossen: 2001) As such, I will go into the potential problems unravelled in the process leading up to the establishing of Attac in Norway in a bid to discuss Attac's current position in the political discourse in Norway by trying to relate the organisations structure, agenda, aims and motives to existing lines of conflict and problematical issues in Norwegian society and politics. While I remain critical to the way Attac's intrinsic difficulties was presented in some of the Norwegian newspapers, this does, however, not mean that this text will be oblivious to the internal differences of Attac as a cross-political organisation, rather that I will try to present any such differences in relation to external issues, thus hoping to determine the degree of difficulty these pose to Attac. By taking the discursive approach to analysing Attac in Norway, I will also be looking for an understanding of certain political issues on a greater level. I will examine Norway's relationship to EU-membership, and to the EU as an institution, but at the same time, I will also try to gain some insight into how a transnational social movement, or protest-organisation that, self-admittedly, draws upon a long tradition of French political grass root mobilisation, like Attac, manifests itself in its local surroundings.

2.2 The Complicated Issue of Uniting Resistance against Global Capitalism in Norway.(And still avoid becoming part of the Establishment)

As mentioned above, Morgenbladet took, in March 2001, the initiative to establish a Norwegian faction of the, originally French Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Attac. Before this initiative was taken, the Swedish section of Attac had already been established, and had received a certain amount of attention in Norway, from both media and politicians. The Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson has at several occasions declared his support for Attac's main agenda, such as the Tobin-tax, and did, at the time of establishing Attac Sweden claim to welcome the new organisation with open arms. (Clinell: 2001) (www.klassekampen.no, [a])

The Norwegian Minister for Foreign Affairs and former Prime Minister, Torbjørn Jagland, has also stated his support for Attac, most recently when he arranged for Attac Norway to receive NOK 80.000, the equivalent of approximately £5500, as the organisation was getting started. (www.klassekampen.no [b]) The most obvious reason for this high-profile support would be that regulating the global economy and regaining national sovereignty on issues of social welfare sound like promises that could have been made by Scandinavian social-democratic parties in any election-campaign of the recent years. On the surface, the rhetoric of the Norwegian social-democrats (Det Norske Arbeiderparti, in particular) is very much based around issues concerning the welfare state and in support of a strong national economy. As I will come back to in the section looking at political rhetoric and the power of terminology, the establishing of Attac in Norway is, in many ways a manifestation of the fact that some people regard Arbeiderpartiet's rhetoric as being neo-liberalism disguised as socialism. In addition to this Norway was, over the course of the summer of 2001 preparing for a general election, and Arbeiderpartiet, the party then in government, was in desperate need to boost its image after some disastrous opinion polls indicated they would no longer be in government after the election.

With all the positive interest Attac has been receiving in Norway, some may see Jagland's attempt at flirting with this new social movement as a blatant stunt to impress younger voters. In addition to the above mentioned reasons for why the Norwegian government has been courting Attac, one should maybe not dismiss the fact that Jagland, and Arbeiderpartiet in general, are socialists at heart, and that they genuinely believe in Attac's agenda. It is easy to simply be cynical about the fact that politicians want to use popular movements for self-promotion, but, as mentioned before, Scandinavian politics have historically been more centred around the welfare state and other social issues than what, for example, New Labour's rather more Thatcherite policies on privatisation have been. Erling Fossen, however, argues that mainstream politicians have, in particular since the demonstrations in Gothenburg, backed away from their initial, strong support of Attac. According to Fossen, Attac's non-violent approach lost some of its credibility in the media after various people on the political left, however loosely associated with the anti-capitalist movement, did not denounce the violence in Gothenburg. In addition to this, Fossen argues that the representatives for the Norwegian government announced their support for Attac before they really knew what the organisation stood for. (Fossen: 2001) Bernard Cassen, leader of the French Attac, also took a similar view when he expressed doubts as to whether Torbjørn Jagland actually knows what Attac is. By pointing to the neo-liberal policies of most social-democratic governments, Cassen argues that social-democrats are not, in fact, interested in regulating the global economy; on the contrary, history has shown how they are keen to deregulate it. (www.dagbladet.no[a])

Norway's most politically minded daily newspaper, Klassekampen identified another reason as to why the Norwegian government tries to give Attac what it calls a "sticky embrace". During the period leading up to Attac Norway's founding meeting, an interim-board was put together to come up with a proposal for a political platform. One of the issues that was focused upon the most by the media was whether Attac would take a stand on the question of Norwegian EU-membership or whether it would explicitly state in the political platform that Attac Norway would not be concerned with this issue. According to Klassekampen, Arbeiderpartiet, which is officially a pro-EU-membership party, wanted to gain some credibility with young voters without compromising its view on the EU-issue

. …as opposed to in France, wide, experienced, and well-trained organisations working against neo-liberal devaluation of national sovereignty on issues of economy and welfare already exist in Scandinavia. Unfortunately for Persson and Jagland, these organisations are against the EU. (www.klassekampen.no [a])

While Jagland and Persson may well have had legitimate reasons to want to support Attac, Klassekampen, in this case possibly reflecting a central issue in the Norwegian society, links the government's support of Attac to their will to join the European Union.

