The World Trade Organisation's mission is to gradually turn the whole world into a single market, where all participants are able to offer their products for sale secure in the knowledge that the market has in no way been corrupted by practices that distort free competition. On a level playing field such as this it is the most competitive who win - in capitalist terms the multinational corporations, with their superior technology, their abilities to substitute machines for human labour, the despoliation of the environment, their monopolist practices. The inevitable consequence of every step forward the WTO is able to make towards its goal is generation of unemployment, the further spread of world poverty, an increase in anti-environmental practice in the never-ceasing chase of monopoly capital for maximum profit.
The home states of the multinationals and the billionaires who control them - principally the US, various European countries and Japan - have been anxious to keep the march towards monopolisation moving briskly ahead, but it will be recalled that in a meeting of government ministers called for this purpose in Seattle in November 1999 they suffered a setback. The failed aims of Seattle were to inaugurate a "Millennium Round" of negotiations with a view to pushing forward the imperialists' agenda for the intrusion of "free" trade to such areas as transport, distribution, medical care, education, prisons, estate agency, banking, insurance, construction, tourism, entertainment. The collapse of the Seattle round was principally due to the fact that neither the United States nor Europe were prepared to abide by the rules they were anxious to lay down for others. Everybody else had to dismantle all protectionism and subsidisation of uncompetitive industries, while the US retained the right to protect its steel and textile industries, for example, and the European Union its farmers.
Inevitably the outcome of Seattle was no deal.
The question now is to what extent Doha succeeded where Seattle failed.
Certainly on the face of it Doha has inaugurated a new round. As The Economist of 15th November said "At least they struck a deal" ('Beyond Doha'). The Economist goes on to say:
"But however gigantic it may have seemed to the exhausted negotiators in Doha, this first step is in fact the smallest one. The World Trade Organisation … has been saved from the oblivion to which a failure might have condemned it".
In other words a new trade round has been launched. Negotiations will now go ahead over the course of the next three years for WTO discipline to extend into a whole host of areas into which it never previously extended. In fact Robert Morejón on Radio Havana Cuba said on 16th November that Doha "reached a number of agreements on so many topics, it cast a doubt on their viability".
The imperialist agenda is to secure totally free movement of capital (Trade Related Investment Measures - or TRIMs), to secure world-wide observance of intellectual property rights (TRIPs) by use of the WTO's draconian enforcement system and further to expand free trade in the services sector (e.g. insurance).
The imperialist TRIMs agenda seeks to subject every country to the vagaries of imperialist speculation. As Amit Sen Gupta writes in People's Democracy of 18th November:
"…the economies of capitalist countries are today driven by finance capital that seeks avenues for short-term investments that are largely speculative. Such short-term flows are known to exit at the first hint of trouble and can ravage whole economies precisely because of their volatile nature (as happened in East Asia a few years back)". As Sen Gupta correctly points out, for a non-imperialist country to surrender its control over the movement of capital means to surrender the last vestiges of its economic sovereignty.
The Guardian of 15th November reports that India had some temporary success in shelving these issues:
"But the most dramatic demonstration of the new power of the developing countries came in the last day as India succeeded in leading a rebellion against the EU's insistence on widening the Doha round to include 'new issues' such as investment, competition and government procurement. This has been a source of bitter contention for several years with developing countries arguing that it overloads the agenda with a set of largely complex subjects when there was still so much unfinished business from the previous round. India's stand effectively shelved all of the new issues until the next ministerial talks in two years" ('Power shifts in the World Trade Organisation: developing countries flex their muscles').
In our view however this is really not much of a victory since even imperialism cannot negotiate everything at once and is unlikely to be inconvenienced by a two-year delay. And as David Ransom explains in the New Internationalist of May 2001 ('If the WTO means to stay afloat it will have to lose some excess baggage') from the point of view of imperialism, "It's the direction that counts, not the speed or the stormy waters that may from time to time make for choppy sailing for the unsinkable free trade juggernaut".
