Big powers, big banks
Behind the World Trade Organization
By Fred
Goldstein
The Seattle Conference of the World Trade Organization is
calculated to further extend the global commercial domination
of U.S., European and Japanese imperialism over the oppressed
countries of the world.
It is also meant to serve as an arena for the mediation of
inter-imperialist trade disputes. The ceremonies have happily
been disrupted by militant anti-corporate demonstrators in a
bold challenge to the rulers of the WTO.
The Clinton administration in particular threw its weight
behind the conference. However, instead of a smooth victory,
all the contradictions of the world capitalist system of
commerce have surfaced and the conference is "in danger of
failure," according to Director General Michael Moore.
To shore up the effort, Bill Clinton quietly tried to
persuade the heads of state of Japan, various European
countries, Canada, Brazil and others to attend. "But for
weeks," wrote the New York Times of Nov. 24, "the White House
got tangled up in the question of whom to invite, compiling
lists and then abandoning them. `Every time we put together a
list of names,' a White House aide said, `it became clear that
we would make 20 enemies.'"
Given the U.S. program for Seattle, it is not hard to
understand.
For example, the WTO bosses are looking forward to revising
the General Agreement on Services, which covers 160 sectors of
economic activity worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The
aim will be to reduce protections for a whole host of areas,
including telecommunications, transport, distribution,
hospitals, clinics, outpatient facilities, assisted living
arrangements, nursing homes, education, prisons, real estate,
banking, insurance, construction, environment, tourism and the
entertainment industries, among others.
They are using the "horizontal" approach, according to Third
World Network, a network of non-governmental organizations from
oppressed countries. An agreement for any one sector is
automatically applied to all others. Any protections removed
from telecommunications, for example, can automatically be
applied across the board--like health care.
If the U.S. has its way in the WTO, the giant insurance
companies will get the chance to swallow up the world's
healthcare services.
U.S. firms gobble up world's
companies
For example, six months after the WTO's "Fourth Protocol"
removed protections from the telecommunications industry in
1998, more than one tenth of the world's companies changed
hands. When the smoke cleared, U.S. firms owned 38 percent of
world trade in basic telecom services.
The monopolies want to use the WTO to override environmental
protections. The American Electronics Association, for example,
of which Microsoft is a prominent member, has asked the U.S.
Trade Representative's office to lobby against European draft
legislation that would phase out toxic substances from
computers and electronic equipment. It claims the legislation
violates WTO rules.
Similarly, the chemicals, plastics, electronic, and food
processing industries have pressured the WTO through the U.S.
delegation to ban "eco-labeling"--the right of consumers to
know what they are buying and how environmentally destructive
it might be.
The most infamous use of the WTO to foster death at a profit
was its suppression of the use of the generic AIDS drug Zidovir
100. Produced by an Indian company and exported to Belgium,
Tanzania and Uganda, it cost less than half the patented AZT of
Glaxco-Wellcome. Under the WTO's so-called Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, the generic drug could
not be used. A similar ruling was made against South Africa,
which had passed a law enabling the production of generic
anti-AIDS drugs.
The Kenyan delegation to the WTO, speaking on behalf of the
African group, demonstrated the complete hypocrisy of the
multinational corporations when it requested an amendment on
the issue of genetic engineering of seeds and intellectual
property rights. The patenting of "essentially biological
processes" is outlawed by the Convention on Biological
Diversity, Article 27.3(b). "Why," asked the African group,
"does the option of exclusion of patentability of `essentially
biological processes' not extend to processes,' as the latter
are also biological processes?"
The reason is that the multinational biotech firms want to
be free to create "terminator seeds," which die after one
generation, so that the oppressed countries will have to buy
their seeds over and over again.
Marx on free trade
All this market manipulation by the big firms is done in the
WTO under the guise of promoting "free trade."
Even if so-called free trade really existed, it would be
highly injurious to the less developed countries. When Karl
Marx in 1848 wrote the founding document of the world communist
movement, the Communist Manifesto, he showed how the rising
capitalist class destroyed the old feudal society and took over
the world with the utmost brutality. In a famous passage, he
wrote:
"[Capitalism] has resolved personal worth into exchange
value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered
freedoms has set up that single, unconscionable freedom--Free
Trade. In one word, for exploitation veiled by religious and
political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless,
brutal exploitation."
This was the era of pre-monopoly capitalism when the rising
capitalist powers, headed by the British, were forcing
pre-capitalist civilizations, such as India, North Africa,
China and even parts of Europe, to accept their cheap
manufactured goods. Whole cultures of peasants and artisans
were wiped out.
Thus free trade was always connected with "brutal
exploitation," as Marx put it. But in today's world of monopoly
capitalism--that is, imperialism--there is no such thing as
free trade.
