homes.
John Clarke didn’t organize a riot and neither did OCAP. They just didn’t stop it.
II
FENCING IN DEMOCRACY
TRADE AND TRADE-OFFS
In which citizens discover that the
true price of “free trade” is the
power to govern themselves
Democracy in Shackles
Who benefits from free trade?
June 2001
During the April 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, U.S. President George W. Bush proclaimed that the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would help usher in “a hemisphere of liberty.” Explicitly linking globalization and democracy, Bush argued that “people who operate in open economies eventually demand more open societies.”
Does globalization really foster democracy? It depends on the kind of globalization we create. The current system simply outsources decision making to opaque and non-representative institutions, but there are other choices available. At home and on the world stage, democracy is a choice, one that demands constant vigilance and renewal.
President Bush seems to have a different vision. Like so many defenders of the current global economic model, he argues that democracy is not so much an active choice as a trickle-down effect of economic growth: free markets create free peoples. Would that democracy really were such a laissez-faire matter. Unfortunately, investors have proven themselves all too willing to support oppressive monarchies like Saudi Arabia’s, or Communist authoritarianism in China, as long as these regimes crack open markets to foreign companies. In the race for cheap labour and precious natural resources, pro-democracy movements are often trampled.
Sure, capitalism thrives in representative democracies that embrace pro-market policies such as privatization and deregulation. But what about when citizens make democratic choices that aren’t so popular with foreign investors? What happens when they decide to nationalize the phone company, for instance, or to exert greater control over their oil and mineral wealth? The bodies tell the story.
When Guatemala’s democratically elected government introduced sweeping land ownership reforms in the 1950s, breaking up the monopoly held by the U.S.’s United Fruit Company, the country was bombed and the government ousted. At the time, the U.S. claimed it was an inside job, but nine years later, president Dwight D. Eisenhower reflected that, “We had to get rid of a Communist government that had taken over.” When General Suharto staged his bloody coup in Indonesia in 1965, he did so with co-operation from the United States and Europe. Roland Challis, the BBC’s Southeast Asia correspondent at the time, maintains that “getting British companies and the World Bank back in there was part of the deal.” Similarly, it was “free market” forces in the United States that instigated the military overthrow of democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973, eventually leading to his death. (At the time, Henry Kissinger famously commented that a country shouldn’t be allowed to “go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”)
The current open talk in Washington about the need to unseat Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez shows that this deadly logic didn’t die with the Cold War. But these days,the free market’s interference with democracy usually takes subtler forms. It’s a directive from the International Monetary Fund requiring governments to introduce user fees in health care, or to slash billions from public services, or to privatize a water system. It’s a plan cooked up by the World Bank to erect a massive dam, implemented without consulting the communities displaced by the project, ones whose way of life will disappear. It’s a World Bank report calling for more “flexibility” in the labour market of a heavily indebted country—including restrictions on collective bargaining—in order to attract foreign investors. (If they resist and defend
John Clarke didn’t organize a riot and neither did OCAP. They just didn’t stop it.
II
FENCING IN DEMOCRACY
TRADE AND TRADE-OFFS
In which citizens discover that the
true price of “free trade” is the
power to govern themselves
Democracy in Shackles
Who benefits from free trade?
June 2001
During the April 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, U.S. President George W. Bush proclaimed that the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would help usher in “a hemisphere of liberty.” Explicitly linking globalization and democracy, Bush argued that “people who operate in open economies eventually demand more open societies.”
Does globalization really foster democracy? It depends on the kind of globalization we create. The current system simply outsources decision making to opaque and non-representative institutions, but there are other choices available. At home and on the world stage, democracy is a choice, one that demands constant vigilance and renewal.
President Bush seems to have a different vision. Like so many defenders of the current global economic model, he argues that democracy is not so much an active choice as a trickle-down effect of economic growth: free markets create free peoples. Would that democracy really were such a laissez-faire matter. Unfortunately, investors have proven themselves all too willing to support oppressive monarchies like Saudi Arabia’s, or Communist authoritarianism in China, as long as these regimes crack open markets to foreign companies. In the race for cheap labour and precious natural resources, pro-democracy movements are often trampled.
Sure, capitalism thrives in representative democracies that embrace pro-market policies such as privatization and deregulation. But what about when citizens make democratic choices that aren’t so popular with foreign investors? What happens when they decide to nationalize the phone company, for instance, or to exert greater control over their oil and mineral wealth? The bodies tell the story.
When Guatemala’s democratically elected government introduced sweeping land ownership reforms in the 1950s, breaking up the monopoly held by the U.S.’s United Fruit Company, the country was bombed and the government ousted. At the time, the U.S. claimed it was an inside job, but nine years later, president Dwight D. Eisenhower reflected that, “We had to get rid of a Communist government that had taken over.” When General Suharto staged his bloody coup in Indonesia in 1965, he did so with co-operation from the United States and Europe. Roland Challis, the BBC’s Southeast Asia correspondent at the time, maintains that “getting British companies and the World Bank back in there was part of the deal.” Similarly, it was “free market” forces in the United States that instigated the military overthrow of democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973, eventually leading to his death. (At the time, Henry Kissinger famously commented that a country shouldn’t be allowed to “go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”)
The current open talk in Washington about the need to unseat Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez shows that this deadly logic didn’t die with the Cold War. But these days,the free market’s interference with democracy usually takes subtler forms. It’s a directive from the International Monetary Fund requiring governments to introduce user fees in health care, or to slash billions from public services, or to privatize a water system. It’s a plan cooked up by the World Bank to erect a massive dam, implemented without consulting the communities displaced by the project, ones whose way of life will disappear. It’s a World Bank report calling for more “flexibility” in the labour market of a heavily indebted country—including restrictions on collective bargaining—in order to attract foreign investors. (If they resist and defend
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