Re: Monbiot on Lamy, WTO
As Jim Morrison said, You cannot petition the Lord with prayer. The imperialist game (the Kantian thing in itself in this case) of squawking, Free-trade! Free-trade! or the sky will fall, while at the same time muscling their way into positions of certainty and control over the trade in commodities is pretty much exposed now for any clear thinking minor ruling class in the world to see. Now a socialist world orderhmmm...that'd be right nice. The wealthier (in use-value terms) regions of the world could start 'bombing' the Iraqi area with solar powered refrigerators. Regards, Mike B) --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Though we shouldn't underestimate the significance of the fact that stalemate was led by the government of a socialistic party, PT. Ahmet Tonak I still think that Iraq/Afghanistan was a factor. The US has less to bribe and its threats probably seem less threatening. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a socialist globalization? But stalemate is probably the best we can ask for now. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = * We have nothing that is ours except time, which even those without a roof can enjoy. Baltasar Gracián, Oráculo manual y Arte de prudencia http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Monbiot on Lamy, WTO
A threat to the rich Forcing the poor countries to walk out of the Cancun trade talks may rebound on the west George Monbiot Tuesday September 16, 2003 The Guardian Were there a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, it would be awarded this year to Pascal Lamy, the EU's trade negotiator. A week ago, in the Guardian's trade supplement, he argued that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) helps us move from a Hobbesian world of lawlessness into a more Kantian world - perhaps not exactly of perpetual peace, but at least one where trade relations are subject to the rule of law. On Sunday, by treating the trade talks as if, in Thomas Hobbes's words, they were a war of every man against every man, Lamy scuppered the negotiations, and very possibly destroyed the organisation as a result. If so, one result could be a trade regime, in which, as Hobbes observed, force and fraud are ... the two cardinal virtues. Relations between countries would then revert to the state of nature the philosopher feared, where the nasty and brutish behaviour of the powerful ensures that the lives of the poor remain short. At the talks in Cancun, in Mexico, Lamy made the poor nations an offer that they couldn't possibly accept. He appears to have been seeking to resurrect, by means of an investment treaty, the infamous Multilateral Agreement on Investment. This was a proposal that would have allowed corporations to force a government to remove any laws that interfered with their ability to make money, and that was crushed by a worldwide revolt in 1998. In return for granting corporations power over governments, the poor nations would receive precisely nothing. The concessions on farm subsidies that Lamy was offering amounted to little more than a reshuffling of the money paid to European farmers. They would continue to permit the subsidy barons of Europe to dump their artificially cheap produce into the poor world, destroying the livelihoods of the farmers there. Of course, as Hobbes knew, if other men will not lay down their right ... then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself of his: for that were to expose himself to prey. A contract, he noted, is the mutual transferring of right, which a man enters into either in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to himself, or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. By offering the poorer nations nothing in return for almost everything, Lamy forced them to walk out. The trade commissioner took this position because he sees his public duty as the defence of the corporations and industrial farmers of the EU against all comers, be they the citizens of Europe or the people of other nations. He imagined that, according to the laws of nature that have hitherto governed the WTO, the weaker parties would be forced to capitulate and forced to grant to the corporations the little that had not already been stolen from them. He stuck to it even when it became clear that the poor nations were, for the first time, prepared to mobilise - as the state of nature demands - a collective response to aggression. I dwell on Pascal Lamy's adherence to the treasured philosophy of Kant because all that he has done, he has done in our name. The UK and the other countries of Europe do not negotiate directly at the WTO, but through the EU. He is therefore our negotiator, who is supposed to represent our interests. But it is hard to find anyone in Europe not employed by or not beholden to the big corporations who sees Lamy's negotiating position as either desirable or just. Several European governments, recognising that it threatened the talks and the trade organisation itself, slowly distanced themselves from his position. To many people's surprise, they included Britain. Though Pascal Lamy is by no means the only powerful man in Europe who is obsessed with the rights of corporations, his behaviour appears to confirm the most lurid of the tabloid scare stories