The so-called WTO is an organization of capitalist states
(with the exception of Cuba and China if it joins in the near
future) that is dominated by the great imperialist powers. Each
one of them fights to open up every market possible for its own
multinationals and to close out any harmful competition. The
U.S., Europe and Japan will demand "free trade" only in areas
where they have advantages. Otherwise, they will fight to the
death.
The WTO ruled against Europe in its "banana war" with the
U.S. The European capitalists have refused to abide by the
agreement. The U.S. has used "national security" as an excuse
to keep Japan from selling ships to its merchant marine.
Washington has brought suit against Brazil, Japan and Russia
for exporting steel to the U.S., but has also brought suit
against India demanding that it drop vital import quotas
necessary to protect its balance of payments and its ability to
pay debts.
No equality in an imperialist world
The very idea that imperialism would apply an equal standard
to the oppressed countries only facilitates world inequality.
The Group of Seven (G-7)--the U.S., Bri tain, France, Germany,
Japan, Italy and Canada--had a gross national product of close
to $20 trillion in 1997. That is 64 percent of the world's
production coming from countries with only 11.8 percent of the
world's population.
Of the top 500 corporations in the world, only six are from
countries outside the U.S., Europe, Canada or Japan. Of the 100
largest banks in the world, all are from the imperialist
countries. As of 1997 the imperialist countries exported close
to $5 trillion and imported a similar amount--controlling the
vast majority of world trade. In the same year, the oppressed
countries were in debt to the tune of $2.2 trillion to the
imperialist banks and governments of the world.
The underdeveloped countries are truly prisoners in the WTO.
The WTO processes are carried out behind closed doors among the
rulers of the organization, whose proposals are brought to the
General Council. The governments of the Third World basically
sit outside waiting to hear what the G-7 proposes.
Decisions are made not by vote but by consensus--that is, by
backroom arm-twisting. And when the U.S. or European trade
ministers cannot prevail, they call their government offices.
They promptly get on the phone to the governments of the
recalcitrant trade officials from underdeveloped countries and
force them to change their position.
The dispute process is run by a panel of three, who are
lobbied by the big capitalist governments. The appeals process
is long and drawn out. The extraordinary expense of
participating in WTO processes is a burden on the poorer
countries and puts them at an extreme disadvantage.
The G-7 can field massive delegations of lawyers,
researchers and industry experts backed by the multinationals
with privileged technological and industrial knowledge. The
entire WTO process is utterly the opposite of free. It is one
in the many processes by which the monopolies dominate the
globe.
Using the WTO as a pressure point for workers' rights and a
symbol of protest against corporate greed and environmental
destruction is a great step forward for the movement. But it
must be understood that, in the final analysis, the evils being
perpetrated against the masses and the planet are being carried
out by the multinational corporations and the imperialist
governments that represent them.
The fight must be carried by each working class to its own
government and its own exploiters. They are the ones who must
be stopped. The WTO is just a shell. The ruling classes of the
imperialist countries have the cops, the courts, the prisons
and the laws to enforce the right of corporations to set up
sweat shops, to employ child labor, to circumvent unions and to
destroy the environment.
Trade inequities flow
from capitalist ownership
Most importantly, all the inequities of the world trade
system flow from the system of capitalism itself. Inequalities
of distribution or trade flow from inequalities in the
ownership of the instruments of production, transportation and
communication. The one cannot be eradicated without the
destruction of the other.
A tiny handful of billionaires owns and controls the
factories, offices, mines and services. They operate them for
profit. All the contradictions of trade surfacing in Seattle
flow from this fundamental fact.
Child labor, low wages and harsh and inhuman working
conditions must be fought against. But they are the inevitable
product of the system of wage slavery--the system of
exploitation itself. As long as workers have to sell their
labor power to the bosses and the bosses control the surplus
they create, such evils will be perpetuated.
As the Seattle conference approached, much ink was spilled
over whether "globalization" is good or bad, inevitable or a
reversible policy, etc. But globalization cannot be discussed
outside the framework of a class analysis.
To the bourgeoisie, globalization is a process of expanding
their ability to accumulate profits on a wider and wider scale,
through setting up factories, selling commodities and financial
plunder.
But from a working-class point of view, the bourgeoisie's
role in history has been to carry out the socialization of
production on an extended scale by bringing more and more
workers into a process of cooperative labor. This opens the way
for greater collaboration and international solidarity in the
struggle against capital.
The international working-class movement must fight every
attempt by the bosses to use globalization to their advantage.
But in the long run, the only real solution to the plague of
hardships brought on by capitalist imperialism is to change the
form of appropriation of the trillions of dollars worth of
goods created by the workers.
The struggle will be resolved only with the establishment of
socialism--a system in which instead of private appropriation
by a handful of billionaires, the wealth created will become
the social property of all the workers and oppressed.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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