the strange bedfellows problem

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Left and right cosy up in war against free trade

Charlotte Denny
Monday May 13, 2002
The Guardian

The success of Jean Marie Le Pen in the French elections has prompted an
attack of the vapours in the anti-globalisation movement over the way in
which ultra-right groups throughout Europe have been appropriating many
of their ideas, including opposition to free trade.

Many of the millions of people who have protested on social justice
issues such as debt and unfair trade outside international meetings over
the past four years are genuinely horrified at the racists who have
joined their bandwagon.

For the intellectual leaders behind the protests, their new allies should
come as less of a surprise. It has been dubbed the anti-globalisation
movement's dirty little secret - the close kinship between the arguments
of opponents of free trade on the far left and the far right.

In America groups such as Public Citizen, the organising force behind the
Seattle protests, unashamedly made common cause with the right-wing
presidential candidate Pat Buchanan when they were battling to defeat
fast-track approval of trade treaties, even though some of his views on
abortion and race relations made his erstwhile allies gag.

Public Citizen believed that the ends justified the means and they have
many goals in common with Mr Buchanan and the far right. In the US, both
far right and far left de monise the World Trade Organisation, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Conservatives in America dislike any form of international regulation
which trammels the market and America's right to act unilaterally.

Meanwhile, the left in the US has largely abandoned the progressive
internationalist tradition which motivated the wartime founders of the
bank andthe IMF.

When the Bretton Woods twins were captured by the neo-liberals during the
1980s, the left should have fought back and argued for reform. Instead,
large parts of the US far left now call for the abolition of the only
international institutions with any power to mitigate the inequalities of
the global economy.

On trade, the far left's position is even more short sighted. They have
chanelled the outrage against inequal ities in the world economy, which
motivates millions of their followers to take to the streets, into an
anti-trade position which is damaging to the interests of the poor.

Under the banner of social justice they march alongside unions and firms
whose main interest is in protecting relatively well off workers in the
north from competition from the south. They are too timid to attack the
real inequities in the global trading system - the vast subsidies poured
into farming in the north which artificially depress the prices of
agricultural goods and destroy the livelihoods of southern farmers.

Properly managed, trade has the power to lift millions out of poverty as
the experience of the Asian tiger economies demonstrates. As well as
tackling the racists who have crept into its broad tent, the
anti-globalisation movement, if it wants to become a true social justice
movement, must defeat the arguments of the anti-trade lobby on the left
and the right.

Some free trade opponents would argue that there is an alternative to
liberalisation - a return to local economies and local trade.

Leaving aside the shaky intellectual foundations of this argument which
would marginalise poor countries on the fringes on the world trading
system , locked in subsistence economies, it is no great surprise to hear
similar ideas being voiced by Mr Le Pen.

Proponents of localisation genuinely believe that international trade is
a lose-lose proposition - a global race to the bottom which harms workers
in the north and the south. But their arguments are attractive to ultra
nationalists whose dislike of trade is rooted in a xenophobia which veers
at times into straight racism.

Complaining that foreign workers are stealing our markets is just a short
step from complaining that immigrants are stealing our jobs.