It was egged on by a layer of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have grown in influence in the trade ministries of the world – and by a courageous group of protesters that brought together Korean farmers, European anarchists and Mexican socialists.

The ostensible aim of Cancun – like the previous WTO ministerial conferences at Seattle and Doha – was to push back the barriers to “free” trade. But it was also to expand the remit of WTO agreements into new areas. The three rich imperialist blocs: the USA, EU and Japan walked into the process with their usual agenda: the poorest countries must open up their agricultural markets in return for minimal concessions on opening up markets in the rich countries.

But they also wanted to open discussions on the so-called "Singapore Issues": investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation. There is already agreement at the WTO that services should be "globalised" – i.e. that the rich countries should be able to buy up and exploit the developing world’s railways and waterworks.

The Singapore agenda would have allowed Washington and Brussels to dictate to any country the way they regulated investment and government procurement. It would have allowed them to dictate "policy" in other countries. It would, in short, have explicitly extended the WTO's remit from globalisation of trade to globalisation of capital investment.

The WTO is one of the few multilateral bodies backed by international law. The IMF can starve a country but the WTO can prosecute and convict a country, forcing it to do something by means of allowing other countries to wage trade war against it.

The WTO system allows organised "retaliation". In other words, adopting the Singapore Issues as part of the WTO would have added the backing of international law to the arm-twisting efforts of global corporations to get their hands on capital in countries where they currently find it hard.

The determination, especially on the part of the EU, to push the Singapore Issues provided the anti-globalisation movement with a perfect opportunity. As early as February 2003, anti-globalisation theorist Walden Bello argued:

“" If derailing the drive for free trade at the 5th Ministerial is indeed the goal, then the main tactical focus of the strategy becomes clear:
Consensus decision-making is the Achilles heel of the WTO and it is the emergence of consensus that we must prevent at all costs from emerging… Winning or losing in Cancun will be largely determined by whether or not we are able to stop or stalemate negotiations on the new issues." (Bello, The Road to Cancun 25 February 2003)

In the event, the forces opposed to the US-EU alliance succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. As in Seattle it was a combination of protesters and reticent third world governments that did it, but with the roles reversed. The protesters, although they achieved the aim of bringing half the world's media to see a spectacle, were not decisive: it was suit-wearing bureaucrats from across the globe that delivered a blow to globalisation.

The first five days of the conference were dominated by the draft agreement on agriculture. From the beginning it was clear that the USA and EU were determined to push through a demand to open up developing country markets in return for agreements that would effectively leave their subsides to their own farmers intact. Agricultural dumping would continue, starvation would continue.

Meanwhile, days after 70 developing countries had politely asked that the WTO not raise the Singapore Issues at Cancun, they arrived to be presented with a draft agreement on two of them! To say this pissed them off would be an understatement.

The arrogance of the US-EU alliance, and the behaviour of the WTO bureaucracy itself were major factors in uniting opposition to them. The new book "Inside the WTO" became required reading for activists in the weeks before Cancun. Based on a series of anonymous interviews with trade delegates to the WTO's Geneva HQ it revealed a regime of bullying, bribery and harassment. Step out of line in the WTO's swish conference hall in the Swiss Alps and you will soon get a late night call from your home capital asking: why are the USA threatening to withdraw our aid package?

At Cancun, then, an unprecedented alliance was formed between the less developed countries, a set of medium-developed large economies, and the agriculturally rich former colonies of the Cairns group. The Cairns group is an alliance of 17 agricultural exporters that account for one-third of the world's food exports, including South Africa, Australia, Indonesia and Argentina.

n general it has been pro-WTO and, given the nature of its governments, not greatly gladdened by the anti-globalisation protests. The typical economic problem of a Cairns group country is how to develop its own industrial and service sectors so as to reduce reliance on agriculture, and break free of the diplomatic stranglehold of the USA. In Marxist terms these are developed semi-colonies or minor imperialist powers.

The voice of the poorest countries at the WTO had begun to coalesce around an alliance led by members of the Cairns group, together with India and China called the "G20". It is now called the G20+ since so many smaller countries signed up to it as soon as it was clear it was going to defeat the "subsidy superpowers". The actions of India and China were crucial. These are both countries that have developed rapidly under the impact of globalisation – but they are hardly adverts for free trade.