TRIPs - the globalisation of international property rights - are another fraught question. For one thing, intellectual property rights represent the very antithesis of the 'free trade' the WTO is supposedly promoting, for the owner of such a right is given a monopoly over his product which enables him to dictate the terms of all and any trade in that product. Thus the multinational drug companies are entitled to dictate terms for the production and sale of the drugs they have developed - notoriously preventing relatively affordable anti-AIDS drugs being produced and used in poor areas of the world to relieve peoples' suffering. Because of their profit-driven character the drugs companies need to enforce their intellectual property monopolies in order to recover the costs of the research and development that they undertake - and paradoxically in order to do this they have to restrict their drugs' availability. There is no way round this problem other than public funding of all research and development which thereby puts the products of that research and development directly into the public domain. Under WTO discipline, however, the public funding of anything will increasingly be seen as interfering with the right of imperialism to pursue profit. How can drug companies make money if they have to compete with the products of publicly-funded research? This particular argument remains in the future, but it will surely come.
As if the 'legitimate' concerns of the corporations who profiteer on the basis of research and development were not bad enough, the whole area of intellectual property has been invaded by pirates who take out patents on processes that they have in fact spent little or nothing to develop. CP Chanderasekhar Jayati Ghosh in People's Democracy (26th August 2001) gives the example of Basmati rice - an example which is only too typical:
"… The US-based company rice-tech … filed patents for varieties of Basmati which it claims to have developed itself, and on August 19th, it was actually awarded these patents and will now have the right to sell these products as Basmati rice.
"This not only constrains Indian exports of Basmati rice to the US market, but potentially can damage domestic producers even further. This is because the need to comply with the TRIPs agreement has meant that India has already passed legislation which could give exclusive marketing rights domestically to the holder of a patent in any member country. To overturn the US Patents Office ruling, the Indian government would have to file a case in the US courts, which means a lengthy and extremely expensive legal process" (and India might not even win!).
The grossly inhuman and unfair effects of TRIPs were a major factor in causing Seattle's failure to produce an agreement to move ahead. Not wanting a repeat performance of Seattle, a verbal concession was made at Doha which Oxfam has interpreted as "an agreement that will relax the TRIPs rules on patents of medicines, in the interests of public health. The conference agreed that governments are free to take all necessary measures to protect public health. Now if drug companies price drugs beyond the reach of people who need them, governments can override patents without fear of retribution." (Few gains for the world's poorest nations, The Herald 20th November 2001).
The Economist of 15th November ('Seeds sown for future growth') states "although the declaration is political and not legally binding, it sends a strong message about how poor countries can deal with epidemics such as AIDS."
But as Geoff Dyer points out in the Financial Times of 16th November it may well be that this exception will only benefit developing countries that have their own drug industries for "the document has left undecided the question of whether developing countries can import cheap copies of patented drugs from third countries." (Activists point to flaws in declaration on drug patents). More importantly there is no commitment to putting an end to piratical practices such as the patenting of processes that have been in use in third world countries for centuries.
Protectionism of the US and Europe
The major problem with the Doha agreement is its failure to get the imperialist powers to budge from their own protectionist practices. These protectionist policies, according to the Secretary-General's report to the UN Preparatory Committee on Financing for Development, January 2001, (quoted in New Internationalist May 2001, p18-19) "cost the economies of the South an estimated $100b per year - at least double the amount of development aid". If Doha was not to go the same way as Seattle, some concessions had at least to be seen to be made.
Accordingly, in agriculture, which the European Union insists on subsidising to the hilt, it was agreed that subsidies should be "phased out" over the next few years. However, both Ireland and France face major social unrest if they withdraw subsidies to their farmers and thereby drive them to bankruptcy - and France is facing a general election next year and the ruling government party can't afford to antagonise the voters. Therefore, although issues that "may lose elections in France are life and death in Tanzania" (comment by African participant at Doha quoted in The Economist of 15th November, op cit), the Doha declaration states that the commitment to phasing out agricultural subsidies in Europe is made "without prejudicing the outcome of the negotiations" - or, in other words, the Europeans don't actually have to agree to reduce subsidies - only to talk about reducing subsidies.
