The Broad Perspective
Supporters of the FTAA believe that when the day is done, the economic
benefits of the FTAA will outweigh the environmental and humanitarian
costs. Protesters don't. This is making the all-too-naive assumption that
most supporters of the FTAA have actually considered the environmental and
humanitarian costs. I was listening to the CBC on Monday after the Summit
weekend and a Manitoba resident came on a call-in show to say he didn't
know what the protesters were protesting about, and he didn't care. He
thought the security cost too much money and that it was the protesters'
fault. (Because we all know how much input the protesters had in the
Summit security budget.) Another caller said that he couldn't understand
why so many people were against free trade when the economic benefits were
so obvious. (His bank account, I'm sure, looks great what with all those
deposits and no withdrawals?) This is all to say nothing of the
assumptions being made about the economic benefits. Even if the FTAA did
benefit Canada and her citizens, it may be at the cost of the citizens of
the other countries included in the FTAA. But in a good game of Capitalism
that's only fair. We—that is, North Americans—are winning so far aren't
we?
(A note for the Levi-Straussians: If I criticize capitalism, that doesn't
mean I'm a communist. If I criticize democracy, that doesn't mean I'm an
anarchist, and if I refer to them, I'm not implying that I'm a part of
we.)
* * * * *
Representative Democracy vs. Social Activism
George W. Bush and The National Post would have you believe that the FTAA
will bring democracy to the Americas. But what brand of democracy might
that be? The Americas have already seen the brand of democracy displayed
in Quebec, only it was called military dictatorship and didn't have a PR
strategy. What we saw in Quebec was grassroots social activism going
toe-to-toe with its more sophisticated, more entrenched cousin,
representative democracy.
Representative democracy, the putative backbone of our society, is
becoming less and less representative and more and more specialized.
Women's groups, for a random, but excellent example, which represent more
than 50 per cent of the population, are considered special interest
groups, while MOPEs (managers, owners, professionals and executives),
which represent a significantly smaller percentile, are the social group
that our elected officials most truly represent-the FTAA is a case in
point. Come election time, when we exercise our democratic power (we are
allowed one decision every four years), many people reflecting on their
values find themselves voting not for the candidate who most represents
their values, but for the candidate who least offends them. This is more a
lesser-of-evils democracy than a representative one.
That last paragraph is more a whinery passive lane than a useful plan of
action, because the simple fact is that if we aren't satisfied with how
our government is representing us we can run ourselves. But this is where
the specialization endemic to capitalism bubbles up: My father, for
example, is not a social administrator or politician, he is an accountant.
He knows how to balance a monthly statement, not how to administer all the
complexities of our government nor how to woo popular opinion. Though he
can't afford to campaign, he does care about the decisions that affect him
and that are made on his behalf. The only people who can afford a
successful campaign are MOPEs and established politicians, or individuals
like you or me, as long as we subordinate ourselves to a political party
platform regardless of the cost to our constituents' interests. That being
said, a weekend of activism is an affordable alternative method of
demonstrating democratic power.
* * * * *
Balancing the Statements
While economic benefits for North Americans may be obvious to some, they
still don't eliminate the environmental and humanitarian hazards that can
arise under an FTAA that doesn't address these issues. The environment and
humanitarian issues are some of the biggest sticking points for
anti-FTAAers. While some anti-FTAAers' primary sticking point is the claim
of the economic benefits, which they dispute, these first two issues take
prominence. Free trade will open borders to corporations so they can shop
for the cheapest place to establish production facilities. The cheapest
choice is often the choice that requires of the investing corporation the
least environmental and humanitarian commitments.
While North American labourers want an air conditioned workplace and
health benefits, or at least sick days, washroom breaks, and freedom from
abuse from their managers, many of them still purchase products made by
labour that has none of these things. North American marketing helps us
forget all this, but the hypocrisy is blatant: if you demand certain
working conditions, yet profit from low prices on goods made in poorer
working conditions than the basic minimum that you demand, then you are a
hypocrite. Buy Canadian made.
