Elaine Bernard
CAMBRIDGE,
Mass.-In spite of what you may have read or heard about the anti-WTO protests
last week, the people on the streets of Seattle weren’t opposed to
globalization. Their cause is an example of globalization, with protests in
solidarity with the Seattle actions taking place in many cities around the
world. Theirs is just not a version of globalization endorsed or even envisioned
by the WTO.
American
media, political elites and corporations seemed startled by the emergence of
this powerful worldwide movement of resistance to WTO policies. From my
perspective, it was a phenomenon beyond resistance–it was a first step toward
the development of an international civil society.
Analysts
have long measured the development of a democracy by the vitality of its
autonomous civic life. That’s because democracy is more than formal rules and
the election of a government. Its lifeblood comes from the sphere of society
that organizes itself and is not under control of the state.
This
flowering of "civil society" provides space for debate for the
development of public values, and is the process by which a public self, or
citizenry, is created.
The
protesters in Seattle were creating that space. True global citizens in the
making, they demand accountability, democracy, and the right of individuals to
have a voice in setting the increasingly important rules of international trade
and commerce.
The
WTO meeting was merely the place where these people burst onto the American
public’s radar. Social movements around the world had already linked into
grass-roots networks, made possible by the astonishing speed at which they can
communicate in the Internet era. Quick and relatively inexpensive international
travel enables direct contact between even very small and poor organizations.
Immigration brings workers from the poorest corners of the world to every major
U.S. city. So Americans whose chief contact with the problems of developing
countries might once have been writing a charitable check now have a more
personal basis for activism: It is no longer charity, but true solidarity.
The
WTO is a magnet for the concerns of these internationalists because, since its
creation in 1995, it has been the central agency for writing and enforcing new
global trading rules. These rules, based on the neo-liberal economic policies of
free trade, privatization and deregulation, are flawed: They value corporate
power and commercial interests over labor and human rights, environmental and
health concerns, and diversity. They increase inequality and stunt democracy.
The WTO version of globalization is not a rising tide lifting all boats, as free
traders insist, but a dangerous race to the bottom.
For
example, the WTO says its purview does not include social issues–only trade. So
it claims to be powerless to do anything about a repressive regime selling the
products of sweatshops that use child labor.
Yet
let this regime use the same children in sweatshops to produce
"pirated" CDs or fake designer T-shirts, and the WTO can spring into
action with a series of powerful levers to protect corporate "intellectual
property rights." So, it’s really not a question of free trade versus
protectionism, but of who and what is free, and who and what is protected.
The
WTO says that countries can regulate only "product," not
"process."
But
moving beyond the simple regulation of end product and toward regulating how
things are made has been an important achievement of the labor, consumer and
environmental movements. The difference between a shirt produced under
near-slave-like conditions and a shirt produced by union labor under decent
conditions isn’t readily obvious in the packaged product; we must monitor the
process by which that shirt is produced.
These
are the kinds of issues that inspired the Battle in Seattle. So what did the
protest accomplish? First, it has put the public back into this vital public
policy discussion, which for too long has been dominated by a powerful few in
secret meetings.
Second,
the protests have illuminated the fact that there is no such thing as pure and
simple trade, especially once we start to deal with social programs and
government actions deemed to be "non-tariff barriers to trade." As the
Europeans have long understood, a common market must have a social and political
dimension to it.
Third,
the protests have fostered some interesting new alliances: north and south,
labor and environmentalist, Generation X and old hands from the 1960s. There are
still significant differences among the wide array of protesters. Some believe
the WTO should be abolished; others simply want a seat at its table for labor
and environmental activists. Workers in industrialized countries worry about job
loss and runaway plants; workers in developing countries fear that labor
standards and environmental protection are simply ways to keep their products
from getting to wealthy markets.
But
that’s what makes the emergence of these international advocacy networks so
important. They are a forum for debating, negotiating and deliberating global
solidarity. They are the beginnings of an emerging international civil society.
And as demonstrated in Seattle, they will be heard.
Elaine
Bernard is executive director of the Harvard Trade Union Program.
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Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company