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WTO: Vehicle for Corporate Hegemony

Globalisation is making many people wealthy, but it is not about making the poor any richer.

The Canberra Times, 30 November, 2000

Today is the first anniversary of "The Battle of Seattle", in which street protesters disrupted the Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation. An image widely presented by media was of an ignorant, violent rabble opposing the inevitable march of progress and prosperity.

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and evangelist for globalisation, vented an opinion typical of one view: the protesters were "a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix." But who really were the ignorant parties in Seattle? And who was violent?

The protesters were in fact very diverse, well informed and overwhelmingly peaceful. They included many people from around the world with first-hand experience of the effects of globalisation. Their goal was to force the WTO, and the world, to listen to the voices of the vast majority of humanity whose interests are not represented within the WTO.

To this end a teach-in was organised for the weekend preceeding the WTO conference, featuring a diversity of speakers. About 2,500 people managed to squeeze into the teach-in, but evidently not many mainstream reporters made it. Nor did reporters seem to discover the welter of material released in the lead up to the conference, despite ample warning of the protests. When the protests started, the media by-and-large seemed to be indifferent to or bewildered by the protesters' points of view.

The protests themselves involved peaceful resistance, for which many people had trained, some for hours, some for weeks. They succeeded in disrupting the WTO conference by blocking movement in the streets around the conference site. They overwhelmed police and other forces by weight of numbers, 40,000 to 60,000 people from over 700 organisations.

One group, comprising perhaps 100 anarchists, conducted a well-planned window-smashing program, targeting corporations whose practices they regard as particularly exploitive. Predictably, media focussed on these destructive acts and tarred the whole protest with the brush of violence.

So what was all the fuss about? What's wrong with the WTO?

Many things are wrong with the WTO, and with the corporate globalisation that it is part of. Globalisation is making many people wealthy, and it has dramatically increased inequality, both between countries and within countries. However, globalisation is not making the poor any richer.

In fact, the poorest in the poor countries are worse off, and the poorest in many wealthy countries are also worse off. Even in the USA, people on average incomes were no better off at the end of the 1990s than at their beginning, despite the so-called economic boom. So globalisation is not yielding prosperity for billions of people around the world. That claim is hype.

Globalisation is really about corporate hegemony. Gargantuan transnational corporations are to have power over people, nations and resources of all kinds. They want to do business unimpeded by concerns for social equity, the environment or cultural differences. They want to exploit existing wealth.

For example, they are patenting traditional crop varieties that have been developed and used in many countries for hundreds of years. Poor farmers then have to pay to use their traditional seed varieties, or pay to use a genetically modified corporate variety that also requires expensive pesticides and chemical fertilisers. Corporations have also set about buying up water rights in many poor countries, because accessible fresh water is becoming a scarce commodity. The Monsanto name became so odious because of such practices that the corporation has changed its name.

The WTO is a prime vehicle for the program of corporate hegemony. Its rules are written mainly by the governments of the richest countries, with plentiful influence and advice from corporations and financiers, who often write the draft texts. Rules and legislation are so complex and voluminous that few legislators are able to read them properly, and they may not realise that the rules would prevent Europeans from blocking genetically modified food, they would allow the world's fresh water to be privatised, they would allow all forms of existing life to be patented, and they do not permit discrimination against products on the basis of exploitation of labour or the environment.

The WTO is anti-democratic. None of the WTO officials was ever elected to their positions by a popular vote. The WTO does not assure due process or justice. Disputes brought to the WTO are adjudicated by three-member panels in secret with no rights of appeal. Panelists typically are government and corporate technocrats with no required evidence of worldly wisdom nor expertise in such things as genetics, the environment, anthropology, human rights and so on.

The WTO directly violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It would override or undermine the Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and virtually any other present or future international treaty, convention, act or agreement.

In short, the WTO is about overrunning national sovereignty and social autonomy. Cultural differences are being trampled. The purpose is not to promote wealth creation, but to allow corporations to exploit and extract existing wealth on behalf of the already wealthy.

The WTO is also without rational justification. The conventional theory used to justify free trade and globalisation is the theory of comparative advantage, and central to this theory is the assumption that capital is not internationally mobile. Obviously this assumption is blatantly violated in the real world. With internationally mobile capital, free trade yields not mutual benefit to trading nations but a haemorrhaging of wealth into the hands of tiny financial elites in both rich and poor countries.

Thus the WTO itself exhibits great ignorance. WTO apologists seem to be ignorant of the real effects of their policies, and they are evidently ignorant of the fundamental falsity and irrelevance of the theory that is used to justify corporate globalisation.

The greatest violence in Seattle was perpetrated by police and other enforcers. The UK environment minister, Michael Meacher, said afterward "What we hadn't reckoned with was the Seattle Police Department, who single-handedly managed to turn a peaceful protest into a riot."

Police freely used rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray. Pepper spray has become a standard weapon. It was not just sprayed over crowds, it was applied directly to the eyeballs of victims. The spray is ten times more concentrated than the hottest chili pepper, so that "it felt as if two red-hot pieces of steel were grinding into my eyes", to quote one police trainee.

There were ignorance and thuggery in the Battle of Seattle, but they were evidenced and perpetrated overwhelmingly by the WTO and its apologists and enforcers, not by the protesters.


