[You've read Andreas Seppelt's articles praising NAFTA, now here is an article from the opposite point of view! - Ian]
"The entire logic of free trade rests on the mobility of capital ... and the lack of mobility of labor and communities. In a free-for-all in which the lowest bidder 'wins,' workers in all countries end up competing with each other to offer the lowest-cost, least militant, most obsequious labor conditions possible, while countries vie with one another to repeal environmental standards, safety and health measures, and the right to organize." -- Ron Reed, Alaska Greens
I find it amazing that the arguments for the North American Free Trade Agreement (recently passed in the U.S.) completely miss the point. Come to think of it, even arguments against, like those by the two-faced Ross Perot, divert the focus from the real issue.
The NAFTA has little or nothing to do with illegal immigration (a racist remark on the face of it); workers' rights; human rights; consumer protection; leveling of safety and health standards; or even environmental protection. It certainly has very little to do with free trade vs. protectionism. See Noam Chomsky in The Nation or Z for proof positive that the NAFTA is very highly protectionist. Indeed, one would think that if it were truly about free trade, it could be written in a single paragraph, and yet the NAFTA is over 2000 pages long!
All of these issues are important, but they are all rooted in the more fundamental question: the ascendancy of capitalism.
If the conditions and wages of workers in the U.S. are merely "side agreements" and if the condition and health of the environment are also merely "side agreements," then one wonders what exactly are the "front agreements" of the NAFTA?
When the level of analysis is brought to this depth, the NAFTA treaty comes undone and its true purpose exposed, namely, the free and unrestricted flow of capital and profits for transnational corporations -- in short, "corporation rights" (and you thought animal rights were bad!).
NAFTA is less about free trade and more about power. Who will control the flow of capital? Who will control the wages of workers? Who will control the benefits gained by workers in the past 100+ years in the U.S and the past 50+ years in Canada? Who will have control over domestic trade? Who will control the balance between international trade and the quality of the environment? Who will control the state of education in the coming years? After all, through privatized education (AKA, brainwashing) the corporations will have overcome the last impediment to maximal profits.
Ultimately, the question is simply "Who will decide?" Even with Clinton's band-aid side agreements on labor and ecology, public participation is effectively shut out under the NAFTA, with decisions made by free market econocrats behind closed doors. Now that NAFTA is passed, the answer to all of the above is simple. The Transnational Corporation.
Says Sierra Club member Rick Lamonica: "The greatest danger with free trade is the empowerment of transnational corporations to transcend political governments and expand exploitation everywhere. It institutes methods for corporations to circumvent environmental, labor, and consumer protection regulations through appointed, unaccountable international trade bureaucrats that can declare laws 'hidden trade barriers.'"
The NAFTA will create the largest trading bloc in the world in order for U.S. corporations to remain competitive in the global market with Japan and Germany (which, like the U.S., would have hegemonic standing under a united European market). Without challenging the capitalist logic undergirding this convenient arrangement, movements for social justice and especially environmental protection are already lost. Murray Bookchin, in particular, notes in his excellent book The Ecology Of Freedom that "the notion of the domination of Nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human."
Furthermore, as corporations roam the continent in search of low taxes, government subsidies, cheap labor, and environmental permissiveness, when the NAFTA econocrats now speak of "comparative advantage," they are no longer talking about a nation's ability to specialize in a particular commodity, but rather a government's willingness to short- change its own citizens to accommodate corporate demands. This is something which President Carlos Salinas, ruling under Mexico's 80-year, corrupt, one-party system, has consistently expressed interest in doing, not to mention Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien going back on his promise to renegotiate the NAFTA.
Finally, something that you certainly won't hear from the NAFTA ideologues is the fact that under this treaty, agreements will be negotiated in secret, with a narrow composition of dispute resolution panels and no publication of the texts presented to those panels.
In short, the NAFTA engenders a threat to national and local sovereignty, a preempting of the right of communities to political self-determination, the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few, and the imposition of trickle-down economics on the entire continent.
So what can one do in the face of this corporate onslaught? Since the NAFTA went into effect on January 1st 1994, then one might wonder, what's the use? Why struggle against it? Perhaps there is not a whole lot that we each can do individually, but our collective efforts can make a difference. We need to seek ways to restore an inner locus of control, to regain power over our own lives.
Gardening, buying locally, quilting, cooking (vegan or otherwise), sewing, bartering, walking, biking, reading Usenet News, doing street theatre, crafts, art, self- directed construction, housing and food cooperatives, play, mutual aid, communal child-care, farmer's markets, and above all, community trading systems -- all of these activities and structures are political in nature. They re-value those endeavors that are neglected in the corporate frenzy for unlimited economic growth. They take back decision-making power from the wealthy business elite and place it where it belongs: in the hands of individuals and communities.
The fact that the NAFTA has passed is irrelevant. Those who are concerned with environmental destruction, privatization of education, and erosion of workers' benefits must, as always, continue the struggle for social and economic justice. In our opposition to unmitigated greed and corporate control of society, each one of us must be willing to make a change in lifestyle. We must challenge the ascendancy of classical economics and its emphasis on materialism, and instead create decentralized, non- hierarchical, egalitarian alternatives, with production based on need, not profit. Power should be with the consent of the governed.
As Joan Roelofs stated, "If we look at what needs to be done to sustain human existence, instead of what we can sell or export, nurturing of children and communities looms large." This was and remains the real reason to oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement.
- Johnn Tan, Ogden, Utah, USA