about Eurocrats running out of control. But while this man has inflicted lasting damage to Europe's global reputation, he may not have succeeded in destroying the hopes of the poorer nations. For something else is now beginning to shake itself awake. The developing countries, for the first time in some 20 years, are beginning to unite and to move as a body. That they have not done so before is testament first to the corrosive effects of the cold war, and second to the continued ability of the rich and powerful nations to bribe, blackmail and bully the poor ones. Whenever there has been a prospect of solidarity among the weak, the strong - and in particular the US - have successfully divided and ruled them, by promising concessions to those who split and threatening sanctions against those who stay. But now the rich have become victims of their own power. Since its formation, the rich countries have been seeking to recruit as many developing nations into the WTO as they can, in order to open up the developing countries' markets and force
Re: Monbiot on Lamy, WTO
I still think that Iraq/Afghanistan was a factor. The US has less to bribe and its threats probably seem less threatening. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a socialist globalization? But stalemate is probably the best we can ask for now. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Monbiot on Lamy, WTO
Though we shouldn't underestimate the significance of the fact that stalemate was led by the government of a socialistic party, PT. Ahmet Tonak I still think that Iraq/Afghanistan was a factor. The US has less to bribe and its threats probably seem less threatening. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a socialist globalization? But stalemate is probably the best we can ask for now. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... But I'm still not clear on what you're advocating as an alternative. 100% autarchy is impossible. But 50%? 25%? Give me a case and I'll think about it. Here in Johannesburg, I'd say 100% delinking from hot money by imposing tight exchange controls. Our currency has fluctuated from R6/$ in January 2000 to R13.8/$ two years later and it's now strengthened to R7.8/$ today. I could go on about all the fallout, but you can imagine. So to hell with portfolio capital flows. To hell with all international trade in luxury consumption goods, too, because it exacerbates the wealth skew in the economy. A 100% luxury goods tarriff would help. These kinds of policies have actually been applied at various times and are not utopian or based upon revolutionary power changes. Then I'd say, be more ambitious and price in eco damage done by minerals and beneficiation processes, that make SA *twenty times* worse in greenhouse gas emissions per person corrected for GDP, than even the US. That should limit the need for huge post-panamax port designs (vast state subsidies are being prepared for yet another, at a place called Coega) that accommodate the export of aluminium, steel and other base metals. Then a clever industrial policy would start a new round of ISI, but this time based on consumer goods for the masses and mid-range capital goods, not the kind of luxury goods ISI that were typical during the 1950s-60s. I could go on, but the deglobalisation capacity is enormous -- probably in excess of 50% -- and the scope for a set of bottom-up Local Economic Development options are just as promising, given the backlog in delivery of simple (non-import-intensive) infrastructure and basic needs. (A version of the argument, in its most mild-mannered policy-friendly style, is in Occasional Paper #6 at http://www.queensu.ca/msp) You could never have any delinking if there weren't substantial solidarity among poorer countries - some kind of trading, financial, and technological links. It all depends on appropriate scale economies and resources, right? It would be great if oil flowed from Angola on rail lines to Gabarone, Jo'burg and Harare -- not to New Jersey. The idea of the Southern African Development Community was precisely to make these kinds of linkages. Didn't work for all sorts of reasons, but it's not impossible. As soon as I say that though, I wonder - what common interests are there between Brazil and Zimbabwe? Unfortunately, capitalists from the two subimperialist powers of the south Atlantic -- Brazil and SA -- have begun the early stages of a fight over how best to loot Angola, and Lula has even made noises about his firms investing much more in Mozambique. Language ties make these penetrations -- best considered as 'accumulation by dispossession' -- attractive, but not necessarily inevitable. Keeping SA capital out of the region where it plays a particularly pernicious role -- banking, breweries, minerals and energy privatisation -- will be an increasingly tough job for anti-imperialists here. But the struggles have begun, with regional groups (mainly Jubilee) finding many opportunities for unity, e.g. in a demo against the World Economic Forum southern Africa meeting a fortnight ago, and regularly against the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Zed is coming out with my update on this theme -- *Against Global Apartheid* -- in September... Doug
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
