A-Infos (en) MAI: Towards a radical understanding

[Bernard Cooper <bcooper@cam.org>]

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STRUGGLES AGAINST THE MAI -TOWARDS AN ANARCHIST UNDERSTANDING

On the issue of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), anarchists
are begining to assume their place in what is a potentially radical fight
against the dominant economic and social order under capitalism. In Canada
up to now, the fight against MAI is largely being done by social democrats
and left-Liberals. So far, the anti-MAI campaign is a continuation of a
traditional left-Canadian nationalist, anti-free trade, pro
state-interventionist position.

This dominant anti-MAI discourse principally concerns itself with: 1- the
protection and maintenance of Canadian social services; 2- assuring that
environmental and labour regulation is enforceable, in Canada, as well as
with Canada’s trading partners. 3- "democratising"  the negotiating process
surrounding free-trade agreements; 4- ensuring that investment is
responsible to communities and nations, in the cultural domain as well as
environmentally and socially; 5- favouring domestic (= tamer & more
accountable) capital over TNCs and foreign capital; 6- fighting the
increased commercialisation of our lives; 7- protecting the sovereignty of
a supposedly democratic political institution, the Canadian state, and its
interventionist and regulatory role in the economy, society, culture,
foreign affairs, etc.

The following is an example of the dominant anti-MAI discourse in Canada;
it is adopted by the Polaris Institute and the Council of Canadians, and
was written prior to the last federal election (spring 1997)  by Tony
Clarke, in consultation with Maude Barlow, Jim Grieshaber-Otto, Ed Finn,
and several U.S. colleagues:

"What is perhaps most disturbing in the forging of the MAI is the complete
lack of any public discussion and debate. MAI... should be a major topic
for debate both inside and outside the legislatures of the OECD countries.
If any semblance of democracy is to be salvaged in Canada, concerted steps
must be taken to forestall this surrender to corporate tyranny. The
forthcoming federal election offers an opportunity to focus the public
spotlight on the MAI..."

What then is an anarchist oriented understanding of the anti-MAI struggle?
As well, what do some anarchists see as the limitations of liberal,
social-democratic and other state-oriented criticisms of this global
free-trade deal?


Protection of social services

Well before negotiations on the MAI, during the 1980s’ debt hysteria,
state-administered social services were cut or privatised, and commercial
practices and norms were introduced into these services. Even without these
reforms, we should note that the welfare state model of economic
intervention poses no immediate threat to capitalism. "Welfare-statism"
works within the system by employing its rules, and benefits from the power
and centralisation of the state. Free trade deals like the MAI consider
nationalised economic sectors and state-administered social services as a
form of monopoly. As such, they constitute a prejudice against free access
to economic opportunities. Government provided services, in this view, must
function in a business-like way. Given that these neo-conservative reforms
are well underway, a radical struggle against free trade deals like the MAI
can also be the beginning of a deeper analysis of the vulnerability and
shortcomings of state administered services.

The fight to protect existing social services is also an incomplete fight.
Defending "gains"  made under the welfare state hardly challenges the
underlying reasons why such social protection is needed in the first place:
Because of a predatory, unstable economic process that is principally
answerable to elites; a capitalist economy that destroys community and
distorts human values. 

Liberals and reformists that want a return to a classical welfare state
model are knowingly or unwittingly defending the interests of the national
bourgeoisie. It is a form of capitalism that serves a (diminishing)
majority here in Canada, and in other "first world" countries.

A radical, anarchist struggle against the local (national) effects of
capital and its globalisation, could also raise awareness about the
economic and political links between this wealth and "third world" poverty.
The worst material manifestations of capital, in terms of human and labour
rights violations and environmental degradation, have been externalized to
the periphery, that is to say away from the wealthy "metropolitan" centres
of capitalism. These centres are, without coincidence, European-populated
states. It is however in these same countries that the spiritual
ramifications of capitalism are deeply embedded. Increasingly atomized,
alienated, and rendered asocial, the populations of the wealthy countries
are still sheltered from the worst material depredations of capital. 

The defenders of the status quo, those fighting for the welfare state,
can’t assure either that this welfare state is not destroyed by attrition
and cutbacks, or that this social democratic model be expanded to other
areas of the world. They seem to be saying "we don’t want the worst
manifestations of the international capitalist economy coming home to roost."
 
In the same period when capital movements across state borders have
accelerated, we have also seen immigration policies in first world states
become even more exclusive and selective. This classist and racist double
standard in the international state system persists and is on the increase.
Barriers to capital may be falling, but state borders treat people very
differently. 

An anarchist struggle against the MAI should seek to expand the limits of
the defensive (statist) struggle against the MAI; a stance implicit in the
struggle to maintain the welfare state and "regulated" capitalism. We
desire more than capitalism on a shorter leash. 

The anti-MAI struggle can be made into a wake up call to wrestle away the
state’s powers from below, and in so doing, subvert it and its legal
fictions. This can be presented as a real alternative to letting these
powers be hamstrung from above by global capital. 

Let us then claim community-control and democratic management of public
infrastructures, social services, resources and our natural environment.
This is not only the best way to defend these services, but also ensures
their accessibility, their superior quality, and their management according
to human and community values rather than bureaucratic and commercial
considerations. 

By directly claiming these social functions -those being destroyed by the
state as it serves elites- people will gain valuable experience as
citizens. Such democratic participation and management would also likely
show the limits of government, because the real sources of power are vested
in the economic regime, and its legal arrangements in the state. 