Such a link would seem rather contrived in most other European countries, but in Norway, the only country to twice have rejected the offer of EU-membership in referendums, the question of whether to join the EU or not is one of the most important, controversial and also paradoxical issues in today's political debate. It is also a question that, increasingly, seems to be playing a large part in how Norwegian people define their political belonging. This is something I will look at in relation to Attac's agenda of criticising global capitalism in the next section of the text.

The example above illustrates well, I believe, the way it is so easy for the two opposing sides in the Norwegian EU-debate to dismiss any statement or action from the other side as being part of a hidden agenda to gain support for their view on the EU. Even more so, it illustrates the way the question of Norwegian EU-membership penetrates so many other political topics, complicating both the topics themselves and the way people can relate to them. In order to shed some light on the conditions surrounding the establishment of Attac in Norway, I will, in the next section focus more specifically on how the debate over Norwegian EU-membership manifests itself. Because the EU-issue has been, and continues to be, of such importance in Norwegian politics, the arguments used, in my opinion, reflect much wider issues, such as how Norwegians view themselves, and, on a larger scale, how they view others.

Whatever the reasons for the Norwegian government's goodwill towards Attac, this goodwill is not something that is unconditionally accepted by Attac.

One of the most important challenges for ATTAC in Norway in the near future is to avoid being absorbed by mainstream social democratic politics; to keep the critical distance needed to follow ATTAC's platform and stay independent. (Wahl; 2001)

The above quote does, in many ways, lie at the heart of Attac's agenda, both in Norway and internationally. The organisation does not want to become institutionalised, it does not want to have power, it wants the power to influence and criticise those who do.

What is real power? Real power is not what we want; we want real changes. (Wahl: 2001)

The way to go about influencing the power-elites and pressing for change is, according to Wahl, in the same interview, an approach Attac as an organisation likes to call confrontational dialogue. Since the Norwegian government is so positive to Attac's agenda, Wahl stresses the importance of using this goodwill to put pressure upon the government in relation to how Norway's official policy on issues such as regulating the global economy are put forward in forums such as the WTO. (The World Trade Organisation) (Wahl; 2001)

So far, the actions of Attac Norway have included sending delegates to peacefully protest at the EU-summit in Gothenburg, and to the G8-meeting in Genoa, as well as staging a peaceful protest outside the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo, in this context. Attac have also become involved a general debate concerning the increasing violence at the large anti-capitalist protests around the world. Even though Attac, both in Norway and internationally, takes a firm stand against the use of violence in the protests, society has been fed an image by the mainstream media of protestors being violent, masked thugs, and this perception is something Attac also has to struggle with in order to gain public support. When, as in the case of the EU-summit in Gothenburg, Attac did not, very overtly, condemn violent protest ahead of the demonstrations, it was easy for people to assume that the organisation that had received so much media attention lately was actually involved in the violent clashes. The fact of the matter was that on the day of the worst riots in Gothenburg, Attac were staging a peaceful protest in a nearby park. According to Christoffer R. Klyve, the protest consisted of two football teams playing against each other, one team, representing the third world, playing uphill, the other, representing the industrialised world, playing downhill, with the referee representing the IMF. (International Monetary Fund) This form of protest was, obviously a PR-stunt, hoping to attract some media attention and move the media's focus away from the violence, but with the appetite for scandal and violence displayed by news-broadcasters, the football match was, largely, ignored. Images of protestors tearing down a McDonalds restaurant make for higher viewing figures. (Klyve: 2001)

2.3 Attac Norway as a Cross-Political Project.

It could, in theory, be very easy for an organisation with a critical/sceptical agenda like ATTAC, to enter Norway's political mainstream. Much of the political debate concerning international and global issues in Norway is seeped through with a sceptical attitude, something that is reflected, as I will expand upon, in the question of Norwegian EU-membership. As much as this popularity and easy access is an asset for ATTAC, it is also one of the main dangers threatening to disarm the organisation before it settles into its intended role as a critical outsider. At the other end of the stick, Attac does, at the same time, have to deal with and defend itself against accusations of condoning the use of violence as a political tool. The line between being a legitimate political actor and an underground, militant organisation can, at first glance seem to be very fine. However, as I have indicated above, the use of vocabulary and the power over relevant terminology plays as large a part in this question as concrete actions from any participant can do. Using the language of mainstream politics may not, for Attac, necessarily lead to acceptance, it could also just lead the organisation to becoming a part of the old political discourse it wants to transcend and away from.

After the initial period of conflict, and overwhelming media-attention, Attac Norway was, as mentioned, officially founded at the end of May 2001. The optimism and enthusiasm of those involved makes Attac Norway's future seem promising, but how cross-political and all inclusive is Attac really?