The average tariff on imported goods in India is 50%; in China the WTO’s rules on "intellectual property" cannot stop millions of people walking round in fake Gucci and Armani clothing or listening to millions of dollars worth of pirated CDs. Having built their economies to space-race status behind a fortress of protectionism, both India and China are now ruled by highly nationalistic bourgeoisies who know the next step is onto the world stage as global economic superpowers.

India and China know it is inevitable that they will have to open up their economies. They know they are entering what is currently a two-horse race. To gain leverage they are drawing around them an alliance of poorer countries who, for now, have a common interest in rolling back the power of the USA and Europe. The defeat they inflicted at Cancun was summed up by Walden Bello:
"The WTO has been severely damaged. Two collapsed ministerials and one that barely made it – Doha - recommends the institution to no one. For the trade superpowers, it is no longer a viable instrument for imposing their will on others. For the developing countries, membership has not brought protection from abuses by the powerful economies, much less serve as a mechanism of development."

So what will be the fallout?

It is clear that both the USA and EU are in the process of building a system of bilateral and regional free trade agreements outside the remit of the WTO. This marks the emergence of a series of rival regional trading blocks that the WTO was designed to stop. Already Europe and America are at each other's throats over GM crops, steel and bananas.

China, despite its willingness to make a mockery of the WTO, recently showed its preparedness to wade into the rivalry: it sponsored a claim by one of its calligraphers that the Dow Jones news service had "stolen" one of his characters in its logo. He won.

But while NGOs and activists are rejoicing after Cancun, the victory poses the movement with two major problems: the reliance on emerging imperialist governments who systematically rip off their own people; and what to do if the WTO collapses. Both issues bring to the fore the previously semantic difference between being "anti-globalisation" and "anti-capitalist".

Some NGOs, like the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), see momentum for reform. "There is the potential for a real positive outcome following this collapse in Cancun. Now we may get real negotiations on the difficult issues confronting the global trading system," said Mark Ritchie, President of the IATP. "It is clear that we are seeing a shift in the power dynamic at the WTO. No longer are developing countries going to roll over for the US and EU – particularly on issues of vital importance to them.”

More fundamental opponents of globalisation like Bello argue that the world doesn't need the WTO. But what does Bello advocate in its place? A series of rival capitalist trading blocs whose ambitions are held in check by a 19th century style "balance of power". He writes: "What developing countries and international civil society should aim at is not to reform the WTO but, through a combination of passive and active measures, to radically reduce its power and to make it simply another international institution coexisting with and being checked by other international organisations, agreements, and regional groupings.

These would include such diverse actors and institutions as UNCTAD, multilateral environmental agreements, the International Labor Organisation (ILO), evolving trade blocs such as Mercosur in Latin America, SAARC in South Asia, SADCC in Southern Africa, and ASEAN in Southeast Asia. It is in such a more fluid, less structured, more pluralistic world with multiple checks and balances that the nations and communities of the South will be able to carve out the space to develop based on their values, their rhythms, and the strategies of their choice."

Bello's vision is a dangerous utopia. For capitalism there are two ways out of the WTO crisis. The first is that the imperialist powers manage to browbeat their kid brothers in Canberra, New Delhi and Beijing into accepting some form of agreement at the next ministerial conference.

If the big imperialist powers can overcome resistance among their own farming populations (who in the EU amount to around five per cent), they can scrap the subsidies (the CAP and the US Farm Bill). It may take a decade but they can do it. In return they get agreement not just on third world agricultural markets but on services. The GATS treaty has been signed but stalled: there needs to be a round of bilateral horse trading where poorer countries agree to open up their state-owned industries to ownership from abroad.

If a big shift takes place in the imperialist blocs, away from subsidised agriculture, they will expect the semi-colonial world to open up their services and industries. That option is still in play and, if successful, could turn the world over a period of decades into one giant integrated capitalist economy.

The other option is the collapse of globalisation, the reversal of the growth of world trade (it is already down to a two per cent growth rate, down from 12 per cent in the heyday of globalisation).

The working class has to offer an independent future, separate from both. An international economy regulated by a world government and world democracy. We aspire to nothing less. The condition for it is the removal from power, not just of the representatives of Exxon and Microsoft, but of India's Tata and China's Chinamobil. And that power being put in the hands of the workers, farmers and poor peasants who, at Cancun, may have seemed like a brave, jubilant and determined sideshow, but who in fact represent the way forward for humanity.

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