I partially agree, Peter. George is generally so sensitive to power relations and so critical of corporate influence over public institutions that this I was wrong article really required bizarre distortions. I have a gut feeling that he is reacting to the rise of deglobalization discourses, as found in Bello's and Amin's work, and I suspect that his new book (which I haven't seen yet) punts the globo-parliament idea even more heartily -- hence leading down the slippery slope of fix-it not nix-it politics. That in turn requires him to entirely avoid the obvious questions: a) what good has come from numerous WTO reform initiatives (from AFL/ICFTU, enviros, Cairns Group, Like-Minded Group, etc etc)?; b) what manipulations are being carried out by the new Green Men (Friends of the Chair, including SA trade minister Alec Erwin, responsible at Doha for WTO rules) who have replaced the discredited Green Room process?; c) what are the underlying features of international capitalism that generate both overproduction and protectionist tendencies?; and d) how could one expect to price in the negative environmental and social externalities of trade, as Herman Daly et al suggest (and I guess, Peter, too), in such a politicised forum as the WTO? Really, reform is thoroughly utopian. Moreover, his contention that the US is trying to destroy the WTO is a ridiculous misinterpretation. Zoellick will use the WTO when he can to defend US corporate interests (e.g. Big Pharma); and he will also set up bilaterals and hemispheric deals when he can (we're seeing this now with Africa). So I'm back with Keynes on that 1933 Yale Review citation that Daly likes: let goods be homespun whenever reasonably and conveniently possible. Comrades, let's globalise people, not capital... Was debating this in Ottawa with public choice poli-scientists from Harvard/Columbia/Bonn last week: their ancient line -- commerce makes the manners mild -- is contradicted by many variants of export-oriented output in this part of the world (oil, diamonds, coltan, gold, timber). I'm convinced we need a profound shock to the global trading system, on the order of the payments freeze and transport crises of 1929-45, to allow for a bit more sanity and balance in the restructuring of economies, and for peace-building, at least in Africa. Patrick Bond phone: (27)83-425-1401 and (27)11-614-8088 fax: (27)11-484-2729 - Original Message - From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 2:47 AM Subject: Re: Monbiot on the WTO Here are some thoughts on Monbiot and some of the pen-l responses. 1. I think Monbiot came to the right answer, but mostly for the wrong reasons. He is in grave danger of falling in with Oxfam and other internationally minded NGOs who have bought into the notion that what poor countries most need is unfettered access to rich country markets. From there it is one short step to signing on to the Cairnes group, etc. He hasn't looked deeply enough into *why* poor countries are so desperate for export markets. In other words, he hasn't incorporated an understanding of the post-debt-crisis financial framework into his analyis of trade. He is quite right to argue for a transformation of poor countries from resource to industrial exporters, but this makes sense developmentally only in terms of a coherent domestic transformation on all levels: domestic markets, domestic capabilities, etc. If industrialization serves mainly as an export-directed phenomenon, bereft of local linkages, for the purposes of servicing debt, then free trade in such products is part of the problem, not the solution. 2. Obviously (to me anyway), if the gross financial and trade imbalances need to be fixed, and if some unspecified debt reduction and capital flow regulatory framework is the answer on the finance side, then an international organization that coordinates trade balances -- keeps them within acceptable bands that have been openly negotiated -- is the answer on the goods and services side. In my make-believe world, this is above all what the WTO would be doing. 3. The institutional problem of environmental and social standards is huge. The ILO (which I will be working for once again over the summer) is admirable in many ways, but only because it is largely powerless. It benefits from the importance of being unimportant. The WTO is fatally flawed because it rests on the foundation of trade ministers, the designated corporate gofers within any government. On top of that, it is the product (as are all really important international organizations, unlike the ILO, UNESCO, etc.) of global power imbalances. I cannot begin to imagine anything good coming from this organization under these circumstances. The sort of democratic and accountable global governance we need will require much more radical changes at the national level in the US and other great power countries
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Patrick Bond wrote: So I'm back with Keynes on that 1933 Yale Review citation that Daly likes: let goods be homespun whenever reasonably and conveniently possible. Comrades, let's globalise people, not capital... You're doing the same thing that the IMF-Treasury-Wall Street complex does - equate trade with capital flows. Keynes said goods, which you elide into capital. And Monbiot was talking about the cross-border movement of goods services, not about portfolio investment. Could small countries in Africa ever produce a variety of sophisticated industrial goods? Could even the Netherlands do so on its own? What level of development do you have in mind with this homespun model? Doug