Attac is a cross-political organisation… Now that the initial problems have been overcome, I hope the media will focus on the real issues… (Aschehoug: 2001)

Maren Aschehoug is an example of how Attac may have a realistic potential to stay the way it wants to; as an all-inclusive organisation criticising the negative consequences of neo-liberalism on a global and a local level. Aschehoug has an economics degree, supports Norwegian EU-membership and votes, in general elections, for Høyre , Norway's conservative party. Judging from these three pieces of information, one could assume that she would also support deregulating the economy and profit-driven capitalism. Such an assumption would be wrong. Maren Aschehoug may not be representative for all economists in Norway; she actually points out how distant the economics-education is from the wider issues of society. The issue at stake is not grounded in economic thought, she claims, it is a question of political ideology, where Aschehoug is concerned with how politics, and society as a whole, has experienced a sharp, ideological turn to the right. When asked why she joined Attac she mentioned three of her main reasons as being the need for a continued struggle against the MAI-treaty, cancelling third-world debt and keeping all nations' right to regulate their own economy. She dismisses the accusation from Klassekampen about Attac being a collection of old-school radicals reliving their youth, and Attac being a new playground for them, as nonsense. (Aschehoug: 2001) (www.klassekampen.no [c])

Attac is a radical organisation. Of course people with a radical perspective are going to participate in the Norwegian version. Attac is an organisation that wants global change, and then it is must be an advantage to include people with experience in such a field of work. (Aschehoug: 2001) .

This enthusiasm and optimism amongst Attac's members seems to have been lost in the media's coverage of Attac Norway. In a bid for critical journalism, Klassekampen and Morgenbladet's writers have focused on the internal conflicts of Attac, rather than looking at why more than 3000 people, in a small country like Norway, have become members of Attac. If the ideological enthusiasm stays as strong as it seemed to be while I conducted my interviews, and the Norwegian governments still sympathises with Attac, for whatever reasons, Attac does absolutely have the potential to become a major player in the Norwegian political discourse. On the other hand, as Professor at the University of Oslo, Berge furre stated in his interview; it is too early to judge whether Attac as a new form of organisation will be successful. (Furre: 2001) Asbjørn Wahl also points out how Attac in Norway has far from settled down yet;

ATTAC is not a fixed, rigid, institution; it is a continuous process, developing everyday. It is important to remember that the organisation has emerged to its current state in only three years, and has only existed formally for a few weeks in Norway. (Wahl; 2001)

As far as a successful start goes, most of the people involved in Attac Norway agree, more or less, that Attac has become what it wanted to be, a cross-political, inclusive and critical project. But as Wahl states, it is also an unfinished project, a continuous process, and the future only can show what direction the organisation will take. Attac's main strength is the organisations ability to mobilise a widespread support, but as the media-coverage indicates, widespread support can also mean widespread disagreement within Attac. The fact that people from most areas of what is considered the political left in Norway are represented can mean that Attac will become a much more powerful social movement than the country has seen in many years, but it can also mean that the organisation will be restricted from action because of internal conflicts of interest. A major question, then, seems to be if the people involved with Attac have the ability to leave their personal political agendas outside of Attac and concentrate, rather, on the issues specifically covered in Attac's political platform.

In the next section of this text I will look at what I believe to be some of the most central premises for the future development of Attac in Norway. By looking at how there is a distinct division between centre and periphery in the Norwegian society, and how this conflict is related to both issues of cultural and national identity, and to the question of Norwegian EU-membership, I want to gain some understanding of some of the most important challenges facing Attac Norway.

3. Imagining the Norwegian Political Discourse.

3.1 National Identity, the EU-Debate, and some other Problems.

There is no doubt that the question of Norwegian EU-membership is situated firmly at the centre of the Norwegian political discourse. Whether Norway should be a member of the European Union or not is a question that, in many ways, penetrates a lot of the country's domestic political life, and nearly all of the debate concerning Norway's foreign affairs. The debate around the issues of the EU is, however, in certain ways, paradoxical. While the argument against Norwegian EU-membership is firmly based around concepts such as national identity, sovereignty, people's rule and unity, most research done concerning this topic points to a clear tendency to an internal division in the Norwegian public; between those who live in the centre (Oslo, the capital, and other urban areas) and those who live in the periphery. The geographical location would, according to comparative politics Professor Stein Rokkan's model, also frequently indicate how people made their livelihood, thus also revealing where on the social ladder a person was situated. Rokkan's classic study from 1967 identifies what he call cleavages, or lines of conflict in Norwegian politics, and how these cleavages, in some ways, differ from those in other countries. (Rokkan: 1967) While Rokkan's focus on religion as a decisive factor, and on how people living in the periphery would, generally, work in the primary field of production may no longer be very accurate, some of the observations made in his study seem highly relevant for how political debate in Norway takes place today.

One central factor in how the Norwegian political discourse developed, as identified by Rokkan, was the lack of a class-based social structure. (Rokkan: 1967) Instead of having a bourgeoisie and a working-class conflicting over power and democratic participation, where the working-classes in different areas would relate to each other in their struggle against the ruling classes, Norway's people were, in the process of Norway becoming a sovereign country leading up to 1814, imagined to join forces against the oppressive Danish colonialists who were living in the capital, and thus representing a lifestyle different from the rural lifestyle that came to be associated with the Norwegian national identity. Iver B. Neumann points to the centre/periphery conflict as a fundamental line of conflict in the Norwegian political debate, in his book "Norge - En Kritikk", a discursive analysis of the terminology used in the Norwegian EU-debate. (Neumann: 2001)

According to Neumann, the Norwegian EU-debate is very much shaped around this conflict, which can be traced back and forth through a number of interconnected factors and political terms, together constituting the EU-debate, but also the Norwegian political debate as a whole, and thus also some of the basis upon which national identity is imagined or constructed. (Neumann: 2001) (Anderson: 1991) Neumann outlines a basic list of terms he sees as opposing each other in the EU-debate, and in this section of the text I want to look at some of these terms, relating them to what opportunities and obstacles they pose to what Attac want to achieve in Norway.

