The PCDForum traces its origin to March 1987, when more than a hundred leaders of non-governmental organizations and other development professionals from forty-two countries met in London for a Symposium on "Development Alternatives: The Challenge for NGOs." Participants concluded that conventional development has failed. Officially favored prescriptions disempower and impoverish the majority of people and destroy the environment. So long as official agencies remain committed to these prescriptions the leadership toward more constructive approaches would necessarily depend on voluntary citizen action in both North and South and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) would have to redefine their roles accordingly. Participants in the London meeting subsequently carried this message forward into countless forums around the world.
The founders of the PCDForum were active participants in this process of carrying the message forward. Recognizing the need for an organization that would function as a support group for individuals and organizations engaged in challenging the fundamental premises of dominant growth-centered economic development models, they established the PCDForum on January 1, 1990 to address this need. The book Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda authored by David C. Korten and released in that same year launched the Forum and articulated its initial message that:
The human burden on the earth's ecosystem already exceeds sustainable limits. Growth-centered economic policies increase this burden, accelerate the breakdown of the earth's regenerative systems, and intensify the competition between rich and poor for the earth's remaining real wealth. The result is a three-fold human crisis of increasing poverty, environmental destruction, and social disintegration. Growth-centered development must be replaced with a development that strengthens the self-reliant capacity of people and communities to better use their own resources to meet their own needs. Because official aid agencies are captive to internal structures and imperatives that serve the flawed logic of growth-centered development, leadership for change must come from individuals acting voluntarily in response to life-centered values rather than by conventional economic and political rewards.
Since 1990 some 200 activist-intellectuals engaged in challenging development orthodoxy have served at one time or another on the Forum's International Board of Contributing Editors — its primary networking body. From 1990 through 1997 the Forum maintained an Information Service that distributed path breaking think pieces written by its contributing editors and others to cooperating publications around the world. A number of organizations dedicated to building support behind people-centered development agendas within national settings became affiliated with the Forum. During this early phase, the Forum's messages were communicated through articles and presentations addressed primarily to development professionals concerned with Third World development.
One of the Forum's most important roles has been to lend legitimacy to those who dare to defy stifling intellectual taboos against questioning development orthodoxy regarding economic growth and foreign aid. With time the heresies of those who dared became defining ideas that over the past five years have mobilized millions of people in protest against corporate globalization in its many manifestations.
The Forum's role has evolved accordingly. It now directs more of its attention to issues of governance — developing an increasingly refined analysis of how the neoliberal policy agenda of market deregulation and economic globalization is weakening the democratic accountability of governments and transferring power from people and communities to global financial markets and corporations. This transfer of power results in a corresponding shift in economic priorities from the production of goods and services to meet human needs to a wholly different agenda centered on extracting wealth from the larger society to increase the financial assets and power of the wealthiest among us.
This analysis was articulated in the book When Corporations Rule the World written by David C. Korten. Addressed to a much broader popular audience than previous PCDForum publications, its release in October 1995 corresponded with an increasing awareness by the general public that "free" trade agreements are about a lot more than trade and that an increasing concentration and abuse of corporate power poses a threat to democracy and the economic security of ordinary people. Readers find the book gives them needed tools for refining their understanding of what is happening and for articulating their conclusions to others. When Corporations Rule the World has become an international best seller with sales of over 90,000 copies in twelve languages. It has also opened the Forum's access to radio, television, and mass print media — allowing the forum to reach millions of people with its message.
The second edition of When Corporations Rule the World, which was released in April 2001, has a Foreword by actor/activist Danny Glover and five new chapters examining the events of the past five years and their implications — including the growing global resistance movement.
While the Forum has played an important role in mobilizing citizen resistance to corporate rule, it is also aware that at best resistance only slows the destructive forces at work in the global economy. If we are to have just, inclusive, and sustainable societies, there must be a broad public awareness of the available alternatives and the forces mobilizing toward their realization.
To this end, the Forum took a lead role in establishing The Positive Futures Network (PFN) and its quarterly publication YES! A Journal of Positive Futures. PFN and YES! are dedicated to advancing the awareness of positive alternatives and assisting individuals in finding their place of contribution toward their realization.
The need for greater awareness of positive alternatives also led to the Forum's most recent book, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, which demonstrates how principles derived from the study of living systems can be applied to the creation of economies that serve life rather than money. Written by Dr. David C. Korten and released in March 1999, it makes the case that contrary to the claims of propagandists, capitalism's global triumph is not a victory for democracy and the market economy. To the contrary, the relationship of capitalism to democracy and markets is like the relationship of a cancer to the body. Capitalism functions as a parasite, consuming the life energies of the whole to advance its own mindless growth without regard to the consequences — which include the destruction of life, democracy, and the essential conditions of efficient market function.
The Post-Corporate World suggests that an obvious alternative to global capitalism and corporate rule is a combination of real one-person, one-vote democracy, mindful market economies based on human-scale stakeholder-owned enterprises, and ethical cultures that recognize there is no individual freedom without responsible self-restraint. It spells out how such an alternative can be achieved through a policy agenda intended, among other things, to eliminate financial speculation and the institutional form of the publicly traded, limited liability corporation. Over the next few years the PCDForum will be working to further refine and advance this agenda, working with and through civil society organizations and movements seeking to create post-corporate, post-capitalist societies with functioning democracies, mindful market economies, and authentic ethical cultures.
The November 1999 Seattle against the World Trade Organization (WTO) brought together a broad alliance of labor, religious, environmental, youth, peace, women's, gay and lesbian, human rights, sustainable agriculture, food safety and other interests to mark a new defining moment in the global resistance to corporate rule. To the corporate press the protesters were nothing more than a bunch of disparate ill-informed malcontents, a cacophonous mob with no definable cause. In truth the protesters were unified by a commitment to two major themes: a call for democracy over corporate rule, and a call for life values over financial values. Democracy and life are coming into focus as the movement's defining values. In India the emerging movement unifying these positive social forces is known as the Living Democracy Movement.
According to the movement's underlying analysis, the existing system of global governance places the power of decision in the hands of corporations, which by the nature of their legal structure, are compelled to place their own financial imperatives ahead of the needs of people and the living planet. The institutions of global governance therefore must be restructured to restore the power of decision to living people with the capacity and inclination to align economic activities with the needs of life. For several years this has been the Forum's defining message and continues to be the centerpiece of its work.