WTO Summit in Cancun and Singapore Issues

Dividing the World Between Rich and Poor

By Lil Joe

The WTO summit took place in context of the most serious economic and political rift between the United States and Western European countries since the Second World War.  The bourgeoisie of capitalist countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America has instructed their respective governments to take full economic advantage of both the economic and political contradictions between these two industrial capitalist giants.

The competition between the United States and the European Union, S. Korea, Japan surfaced in the areas of protectionism – e.g. the recent 'banana wars, memory semiconductors from S. Korea to the EU, and conversely ships from S. Korea to E.U. and the steel wars in which the EU is threatening sanctions on the U.S. for erecting 'illegal' tariffs, the steel and the 'lumber war' between the U.S. and Canada.

It is in this context that the breakdown in negotiations about Singapore issues – trade, investment, competition, and transparency in government procurement has to be analyzed in detail.  This piece is not that analysis, as the information is massive and must be painstakingly sifted and analyzed.

I am able to say, however, that the European Union was the real loser in this breakdown of confidence, although the EU provides more aid and technical assistance to African and Asian countries than the U.S. and Britain, whose major activities have been bombing and destroying Asian and African countries, while Israel with U.S. funds and weapons has been  killing Palestinians and destroying their homes.

Nevertheless every capitalist acts on his or her own interests, whether this means joining, or associating, or disassociating. Objectively and subjectively (that is economically and politically) the 3rd world bourgeois countries are in a strong position to take economic advantage of the contradictions between the industrial giants at this moment by demanding special treatment, which is what the disputes regarding the "Singapore Issues" are all about.

It's a smart move on the part of the politico-economic representatives of the 3rd world bourgeois states. And well articulated by well-rehearsed demagogues both in the Sessions and in the streets and on the web where they were able to manipulate guilty White liberals and ethnic nationalists of Africa and African origin and Asians to support these coloured capitalists as if by doing so they were contributing to the ending of '3rd World Poverty'. Good Game!

By posing the issue of “rich” countries versus “poor” countries -- or/and, alternately rich White "1st world" countries against poor "3rd world" people of colour -- the rich capitalists, kings, chiefs and politicians of the "poor 3rd world countries" are able to divide the world between rich and poor. Thus circumventing both global and national class realities to hold up the image of their respective impoverished countries as if they are themselves the “poor,” or representing the poor rather than their own selfish class interests.

Remember as you read this that the "crops" and "manufactured" goods that are being grown or manufactured in Asia, Africa and Latin American capitalist countries are owned by capitalists of those countries, or/and transnational investments or are state property, but not by workers and peasants.  The favors granted to capitalists in the 3rd world countries, will be enabling the “national bourgeoisie” of the capitalist countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America to sell on the United States and European Union markets commodities produced by proletarian surplus-labour in the third world countries. 

The outcome is the national capitalists in 3rd World countries gaining greater access to European and American customers while at the same time keeping domestic crops priced relatively higher by protectionist tariffs, will enrich those capitalists by maximizing sells at home and abroad but will not end poverty in Africa and Asia or Latin America. Rather, relative poverty works in the interests of the bourgeoisie in those countries, by keeping wages low (the reversal of industrial Fordism in the EU and U.S.) in export produce, cheaply produced thus underselling domestic crops in Europe and America.

The working-class has no interests in tariffs, e.g. American workers as a class do not benefit from the Democratic Party and Bush slapping a 30% duty on imported steel, which while maximizing profits for domestic steel products as opposed to cheaper imported steel only increases the price of production and final goods domestically produced and sold at artificially engendered higher prices to cover the increased cost of production.

Increased supply increases competition, and the result will be lower prices overall.  But the capitalists would by this lessen profits in proportion to which prices and therefore profits decline over time. Workers of every country as consumers benefit by lower prices and to that extent it is in their interests as consumers to eliminate all tariffs and duties.

But the bourgeoisie of capitalist countries in the 3rd world want to place protectionist barriers on cheaper and higher quality commodities imported from Japan, and South Korea as well as the European Union and the United States.

Given the context the disunity of the bourgeoisie of the capitalist industrial countries, the bourgeoisie in the poorer, agrarian countries are banding together to take advantage of the rising political crisis in Europe – especially the emerging economic war between the United States and the European Union as manifested politically in German, French and Russian capitalist governments opposition to the U.S. war against and occupation of Iraq.

Nevertheless the global capitalist class is a cosmopolitan corporation and WTO is nothing but their open meeting to figure ways to maintain high profits and minimize the mutually destructive side of capitalist competition.  The workers neither in the industrialized capitalist countries, nor those where economics is based in agriculture stand to gain from controlled capitalist competition.

The capitalists, Black or White, have no material interests in common with workers.  Their class interests are mutually exclusive: where capitalists as producers are buyers of labour-power the workers are sellers, whose labour is consumed reappearing in the products as value of the commodities that workers, as consumers, must purchase as means of subsistence.  Thus where capitalists are sellers (of the products of proletarian labour) proletarians are buyers.

Proletarians are also a cosmopolitan class. Workers must become proletarian conscious of its cosmopolitan interests.  Workers in capitalist countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America who by selling their labour-power to the national bourgeoisie sell the rights to the products of their labour, alienated labour, the same as proletarians do in Japan, Korea, Europe and North America.