The most crucial term, or even change in terminology, to the EU-debate over the last few years was, according to Neumann, when the European Community changed its name to the European Union. After having founded a national identity on a deep unwillingness to the concept of a political union, following the struggle to leave two political unions in which Norway was the colonialised part, first the union with Denmark that lasted until 1814, and then the union with Sweden, that lasted until 1905. Even though only a small majority of the Norwegian people actually wanted to leave the union with Sweden in 1905, the outcome of the referendum held in that context seems to have been largely ignored, and through the national imagination, the Norwegian scepticism to the concept of political unions was born. As Inge Lønning, a previous leader of Europabevegelsen, the Norwegian pro-EU membership organisation stated after his resignation following the second referendum on Norwegian EU-membership in 1994;

In the struggle for the Norwegian public's vote, the race was, in reality, lost at the exact moment the EC changed its name to the EU. That opened the door for a final brainwash, with the term Union as a detergent. For obvious historical reasons it is easier in Norwegian than in any other language, to remove any trace of thought." (Lønning: 1997; 199)

Even though this perspective probably exaggerates the power of the term union to deter all Norwegian voters from thinking constructively, it must be said that a lot of the EU-debate has been focused on the fact that joining the EU would mean losing national sovereignty and fulfilling the wish of the ruling power-elites. (Neumann: 2001)

In relation to how the opponents of EU-membership have focused on the connotations and denotations of the term union in the Norwegian language, Neumann points out how he believes the lines of conflict evident within the discourse of the debate about union are also manifest in other areas of the political debate. In Norway, Neumann argues, the people and the state are considered to be two separate units. Only on the subject of the welfare state has the state and the people come together to create, or imagine, the nation. (Anderson: 1991) Comparing the Norwegian political discourse to that of France, Neumann stresses how, in France, the key terms are state and nation, while in Norway they are state and people. The people, according to Neumann, see the state in Norway, as a centralised opponent, working to impose the values of the urban population. (Neumann: 2001)

Being urban in Norway is a term Erling Fossen has focused upon in his work. In an interview he claims that in Norway, the cultural identity of the capital does not correspond to that of the rest of the country.

In Norway, urban culture is mocked, it is looked down at as perverted remains of the Union with Denmark. (Fossen: 2001)

Despite the fact that both Neumann and Fossen speak from a pro-EU perspective, making their analysis of the Norwegian national identity biased, the lines of conflict between centre/periphery in Norway are evident, manifesting themselves in how people think of the various actors in the Norwegian political landscape. But what does this all mean for Attac? In the next section of the text I want to focus on how the content of the terms outlined above complicates the situation for a cross-political project criticising global capitalism in Norway.

3.2 Resisting Global Capitalism on Norwegian terms.

Erling Fossen, in his book "Et radikalt ja" (A radical yes.), argues that if you are against Norwegian EU-membership, the political discourse brands you as a radical, while, on the other hand, if you are for EU-membership, you will be considered a capitalist.

Norwegian radicals see the EU as a capitalist project. (Fossen: 1993; 9)

While Fossen may be jumping to conclusions, based on his firm belief that joining the EU would ease the conflict between centre and periphery in Norway, his opinions cannot simply be dismissed as wrong. History has shown how the Norwegian national identity has been based firmly around resistance to external political powers, while internal differences have been downplayed. After less than 100 years of political sovereignty the internal conflicts in Norwegian politics are beginning to show, in particular around the issue of EU-membership. In the above quote however, Fossen raises, in addition to the issue of how the EU is seen in Norway, another important question. Norwegian radicals are not necessarily like radicals in the rest of Europe. In Norway it is the political left that opposes the EU. In Britain, for example, it is, mainly, the conservative right. Fossen questions the way the term radical in Norway also means nationalist. In his opinion, the Norwegian political discourse has been so closely tied up to imagining a national identity based on resistance to external powers, that the internationally minded radical movement became lost in the rhetoric of protecting national sovereignty and being radical has become being sceptical to the culture of what is seen as the ruling elite, a culture that is also seen as external to the Norwegian national identity. (Fossen: 1993)

Seen in this context, Attac, as an organisation uniting resistance towards an external force, beyond the control of Norwegian politics, should stand a good chance of uniting those sceptical of both global capitalism and a loss of national sovereignty. The intrinsic problem here is, however, fairly obvious. Norway already has a number of strong organisations resisting the supra-national powers of the EU, and as long as the EU is viewed as a capitalist project, on which basis Attac will criticise it, those who are engaged in these questions will have to leave aside their personal agendas in order to make Attac work. Representatives for Attac argue that this is precisely what has happened, people from Nei til EU (No to EU) have joined forces with people from their opponent, Europabevegelsen (The European Movement) in the struggle against what they see as the greater problem, global neo-liberal capitalism. (Klyve: 2001) However promising this sounds, it may be too early yet to applaud Attac for transcending the Norwegian EU debate. What remains to be seen is whether Attac, in the process, also manages to successfully transcend the elements in the Norwegian national identity insisting to keep Norway at an arm's distance from the outside world. A question arising at this point is; how does one interpret Attac's agenda?

