<html><div style='background-color:'> <DIV><HTML> <DIV> <DIV><HTML> <P>In "The Meaning of Doha," Walden Bello wrote that "a deep global recession brought about by the indiscriminate locking together of economies by accelerated trade and financial liberalization...cannot but erode the...WTO."</P> <P><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">The Financial Times Wednesday reported: "According to some authoritative estimates, a successful trade round would increase global economic income by hundreds of billion dollars [sic] over several years."</FONT></P> <P><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">Ignore the common mercantilist illusion that trade can increase "income."  The common assumption underlying the Times' "authoritative sources" and Walden Bello is that the function of the WTO is to mediate distribution of "income," whether increasing or decreasing, among its 142 members.  The WTO functionaries support the "free market," invisible hand as mediator.  Bello prefers a more down to earth mediation, men legislating rules and regulations that ensure a equal, or to use the bourgeois terminology, a just distribution.</FONT></P> <P><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">In Marx's draft introduction to the Grundrisse he states explicitly, "The structure of distribution is entirely determined by the structure of production."  In Vol. 1 of Capital Marx states that the general law of the capitalist mode of production is the accumulation of wealth at one pole and poverty at the other.  In this context we are dealing with the North and South poles, so to speak.  Hence, distribution under the capitalist mode of production is inherently "unjust" and can be aggravated or ameliorated, but not eliminated.</FONT></P> <P><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">The analysis of the interconnections of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption made by Marx needs to be better know by activists who deal with economic problems.  They focus on increasing consumption to a "just" level in less developed areas.  But before consumption comes exchange (the global trading system), and before exchange comes distribution.  In other words the distribution of wealth takes place before the exchange of commodities.  This is also why commodity exchange does not produce "income".  We have already seen that the mode of distribution is based "entirely" on the the mode of production.</FONT></P> <P><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">Lack of an understanding of these interconnections results in activists moving from economic analysis of economic problems to arguments based on subjective moralities, where omnes est vanitas, and grasping for the wind. </FONT></P> <P><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff"></FONT> RS</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at <a href='http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag_itl_EN.asp'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></html>