The environment is an even touchier issue, because the effects of what we
do now won't be blatantly obvious until much later, when conditions will
be irreversible. We have restrictions on our industry regarding air,
water, and soil quality, emissions, pollutants, and wildlife habitat that
require corporations in Canada to invest significant sums of money towards
equipment and processes that reduce environmental damage. When we export
production we reduce pollution in our backyard and it looks good to us.
That's only marketing, however, because the pollution, though it has
moved, still exists. Globalization, as portrayed by the FTAA, is only a
trade agreement. Environmental activists on the front lines of the Quebec
protests want globalization to include environmental responsibility on a
global scale.
The not-in-my-backyard mentality towards pollution only feeds consumption.
Imagine if you had to live with all the garbage you produced. You'd have
to start composting, you'd have to find a way to reuse containers and
other forms of packaging, and you might consider buying things in bulk to
reduce the amount of waste you produce. And this only speaks to one form
of pollution. Air, water and soil quality are under constant threat from
mass production required to compete in a capitalist system.
Capitalism, like good old-fashioned Darwinism, is a competitive system,
not a co-operative one. Competitive systems are contagious. They work
along the same lines as a nine-slice pizza split between my brother, my
dad and I. If my brother competes with me for more slices than his share,
then I have to compete just to get my share. We eat as fast as we can to
get our three slices in before the other horns in on our wedge. We end up
not eating the crusts so that we can get on to the next piece quicker. A
wasteland of grease-stained cardboard and uneaten crusts is left in our
wake. Fun as it was when I was a kid, it's a juvenile and irritating way
to spend all your meals. It was like living hand to mouth-either my hand
was in my mouth or my brother's fist was. My brother got the first world
share of the pizza and I got the third world share. (This is, of course, a
lie. I was the pig.)
This competitiveness spreads not only within a capitalist system, but
around it. Territorial imperialism in the 16th to 19th centuries is a
classic example, except the competing groups weren't corporations acting
on their own, but with the direct support of the standing monarchies.
The
Hudson's Bay Company came to Canada and killed millions of beaver for
their pelts, not for consumption in the Americas, but overseas where this
"soft gold" was highly valued. The ecological damage incurred to support
the consumption of the dominant class was exported. This manifests itself
today in the McDonald's hamburger, Canadian softwood, and fresh water.
McDonald's hamburger products come mostly from South America, where
millions of hectares of rainforest are slashed and burned to clear grazing
ground (and poor grazing ground at that, since the soil on which the
rainforest thrives does nothing for grazing crops). Canadian forests are
being clear-cut for export, and our fresh water is being sold off. You can
develop film in Lake Ontario, yet our biggest city lives off it as a
source of fresh water.
If this sounds like a statement of the deplorable condition world trade
has left our countries in, it's not. Even if Canada had tariffs that acted
as an impermeable boundary for trade, Ontarians would still be eating
Alberta beef, Manitoba wheat, Maritime seafood, and BC lumber. What's
happening with free trade is that tariffs are disappearing and these used
to act as a mitigator. If our forests were being leveled by Weyerhauser
and taken out of the country, then we were compensated in form of taxes,
which presumably would trickle back down to us. School would be cheaper.
Healthcare would be better. Fuel wouldn't cost as much. Under free trade,
the only thing we get in exchange for the slow erosion of our environment
and the loss of our natural resources is jobs. Under free trade, our tax
dollars can go to paying a US pharmaceutical company a $300 million
settlement for "lost profits" if our Surgeon General doesn't think their
drug is good for Canadians. That's 10 bucks apiece so they can't sell
poison to Canadians.
* * * * *
The Angles
Here I wish I could quote Tom Howell's essay "Confessions of a Left-wing
Bigot," but I'm afraid he hasn't published it and I don't have a copy on
hand, so I'll summarize my take on it. In his essay, Howell lays out the
basic ideals behind the left wing and the right wing: Lefties value people
more than money. Righties value money more than people. This is a
distilled yet functional polarization of a political (personal) spectrum.