During the period leading up to Attac's founding meeting in Norway, public debate showed how not all people knew what Attac were actually trying to achieve. Attac's international platform specifies how the organisation aims to criticise financial globalisation. (www.attac.org) In an online interview with the readers of Dagbladet, Asbjørn Wahl and Unni Berge, then in Attac Norway's interim board, were asked whether they were against globalisation. By replying that globalisation, as a term, is undefined and vague, Wahl and Berge pointed to a core issue for Attac Norway. (www.dagbladet.no [b]) In Norway, as I have tried to indicate, the EU falls into, at least, two categories, each complicating to Attac's agenda. First of all, if the Norwegian national identity is based so firmly in a feeling of resistance to external powers, and in trying to maintain national sovereignty on questions that are seen as crucial to Norway's peripheral areas, that the EU is seen as a compromise on national sovereignty, and a form of colonial rule, in which Norway, as a small, and relatively marginal, country, will not have a fair say in policy-making. This sentiment is something Attac Norway stands a risk of being drawn into. When, in addition to this, the EU is seen as a capitalist project, as Fossen and Neumann both indicate, the circle is complete. (Fossen: 1993) (Neumann: 2001)

The combination of a threat to national identity, national sovereignty and the social-democratic, regulated economy the Scandinavian countries have, historically, taken pride in, makes the EU a very controversial topic in the Norwegian political debate. Curiously enough, the factors that make for Norwegian's scepticism towards the EU, are very similar to some of the arguments used in, both, Attac's international, and Norwegian, platform. Attac's international platform talks of how sovereign nations are responsible for the common good, and how the nations' ability to execute the public good is threatened by neo-liberal globalisation. (www.attac.org) The line between nationalism and resistance to global capitalism is a very fine one, and, perhaps particularly in Norway, Attac must be careful not to transform from being an international movement to being a nationalist international movement. If the Norwegian section of Attac is going to be preoccupied with issues concerning the Norwegian national discourse, they will eventually run into problems, predicts Fossen in an interview. (Fossen: 2001)

In the case of Norway it is a decisive problem that globalisation, so far, is creating economic prosperity, not the other way around. (Fossen: 2001)

Fossen's point here is that it will be difficult to mobilise against globalisation on a local level, like Attac want to, if the perspective is limited within the Norwegian political discourse. Attac in Norway will, necessarily, have to focus on issues of international solidarity, rather than on the potentially damaging effects the EU, as a manifestation of economic globalisation, can have on Norwegian national sovereignty. It can, of course, be argued that this is what they do, indeed, the main cases on Attac's agenda are not directly relevant to the Norwegian economy; Norway is neither a hotspot for currency transactions, a tax haven nor a third world country with a huge national debt. The leader for Attac Norway, Nina Drange, also point this out as an important issue in relation to the Norwegian election campaign of 2001 which almost completely ignored issues of international and global importance. One of Attac Norway's aims, according to Drange, is to move political debate up to an international level. (Drange: 2001)

Leaving the national discourse aside and focusing on global issues does, of course, pose a certain risk to Attac Norway. In the few months since Attac Norway was established, media interest and coverage of the organisation has declined sharply, possibly because of the run-up to the general election, and a saturation with political issues in the news, but also possibly because the novelty of Attac has worn off. When some of the most vital political organisations in Norway are as strongly focused around the EU-question and issues of direct importance to the Norwegian people, an organisation focusing on political and economic problems that are relatively distant from people's everyday lives may encounter problems mobilising support. This is a paradox Attac must, in one way or another, deal with. Will the organisation keep a balance between local, national and global issues, or will this balance tip in favour of a more narrow approach? If Attac becomes a forum for the protection of national sovereignty, the anti-EU wing will, undoubtedly, remain in Attac, but the wide, cross-political project as described above will possibly fade away. On the other hand, if Attac simply turns into an organisation supporting the third world, the chances are, Attac's agenda may find itself beyond people's political horizons, leading to participation from only a few activists/idealists already engaged in these question. Such organisations do already exist, and as stated in the section about Attac being a convergence of existing networks, the organisations should work to incorporate its collective experience against what it has defined as its main target, unregulated economic globalisation. Similarly, if Attac manages to maintain the balance it has so far seemed to contain, a danger is that the organisation will be left ineffective because of a constant need for compromise.

In my interview with him, Asbjørn Wahl pointed out a direction Attac would like to take;

In addition to taking back the power over our own future, the struggle is about regaining power over the terminology. (Wahl: 2001)

By taking back the power over the terminology, Wahl was not only referring to informing people about what Attac criticise about today's globalisation, but about regaining territory over the whole debate concerning how a globalised society can, and should, be governed. (Wahl: 2001) The point here, then, is not to participate in the current political debate on the terms laid out within it, but to move beyond the current debate, using the relevant terminology in new ways. Wahl says the conditions for debate in today's political climate are determined by the way neo-liberalism penetrates it incorporating a kind of political consensus. In order to discuss the issues in Attac's platform, the political consensus of neo-liberalism must be broken, and the confrontational debate favoured by Attac can take place. According to Wahl, focus must be put on how words like development and progress have come to mean economic expansion and profit. What Attac want to do, in Norway, and internationally, is, change the foundations on which political debate takes place. (Wahl: 2001) To do so, Attac must find a way to deal with global problems on a local level, without compromising the importance of either.

