The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy

Christian Century, Oct 28, 1998 by John B Cobb Cobb, Jr.

THOSE OF US on the left who the ideology of free trade are sometimes accused of having strange bedfellows, notably Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan. But this meeting of left and fight may not be so surprising. The differences that once divided the major political parties have been superseded by new issues on which the dominant Republican and Democratic forces converge.

Buchanan quotes Christian Kopf as saying: "The real divisions of our time are not between left and right but between nations and the globalist delusion." Buchanan agrees with Kopf that nations should maintain or recover their sovereignty. For the opposing position, Buchanan quotes George C. Ball: "The urgent need of modern man [is] to use the world's resources in the most efficient manner. That can be achieved only when, all the factors necessary for the production and use of goods--capital, labor, raw materials and plant facilities--are freely mobilized and deployed according to the most efficient pattern--and that in turn will be possible only when national boundaries n0 longer play a critical role in defining economic horizons."

Ball's view has become orthodoxy in both political parties, in the world of business and finance and in the universities. Even those who oppose particular steps toward the realization of this vision often insist that they accept the ideal. Those who believe that this transfer of power from political to economic institutions is unwise, even disastrous, are in the minority. No dissident voice is louder or clearer on this topic than Patrick Buchanan's.

Of course, since he speaks from the Republican right and I am a former leftist Democrat who has become a Green, I am not always comfortable with his formulations. I came to my opposition to free trade chiefly from seeing its effects on Third World people and the natural environment. Buchanan shows no interest either in the environment or in the Third World. He writes as an ardent U.S. nationalist. He asserts that it is the rightful nature of nations to compete; hence, America needs to look out for itself. Buchanan has little interest in international cooperation for the common good.

Despite our differences, Buchanan and I share a deep concern for the effects of free trade on U.S. workers. While our nation's elite have celebrated the great prosperity brought by globalizing the economy, wages have declined. Buchanan provides some sobering statistics. "Between 1972 and 1994, real wages of working Americans fell 19 percent." The gap between the minimum wage and a living wage increases.

In order to maintain the lifestyle to which families became accustomed during healthier times, even mothers with young children must enter the work force. "In 1960 only 18 percent of women with children under the age of six were in the work force; by 1995 the figure had soared to 63 percent." Despite the second income working mothers provide, "in the first six years of the 1990s, the median family income fell 6 percent." Meanwhile, unemployment rises among American men. "Since 1966 the share of American men with jobs has fallen from 85.4 percent to 76.8 percent. Idle men end up in trouble, often in prison, where 1.1 million American males now reside." Buchanan's conversion to economic nationalism resulted from becoming aware of the losses sustained by the American working class.

Buchanan also deplores the ever growing division of America into a class society. He notes that "America's wealthiest 1 percent, which controlled 21 percent of America's wealth in 1949, now [1995] controls 40 percent... Top CEO salaries--44 times the average wage of a worker in 1965--have soared to 212 times." For Buchanan the globalization of the economy explains the decline in the position of American workers. This globalization has ended the epoch of responsible nationalist industrialists whose patriotism was expressed in concern for both their stockholders and their workers. These are Buchanan's heroes. He barely acknowledges the role of labor unions in improving the condition of workers or the systematic weakening of these unions, to which globalization was a major contributor.

Buchanan also ignores factors other than globalization that have contributed to the impoverishment of workers. For example, the tax burden has steadily shifted from the rich to the poor. Although Buchanan protests the increased burden of taxes on workers, he does not criticize the easing of the burden on the rich.

A still more important factor ignored by Buchanan has been the victory of the standard economic theory that 5 to 7 percent unemployment is needed to prevent inflation. Despite lack of evidence to support it, this theory has determined our economic policy during the same period that the globalization of the economy has accelerated. It makes a permanent underclass a centerpiece of national policy, to be enforced by the Federal Reserve Board through its control of interest rates. This national commitment to high unemployment means that those who are currently unemployed can find work only by displacing those who now work. Importing farm workers from Mexico, legally and illegally, also ensures competition for low-paying work. National leaders can then play off hardworking, low-paid laborers against immigrants and those who receive the dole, directing workers' resentments away from those who control the economy and prevent full employment. Buchanan has nothing to say about how these policies exacerbate the problem of the poor.