Watchdog state, welfare state 

The state, despite its democratic rhetoric, is used as an instrument to
mask the agenda and rule of economic elites. It is no surprise that the
most important decisions the state is taking are not derived from "popular"
mandates. Important decisions effecting the lives of ordinary people are
not entrusted to the people in a representative system of government.

Certain critics of MAI view the free-trade deal as an attempt to destroy
the state from above, with undemocratic corporate power. This view
inadequately considers the historical, and current, role of the state in
the development of various forms of domination, including capitalism. 

State-run social services began as a response to agitation by labour
movements and social reformers (not to mention role of conflict with
foreign states during the Cold War). They are not characteristic of the
state or its traditional role. During the Great Depression and especially
after the War, reform-minded governments brought in these programmes either
in response to, in anticipation, or to co-opt social pressure or a
potentially revolutionary social and labour movement.

What kind of state does capital need? The state must be, above all, about
the maintenance of elites that exploit people and nature by means of legal
fictions such as property, an economy that reproduces dependence, and a
very real monopoly on violence. The role of the state in the development of
capital has been paramount: Among the most reliable state regimes, where
the dominant classes could count on the rule of law, the force of arms, and
the complicity or subjugation of key social classes, capital flourished.

Without the state, and its essentially coercive role, capital finds itself
mired in the arbitrary and prey to the action of anyone who disagrees with
its claims, or resists its exploitation. The state is the legal front of
capital; a counterpart that assures capital can actualize and reproduce
itself. 

The corporations therefore, are not proposing the destruction of the state
from above. More specifically they propose the dismantlement of the welfare
state since capital now needs a state purified of its aberrations, and
brought into line. It must be reinforced, but also made subservient to
trade pacts and organizations (OECD, WTO, IMF, World Bank) that constitute
the new world order, and that are laying the groundwork for a global
corporate state. It is revealing to note that such functions as domestic
and foreign "security" (police, intelligence, and military) are not
attacked in the MAI. On the contrary, they are seen as guarantees against
domestic upheavals that threaten stability and profitability or the
movement of capital. 

The people saying that our government programmes are threatened by the MAI
are also the ones unable to save them when they form governments: Wherever
the left is elected to power, whether it be in Italy, in France or "New
Labour" in Great Britain, not to mention NDP (social-democratic)
governments here in Canada, they have been unable to govern differently
from the right. Apart from trying to have the MAI watered down, what do
these MAI "opponents" propose? Do they propose more nationalisation, or a
guaranteed income? Even without the MAI, what can be done about the
continuing influence of transnational capital, and its unaccountable
organisations? Despite the Pequiste slogan ("l’autre facon de gouverner"),
there is apparently no other way of governing. It is for reasons like these
that anti-authoritarian (anarchist) activists see no possibility of
radical, democratic change within the state.

A radical struggle against the MAI is a struggle against capitalism, rather
than for a different sort of capitalism. The struggle for alternatives to
capitalism takes place outside of the state. So-called socialist states
have invariably reproduced the same concentration of economic control, and
dictatorship. The MAI and related free trade pacts will be defeated only
when capital is effectively challenged, because capital needs the MAI in
order to grow and develop.


Alternatives to the state and capitalism: democracy

To liberal and social-democratic critics of the MAI,  capital’s ascendancy
is seen as an aberration in the management of the state. It is as if  the
political class had gone astray and must be brought back onto course. In
this view, the role of public opinion is to remind government and capital
that we still live in a democracy, at least in name. The paradox is that in
"first world" countries especially, there is still "too much democracy;"
capital needs to undermine what human rights gains have been made in order
to further along its agenda.

A radical anti-MAI struggle should emphasize that such important
developments in the nature of the economy can not be adequately discussed
when nearly all media are controlled by either the state or capital, and
that governments negotiating the MAI not only overlooked having a public
debate, but actively denied, as long as they could, any knowledge of such
negotiations or of their importance. To rally to the defense of
organizations -national governments- that are willing accomplices in
capital’s consolidation of more powers, is at best an inadequately thought
out strategy to preserve social services. The fight against the MAI should
not be a struggle to protect the very institutions and politics that lead
to it. 

The anti-MAI struggle could be used as a springboard to show the failings
of "representative democracy" (sic), as well as to fight for a radical,
participative democracy, without a state, and for the right of people to
create social and economic arrangements that serve their needs. It is by
directly claiming these social functions -currently being destroyed by the
state in its role as servant to elites- that anarchism proposes things
diametrically opposed to the interests of capital and the corporations:
participatory democracy in the management of all social, political and
economic domains; worker-managed economic organisations that federate
regionally or functionally to achieve broader aims; greater self
sufficiency in fundamental economic matters; a non-exploitative, committed
relation to the locality’s ecology; as well as non-coercive, cooperative
means of working out conflict. 

Such a vision of human organisation requires that centralised powers be
dissolved and redistributed to functional groupings that manage a diversity
of economic, community, cultural, recreational, and educational activities.
No kind of state paternalism, whether it be interventionist or
laisser-faire, has done this or can do this for us. 

Written in consultation with various anarchists in Montreal, notably Jaggi
Singh and Patrick Borden,

-Bernard Cooper


May 25 in Montreal: Operation SalAmi ("dirty MAI"), a civil disobedience
action, will be shutting down the Montreal Conference on Globalized
Economies. Join us! 
For more info: operation salami <salami@alternatives-action.org>

Contre l’AMI et le capital,
Une démocratie radicale!

(Instead of the MAI and capital,
A democracy that's radical!)

Contre la misère et l’exploitation,
organisons l’autogestion!

(Against poverty and exploitation,
let's organise for self-management!)




***********************
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original
virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through
disobedience and rebellion. 
-Oscar Wilde





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