Dear Friends, This book's author (J.W. Smith) and reviewer (William Kotke) are both smart friends of mine. (In fact, I'm happy to report that I introduced them, and they've subsequently collaborated on projects.) J.W.'s new book gives an updated ecological and economic re-interpretation of industrial / capitalist history and the free trade/New World Order elites that presently control society. As is suggested by Bill (who himself is the author of The Final Empire), Economic Democracy is the sort of historical reference tome you might ask your local library to acquire. -- Christine Vida, Berkeley BOOK REVIEW Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle of the Twenty-first Century. J.W. Smith. M.E. Sharpe, pub. 2000. 380 p. $99.00. (Ask your library to order a copy). THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE ORIGINS OF THE WTO This significant new text is destined to become a handbook for those who are becoming awakened to the new planetary economic order. This book will also be a tremendous resource for anyone wanting to understand the history and present realities of the economic power relationships of world society. Smith traces the origins of the ownership and control of industrial society to its beginnings in medieval European society. When the elites within medieval city-states began to create rustic technology in such industries as cloth making they had to go to their countryside to get the raw materials such as wool. They also needed to sell their products for profit within the city and enough back to the countryside to pay for those resources. As Smith describes, the peasants in the countryside observed this rudimentary technology in the city and began to duplicate it. To maintain their profits and economic power, the elites sent their military forces to the countryside and destroyed the peasants' machinery, militarily forcing the countryside to provide raw materials and become a captive market for manufactured products. The elites, to maintain their profits and economic power made a military res ponse. The military force went to the countryside and destroyed the peasants' machinery and militarily enforced the pattern of the countryside providing raw materials and becoming a forced market. Centuries later we see Gandhi in India always sitting with a spinning wheel as protest against the British Empire that ruled the land. Although India had previously produced some of the finest cloth in the world, Britain prohibited the production of cloth in India in order to funnel the wealth spent for cloth to the mills in the imperial center. Many years later we see the IMF and World Bank force Third World countries to "privatize" their publicly owned utilities and such and sell the facilities off to the transnational corporations and banks of the imperial center. There has been no change in the mechanism of economic power. Smith focuses on the aspect of unequal trades. This is the mechanism that funnels the wealth to those in control. Smith also examines the changing strategies of military control of empire and exposes the fact that monopolies are still alive and well. In olden times the mounted troops simply came and destroyed the peasants' looms. Now we have control of money through the international banks and the control of ideas through intellectual property rights and patents guaranteed by the WTO and backed by worldwide military force. All of this is done with the acquiescence of the mass populations unaware that monopolies, which deny the masses their full rights, are structured within capitalism's laws. Smith does an excellent and scholarly job of documenting how these monopolies are hidden through a continual refinement of imposed "Social Control Belief Systems." He shows how the British imperial elite took the work of Adam Smith and twisted it to further hide the very monopolies that Adam Smith had argued against and deplored! While the Wizard of Oz in the background used covert operations, military force, and various forms of colonialism, they held out the myth of the "free market" to the eyes of the masses: "No one is in control, economic events and consequences are simply the work of the free market working itself out for all of our benefit!" The U.S. is 5% of the world population and sucks up 48% of world resources each year. Their military budget is larger this year than the next nine countries behind them - combined. The U.S. keeps military troops stationed in over 100 countries in the world. Are we to believe that this is not a military and economic empire held in place by force? Of course not! This economic elite is so concentrated that it owns the U.S. government. Notice how quickly all involved stepped up to pass NAFTA. (This "free trade" document is more than 1,000 pages of "rules"). One half of one per cent of the U.S. population owns wealth equal to the bottom 80%. The activities of those in power are not for our benefit. According to studies of the United Nations Development Program, the assets of the top three world billionaires are more than the combined GNP of all 48 least developed countries and their 600 million people. A yearly contribution of 1% of the wealth of the 200 richest people in the world could provide universal access to primary education for all. As Smith demonstrates in his voluminous scholarly documentation, this is not a matter of "economics" carrying all of those emotionally laden words, it is a matter of massive social institutions of whatever label, that own and control the lives of the worlds' people. This power of the planetary economic elite is now projected over and above government's -by the WTO and all of its institutional appendages. No one on the planet has ever voted in a democratic election to militarily control the world and have the WTO run it! Solutions Smith's scholarly study goes on to point out solutions that we can use in the future. There is enough, he points out. Smith states that $17 trillion (1990 dollars) has been spent on arms since World War II. ".[T]hat is five times enough to have industrialized the developing world to a sustainable level over the past forty-five years," he says. "The $3.15 trillion needed for developing world industries would have left $13.85 trillion to provide training to run the machines and society; to install initial communications infrastructure to reach the populations with that training (including population control); to guarantee food until a country was able to produce its own; to search for, catalog, and develop, resources; and for environmental protection." In this scholarly study Smith points to the actual ability of society to produce the adequate needs of all. The presently imposed belief system, as Smith describes, would have us believe there is scarcity. At the same time, the miniscule group at the top says there is not enough for schools, they allocate whatever is needed for the vast structure of economic and military warfare that they are carrying out. In a number of chapters of elaborate description, Smith shows how the productive force of society could be easily directed toward adequate standards of living that also guarantee protection of the environment. This is a great value of his work -to provide a vision of how easily it could be done and to provide an image that can shine through the fog of propaganda generated by the tiny but powerful world economic elite. 1,132 Words K�[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