Moreover, according to the Irish Times of 15th November "the EU won last minute concessions on linking environmental standards to trade" (WTO delegates agree new round of trade negotiations). This potentially can be used to perpetuate subsidisation of farming indefinitely for otherwise European farming will become so uncompetitive that thousands of square miles of farmland would simply return to the wild. But even if Europe did eventually abandon farm subsidisation, the whole process would be backloaded - i.e., third world countries are obliged to open up their markets NOW, but imperialist countries can stagger the process because, evidently, the livelihoods of millions of third world peasants count for nothing as compared to those of hundreds of French farmers! In the meantime not only do subsidised agricultural products on European markets render third world products uncompetitive but European products are regularly sold in third world countries below the prices of local producers driving the latter into bankruptcy and utter destitution. Although Europe is the most noticeable bęte noir when it comes to subsidisation of agriculture, it should not be thought that the US does not also protect its own farming interests. It uses domestic government support payments to farmers which mysteriously remain uncontroversial, apparently because, unlike European subsidies, they are not linked to exports! It uses its anti-dumping laws to ban cheap imports - and it shamelessly uses spurious health concerns. Thus the import into the US of New Zealand lamb has been banned for years. The ban was, however, lifted recently - no doubt to help put New Zealand and the Cairns group of producers to which it belongs (including Australia) in a pro-US frame of mind at Doha.
The position is similar with regard to textiles and steel, and other industries which US imperialism protects by use of unfair practices. Edward Alden reports in the Financial Times of 16th November:
"Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, is winning praise internationally for making several important concessions that helped ensure the launch of a new round of world trade talks… "Mr Zoellick, for instance, overrode the advice of 410 members of the House [Congress] in a vote last week and agreed to negotiations on anti-dumping rules, which are used largely to protect politically powerful industries like steel, textiles and semiconductors."
Nevertheless, much to the consternation of the financial press, there are signs that the US Congress will not back Mr Zoellick's commitments at Doha. In particular, they will hold back on giving their negotiators the power to make any commitments whatever during the forthcoming negotiations. In such cases of course, any future negotiations, were they to take place at all, could only be one sided. Oppressed countries would be free to make negotiating concessions but US imperialism would not! How convenient!
And yet it is difficult for third world countries to walk away from the WTO altogether. Just as under capitalism it is even worse for a worker not to be exploited - i.e., to be unemployed - than it is to be exploited, so for the oppressed countries individually grossly unequal trade is still better than no trade at all. Moreover, imperialism is adept at making short term deals with just one or two countries to prevent sufficient unity developing among the oppressed for them really to be in a position to give imperialism a run for its money. As it is oppressed countries are subjected to "high handed unethical negotiating practices" by the imperialist countries, "linking aid budgets and trade preferences to the trade positions of developing countries and targeting individual developing country negotiators."
One might add that the example of Afghanistan cannot but be intimidating for any country which seeks to advance its own people's interests at the expense of those of US multinationals. The US no doubt hopes that with arguments as forceful as its military might there is surely no need to make trade concessions in trade negotiations with weak nations.
To sum up Doha, then, it must be said that tentatively imperialism has secured agreement that negotiations should progress, and it has made precious few concessions in order to secure that agreement. As Walden Bello says in Business World on 20th November (Perspective) "There is only a perfunctory acknowledgement of the need to renew implementation issues, which was the key agenda of the developing countries coming to Doha. The language on the phasing out of agricultural subsidies is watered down owing to the strong objections of the European Union. There is no commitment to an early phase out of textile and garment quotas because of the strong resistance of the United States. The demand for a 'development box' to promote food security and development which was being pushed by a number of developing countries was completely ignored. There is no commitment to change the wording of the TRIPs agreement to accommodate developing countries' overriding of patents for public health purposes. There is no commitment to change the TRIPs agreement to outlaw biopiracy and patents on life, which was a key developing country concern coming to Doha. The declaration eliminates the reference in the draft to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) being the appropriate forum for addressing labour or trade issues, which leaves the door open for the WTO to assert its jurisdiction in an area where it has no authority or competence" (also leaving the door open for imperialist countries to ban almost all third world imports they wish on the grounds that they were produced under the type of poor labour conditions that overwhelmingly prevail in third world production!).
Thus Mr Bello rightly concludes "Doha was a defeat for the developing countries". He rightly concludes, however, that imperialism's victory may end up being a Pyrrhic one, for the more harshly and relentlessly imperialism acts to intensify the poverty of the oppressed countries, the more they provoke rebellion and resistance.
The whole world is seething at the high-handedness of US imperialism and its European side-kicks in not only their so called trade negotiations but even more in their criminal resort to genocidal brutality in the wars they wage to push through the interests of their billionaires. Adept as imperialism is in the act of divide and rule, in the use of deception, blackmail and intimidation and all the other devices through which oppressor minorities have throughout the ages kept the oppressed under control, eventually the tide of resistance breaks through every kind of restraint. Imperialism is in fact working diligently to secure its own demise.
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