4. Conclusion: A Cosmopolitan Perspective on Global Capitalism?

To draw conclusions from a discussion about an organisation that has only existed for a few months, and has, by all accounts, not settled into its potential position in the Norwegian political landscape yet, would seem pointless. Attac Norway is, in the words of Asbjørn Wahl, a continually developing process, and any attempt at making concluding statements regarding Attac's future role in Norwegian politics would amount to mere speculation. (Wahl: 2001) The aim of this text, however, has not been to determine where, and how, Attac will position itself in Norway, it has been to assess and discuss some of the conditions for the emergence of a cross-political project uniting resistance against global capitalism in Norway. As mentioned above, the aspiration was not to provide an exhaustive account of the issues considered to beinfluential in this debate, it was, rather, to focus on how these factors may emerge as problems at the point where they directly interact with Attac Norway.

In the first chapter of the text, some of the underlying concepts of Attac internationally were assessed, while providing a historical perspective on the life of this young organisation. A conclusion drawn from this brief insight must be that both Attac's agenda and organisational structure are as much results of the organisation's origins in France as they are consequences of the current technological, political and social mood on a more global scale. As pointed out in this section, Attac's structure of local and national networks cooperating to inform, engage and mobilise members has a long tradition on France's political left. Further on, the agenda displayed by Attac reflects and inspires a whole range of manifestations of people's dismay with the contemporary state of economic globalisation. Several books have, over the course of only a few years, been published on the subject of unregulated economic globalisation, and the violent protests seen in Seattle, Prague, London and so on, provide only part of the picture that is resistance against global capitalism. All of these various elements together present a display of how there is a growing sense, among sections of the public, that power has shifted away from democratically elected institutions, towards institutions only legitimised by their economic influence.

Attac's ambition is to be a forum for those who are of the belief that something must be done to change the current state of affairs. Another piece of the puzzle is that the emergence of the Internet as a tool for mobilisation, information and debate has made the task of coordinating and running a widespread organisation like Attac a lot easier and cheaper. A central feature of the way Attac is run, both in Norway, and internationally, is the emphasis put upon the relative autonomy of local factions of the organisation. The central organisation should be some kind of a source of advice and guidelines. In this sense, Attac is drawing upon existing networks to provide and develop resources from which its members can draw information and strategic advice. The local factions of Attac are encouraged to work on local issues, basing their work in the ideas laid down in Attac's international political platform. The way Attac sees itself, it is an action-based organisation aimed at changing not only the system, but also the way people think about the system. In order to do so Attac want to change to meanings of the terms relevant to discussing global capitalism, terms such as development and progress, which, Attac now believe function as positive cover-up terms for the negative effects of economic neo-liberalism.

In the next section I briefly looked at one of the issues that feature most heavily on Attac's agenda, the introduction of a tax on currency transactions, or, as its more commonly known, a Tobin-tax. A conclusion from this section would be that the conditions for people's opinions about this controversial subject differ as much as their actual opinions. While those who oppose the introduction of the tax do so for economically logical reasons, those who support it do so because they believe such a tax could help stabilise the global economy. The argument is, once again, one of regulation vs. deregulation, but also one of social concern against economic theory. The discussion concerning the Tobin-tax is, perhaps one of the issues that place Attac so firmly on the traditional political left, thus compromising the organisation's potential to become a truly cross-political project. The question of whether the global economy should be regulated on a global or a national level is one that Attac's political platform fails to answer. Further complicating this issue is the fact that one of the reasons why James Tobin introduced the idea of a CTT was not only to regulate and thus stabilise the increasingly global economy, but for the increasing integration of national markets to slow down. The metaphor of sand in the wheels implies just this, creating a certain distance between national markets in order for states to regain sovereignty over their economic policies. (Rime: 2001) The fact that Attac's international platform states both that the global economy needs to be regulated and that nation-states need to regain sovereignty over economic policy indicates a certain indecisiveness within the organisation which only becomes more articulated when this study moved on to look at how Attac situates itself within, and outside of, a concrete political landscape, that of Norway.

The fact that media coverage of the period leading up to Attac Norway's founding meeting, as focused upon in the second section, was, to a great extent, focused around issues of internal conflict in Attac was indicative of some of the problems the organisation is likely to have to deal with before Attac Norway's true potential and actual position in the Norwegian political system can be found. The fact that the interim-board had trouble coming to an agreement over what position, if any, the organisation should take on the question of Norwegian EU-membership may have received excessive attention in the media, but it does also point to a central line of conflict penetrating a lot of the political debate taking place in Norway.

It is at the point where the question of what stand Attac should take in relation to the EU debate emerges that Attac's situation in Norway becomes complicated. Even if the organisation currently, and maybe only temporarily, seems to have overcome the difficulties caused by the EU-question, and its related problems, it could only be a question of time before the organisation has to take a stand on issues such as Norwegian participation and potential influence over EU policy-making. The latent conflict intrinsic to any organisation attempting to criticise global capitalism from Norway, without taking a stand on the question of Norwegian EU-membership, can, potentially prove to be a very divisive one, in particular if Attac's expressed wish to return to a notion of national sovereignty is not dealt with properly.