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Peter Dorman wrote: rgely powerless. It benefits from the importance of being unimportant. The WTO is fatally flawed because it rests on the foundation of trade ministers, the designated corporate gofers within any government. On top of that, it is the product (as are all really important international organizations, unlike the ILO, UNESCO, etc.) of global power imbalances. Yes, but...it is a one country, one vote institution, and as Bhagwati argues, for that reason, not a favored instrument of the U.S. or the other G7 countries. Its entire budget, as he pointed out, is smaller than the IMF's travel budget. Unlike the IMF, though, it's ruled against the U.S. It seems to me less dangerous than the Bretton Woods Institutions. Doug
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
There are two aspects to the WTO power structure that lead it to deviate from even a moderately acceptable level of democracy. The first has to do with the behind-the-scenes manipulation, which Patrick referred to. It is only formally a one-country, one-vote institution. The second has to do with the role of the WTO in imposing the interests of some sectors of each member country's ruling class on the rest. This is the part that gets modeled in all those formulaic political economy of free trade papers. Those who own or run particular industries often have their own desired trade barriers; the WTO, in principle, exists to lean against them in order to reduce trade barriers generally. In practice, this has been highly uneven, with much more protection permitted in some sectors than others. But the main point is that the WTO serves as a quid pro quo mechanism for the market access folks everywhere: your country must accord market access here in order to get market access there. And market access reflects one set of political interests among many. What demonstrators have been demonstrating against is the steady push, utilizing the WTO as a vehicle, for the market access interests of those who profit from exports in every country against all the other social/economic/environmental interests that conflict with them. By its very nature, the WTO is a club to be used against democracy. I agree, however, that there are many levels of hell, and the IMF occupies a rung that makes the WTO's look like, well, Lake Geneva (where it actually sits). Peter Doug Henwood wrote: Peter Dorman wrote: rgely powerless. It benefits from the importance of being unimportant. The WTO is fatally flawed because it rests on the foundation of trade ministers, the designated corporate gofers within any government. On top of that, it is the product (as are all really important international organizations, unlike the ILO, UNESCO, etc.) of global power imbalances. Yes, but...it is a one country, one vote institution, and as Bhagwati argues, for that reason, not a favored instrument of the U.S. or the other G7 countries. Its entire budget, as he pointed out, is smaller than the IMF's travel budget. Unlike the IMF, though, it's ruled against the U.S. It seems to me less dangerous than the Bretton Woods Institutions. Doug
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Peter: What demonstrators have been demonstrating against is the steady push, utilizing the WTO as a vehicle, for the market access interests of those who profit from exports in every country against all the other social/economic/environmental interests that conflict with them. By its very nature, the WTO is a club to be used against democracy. Exactly! This is why this third-worlder, as a matter of reflex, instantly objected to Monbiot immediately after reading his article. When it becomes that the banana producers of Anamur on the Mediterranean cost of Turkey, if there are any left of course, also have a say in the affairs of such a trade organization, I don't care whether it is called the WTO or the FTO. For now, however, it is one of my enemies among many. Not necessarily the worst but an enemy nevertheles. Best, Sabri
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] You're doing the same thing that the IMF-Treasury-Wall Street complex does - equate trade with capital flows. Keynes said goods, which you elide into capital. Doug, come on, you know the rest of the quote: Above all, let finance be primarily national. And Monbiot was talking about the cross-border movement of goods services, not about portfolio investment. So? He is mistaken, quite simply. Just like Bhagwati. Could small countries in Africa ever produce a variety of sophisticated industrial goods? Well, we've been through the colonial-era Zimbabwe story, which was impressive notwithstanding the self-defeating racism. But sure, it's very hard to do autarchy. That's why advocates of delinking like Amin and Bello specify that they are not for 100% autarchy. They promote delinking from the most destructive circuitry of capital, namely pure export-led growth based upon primary commodities, and debt repayment. Join 'em, Doug?
