To whom...,
It seems to me that Marxists, particularly Marxists in and around the Seattle area, should come up with something a little better than a demonstration by workers on antiquated capitals against free trade. Free trade, as such, is something that socialism would clearly foster, if it could. What we protest against is capitalism, not markets, not free trade, not industrial development, and it is time to say that.
What capitalists say is true when they indicate some poor community that now has a capitalist factory in it. Things are better there because of the factory. The problem is that they are incrementally better for the people and vastly better for the capitalists. The problem is not investment and economic development, it's investment and economic development at any price. The "price" is not the displacement of workers on antiquated capitals. That, I think, is simply inevitable. The price is dislocation for such small gain.
The problem with capitalism is that positive change feeds an evil machine. Free trade is good. Washington state soft wheat farmers, including some of the few real family farms in the western U.S., now depend on Asian noodle consumers for their livelihood. Asia consumes vastly more soft wheat flour than Europe or America, per capita. So the protesters will be saying that to save, say, Sri Lankan orange growers we have to cut the throats of Washington wheat farmers. It makes no sense as a message. America grows soft wheat very well. Malaysia can't grow it. So should we tell the Malays they can't have wheat noodles because the owners of little Sri Lankan orange groves don't want to compete with California? I think not.
I think we want to point out that capitalists constantly present the world with false choices. We are constantly made to believe that we have to choose between lining rich pockets and economic underdevelopment, or supporting backwards domestic power structures (like Matahir of Malaysia) in order to save us from the capitalists. These are false choices. If capitalism leads us around like a donkey with a carrot and a stick, the answer is not to refuse to move and get beaten. The answer is to take the carrot.
The WTO and the rest of the bodies fostering globalization are simply trying to spread the "gentlemen's agreement" among capitalists to trust each other and take each other's credit money. The bourgeoisie are a far more uniform class than the working class. They are great consensus builders - among their own kind. So it seems elementary to protest manifestations of this global, bourgeois consensus-building like the WTO, so as not to let the consensus spread. It is not elementary, but simplistic. Capitalism, as the dominant mode of world production, can bide its time. Reactionaries and foot-draggers will eventually fall into step as surely as night follows day. Socialism needs global consensus and desires to foster it.
So, what then, cheerlead the WTO and hope to be around for the a stagist revolution? Not at all. But, don't protest the idea of free trade. Use peoples' suspicion of free trade to promote the ideas that capitalism gives us a false choice and there is a carrot to be grabbed out there. The left is throwing reformists and economic reactionaries to the fore. It should be forwarding progressives and economic revolutionaries. A simple "false choice" campaign would go a long way to bring people out of their dogmatic, capitalist thinking. Most people don't like capitalism, but they guess it's the only way to develop economically since the only people who seem to protest it are hippies, indios and small farmers - folks happier to be poor than they. Being poor and happy about it is what capitalists want people to be. People who demand economic development simply have to demand more. They have to demand development and the power to control that development themselves.
The world's problem is clearly not too much development or too much industrial technique and effort being brought to bear on the world's challenges. It is that industrial technique and effort are only being brought to bear on one challenge - how to make capitalists rich and keep them rich. It should be brought to bear on a challenge that is equally easy to define but far more complex, difficult and rewarding: how to make the working class rich and keep it rich.
peace