Heller foresaw Seattle backlash
Sir,
The sad loss of Joseph Heller is an opportunity to celebrate his remarkable prescience. Catch-22 caught the anti-authoritarian spirit of the Vietnam war protests even though his novel was about the second world war. But the great man also foresaw the backlash against big business at the recent World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle, styled as the most significant protests on US soil since Vietnam.
In a past interview with your paper (March 1998), Joseph Heller described his character Milo, a wartime business opportunist, in this way: "Like capitalism . . . he provided good things and bad things. He didn't think about consequences. He was anti-social and unpatriotic. In fact, he was the forerunner of the multinational corporation and the global economy."
It was understanding these issues that made protesters in Seattle called for a halt to unthinking trade liberalisation and asked a basic question: what are the circumstances under which trade will increase the well-being of people living in poverty? Today, like the poor soldiers in Catch-22 who suffered as a result of Milo's speculative trading, most poor people and poor countries are not in a position to negotiate good deals either at the WTO or with multinational enterprises. The least developed countries feel compelled to liberalise, but on terms they cannot hope to benefit from - Catch-22.
Famously, Heller's character Milo sold his fellow airmen's parachutes for their silk, promising a high return. The deal went bad, leaving no profit, no parachutes and several very nervous air crews flying through dangerous skies - a lesson for us all.
Andrew Simms, Head of the Global Economy Programme, New Economics Foundation, Cinnamon House, 6-8 Cole Street, London SE1 4YH, UK
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Carl
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