[posted by Nestor to marxism list] My translation, hopefully reasonable The most interesting thing with what follows is that it was not written by a Marxist. It was written by an official of the Brazilian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and was published in the _Jornal do Brasil_, a mainstream newspaper... === 9. FTAA: Monroe's dream is Bolívar's Nightmare, an article by Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes, ambassador and former Director of the Institute for the Research of International Relations at Itamaraty (the name of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brazil). Published in "Jornal do Brasil", April 20th: Negotiations for FTAA involve much more than the constitution of a traditional area of free trade. Its effects might be much deeper than simply enlarging the scope of trade of goods and services. Thus, those estimations that are being proposed on how much would Brazilian exports grow, and what sectors and firms would benefit with the ellimination of customs restrictions (either tariff or para-tariff restrictions) in USA and in the Americas simply skim the surface of this strategic initiative of USA, the Hyperpower, and leave its main consequences in the shadows. The main consequency of FTAA will be a radical limitation, and even an ellimination by international treaty where the greatest power in the world will take part, of the sovereign capacity of the Brazilian state to articulate, stimulate, or promote economic development by means of commercial, industrial, agricultural or employment policies. By "economic development" we mean the accumulation of capital, the diversification and integration of the productive stock, the increase of productivity and employment of manpower, a gradual reduction of disparities -regional disparities included- and of external vulnerability. The consequence of this process of negotiated reduction of sovereignty will be, as it is logic, a reduction in the ability of Brazil to promote and defend its interests of any kind, those political and strategical included, in the dynamics of the multipolar world that is emerging with the process of formation of the European state, the economic and political emergence of China (which is to be, in the future, the largest GDP of the globe), and, in a second plane, of Japan, Russia and India. This multipolar world will be, as everything is showing, a violent one, an arbitrary one, and a world where wealth, power and knowledge will be concentrated. Its vast territory, large population, abundant natural resources, level of industrial development, technological capacities, unity of language, absence of acute religious or ethnic conflicts, offer Brazil conditions better than enough -even when compared to the countries above- to share in that process in an autonomous way, provided Brazil does not allow itself to be absorbed by the spheres of influence that are taking shape, under the calm ideologies of pan- americanism, "free" trade and integration. The basic aim of FTAA is to generate a set of rules that, by limiting the ability to establish and execute an economic policy, integrates the Brazilian economy in an assimetric and subordinate way to the American economic territory (and to its political system). It is my point of view that, in the strategic conception of USA, the relationship of FTAA with the remaining micro, mini, small or medium states in the Americas is very remote. After FTAA, Brazil will not be able to exert policies to attract and enforce foreign investment with the intention of enlarging productive capacities, or of stimulation and integration of productive linkages, or of effective promotion and transference of technology, or of strengthening of national capital. Multinational megacompanies will be able to obtain, in the spirit of the counterfeited (esdruxulo)proyect of Multilateral Investment Agreement, more power than the power of national States. After FTAA, Brazil will not be able any more to exert effective commercial, industrial and technological policies, aimed at the creation of new dynamic comparative advantages by stimulating the creation of companies, because it will not have any possibility to protect those companies from the overwhelming competition of the megacompanies that already exist in those sectors, because it will not have any more a tariff or a para-tariff, particularly and most probably in those sectors of most advanced technology. After FTAA, Brazil will not be able any more to resort to the purchasing power of the State in order to strengthen national companies, in order to develop new technologies, in order to increase the scale of production or to have companies that can struggle for markets abroad, anywhere in the world, because they will not be related to the system of market division practised by the multinationals. After FTAA, Brazil will become still more defenceless in front of the now increased power of the owners of technology, and will not have any more the investments that it needs to fight against the abusive consequences of the anti-social use of patents, as it was outrageously demonstrated in the anti-social case of pharmaceutical patents. For any practical means, after FTAA there will not be Brazil any more, if by that we are thinking of the possibility and the vision of constructing a more democratic and fair, more prosperous and less unequal society, in agreement with the national and cultural traits that Brazilians have been painfully building along centuries, against open colonial oppression at first and, now, against the sophisticated neo-colonial control Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
