more WTO

[Patrick Bond]

I saw Bhagwati when he was keynoter (and recipient of a strange 
prize) at an anti-neoliberalism conference in a small Korean city a 
couple of months ago. Trying very hard to win hearts and minds 
there, he very explicitly pronounced himself an "NGO of 1" to lobby 
other NGOs and governments in favour of his free trade rap -- which 
eventually was turned into a letter signed by quite a few leading 
lights from the South (including, I think somewhat ill-advisedly, the 
otherwise more consistent Walden Bello). Anyhow, while I entirely 
agree with you Max, I have to concede that Bhagwati's explicit 
delinking of finance from trade, did actually did resonate with a 
strange but influential fraction of the Korean ruling class -- co-
sponsors of the conference, which was also a site for terrific inputs 
by the "PD" (left People's Democracy) side of the social movement 
community (as well as the "NL" National Liberation folk advocating 
unity with NK) and by the still-marxist KCTU -- as this liberal 
capitalist fraction was blaming their problems, obviously, just on 
the crumbling "international financial architecture" not on capitalism 
(and being exporters naturally they liked Bhagwati's line). 
Interestingly, their proposal to deal with their own financial crisis 
(and no one else's!) was to call for a national "debt redemption 
movement" -- which harked back to a moment earlier in the century 
when anti-Japanese, anti-banking, anti-imperialism sentiments 
united the Korean people -- to try to get ordinary Koreans to dig 
deep into their pockets to pay the loans that got Daewoo and all 
the rest into so much trouble. It was a most bizarre few days, I 
must say, trying to sort out who was saying what, why, and how. 
Bhagwati was ultimately rebutted, however, by all the SK lefty 
types and visitors (eg, by even the chief economist of Unctad), the 
more the conversations continued.

Just goes to show how immensely contested the underlying 
ideologies are in all of this. And how they play into varying 
fractions' material interests.

On 19 Dec 99, at 22:44, Max Sawicky wrote:
> OF COURSE capital mobility and free trade are linked.
> The ideology is precisely the same.  The technical
> economics may be different,  but politically this has
> no apparent meaning at this time.  The fact that J.
> Bhagwhati can call for one and not the other doesn't
> matter too much.  Old J. called NAFTA a trade bloc,
> not free trade, and this old world kept right on turnin'.
> Joe Stiglitz talked about capital controls and he's
> leaving the WB.  Saying you can do one and not the
> other is like saying General Motors would let you
> nationalize Ford and Chrysler.

Patrick Bond
(Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management)
home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg
office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus
mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050
phones:  (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729
emails:  (h) pbond at wn.apc.org; (o) bondp at zeus.mgmt.wits.ac.za