----- Original Message -----
From: Doug Hunt
To: TOES ; July 30 in Philly ; 50 yen
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2000 1:40 PM
Subject: [July30] S26: Waking Up The Elites
July 30 in Philly - www.unity2000.com
>From The Nation
October 2, 2000
ACTIVISM IN THE STREETS HAS LED TO AN OUTPOURING OF PLATITUDES IN THE SUITES.
Waking Up the Global Elite
by WILLIAM GREIDER
E-mail this story to a friend.
A tide of corporate high-mindedness seems to be sweeping the globe, inspired by
last year's ruckus in Seattle and a continuing series of confrontations. One
international organization after another has scurried to catch up with the
popular rebellions against globalization by announcing "initiatives" to promote
human rights, the environment and worker protections. Leading multinationals
have been eager to sign up as co-sponsors, since the new codes or compacts are
all voluntary and toothless. If corporate declarations of good intent were
edible, the world's hungry would be fed.
The purpose obviously is public relations--improving the tarnished images of
global corporations and portraying weak-willed international institutions as
attentive and relevant to the turmoil of worldwide controversy. But even empty
gestures can prove to be meaningful, sometimes far beyond what their authors had
in mind. An enduring truth, a wise friend once explained to me, is that
important social change nearly always begins in hypocrisy. First, the powerful
are persuaded to say the appropriate words, that is, to sign a commitment to
higher values and decent behavior. Then social activists must spend the next ten
years pounding on them, trying to make them live up to their promises or
persuading governments to enact laws that will compel them to do so. In the long
struggle for global rules and accountability, this new phase may be understood
as essential foreplay.
The United Nations has set up a pretty new website (unglobalcompact.org) that
Secretary General Kofi Annan describes as "making a bit of history" because it
brings together forty-four multinational corporations and banks, a couple of
labor federations and assorted civil-society groups "to launch a joint
initiative in support of universal values." Companies that signed up for the
UN's Global Compact include some familiar stalwarts from the globalization wars,
like Nike and Royal Dutch Shell. All promise to do better by humanity in the
future and to report their progress every year on the UN's web page.
In Paris, meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
has dusted off its long-neglected "Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises"
from the seventies and intends to issue an updated version. Some US companies
are already grumbling about proposed language suggesting that corporate
management has an obligation to consult with labor. The "Sullivan Principles,"
first promoted by the Rev. Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia during the campaign
against apartheid in South Africa, have also been born again. A new, globalized
version asks multinationals to subscribe to eight broad principles (no children
in factories, no bribery of governments, that sort of thing). The Washington
International Business Report, a monthly newsletter that serves US
multinationals, dubbed all this action "Return of the Codes." Demands from
developing countries in the seventies for a "New International Economic Order,"
the WIBR suggested, have finally converged with "the new millennial proposals
for regulation of rampant globalization by somebody." Only, of course,
regulation is exactly what the companies hope to avoid.
Nike seems to be everywhere with its good deeds. In addition to collaborating
with the UN, the company has also joined a new "Global Alliance for Workers and
Communities" with the World Bank and the International Youth Foundation. Then
there's the Fair Labor Association, launched by Bill Clinton to help US firms
clean up their sweatshops; Nike is an active participant (when do they find the
time to make shoes?). Nike CEO Phil Knight explained that the Global Alliance is
surveying workers themselves to find out their needs. "We are finding some
consistent themes," Knight reported. "Workers all want better healthcare and
more education, as well as specific training on reproductive health and
childrearing. They also want help for their families." Could they mean better
pay? Knight never mentions wages, an omission consistent with the voluntary
codes promoted by the multinationals.
The international flurry of high-level solicitude invites cynicism, since it's
clearly intended to reassure the general public (never mind activists) that
conscientious firms and institutions are on the case, diligently cleaning up the
global system, so there's no need for any intrusive laws from governments. But
each self-righteous claim offers a new target for agitation. Every "statement of
principles" is a potential public relations disaster for the companies, because
the contradictory realities of their global operations may sooner or later bite
back.
The establishment, in any case, seems genuinely upset by the rude intrusion of
turtles and Teamsters into their political stewardship of the globe. The Federal
Reserve System holds a cozy campout for friendly media and economists every
summer at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and this year's session was devoted to
authoritative handwringing over the backlash. Himself Alan Greenspan
acknowledged "a remarkable stall" in the progress of further trade agreements,
and he urged fellow central bankers to lobby their governments. "We all need to
press very hard on the political process," Greenspan said.
He and other speakers seemed to fear that elected political leaders are losing
their stomach for the rigors of globalization, now that they are confronted with
active popular opposition. Michael Moore, director-general of the WTO,
complained that it will be "extremely difficult" to launch a new round of
general trade negotiations (the objective stymied in Seattle). "It will only
happen," Moore warned, "if sustained pressure on governments produces the
political will needed to adopt flexible positions in sensitive areas." In trade
talk, that's code language for brushing aside aroused citizens and doing deals.