	WTO: Vehicle for Corporate Hegemony Globalisation is making many people wealthy, but it is not about making the poor any richer. The Canberra Times, 30 November, 2000 Today is the first anniversary of "The Battle of Seattle", in which street protesters disrupted the Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation. An image widely presented by media was of an ignorant, violent rabble opposing the inevitable march of progress and prosperity. Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and evangelist for globalisation, vented an opinion typical of one view: the protesters were "a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960s fix." But who really were the ignorant parties in Seattle? And who was violent? The protesters were in fact very diverse, well informed and overwhelmingly peaceful. They included many people from around the world with first-hand experience of the effects of globalisation. Their goal was to force the WTO, and the world, to listen to the voices of the vast majority of humanity whose interests are not represented within the WTO. To this end a teach-in was organised for the weekend preceeding the WTO conference, featuring a diversity of speakers. About 2,500 people managed to squeeze into the teach-in, but evidently not many mainstream reporters made it. Nor did reporters seem to discover the welter of material released in the lead up to the conference, despite ample warning of the protests. When the protests started, the media by-and-large seemed to be indifferent to or bewildered by the protesters' points of view. The protests themselves involved peaceful resistance, for which many people had trained, some for hours, some for weeks. They succeeded in disrupting the WTO conference by blocking movement in the streets around the conference site. They overwhelmed police and other forces by weight of numbers, 40,000 to 60,000 people from over 700 organisations. One group, comprising perhaps 100 anarchists, conducted a well-planned window-smashing program, targeting corporations whose practices they regard as particularly exploitive. Predictably, media focussed on these destructive acts and tarred the whole protest with the brush of violence. So what was all the fuss about? What's wrong with the WTO? Many things are wrong with the WTO, and with the corporate globalisation that it is part of. Globalisation is making many people wealthy, and it has dramatically increased inequality, both between countries and within countries. However, globalisation is not making the poor any richer. In fact, the poorest in the poor countries are worse off, and the poorest in many wealthy countries are also worse off. Even in the USA, people on average incomes were no better off at the end of the 1990s than at their beginning, despite the so-called economic boom. So globalisation is not yielding prosperity for billions of people around the world. That claim is hype. Globalisation is really about corporate hegemony. Gargantuan transnational corporations are to have power over people, nations and resources of all kinds. They want to do business unimpeded by concerns for social equity, the environment or cultural differences. They want to exploit existing wealth. For example, they are patenting traditional crop varieties that have been developed and used in many countries for hundreds of years. Poor farmers then have to pay to use their traditional seed varieties, or pay to use a genetically modified corporate variety that also requires expensive pesticides and chemical fertilisers. Corporations have also set about buying up water rights in many poor countries, because accessible fresh water is becoming a scarce commodity. The Monsanto name became so odious because of such practices that the corporation has changed its name. The WTO is a prime vehicle for the program of corporate hegemony. Its rules are written mainly by the governments of the richest countries, with plentiful influence and advice from corporations and financiers, who often write the draft texts. Rules and legislation are so complex and voluminous that few legislators are able to read them properly, and they may not realise that the rules would prevent Europeans from blocking genetically modified food, they would allow the world's fresh water to be privatised, they would allow all forms of existing life to be patented, and they do not permit discrimination against products on the basis of exploitation of labour or the environment. The WTO is anti-democratic. None of the WTO officials was ever elected to their positions by a popular vote. The WTO does not assure due process or justice. Disputes brought to the WTO are adjudicated by three-member panels in secret with no rights of appeal. Panelists typically are government and corporate technocrats with no required evidence of worldly wisdom nor expertise in such things as genetics, the environment, anthropology, human rights and so on. The WTO directly violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It would override or undermine the Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and virtually any other present or future international treaty, convention, act or agreement. In short, the WTO is about overrunning national sovereignty and social autonomy. Cultural differences are being trampled. The purpose is not to promote wealth creation, but to allow corporations to exploit and extract existing wealth on behalf of the already wealthy. The WTO is also without rational justification. The conventional theory used to justify free trade and globalisation is the theory of comparative advantage, and central to this theory is the assumption that capital is not internationally mobile. Obviously this assumption is blatantly violated in the real world. With internationally mobile capital, free trade yields not mutual benefit to trading nations but a haemorrhaging of wealth into the hands of tiny financial elites in both rich and poor countries. Thus the WTO itself exhibits great ignorance. WTO apologists seem to be ignorant of the real effects of their policies, and they are evidently ignorant of the fundamental falsity and irrelevance of the theory that is used to justify corporate globalisation. The greatest violence in Seattle was perpetrated by police and other enforcers. The UK environment minister, Michael Meacher, said afterward "What we hadn't reckoned with was the Seattle Police Department, who single-handedly managed to turn a peaceful protest into a riot." Police freely used rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray. Pepper spray has become a standard weapon. It was not just sprayed over crowds, it was applied directly to the eyeballs of victims. The spray is ten times more concentrated than the hottest chili pepper, so that "it felt as if two red-hot pieces of steel were grinding into my eyes", to quote one police trainee. There were ignorance and thuggery in the Battle of Seattle, but they were evidenced and perpetrated overwhelmingly by the WTO and its apologists and enforcers, not by the protesters.