Those who own the earth and natural resources, as parcels of private property -- the landowners and bourgeois states -- and those who own industrial capital, commercial institutions and the banks - produce nothing but are owners of everything. The capitalist class in each country is the most powerful, economically dominate class of that country, and as such is the most powerful, politically dominate class in those countries.  The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole national bourgeoisie.

These are the governments that send Foreign Ministers to the U.N. to represent their respective national bourgeois political interests in an international body which manage the common interests of the various nations-states. The WTO is the same, to which Ministers of Finance and Treasuries participate each representing its governments particular interests.

Given the context of global rivalry and increased conflicts of interests between the E.U. and the U.S., Japanese and Korean capitalists, represented in WTO, as well as their conflicts of political interests in the U.N., the bourgeoisie in the poorer, agrarian countries are banning together to take full advantage of the rising political crisis and economic rivalries.

The usefulness of the U.N. as a mediating body within which capitalist governments - in particular the economic and political powers who are the Permanent Members of the Security Council, plus Germany and Japan - were able to come together to resolve political conflicts of interests has been partially if not fatally wounded by the Unilateralist policies of the United State: its War on and Occupation of Iraq. What is new is that Germany, and France have for the first time since the close of World War Two had the industrial and political power to resist U.S. bullying.

The industrial economies of nations in the European Union and Japan are dependent on oil from the Middle East.  The United States, by placing its military forces in Arabia, Kuwait and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, has placed itself in position to blackmail the European Union and Japan.  This is the real reason the bourgeois governments of France and Germany opposed the War against and Occupation of Iraq.  The U.S. Security Council was unable to hold the United States in check.  

At the same time, the United States domination of NATO is also at risk, by the reconstructing of a European army, and their alliance with Russia in the U.N. vis-à-vis the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, is a checkmate to U.S. military expansion of NATO into Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and now into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Georgia.

It is in this economic and geopolitical context that the conflicts at the WTO summit in Cancun and the Singapore issues, are to be analyzed and understood.

As the political world body, the United Nations is on the verge of collapse, So, similarly the collapse of the WTO summit, in that it failed to reach a consensus of global capitalist commonality of interest, is an indication that WTO is doomed to the same fate as its political corollary, the U.N.

But that's good.  By capitalist states each pursuing their own national bourgeois' interests, the collapse of the WTO will eliminate whatever illusory checks the world capitalists had on the United States, and U.S. unilateralist arrogance will both isolate U.S. imperialism internationally and also thereby reveal to the working-class in the U.S. just what in fact the United States is. 

The American working-class must become disillusioned before they drop their reactionary patriotism and join with the rest of the world’s workers in a struggle for socialism.  By collapsing the naked period of ruthless competition between the major industrial capital blocs – primarily the EU, the U.S. Japan, and South Korea – will compel workers in these countries to take state power, and by it the productive forces.

The looming economic war between the United States and the European Union, as manifested politically in German, French, and Russian capitalist governments opposition to the U.S. war against and occupation of Iraq, will have profound repercussions on the respective national economies.  This will engender the kind of practical-critical thinking in the workers of these economic blocs, who must choose to join with the workers of every country as that alone will prevent World War Three. 

The American workers, politically tied to the Democratic Party, and patriotic rather than class conscious is of course the random factor.

The capitalists own everything in the World and have their international economic summits, including but not limited to WTO, and their international political organizations including but not limited to the U.N. Proletarians need to recognize that the WTO and UN are economic and political agencies of cosmopolitan capital and all the demands for changes in these bodies are in the interests of capital, not labour. 

From the standpoint of class conscious workers of all countries, there is a single solution to the emerging economic crisis and that is to seize the productive forces from the capitalist class and by transferring the means of production from private capital to public property, put an end to commodity production, wage-labour, property, money, and there upon put the technology in place – in the hands of 3rd world proletarians to eliminate poverty.  We must do this ourselves alone.

The class struggles of the proletariat in the industrialized countries are breaking out into sharp political combat with each of its own capitalist class and bourgeois government.  Though not in substance, yet in form, the class war assumes a national character.  Waves of economic and political strikes in Germany, England, and especially Japan, France, Italy and Argentina, on one hand, also the peasants wars against White landowners in Zimbabwe and South Africa and Brazil, on the other, are the context and inspiration for this writing.

American workers, however, are politically tied to the Democratic Party, the Party of domestic capital in opposition to the Republican Party, the Party of finance capital and transnational capital.  The American workers are consequently reactionary and patriotic and believe the U.S. imperialism is god's gift to the world – they see U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq as “liberation,” and whereas in England the rail and dock workers refused to load or take military hardware, to be used in the war on Iraq -- the same time the American Longshore strikes in California crossed their own picket lines to load military cargo!

There were millions of unionized socialist, labour, and communist workers in the streets in opposition both to their own parties and governments as well as in opposition to Anglo-American aggression against, and occupation of Iraq. By the millions, workers took to the streets in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia. 

Where are those millions of workers now? Where are the hundreds of thousands of French workers that have routinely engaged in wildcat strikes against the government including when it was being managed by Socialist and Communist party government.

They are out there and as angry as ever.

The petty-bourgeois and anarchist and trade union bureaucrats together with NGOs and ethnic nationalists of the anti-globalism crowd were displaced by wild-cat working class political mobilizations against the Anglo-American aggressions.

Joe_Radical@earthlink.net

update 27 June 2008