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Patrick Bond wrote: But sure, it's very hard to do autarchy. That's why advocates of delinking like Amin and Bello specify that they are not for 100% autarchy. They promote delinking from the most destructive circuitry of capital, namely pure export-led growth based upon primary commodities, and debt repayment. Join 'em, Doug? On that, yes, completely. But I'm still not clear on what you're advocating as an alternative. 100% autarchy is impossible. But 50%? 25%? You could never have any delinking if there weren't substantial solidarity among poorer countries - some kind of trading, financial, and technological links. As soon as I say that though, I wonder - what common interests are there between Brazil and Zimbabwe? Doug
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
As soon as I say that though, I wonder - what common interests are there between Brazil and Zimbabwe? Doug I don't know about Brazil and Zimbabwe but, apparently, Brazil and South Africa are trying to find an answer to your question, if you replace Zimbabwe with South Africa: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/EF12Dj02.html Sabri PS: Here is a related news piece. Brazil, India and South Africa forge strategic alliance Xinhuanet 2003-06-07 10:56:59 BRASILIA, June 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Brazil, India and South Africa on Friday announced they would create a strategic trilateral bloc to reduce commercial barriers and promote social development. This announcement was made by the foreign ministers of the three countries: Celso Amorim of Brazil, Yashwant Singh of India and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of South Africa, after a meeting in Brasilia. At a joint press conference, Amorim said, We organized this meeting, which is the first of its kind among the three countries,in order to intensify the South-South relations in a very practical and concrete way. Singh of India said, When countries like India, South Africa and Brazil speak with one voice, that voice will be heard. Dlamini-Zuma said the three nations share many things and could face each other as strategic partners. This month, India will sign a framework agreement with the South American Common Market, or Mercosur, in order to initiate negotiations for a free trade agreement in the coming summit of the bloc on June 18, in Asuncion, Paraguay. Commercial exchanges between Brazil and India, in the last three years, went up from 500 million US dollars to 1.2 billion dollars. The ministers also highlighted the need to increase defense, transportation, science and technology cooperation.
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Sabri Oncu wrote: I don't know about Brazil and Zimbabwe but, apparently, Brazil and South Africa are trying to find an answer to your question, if you replace Zimbabwe with South Africa: Brazil SA are regional hegemons with considerable industry. Zimbabwe is quite poor and weak. I picked Brazil Zim deliberately, because of the power disparity and because of the geographical distance. Doug
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Brazil SA are regional hegemons with considerable industry. Zimbabwe is quite poor and weak. I picked Brazil Zim deliberately, because of the power disparity and because of the geographical distance. Doug I don't care! Turkey is not a third-world country either. We are gonna screw the US anyway. If it takes regional hegemons, so be it. Chris, we are gonna screw the UK too. Enough is enough!.. Sabri
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Title: RE: [PEN-L] Monbiot on the WTO isn't the WTO run according to the principle of one country/one vote, while the IMF and World Bank are controlled by their big stockholders (mostly the US)? If so, then the WTO is a relatively democratic organization (though of course the voters represent those in power in their countries) -- and Monbiot is more correct than those who want to abolish the WTO. It suggests that the Seattle anti-WTO demos were poorly aimed, that they should have been aimed at the IMF/World Bank/US Treasury axis of weasels. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Ian Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 7:37 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L] Monbiot on the WTO I was wrong about trade Our aim should not be to abolish the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it George Monbiot Tuesday June 24, 2003 The Guardian A few years ago I would have raised at least two cheers. The US government, to judge by the aggressive noises now being made by its trade negotiators, seems determined to wreck one of the most intrusive and destructive of the instruments of global governance: the World Trade Organisation. A few years ago, I would have been wrong.
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 10:02 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Monbiot on the WTO isn't the WTO run according to the principle of one country/one vote, while the IMF and World Bank are controlled by their big stockholders (mostly the US)? If so, then the WTO is a relatively democratic organization (though of course the voters represent those in power in their countries) -- and Monbiot is more correct than those who want to abolish the WTO. It suggests that the Seattle anti-WTO demos were poorly aimed, that they should have been aimed at the IMF/World Bank/US Treasury axis of weasels. === There was criticism of the entire neoliberal institutional matrix in Seattle. The IMF/WB/Treasury axis of exploitation, extraction and appropriation were not in town to take part in the festivities. We would have been happy to lock them down. Ian