I know some people who will believe that they are left-wing because they
value some people more than money, but that's not how it works. If we're
going to polarize, the poles have to be absolutes. The
some-people-over-money attitude is more towards the middle, moving further
right the smaller that "some" is, until it reaches the right pole where
that "some" becomes "me." Where that "some" includes everyone but Hitler
and George W. Bush, then it's safe to say you're on the left (but still to
the right of magnanimous Buddha-types who might still include Hitler on
account of he's dead).
Another more functional way to look at it might be this: Lefties believe
that social systems should serve people, while righties believe that
people should serve the dominant system. Full disclosure: I consider
myself left of center, because I believe in giving people the respect I
would want for myself, and because I have enough of an imagination that I
can picture myself in someone else's shoes. (Actually, I consider myself a
magnanimous Buddha-type because I believe in respecting all things and
because I am in everyone else's shoes.)
It's simple logic that social systems exist ultimately to serve people and
that—even while people need to support the system that serves them—the
vice-versa, that people exist to serve the system, is impossible. That is
unless you're dealing with stratified society, where one class-we're not
talking upper-, middle-, and lower-class here, we're talking first, second
and third worlds-exists to serve a system that ultimately benefits a
dominant class. We're back to social Darwinism, only one system of power,
brute force, has been replaced by another, brute wealth.
If you can read English, then chances are you're of the first world. If
you're reading this on-line then chances are you own a computer or have a
job, which puts you in the global social class that Capitalism, as a power
system, serves. If, like me, you're an ice cream snob and you only buy the
best, then Capitalism is serving you dessert. If, like me, you have an
imagination, then you can imagine what it might be like if your share of
the world's food was going to some fat kid from Illinois at the Big Boy
off I-95 who wants a third burger because he "hardly even noticed" the
first two, and you can imagine that Capitalism might not be the greatest
thing since plastic bullets.
Yet another way to see it is this: Righties believe, like my parents told
me when my brother got to play hockey before I did, that life isn't fair.
Lefties believe, like my parents believed after I threw a fit, that we
have a responsibility to make things fair. Sometimes a fit is what it
takes.
* * * * *
Inevitability
It is inevitable that world-wide free trade will be attempted. The
European Economic Community is a wide scale free trade agreement that sets
a paradigm. So is NAFTA. There is economic reward for the first on the
boat and the western leaders are trying to ensure that they get there
while the pickings are still juicy. There is a $20 dollar bill on the
ground. You might walk by it and hope that the person to whom it belongs
will come back and pick it up, but chances are you won't, not because
you're a greedy person, but because you can be pretty sure that the next
person that comes along will pick it up. The karmic high-ground isn't as
tangible as the ice cream and beer that that $20 can turn into.
Whether hemispheric free trade works or not—I suppose by this I mean
whether it lasts or not—no one will know until it happens. This isn't a
defeatist proposition for anti-FTAAers, nor is it a certificate of success
for pro-FTAAers. The FTAA is a set of terms under which anti-FTAAers would
find hemispheric free trade intolerable. The job of anti-FTAAers is to
ensure that when a large-scale free trade agreement is established, that
it includes a charter of responsibilities to environmental and
humanitarian issues.
* * * * *
Thanksgiving
I am against the FTAA as it stands (that is, as
it stands in secrecy). I didn't go to Quebec to show support for the side
of the FTAA that I stand on. Instead I stayed in Winnipeg and called in to
CBC Radio One to explain why I wasn't in support of the FTAA. Thanks to
everyone who went and demonstrated their-our-concern over the FTAA. Thanks
to those who took gas, thanks to those who were arrested, thanks to those
who weren't, thanks to those police who behaved reasonably, thanks to
those who protested peacefully and thanks to those who tore holes in the
fence. There's nothing wrong with a good fight as long as we understand
each other more clearly and respectfully when it's over.