As I tried to provide an insight into in the third section of the text, terminology is of an essence, in a discussion of the effects of global capitalism, and in a discussion over Norwegian EU-membership. Without implying that the few factors I had the chance to look at in this text can provide a full explanation of the complicated Norwegian EU-debate, I do believe that as long as the EU is seen as a capitalist project invading Norwegian national sovereignty, Attac Norway will have problems avoiding this subject. The paradox is clear; if Attac is to focus on the effects and dangers of global capitalism in Norway, the distance to becoming just another Eurosceptic organisation is short. If, on the other hand, Attac is to focus on the need for global governance in relation to economic globalisation, any attempts at establishing an infrastructure or institution to reinforce, for example, the Tobin-tax, would also imply surrendering some sovereignty to a supranational power.

The current wording in both Attac's international, and Norwegian, political platforms about how national sovereignty is under threat, and how global capitalism needs regulation, displays a vagueness perhaps necessary to include both members who criticise global capitalism on the grounds that it compromises national sovereignty, and those who, like Erling Fossen, believe that a supranational, if not global, form of governance is called for to gain democratic control over the global economy. But such vagueness, in my opinion, also allows for a dangerous nationalist sentiment to emerge within what should probably, in my opinion, be an international organisation aimed at solidarity rather than disintegration. Tobin's notion of disintegrating the global economy with a CTT conflicts with the global infrastructure and organisation any such tax needs to be implemented.

A conclusion I believe can be drawn from the discussion in the case study is that, in Norway, where several organisations criticising the EU's invasion of national sovereignty already exist, Attac could, perhaps, find more potential in looking towards a more cosmopolitan perspective for their take on global capitalism. As long as, in Norway, the issue of national sovereignty is so closely associated with the EU-debate, Attac must, in my opinion, go beyond national sovereignty to transcend the EU-debate defining so much of traditional Norwegian politics. If Attac were to focus on the need for global governance on economic and political issues, the organisation would, to a certain extent, define itself as not an alternative to organisations such as Amnesty International (AI) working for human rights, but as a supplement to them. At a time when Amnesty is debating whether to expand its mandate to, precisely, economic and political issues such as people's right to housing and health-services, Attac could seize the opportunity and step in where Amnesty faces the dilemma of whether to expand its mandate, and thus become a politicised organisation, or remain a more universally accepted organisation working outside or above traditional politics. (The Economist: 18.08.2001) This is a move that could prove to be advantageous for all parties involved, as Amnesty would retain its image as a truly cross-political organisation focused on issues that are not divided by the political left/right axis, while Attac, already established as an explicitly political organisation, could avoid the trivialities of the paradox between a nationalist discourse and a global cause.

The suggestion that Attac could transcend national political discourses by focusing on issues of global governance with a cosmopolitan perspective is, in addition to perhaps being far-fetched, a suggestion that would need to be articulated in more detail than what is possible in this text. While it should in no way be suggested that Attac competes with Amnesty International for support or causes, Attac could, perhaps take a lesson in organisational skills from Amnesty. AI is a global organisation working to criticise the wrongdoings and violations of human rights conducted by national governments, with focus on very specific cases, while Attac, at the moment, looks like a series of national organisations working to criticise a slightly undefined global phenomenon. If Attac is going to gain the influence it wants, it may be a necessity to take a step towards a more rigidly structured form of organisation, on the transnational level, introducing some of the bureaucracy the organisation wants to avoid by giving its local factions so much autonomy.

A factor causing a problem for Attac in Norway is the complicated question of how far outside the centre of political power the organisation can situate itself without becoming marginalized, but also how close to the centre of political power Attac can move without becoming absorbed by the political mainstream. By distancing itself from government Attac may manage to come across as a more radical organisation than it would otherwise do, but too much distance can also prove to be problematical if the organisation wants political influence, and, probably as importantly, mainstream media coverage. Since the over-exposure Attac gained throughout the period leading up to, and shortly after, its official establishment, media interest has declined sharply, which is one of the reasons why a Norwegian faction of the Independent Media Centre, a media organisation aimed at bringing attention to the cause of anti-capitalism, is currently being set up.

One of the reasons for why Attac is experiencing some problems around the issues of national sovereignty and the EU-question could be that the concept of national sovereignty means something else in France than it does in Norway. While the nationalism of Jose Bovè in France is aimed at protesting against what is considered the negative cultural and economic effects globalisation, or in this case, Americanisation, has on, for example, the French agricultural industry, Jose Bovè criticises the EU only on quite specific issues. The section in Attac's international platform, can, in Norway, however, allow for a much more undefined and general scepticism towards the EU, as I have tried to indicate, to emerge within the organisation. Where Attac France have managed to focus on specific cases in their protests, Attac Norway face the possibility of not agreeing on the very broad and divisive question of whether it should be an organisation protecting national sovereignty in general, or only in specific cases related to economic policy. This is, of course, a much more complicated matter than there is space to explore in this text, and one of the reasons why I can claim that Attac Norway faces this difficult problem is that the organisation has simply not existed for long enough for anyone to make conclusive and exhaustive statements regarding the organisations role in Norway's political discourse.