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Here are some thoughts on Monbiot and some of the pen-l responses. 1. I think Monbiot came to the right answer, but mostly for the wrong reasons. He is in grave danger of falling in with Oxfam and other internationally minded NGOs who have bought into the notion that what poor countries most need is unfettered access to rich country markets. From there it is one short step to signing on to the Cairnes group, etc. He hasn't looked deeply enough into *why* poor countries are so desperate for export markets. In other words, he hasn't incorporated an understanding of the post-debt-crisis financial framework into his analyis of trade. He is quite right to argue for a transformation of poor countries from resource to industrial exporters, but this makes sense developmentally only in terms of a coherent domestic transformation on all levels: domestic markets, domestic capabilities, etc. If industrialization serves mainly as an export-directed phenomenon, bereft of local linkages, for the purposes of servicing debt, then free trade in such products is part of the problem, not the solution. 2. Obviously (to me anyway), if the gross financial and trade imbalances need to be fixed, and if some unspecified debt reduction and capital flow regulatory framework is the answer on the finance side, then an international organization that coordinates trade balances -- keeps them within acceptable bands that have been openly negotiated -- is the answer on the goods and services side. In my make-believe world, this is above all what the WTO would be doing. 3. The institutional problem of environmental and social standards is huge. The ILO (which I will be working for once again over the summer) is admirable in many ways, but only because it is largely powerless. It benefits from the importance of being unimportant. The WTO is fatally flawed because it rests on the foundation of trade ministers, the designated corporate gofers within any government. On top of that, it is the product (as are all really important international organizations, unlike the ILO, UNESCO, etc.) of global power imbalances. I cannot begin to imagine anything good coming from this organization under these circumstances. The sort of democratic and accountable global governance we need will require much more radical changes at the national level in the US and other great power countries. In the meantime, I believe there is lots of unutilized potential for creating shadow institutions (paralleling the WTO, IMF etc.) from below, based on hard-nosed negotiation between groups representing democratic interests in different countries. To really be effective, these alternative groups would have to actually take concrete positions on specific issues as they arise; i.e. they would have to cooperate on a detailed program and not just on their opposition to the status quo. This is something effective political groups have always done on a local and national level; now global capitalism has forced the same necessity on us internationally. 4. In the end, I think there really is a case for substantial relocalization, but it should be the result of a sane trading framework, not an imperative imposed on it. Once the debt treadmill is smashed, and once the false economies based on hyper-exploitation of populations and resources are ended, most of the impetus for destructive trade will cease. Then it will be enough to build up healthy local economies on their own merits, through the methods some communities are beginning to pioneer. I apologize for the soapbox tone of this e-mail. I guess I must be pretty opinionated about this stuff. Peter
Monbiot on the WTO
I was wrong about trade Our aim should not be to abolish the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it George Monbiot Tuesday June 24, 2003 The Guardian A few years ago I would have raised at least two cheers. The US government, to judge by the aggressive noises now being made by its trade negotiators, seems determined to wreck one of the most intrusive and destructive of the instruments of global governance: the World Trade Organisation. A few years ago, I would have been wrong. The only thing worse than a world with the wrong international trade rules is a world with no trade rules at all. George Bush seems to be preparing to destroy the WTO at the next world trade talks in September not because its rules are unjust, but because they are not unjust enough. He is seeking to negotiate individually with weaker countries so that he can force even harsher terms of trade upon them. He wants to replace a multilateral trading system with an imperial one. And this puts the global justice movement in a difficult position. Our problem arises from the fact that, being a diverse movement, we have hesitated to describe precisely what we want. We have called for fair trade, but have failed, as a body, to specify how free that trade should be, and how it should be regulated. As a result, in the rich world at least, we have permitted the few who do possess a clearly formulated policy to speak on our behalf. Those people are the adherents of a doctrine called localisation. I once supported it myself. I now accept that I was wrong. Localisation insists that everything which can be produced locally should be produced locally. All nations should protect their economies by means of trade taxes and legal barriers. The purpose of the policy is to grant nations both economic and political autonomy, to protect cultural distinctiveness and to prevent the damage done to the environment by long-distance transport. Yet, when you examine the implications, you soon discover that it is as coercive, destructive and unjust as any of the schemes George Bush is cooking up. My conversion came on the day I heard a speaker demand a cessation of most forms of international trade and then, in answering a question from the audience, condemn the economic sanctions on Iraq. If we can accept that preventing trade with Iraq or, for that matter, imposing a trade embargo on Cuba, impoverishes and in many cases threatens the lives of the people of those nations, we must also accept that a global cessation of most kinds of trade would have the same effect, but on a greater scale. Trade, at present, is an improbable means of distributing wealth between nations. It is characterised by coercive relationships between corporations and workers, rich nations and poor. But it is the only possible means. The money the poor world needs has to come from somewhere, and if our movement rejects trade as the answer it is surely duty-bound to find another. The localisers don't rule out all international transactions. As Colin Hines, who wrote their manifesto and helped to draft the Green party's policy, accepts, Some long-distance trade will still occur for those sectors providing goods and services to other regions of the world that can't provide such items from within their own borders, eg certain minerals or cash crops. To earn foreign exchange from the rich world, in other words, the poor world must