Turtles, Teamsters, and Capital's Designs

Monthly Review, July, 2000 by William K. Tabb

There is no doubt that Seattle was a major up for the left. Massive and militant demonstrations stopped business as usual. Media attention was widespread and managed to convey the protesters' serious sense of purpose and their critique of capital's model of globalization. The unity demonstrated in the now-famous turtle-teamster lovefest symbolized the healing of a breach between the ecological and anti-imperialist concerns of young people and an end to the narrow business unionism and Gold-War collaboration of the Meany-Kirkland years in the labor movement. A new left is emerging on campuses and in the streets among young people and renewed trade-union militance is more visible. The outrage at the loss of democratic control to global-state economic institutions has prompted a vital and promising internationalism.

The events in Seattle confront progressives with two interconnected questions. First, what can we do to make the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the other institutions of global governance democratically accountable? Second, how can we strengthen internationalist consciousness and build working-class solidarity? At the most general level, there need be no conflict between the answers to these questions. However, it is important to understand that, while the WTO and the IMF are undemocratic tools of transnational capital, so too are the governments that appoint the leaders of these institutions. The real issue is the class nature of both the international institutions and the states represented in them. Care must be taken, too, to recognize the tremendous co-optive power of capital. For example, the United Nations (UN), which has become a sort of institutional home for the thinking of those opposed to transnational capital and in favor of more socially and ecological ly balanced development, often acts as a safety valve for capital. That is, capital dominates the WTO and the IMF, and these organizations serve capital's designs, while capital confines its opponents to nonbinding resolutions and good intentions.

In Seattle, the critique of accumulation reached a new level of mass consciousness and breathed life into alternative visions. The "street heat" put muscle behind the challenge to labor exploitation, environmental degradation, and poverty We may be seeing a shift of historical importance. Yet social change is a slow process and we need to assess the impact of Seattle and the increased social activism with both an optimism of the spirit and a more critical intellect. We should look first at the connection between the institutions of global governance and the leading sectors of capital and then at elite designs in this post-Seattle period, focusing briefly on this year's meeting of the World Global Forum in Davos, Switzerland; turn to the long-term perspective of globalist policy makers; note issues surrounding labor regulation and sustainable development; and end with a closer look at the significance of the WTO decision on sea turtles and the future of progressive struggle. The contours of class struggle are changing. Seattle and the response to it is a helpful lens through which to examine some important aspects of those changes.

Elite Policy-Making

While new forms of governance are being imposed by the WTO, the IMF, and other global-state economic institutions, these organizations hardly initiate the rules. Rather, before any of these organizations meet, the United States makes proposals which are discussed within the QUAD--a group composed of the United States, the European Union (EU), Japan, and Canada--which convenes separately and, in secrecy, makes key decisions without the participation of the other members of the world community. The QUAD is not recognized in any of their charters, but it acts as an executive committee that determines their direction. In Seattle, the vast majority of WTO members waited outside the exclusive Green Room meetings, as they were called, for the QUAD to reach decisions that would then be discussed by the body. It was clear to the other delegates that they were essentially excluded from real decision-making. Thanks to the tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets outside, delegates were encouraged to say no to the QUAD's demands. It was the most assertive participation from the developing world at any such gathering.

Behind the officials representing the QUAD are the corporations they serve. Personnel move back and forth between lobbyists for and leadership of giant corporations, the biggest banks, and the leading legal firms, and what is called public service. Corporate groups such as the Business Roundtable in the United States, the European Roundtable of Industrialists in Europe, the Business Council on National Issues in Canada, and the Keidanren in Japan consult closely with the officials who go first to QUAD meetings and then to the general gatherings that the broad membership of the noncore states attend. Through this process, the desires of the dominant sectors of the capitalist class are first negotiated and then imposed on weaker capitals and the workers of the world.