>From press accounts, the Jackson Hole conferees seemed divided themselves on how
much respect they should pay to protesters. Moore himself acknowledged that
"those who oppose us are not all fools and frauds." Former Fed vice chairwoman
Alice Rivlin referred to the assembled policy thinkers as a "pro-globalization
elite" and warned that the critics in the streets were raising many legitimate
objections. "We need to have better answers to those questions, even for the
kids gathered in the streets," Rivlin said. Others, however, dismissed the
dissenters as "youthful and misinformed" and the Seattle movement as "an
umbrella for everything that's wrong with the twenty-first century." If the
elites are genuinely worried about the popular rebellion, maybe next year the
Federal Reserve should invite some real-life turtles and Teamsters to the
Jackson Hole campfire.
* * *
In the meantime, think of the UN as a promising new front. The Millennium Summit
in New York in September illustrated the possibilities. Some leaders from poorer
countries observed that modern globalization reminds them of the old
colonialism; indeed, the same powerful countries are dominating the process.
In some ways, despite its many incapacities, the UN could be a better
battleground for dissenters in the globalization debates than international
agencies like the WTO or IMF, which dutifully adhere to business and financial
interests. The UN has no power whatever, of course, but at least it provides an
international forum for all voices, rich and poor. In any long-term vision for
global reform, the UN will itself have to be rehabilitated and restructured and
eventually empowered to challenge the corporate-led agencies on behalf of people
and human values.
Indeed, a few weeks after Annan cozied up to the multinationals, a study team
appointed by a UN human rights subcommission issued a withering report that
describes the WTO as a "veritable nightmare" for developing countries. In
particular, it was accused of imposing rigid intellectual-property rules on poor
nations, farmers and indigenous people on behalf of the multinationals (the same
complaint that US and foreign activists are making). "What is required," the
study said, "is nothing less than a radical review of the whole system of trade
liberalization and a critical consideration of the extent to which it is
genuinely equitable and geared toward shared benefits for rich and poor
countries alike."
Some activists already see the possibilities. Victor Menotti of the
International Forum on Globalization described Annan's compact as "a feeble and
cynical attempt" to help the multinationals defuse the backlash against them,
but Menotti also envisions a revival of the UN's original role as representative
and defender of human rights--economic as well as political. "The UN repositions
us back on what's supposed to be our turf but which has been taken away from us
by corporate institutions like the IMF," Menotti said. "We need to create some
dogfights within the international system and make people ask, Who is
subordinate to whom?"
* * *
Food First has proposed that the landmark covenants produced in the UN's early
years be revived and restored to viability now that the cold war is over. One
covenant, as co-director Anuradha Mittal explained, is devoted to "civil and
political rights" and was promoted by the Western democracies, including the
United States, while the other, on "economic, social and cultural rights," was
advanced by the Communist sphere. The economic rights covenant--including the
right to food, shelter and an adequate standard of living--has never been
ratified by the United States, alone among the G-7 nations, though it was
belatedly signed by President Carter two decades ago.
"What we are saying," Mittal said, "is that these covenants have to be the
litmus test for globalization--any trade agreement must be able to meet those
principles to be acceptable to us. Otherwise, it will simply make the rich
richer and the poor poorer."
The UN, she suggested, might be rescued from its debilitated condition by this
issue. "We are told to follow trade agreements so strictly and even have courts
like the WTO to enforce them, but why can't we have good, effective courts where
people can go with human rights complaints? The only hope that remains for the
UN is for it to be given back its power to act as a watchdog to protect human
rights for others. Otherwise, it's a fig leaf." The vision of a revived UN opens
up another hard political struggle, but one not necessarily more difficult than
reforming the WTO or the IMF.
One other new front for fruitful agitation was opened this summer. Two members
of Congress, Representatives Cynthia McKinney and Bernie Sanders, introduced
parallel measures to impose new standards on the global system and
accountability on US multinationals in their behavior overseas. McKinney's HR
4596, with Sanders and a handful of others as co-sponsors, describes a
"corporate code of conduct" that would be enforceable by US law and through
civil-damage lawsuits in federal courts. Sanders's "Global Sustainable
Development Resolution" (H.Res. 479) speaks more broadly to reforming the
international institutions and trade agreements, as well as to corporate
accountability.
Naturally, it's a long slog ahead for either proposal to be taken seriously in
Washington, but both represent a promising starting point. The next time you
hear a US Representative uttering the usual bromides about globalization,
interrupt to ask where he or she stands on McKinney-Sanders.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Greider is The Nation's national affairs correspondent.
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--
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then
they fight you. Then you win."
- Gandhi
"If there is no struggle there is no progress.
Those of us who profess to favor freedom yet depreciate agitation are
[people]
who want the crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without
thunder. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will."
> --Frederick Douglass
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