export raw materials. This, of course, is precisely the position from which the poor nations are seeking to escape. Raw materials will always be worth less than manufactured products. Their production also tends to reward only those who own the primary resource. As the workers are unskilled, wages remain low. Every worker is replaceable by any other, so they have no power in the marketplace. The poor world, under this system, remains trapped in both the extractive economy and - as a result - in its subordinate relationship to the rich world. Interestingly, Hines's prescription also damages precisely those interests he seeks to protect. To earn sufficient foreign exchange to import the goods they cannot produce themselves, the poor nations would need to export more, not less, of their natural wealth, thus increasing their contribution to climate change, soil erosion and the loss of biodiversity. His policy also wipes out small farmers, who would be displaced from their land by mechanised cash-cropping. A still greater contradiction is this: that economic localisation relies entirely upon enhanced political globalisation. Colin Hines's model invents a whole new series of global bodies to impose localisation on nation states, whether they like it or not. States would be forbidden, for example, to pass laws that diminish local control of industry and services. Hines, in other words, prohibits precisely the kind of political autonomy he claims to promote. But above all, this doctrine is entirely unnecessary. There is a far better means of protecting the
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
Monbiot: So let us campaign not to scrap the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it into a Fair Trade Organisation, whose purpose is to restrain the rich while emancipating the poor. And let us ensure that when George Bush tries to sabotage the multilateral system in September, we know precisely which side we are on. I am not sure if I agree with this. It would have been nice of course if we can transform the World Trade Organization (WTO) into a Fair Trade Organization (FTO), but one question I have is this: Is the WTO transformable into an FTO? Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say Who knows what's been lost along the way Look for the promised land in all of the dreams we share How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Best, Sabri
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
I would rather call for the strengthening of the International Labor Organization than the WTO. Any organization that emphasizes trade rather than people's lives is not likely to do much good. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 08:27:06PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Monbiot: So let us campaign not to scrap the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it into a Fair Trade Organisation, whose purpose is to restrain the rich while emancipating the poor. And let us ensure that when George Bush tries to sabotage the multilateral system in September, we know precisely which side we are on. I am not sure if I agree with this. It would have been nice of course if we can transform the World Trade Organization (WTO) into a Fair Trade Organization (FTO), but one question I have is this: Is the WTO transformable into an FTO? Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say Who knows what's been lost along the way Look for the promised land in all of the dreams we share How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Best, Sabri -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] I would rather call for the strengthening of the International Labor Organization than the WTO. Any organization that emphasizes trade rather than people's lives is not likely to do much good. = I would second that as long as we can encourage people to ask about what kinds of freedom trade facilitates in order to 'dig a bit deeper' into how we produce/create [un]freedoms. When lefties frame the trade issue in terms of poverty eradication, democracy and ecological sanity, we can win the argument every time. This is an issue that should play to our strengths. On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 08:27:06PM -0700, Sabri Oncu wrote: Monbiot: I am not sure if I agree with this. It would have been nice of course if we can transform the World Trade Organization (WTO) into a Fair Trade Organization (FTO), but one question I have is this: Is the WTO transformable into an FTO? == As I live in 'the North' I would rather hear from others even as I think that many in 'the South' are vehemently against the Bretton Woods paradigm, given my limited sampling of opinions. There's a new cosmo-eco-politics struggling to be born that's not like what happened between 1873-1918 and we need to understand and help create it Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say Who knows what's been lost along the way Look for the promised land in all of the dreams we share How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Best, Sabri There is no promised land, there's evolution and us; an open-ended adventure. Ian
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
There is no promised land, there's evolution and us; an open-ended adventure. Ian Sure Ian, although there is also the _possibility_ of revolution! But this still remains true: How will we know when we are there? How will we know? Compare this against: And let us ensure that when George Bush tries to sabotage the multilateral system in September, we know precisely which side we are on. Why can't we be againts both Bush and the WTO? And don't ask me what the third alternative is. Sometimes, there are only two, sometimes there are more than two. If only I knew which is when! But this time, I choose to look for the third or the forth or the fifth or Best, Sabri
Re: Monbiot on the WTO
- Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] Why can't we be againts both Bush and the WTO? = Most definitely we can. It's how to create collective action-imagination for designing institutions for the 21st century that is at issue given lefty norms. And don't ask me what the third alternative is. Sometimes, there are only two, sometimes there are more than two. If only I knew which is when! But this time, I choose to look for the third or the forth or the fifth or Best, Sabri = What is the 3cubed way? :-) Ian
