ABSTRACT
The demands formulated by the European Marches were articulated through a discourse of rights to have needs met independently of work. Alain Touraine was explicit in his attempt to claim elements of the resistance to the social consequences of restructuring as the emergent new social agent that could show society the way beyond neoliberalism. M. Castells characterized the anti-globalization movement (AGM) as a global networked social movement and, it has been brought into being by the emergence of the new era of a globally networked capitalist society. The new reformism has appeared to highlight fundamental economic and social change and generalized insecurity as the conditions in which a new set of individualistic, but progressive values have been formed and around which a new consensus could be produced. The dominant strategic identity within European trade unionism has been as a social partner willing to accept welfare state modernization so as to restore the competitiveness of European capital in the world market.
