Klein & radicalism

Ken Hanly khanly at mb.sympatico.ca
Fri Apr 7 19:43:45 PDT 2000


That sounds like the good old left. This is certainly heartening. The term capitalism has almost disappeared from much leftist discourse.

There is a short article by Klein at:http://www.corpreform.org/NaomiKlein.html

Klein seems keen on regulating rather than overthrowing capitalism. Indeed as the students noted, the stress is on corporations especially big bad brand name corporations such as Monsanto, or Nike. She claims that it is the protesters who want rules and the corporations who want to do away with rules: " They (protesters) are demanding that national governments be free to exercise their authority without interference from the WTO and asking for stricter international rules governing labor standards, environmental policy, and scientific research...

WTO is only concerned with rules that regulate removal of rules."

The protesters, she claims, are for globalization but one incorporating these types of regulation rather than deregulation.

But regulation of this sort does not change the underlying capitalist relations of production. Certainly such regulation is desirable but it will also be limited by the demands of capital and the need for production of surplus value for the system to keep on going.

The power of the WTO to limit the authority of sovereign governments is for the most part a function of those sovereign governments. Agreements among these governments is the basis for WTO rules. The WTO has no independent power and "interferes" only through panels that make decisions as to whether agreed upon rules have been violated. The WTO does not even set up panels except when member countries request it, and it is not the WTO but countries that have been found to have "just" grievances that impose sanctions. The contrast between the weak sovereign governments and the powerful international WTO is not justified.

The WTO is also concerned with developing further positive regulations as well as deregulating. Various forms of intellectual property rights rules are crucial for the WTO--extending patent rights for 20 years in all member countries for example.

Cheers, Ken Hanly

Cheers, Ken Hanly

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Naomi Klein said on my radio show last night that over the last few
> weeks she's noticed that when she talks to student audiences, she's
> now getting the objection: "You keep talking about corporations. But
> isn't the real problem capitalism?" Things are happening out there...
>
> Doug



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