Opinion/Editorials : Monday, November 08, 1999
 

                        SEATTLE, once thought to be one of the most hospitable of cities, has prepared a
                         bizarre reception for the 5,000 or so dignitaries who will come flying in from the
                         150 countries at the end of this month to launch a new "Millennium Round" of trade
                         negotiations. City and Metropolitan King County councils have passed resolutions
                         telling the visitors they are entering an "MAI Free Zone."

                         Unlike most everyone else in the world, the delegates to the World Trade
                         Organization (WTO) conference will actually understand what that injunction
                         means. A great many will not be amused at hearing that they are expected to forgo
                         any discussion of MAI within sight of the Space Needle. Chiefs of state and
                         government aren't accustomed to taking dictation from local yokels. But that may be
                         the least of their worries, of which more later.

                         MAI, in case you missed the excitement last year, refers to the Multilateral
                         Agreement on Investment, once described by former WTO Secretary General
                         Renato Ruggiero as "the constitution for a global economy." Negotiations among
                         the 29 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
                         (OECD) were proceeding nicely last year until they attracted the attention of
                         left-wing radicals, who proceeded to organize an anti-MAI popular front. By the
                         end of the year, the socialist government of France - home of the OECD and host to
                         the MAI delegates - could no longer take the heat and the talks died an unseemly
                         death. The left proclaimed a major victory over the evil forces of globalism. Flushed
                         with that success, sundry groups of Trotskyites, AIDS activists, Greens, anarchists
                         and thrill seekers will be in full cry in Seattle on Nov. 30.

                         Something called the "Ruckus Society" summoned like-minded hell-raisers to a
                         strategy session at a camp in the Cascades foothills in September to discuss ways of
                         disrupting the WTO gathering. Such urban guerrilla skills as climbing buildings to
                         unfurl banners, a favorite Greenpeace tactic, are part of the scenario. There will be
                         obscure groups like the "Rainforest Action Network" and "Art and Revolution"
                         manning the barricades. But some groups are not at all obscure. Ralph Nader's
                         Public Citizen lobby takes credit for scragging the MAI negotiations by mobilizing
                         an international campaign via the Internet. Never underestimate the organizational
                         talents of a man who has managed to indoctrinate millions of college students with
                         his wacky ideas over the years, getting support for the effort from college fees paid
                         by mostly unsuspecting middle-class parents.

                         Getting back to the MAI for a moment, what exactly is this particular toxic terror
                         that so afrights the left? To non-Naderites, it might seem benign. Countries
                         choosing to sign such a treaty would agree to admit foreign investment, with limited
                         exceptions, and give foreigners legal status equal to that accorded to domestic
                         investors. Since everyone knows that direct investment in factories and services
                         creates jobs and that the rich nations have a lot more capital to invest than poor
                         nations, it doesn't sound so bad, does it? If allowed to flow freely, capital would
                         often go to where it could do the most good, relieving the misery of people who toil
                         for a pittance in places like India or Bangladesh.

                         But while the international left weeps publicly about the wretched of the earth, it
                         isn't much inclined toward practical ways of helping them. Indeed, rather the
                         contrary. The folks who will descend on Seattle en masse are the types who plump
                         for "global warming" measures that would idle marginal factories in Third World
                         nations. They fight bio-technology, a science that can provide poor farmers with
                         plants and livestock more resistant to disease, particularly in tropical areas.

                         The reason they totally neglect the interests of the world's poor is very simple: Most
                         of them have never been poor themselves and they hate the private, multinational
                         corporations that deliver jobs and technology to the nether reaches of the world.
                         That hatred shows up in their literature and is also the reason why they will be in
                         Seattle to try to trash the next round of trade liberalization.

                         But whatever they imagine their goals might be or whatever self-image of innate
                         nobility they possess, they are living in a dream world. After the disastrous 20th
                         century experience with state ownership of "the means of production," privatization
                         is an unstoppable wave globally. Technological development will have its way no
                         matter how many Luddites lay down in front of the steamroller. And a lot of people,
                         even the romantics of revolution who so frequently inhabit the world's newsrooms,
                         are getting wise to their scare politics.

                         What the Seattle commandos probably don't understand is that they are serving
                         interests they profess to hate - Third World oligarchies, for example. National
                         poverty is not ordained by heaven. It is caused - even Karl Marx got this right - by
                         ruling classes that take no interest in the problems of the common man. Such
                         oligarchical classes sit on top of any number of impoverished Third World
                         countries. Some of them initially sold themselves to their followers as Marxist
                         populists but learned that power and wealth have their psychic rewards even if the
                         ideology didn't work out.

                         As often as not, they protect their privileged status by keeping out great
                         multinational corporations that might come into their countries and mobilize people
                         and resources for efficient commercial endeavors that would drive the local cronies
                         out of business. MAI is a distinct threat to such people, as is any measure that
                         opens up the world to trade and investment.

                         Public Citizen started life with grand ideas for bringing American multinational
                         corporations to heel. It may indeed have accomplished some good results by forcing
                         corporations to justify themselves publicly. But it didn't topple capitalism, and now
                         finds itself allied with plaintiff lawyers who are less interested in justice than in
                         enriching themselves. Such is the law of unintended consequences, perhaps.

                         What about Bill Clinton? Is he going to let a major international event turn into a
                         fiasco? He in fact opened the door to the fiasco by demanding, at the behest of two
                         powerful constituencies, that national labor and environmental policies must meet
                         certain standards set in trade negotiations. His minions now are trying to appease
                         NGOs (non-governmental organizations) like Ruckus, by saying that indeed the
                         NGOs should have a place at the trade table. Most significant, he is trying to keep
                         MAI off the agenda. Does Al Gore have influence in this lame-duck administration,
                         or what?

                         There is good reason to doubt that appeasement will do the trick. Once you learn to
                         scale a building, or bend a city council to your will, compromise is not an
                         interesting option. Above all, you would miss all the fun.