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If you can't beat 'em ... | page 1, 2
In the United States, workers who organized for better wages and hours were likely to see their plants shut down and moved someplace where unions are outlawed. Communities that tried to punish polluters were threatened with the loss of jobs and tax revenues. In short, capital has been mobile for decades, evading and often defeating attempts to control the social costs of industrial production. Also Today Everything you need to know about the WTO
While thousands of protesters gather outside, there's plenty of disagreement inside, too. The whole world is watching
Direct action comes to the WTO, and members debate what the meaning of "nonviolence" is.
Joe Conason Joe Conason's column appears in Salon News every other Tuesday.
But with their demand for the complete opening of formerly closed societies to new investment and trade, the corporate elites may ironically be shutting off their own escape from responsibility. Since the founding of the WTO in 1995, the ideologues of free trade have established a worldwide forum in which disputes over tariffs and other commercial barriers can be adjudicated. They have never explained why that forum should be dedicated solely to the narrow concerns of investors and managers. And there is no reason why it should. The logic of an international trade regime is that one country shouldn't be permitted to boost exports and restrain imports by unfair means. Critics of free trade have traditionally warned that the inevitable result will be the erosion of the social contract that governs most of the developed world, bringing everyone down to the level of the most impoverished and oppressed. But that outcome will ultimately depend on the definitions of what is and is not fair in the global marketplace. And those definitions are subject to the political will of the WTO's member nations. Obviously, "fairness" and "freedom" are terms that lend themselves to many interpretations. Isn't the violent suppression of labor unions by Indonesia an unfair trading practice, when South Korea lives by a more democratic standard? And isn't the incineration of the Amazon rainforest an unfair practice by Brazil, when the rest of the planet must suffer the consequences? Those are issues that should rightfully be brought before the WTO -- an organization that now devotes much of its energy to determining how much cheese France can send to the United States and whether India is infringing on pharmaceutical patents. In a political system as dominated by corporate interests and ideology as ours, it may seem rather naive to think that American leaders would ever use this country's international power to improve labor and environmental standards. And that may never happen, unless the labor movement and its allies develop a sophisticated global strategy to reform the WTO. The only thing that is even less likely to occur is a return to the good old days.
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