"Ok, here's the deal. If you have to be "in" the circuits of transnational corporate-dominated trade/investment, under present circumstances, you simply get drained, if you're a low-income African country."
Okay, but by what and whom?
"The $ prices of your exports have crashed..."
But the rand prices have skyrocketed with the epidemic devaluation of local currencies in the 3rd world.
"...while trade lib has crashed your local capacity to import-substitute,..."
Meaning that imports from countries whose currencies you can barely pay for are still super-competitive in local markets. How so?
"you're paying typically more than 20% of earnings to the BWIs for repayment on debt taken out a quarter-century ago when your land was run by a dictator fueled by the Cold War, your ruling class structure is now even more dominated by compradors and parasites egged on by homegrown neoliberals,..."
Clearly.
"your import bill keeps soaring..."
Again, why, when foreign exchange is such a nightmare?
"and includes conspicuous-consumption goodies enjoyed by a tiny fraction of elites and expat foreign-aid staff (and NGO leaders),..."
So what?
"and today you've got "responsible" international allies like Oxfam trying to teach you that your poor people can rise up if only the int'l trading system was a bit more fair-"
Doesn't the focus on international trade come in part from the fact that internal economic development in the 3rd world has proven more than elusive despite years and years of socially-conscious advice? What do you think of the approach championed by Hernando de Soto and his Institute for Liberty and Democracy? Isn't there the Japan, Korea, Taiwan model? Isn't the IMF (whatever one thinks of their methods) just as focused on preserving the value of local currencies as the protectionists are? Isn't the value of local currencies essential? Isn't autarky a goal so unrealistic as to be unreasonable? If autarky is unrealistic, mustn't local currency hold value in international trade?
"-and the likes of Keynes and Daly get painted as "extremists."
Obviously the "extremist" label is silly, but can we say that Keynes may be significantly outdated?
Besides the disputes between persons and groups with which I'm unfamiliar, it seems to me that you arguments come down to these points:
"Research at Food First shows that global trade in agriculture has not provided new market access for poor farmers, but rather has destroyed the ability of farmers to grow food for their families and communities. It has resulted in dumping of cheap agricultural products in the Third World nations while undermining their domestic production."
Okay, but then you have as well to make the argument that cheap cash crops produced by 1st world farmers (subsidized, but also efficient) are worse for the people in the favellas and the shantytowns than more expensive cash crops produced by local subsistence farmers (inefficient).
"Daly's 1996 departure speech from the World Bank, where as environmental economist he was repeatedly frustrated, concluded optimistically, "Take it as a prediction--ten years from now the buzz words and hot concepts will be`renationalization of capital' and the `community rooting of capital for the development of national and local economies.'"
I think "re-nationalization of capital" and "community rooting of capital" are not the same thing at all. For development to progress, we have to know what local capitals are worth and that means monetizing them somehow, whether we call it "monetizing" or not.
"These are, even to my socialist ears, more sensible sentiments than Oxfam's utopian attempts to reform globalization through, in part, expanding the reach of multinational trading capital. Oxfam fails to recognise not only the merits of self-reliance, but also that enormous amount of socio-environmental damage is done by virtue of the transport, energy, packaging, marketing, waste and currency fluctuations associated with unnecessary cross-border trade of goods and services in the name of an alleged "comparative advantage," which in any case is mainly invented or artificial."
I think your argument against "transport, energy, packaging, marketing" is anti-development. You can't relegate people to subsistence farming. Interdependence is always superior to "self-reliance". I agree that there is a great deal that is artificial in trade, particularly in the matter of currency, but trade works for the first world, why shouldn't it work for the third world?