Honestly, my position is that both the "fix-it" and "nix-it" positions are non-viable, which is why I will fight with every fibre of my body to prevent the ideologues of either camp to win out and destroy the coalition of forces that made Seattle a success.
Obviously, the fix it "reforms" have at best ended mostly the worst stupid excesses of neoliberalism - slowing the "dam every river" WOrld Bank focus being the obvious example - which mostly constitutes saving capitalism from its own mistakes. Grant almost every point on that score. Children and adults starve and are enslaved in the global factory of production around the world, as AIDS and other diseases rage across continents as the first world pharmaceutical companies horde their medicine in the name of intellectual property. So a few nice words tacked onto trade accords are a pretty weak promise in the face of that massive death and oppression.
But the nix-it crowd is intellectually weak as well. Global capital will not fall to its knees if the IMF, World Bank and the WTO ceased to exist tomorrow. Its operations will be clumsier with more local and even global plunges, but it is not clear to me that the result would be a more equal distribution of power and wealth. I remember when we were fighting the NAFTA deal, Ross Perot was feeding all the anti-NAFTA lines about worker suffering and environmental destruction in the Mexican Macquilladoras in his debate with Al Gore. And Gore rightly noted that all of that destruction and exploitation was happening without NAFTA in place. The same is true without these global deals. Unless you subscribe to the crisis model of revolution - destabilize capitalism until everything goes to hell, then it's our turn - the nix-it position gets us little. The multinational institutions are just one factor in global capitalism and even as we battle them, letting these obvious signs of that global oppression become synonymous with it just leads to the illusion that their elimination solves the problem. Pat Buchanan can take a pure "nix-it" position, but that kind of racist nationalism is the only kind where it works on its own.
Instead, our battle as the global left is a lot tougher than either "fix-it" or "nix-it." We have to build anew, create the institutions of the new world in the cradle of the old, fight for a global democratic structure of peoples forces to overturn the power of global capitalist power. "Just say no" to global capitalism doesn't cut it. We need radical comprehensive treatment for the suffering of the disease, even while we creat the vaccine to end it. What is needed is a bridging of global boundaries to unite labor unions worldwide, create a global environmental force and a fight for global democratic suffrage in running the world economy,
And, damn it, a few window-breakers in Seattle are not going to do it. Not that often timid labor leaders in DC are going to do it on their own, but that's why we need everyone- hell, yeah "can't we call get along." That doesn't mean we don't criticize each other, even occasionally picket one another. I've written multiple times for LaborNotes in the fight for union democracy, slammed progressive institutions for failures of racism and had my own ass (rightly) in a sling at times for my own failures of vision. But even as I'll fight within the movement for the best vision, I will not declare any needed ally a permanent enemy but instead try to keep the revolutionary love for fellow activists in my heart even when I castigate them for their perceived failures.
And what is clear to me is that we are at that classic dialectic moment, when two bankrupt positions - "fix it" or "nix it" - have to be surmounted by a new synthesis of global challenge to the global order. And that synthesis will only happen if the broad parts of the Seattle coalition engage one another, understand the real critical perspectives each bring to the battle, and find the solutions that satisfy both. Because that solution, the one that transcends those differences and unifies, is the solution that will unify the broader society in global struggle.
-- Nathan Newman