Interesting post from John of Dyxmaxion World over at Ezra’s over the weekend about the effect of the events in Seattle in 1999 on the debate over global trade, and the success Cambodia has had with, “the inclusion of human welfare concerns as part of the calculus of capitalist investment,” showing that “improved working conditions can boost exports.” Anyway John says about Seattle:
Of course, this isn’t the criticism we heard from the major media. Instead, we were told that the anti-globalization movement was, in Thomas Friedman’s words, “The Coalition to Keep the World’s Poor People Poor.” Nick Kristof regaled us with stories of young women who escaped prostitution to work in sweatshops. Even Paul Krugman, in his pre-shrill days, dismissed any substantive criticism of neoliberal economics - though Krugman at least had the intellectual honesty to engage those arguments, in his April 2000 column “A real nut case.” (For Krugman’s column, and the response to it, see here.)
The reaction of the neoliberal philosophers to any critiques, including advocating stronger labour protections, was to say that we on the left had no idea what we were talking about (we hadn’t taken Econ 101, obviously) and that our proposals would just make things worse. As the above example of Cambodia shows, that simply wasn’t true.The success of Seattle, more than anything, was breaking the consensus that existed in the public realm before then. An important fact that often goes unmentioned is that while the op-ed page of the NYT might have been unanimous, there has always been a raging debate in the academic sphere over what the proper mix of policies for development is. (My favourite source for anti-consensus economic thinking is the Center for Economic and Policy Research.) For Friedman, Kristof, and yes, Krugman to try and present the issue as a consensus was dishonest, and it’s a good thing that we’re seeing the Washington Consensus challenged.
I had never thought about how one sided the globalization debate was prior to Seattle, before. It obviously was, and a lot of ways still is, but I had never really thought of the significance of that massing of protesters before as an indication that the neo-liberal consensus on trade was not in fact a consensus and was very much opposed by many. And in a lot of ways it brought, a somewhat more critical view to the public discussion. Maybe not by much, but some. The impact of globalization is being considered more seriously by more now. Anyway, I think that’s very exciting.
9 Responses to “Remembering Protests”
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To this day though almost any report concerning protests at G8 or WTO meetings focuses on black masked anarchists or puppeteers rather than the merits of the protest. While things have improved slightly since 1999 there is still a ways to go on this.
Andrew Leonard at Salon has got me way clearer on this.
He was first to differentiate globalization; the global market thing it is and
‘The Washington Consensus’ which freights a bit of sinister greed.
He refers, in turn, to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel economist, 2001-ish who’s has worked out a lot of the realities and refers too…
To Sen
which I have actually read.
Sen is an historian and does a good job covering the whole enchilada from the Phoenicians on….or earlier.
I must confess that I had a great difficulty in reconciling the various ‘globalizations’ being floated…but the thicket does seem a bit less dense now.
One thing I think is important to note is that the Washington Consensus was never universal in other parts of the world. There has (always) been a fairly strong opposition to neoliberalism in the mainstream of the developing world.
One of the breakthroughs of Seattle was the connections that became clear between anti-neoliberals in the developed world and the centrist and center-left of the developing world.
Until then, each round of the WTO negotiations ended up with bad deals for the third world. One of the encouraging things we heard from the third world folks inside the meetings was that the ruckus outside and (more importantly) the way it gave the lie to the picture of unanimity among North Americans about trade gave them the space–or the impetus, or the courage, or opening, or something–to call out the way the US and the G-8 was ramrodding their agenda through.
Interestingly, I am starting to see some of the liberal mainstream economist types start to question whether the idea of unrestricted capital flow (which is what the Washington Consensus is all about) is really the best for everybody. DeLong did one of his video things a couple months ago raising this issue.
I always find it interesting that the free-range capitalist ideal that is so often promoted here in the US as the ultimate in economic systems, and that it ‘won’ over socialism, isn’t actually true in the rest of the developed western world.
It’s actually the case that the US stands alone in it’s market system amongst developed western nations, the rest, at even their most capitalist, still retain a social-democratic economic system of social provision and wealth redistribution. It’s only the US where the “the market will take care of us” insanity has any toe-hold.
However, of course, the bad shit is that the US capitalist model is unfortunately being exported to the developing world and the former soviet republics, with the predictable awful consequences for society therein.
The anti-globalization movement, for a moment, brought the ideas of the radical left back in contact with organized labor, in a movement with a specific aim and the potential for more. This TERRIFIED the ruling class. The mainstream media spared no effort in demonizing the movement. The “black bloc” anarchists were real, but a small part of the movement — much of it was the radical left “coming out of the closet” and discovering how large it actually was, and how much resonance it had with most people.
The key to the demolition of the anti-globalization movement in the US was the Democratic Party’s success in co-opting a large layer of it into supporting the Democrats in the 2000 election.
It’s important to realize that the anti-globalization movement was not demolished outside the US, and had significant influence on later developments, particularly in Latin America, where the left is spectacularly resurgent.
Ummm, although your point about the left reconnecting with labor is a good one, I am not sure I agree with this:
First, I think the reports of a “demolition” of the anti-globalization movement are somewhat exaggerated. One only has to look at the Cancun meetings in 2003 to see that. Not to mention things like Indymedia, which is a direct offshoot from the movement. And, of course, the anti-sweatshop campaigns on campuses.I think there’s this thing you might heard about that happened in the fall of 2001 that had a much more profound effect on the anti-globalization movement than any “co-opting”.
Finally, many of the folks who were involved in anti-globalization fights in 1999-2002 are busy fighting the battles closer to home:
The fight against war.
