People's WTO (Kovel article)

In reply to a post by Henwood and an article by Kovel  --

Kovel's proposal for a  WTO looks very interesting -- a creative way of
bringing together red and green ideas with an interesting way of blending
"local" and "global".  I would not sign it quite yet, due to reservations
about all kinds of details (and lack of knowledge on many details), but it's
very imaginative, innovative and avantgardist.

Gert Kohler
Oakville, Canada

APPENDIX:

Doug Henwood wrote 08 December 1999 Re: Semiperipheral Delinking and Global
Democratic Socialism:
Joel Kovel has a proposal for a People's WTO at
<http://www.greens.org/ny/tohtml.cgi?kovel/wto.htm>. He & I would be
interested in comments.

GK's EXCERPTS FROM THE ARTICLE:
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Beyond the World Trade Organization
                               by Joel Kovel

....>snip (several pages)

Let us replace the World Trade Organization with the "World People's Trade
Organization." From what has been said so far, the WPTO would need to have
the following properties:

   * It would have to be controlled by and responsible to a confederation
     of popular bodies organized on a global basis.
   * It would have to set parameters for regulating trade in accordance
     with the freeing of all beings.

As for the former goal, control of trade would be principally in the hands
of the producers and consumers of goods, and not in those of the middlemen
and financiers, or the corporate elites who now dominate economic life. To
use a contemporary piece of jargon, it would be control by "stakeholders"
rather than "shareholders."

...>snip

The core function of the WPTO would be the setting of a price structure
according to which trade would be carried out. The key here would be to
introduce--and enforce--an alternative calculus of pricing relative to that
of the prevailing system. In place of the dominant calculus according to
which goods are traded by their profitability to capitalists, we need an
order wherein goods are traded according to their "ecological prices" (EP).
The computation of such prices would go along with determining the
differential between EP's and prices on the capitalist markets, and by the
exacting of tariffs accordingly.

...>snip

Finally, it would be inherent in the working of the WPTO to set severe
limits on the reckless flows of capital that now mark the world system. It
should be quite possible to set EP's on capital flows as well as the
transfer of material commodities, the only distinction being that here a
tax rather than a tariff is computed and collected--and similarly
redirected toward ecological development (the notion of "Tobin taxes" may
serve as a model in this instance).

Through these various measures, the WPTO will be unable to carry out the
ecological override that is the hallmark of the WTO. Nor, equally, will it
be able to foster trade that favors sweatshops, maquiladoras and the like,
in other words, the trading of products whose value is created out of the
degradation and exploitation of labor. Needless to add, it will have no
interest at all in doing so inasmuch as its composition is
popular-democratic and its principle of operation is the fostering of
ecological relationships.

Although this proposal is undeniably radical in relation to the existing
system of capitalist trade, it should not be regarded as an end stage in
the development of an ecological society. Rather is it meant to be
transitional to that society--a use of pricing and market mechanisms to
bring down the existing market system. Clearly this can only work on the
basis of a tremendous and sustained political input of popular-ecological
forces, organized around the globe, whose energies are concentrated on
carrying out this project. It is out of that organization that the further
transformation of society will take place. And it is here that the green
philosophy will find its realization.

[end of article]