This text has, however, not been an attempt at providing a conclusive and exhaustive account of Attac Norway and its political and social contexts. I have merely tried to identify, and to a certain extent, discuss, some of the issues and debates in the Norwegian political discourse that can prove to be problematical for Attac Norway unless the organisation defines itself more clearly. There is, however, evidence, both in the media, and in a regular newsletter, posted by E-mail by Attac Norway, that the organisation is in the process of defining itself. The question of what direction this process will, in the near, and far, future take, is not a question that can be answered in this text. Attac's potential as an alternative for people to show political engagement and as a critical outsider in Norway is promising, what remains to be seen is whether the enthusiasm of those who took part in starting this new organisation can last for long enough for all the involved parties to realise that to tackle a new, or at least relatively new, problem like neo-liberal globalisation, a new approach is also called for. In my opinion, this approach would be to move away from the national discourse and rather try to realise the cosmopolitan potential one can already see within Attac. As Wahl stated; he could not care less about whether Norway were a member of the EU or not, it is the neo-liberal policies of both the Norwegian government and the EU Attac should be critical to. (Wahl: 2001) In this context Nina Drange's background in organisations working for third world countries may provide a more useful perspective for Attac than people whose main political interest is the struggle around the issue of Norwegian EU-membership.

References.

Books.

Anderson, B. (1991) "Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism", London: Verso.

Appadurai, A. (1996) "Modernity at Large; Cultural Dimensions of Globalization" London: University of Minnesota Press.

Castells, M. (1998) "End of Millennium", Oxford: Blackwell

Castells, M. (2000 [a]) "The Rise of the Network Society", Oxford: Blackwell.

Castells, M. (2000 [b]) "The Power of Identity", Oxford: Blackwell.

Cheah, P. and Robbins, B. (Eds)(1998) "Cosmopolitics; Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation", Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Clinell, B. (2001) "Attac - grasrotas opprør mot markedet" Oslo: Pax Forlag.

Focault, M. (1980) "Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings 1972 - 1977" (Ed) Gordon, C. New York: Harvester Wheatshef.

Fossen, E. (1993) "Et Radikalt Ja" Oslo; Spartacus Forlag.

Fukuyama, F. (1992) "The End of History and the Last Man" New York: Free Press.

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) "Empire" Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Hertz, N. (2001) "The Silent Takeover. Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy" London: William Heinemann.

Klein, N. (2000) "No Logo" London: Flamingo.

Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1994) "Economies of Signs and Space", London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Lasn, K. (1999) "Culture Jam; How to reverse America's suicidal consumer binge - and why we must" New York: Harper Collins.

Lønning, I. (1997) "1905 and 1994 - et perspektiv på unions-debatten" in "Fellesskap og frihet. Tid for idèpolitikk" Oslo: Genesis.

Neumann, I.B. (2001) "Norge - En Kritikk. Begrepsmakt i Europa-debatten" Oslo; Pax Forlag.

Ohmae, K. (1995) "The End of the Nation State" New York: Free Press.

Petersson, O. (1992) "Nordisk Politik", Helsingborg: Schmidts Boktryckeri AB.

Wintle, M (Ed) (1996) "Culture and Identity in Europe" Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Rokkan, S. (1967) "Geography, Religion and Social Class: Cross-cutting Cleavages in Norwegian Politics" in Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. (Eds), "Party Systems and Voter Alignments. Cross National Perspectives" New York: The Free Press.

Starr, A. (2000) "Naming the Enemy; Anti-Corporate Movements Confront Globalization" London: Zed Books.

Periodical and Newspaper Articles.

The Economist, "The Politics of Human Rights" (18.08.2001)

www.dagbladet.no [a] "Jagland vet ikke hva vi står for" (12.07.2001)

www.dagbladet.no [b] Møt Attac på nettet" (17.06.2001)

The Guardian (2001)[a] "The aid game" (24.07.2001)

www.klassekampen.no [a] "Persson omfavner Attac" (05.03.2001)

www.klassekampen.no [b] "Penger og plattform for Attac" (11.05.2001)

www.klassekampen.no [c] "Sigarer og gravøl"

www.observer.co.uk [a] "Soros: May Day Protestors do have a point" (06.05.2001)

Personal Interviews.

Aschehoug, M. (17.07.2001) Member of Attac Norway. Interview conducted via E-mail.

Drange, N. (29.08.2001) Leader of Attac Norway. Interview conducted via E-mail.

Fossen, E. (26.06.2001 and 30.07.2001) Journalist and author, member of Attac Norway. Interviews conducted via telephone and E-mail.

Furre, B. (27.06.2001) Professor in Theology at the University of Oslo, guest speaker at the founding meeting of Attac Norway 31.05.2001. Interview conducted via E-mail.

Klyve, C. R. (Oslo, Norway, 25.06.2001) Secretary for ATTAC Norway.

Wahl, A. (Oslo, Norway, 06.07.2001) Member of the Board and founding member, Attac Norway.

Lecture.

Rime, D. (25.06.2001) "Sand in the wheels: Is it desirable and feasible to introduce a tax on currency trading?", BI Sandvika, Oslo, Norway.

Websites.

www.attac.org Site accessed regularly throughout the period of November 2000 to September 2001.

www.attac.no Site accessed regularly throughout the period of March 2001 to September 2001.

www.home.online.no/~urbafeks/ Erling Fossen's homepage, with a library of his written work.