The fight for our civil liberties.
The fight for the rights of our brothers and sisters imprisoned without trial in Guantanamo.
The fight for the right to love who we want.
The fight for the right to organize.
The fight against facism.
Is it discouraging that the mass anti-globalization movements aren’t manifesting on the streets? Yes, of course. But to declare defeat is a mistake.
The Washington Consensus was already broken by the time Seattle rolled around. The Asian Currency Crisis and problems in Latin America made it obvious to anyone with the facts available that Neo-liberalism was never anything but an insincere ploy for power.
Seattle had a profound effect on Radical Politics, especially in North America. I think it changed things because while the WTO had experienced street protests on the same scale before, the last place they expected it was in relatively prosperous city in America.
Seattle also showed that direct action and black blocs are tactics that can work, and it woke a lot of Americans up to the reality of Police Brutality. It forced middle-of-the road liberals to accept Diversity of Tactics to some degree, something that helped keep later WTO and G8 Demos from turning into a mess.
The important thing to remember about the Anarchists in Seattle is not that “oh, there weren’t too many Black Bloc folks compared to anyone else”. The mass
of liberals who showed up to express their opinions passively weren’t the people who shut the meeting down. Direct action by people who put their safety on the line did, and minimizing their contribution frankly pisses me off. Almost every demo in the West since has just been people parading around without actually accomplishing anything.
I think in a lot of ways the gains made at Seattle for the Radical left were lost last year at the Gleneagles G8. Bono and Geldof put back into practice the liberal line of “those anarchists aren’t with us” (not that it had ever really gone anywhere, but it was at least being challenged), and proceeded to waste a bunch of energy schmoozing with the people they should have been opposing. That, and statists hijacking the Peace movement to get their guys elected have combined to alienate anyone with any real radicalism from the mainstream left, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
We also had to deal with a bigger police presence and better planning on the part of the ruling class. G8 in Calgary was one of my first protests, and there were cops everywhere, undercovers, especially. People who came into the country for the protests legally were threatened with deportation and followed around. The WTO held meetings in places like Qatar for a reason, too.
The Hong Kong WTO protests have showed that the anti-globalization movement is alive and well, but it isn’t people in the priveleged parts of the world running it, and maybe that’s for the best. On the upside, the WTO is still stalled, and it looks like the US may actually start making concessions on farm subsidies. I really do think this is a fight we can win in the long run.
I was in a heated exchange with Leonard (which I think went on even after I could no longer bear to read his column). I think foundationally he’s shilling for the neoliberal viewpoint, even though he denies it. I say that because he ignores the strongest critiques and focuses on strawmen (like all the other shills), and because he always uses the language of free market fundamentalism (the desire to have either so-called trade barriers which can be any law whatsoever a corporation doesn’t like OR to have the ABILITY and CHOICE to impose tariffs, duties, etc. are both simply dismissed as “protectionism”), and because he tries to get away with the Bill Gates fallacy - the “poor nations” are gaining more than the “rich nations” are losing. There’s zero emphasis on the banks where the money flows in his work, so actually, I would even question that, but granting it’s marginally possible, it’s a non-issue given the growth of inequality. Put another way, Leonard is asking us to be happy to see the loss of living wage jobs, because it makes the Mobutu Seseke’s of the world even a little richer.
Moreover, as far as I can tell, his take is that things like that in Cambodia validate him, not the crazies in Seattle who don’t know their Econ 101. That is, free trade fixed up Cambodia, not leftist agitation.
I used to email Krugman about this stuff, by the way, and just off-hand I would say Andrew Leonard is easily as into the neoliberal ideology as Krugman was in 2000.
I by the way still think the driving idea Krugman wants to get across that there is no “lump of labor” at any existing time is false, and while it’s true “in the long run” and only if you isolate it from the other entangling economic factors you encounter during that long run, I think people should defer to Keynes’ “in the long run, we are all dead” with respect to either market or Marxist pie-in-the-sky (or jobs-in-the-sky) claims.
“Our” critique, that offshoring, automation and the rise of giant capital and corporations requires rethinking capitalist homilies is stronger than ever. I also think a productive line of inquiry would be continuing to apply market analysis to economic “research” and academic careers in the business-dominated nations as well as to their media. Perhaps there’s a Gresham’s Law at work where neoliberal and corporate-fawning economics and media drive out sound economics and media.
labyrus i was there covering the 1999 protest for Alaskan radio.
I went up from Eugene to Seattle with a bunch of anarchists of a sort who did lockdown. Those people were in no way coordinated with the Black Bloc, as in, they did not meet with them before or after or demonstrate any regard for them.
The Black Bloc, at best, got a bit more news time from the shop windows they broke. They absolutely were neither the people confronting the police nor the people who locked down the intersection nor the ones who ringed the WTO meeting hall and the hotel doors.
Sorry. In fact, as far as I could tell, they were the usual egomaniacs and hijackers - they worked well behind where the protesters and marchers and ralliers and activists in affinity groups were confronting the police. they smashed shop windows in the area already liberated by protesters, letting the actual activists take lumps for them.
Had they never shown up at all, the WTO protest would still have gotten plenty of publicity because all of the confrontations would still have happened - in fact, long before the window smashing they were teargassing various groups of bystanders, as I found out the hard way.
To give those window smashers credit for what was accomplished in Seattle is simply wrong on many levels. Had they never shown up at all, nothing positive would have been lacking. And their demonstrated inability to cooperate with anyone else, or to work for anything but their own egotistical needs bodes pretty poorly for the results of putting their anti-ideological and in most cases macho primitivist slogans into practice.