Three writings came my way this past month, all reflecting on the global corporate and local economy. Since I'll be attending a conference this month called "The Good in Nature and Humanity," with keynote speaker Wendell Berry, I figured I'd read some of his thoughtful essays. Berry has published a collection entitled Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (Pantheon Books, 1992, 1993) which includes an essay of the same name.
Then the Spring 2000 issue of "Orion Magazine" arrived with a long piece called "N30 – Skeleton Woman in Seattle" by Paul Hawken, relating his experience of, and thoughts about, the events at the World Trade Organization (WTO) demonstrations. Hawken is well-known for promoting ecologically-sensitive corporate reform (although he didn't succeed with Monsanto Corp.), whose books include The Ecology of Commerce and the recently published Natural Capitalism with Hunter and Amory Lovins (of the ecologically-oriented Rocky Mountain Institute).
Then, last week from the listserv of Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly (Rachel's) came Peter Montague's latest report entitled "Steps Toward a Corporate State." (Rachel's is published by the Environmental Research Foundation and is named for Rachel Carson, the scientist who blew the cover off the pesticide/herbicide industry and its cronyness with the Food and Drug Administration in 1964.) Also, during April, the Center for the New American Dream sponsored an excellent discussion on the topic of "Wealth, Well-Being and the New American Dream," which was facilitated by social psychologist David Myers. He has just published The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (Yale University Press, 2000), and the preface and first chapter can be read at David Myers. (I haven't read it yet, but his facilitator's introduction and later comments were good.) The daily postings of the month's discussion can be found at CNAD discussion; scroll down to the April opening posting of David Myers and work your way up. I also have the daily summaries posted by CNAD to its listserv members, which is a faster way to read them, and I could forward them to anyone who is interested.
These writers have a common theme: we're trending toward a global corporate state, and what should we and can we do about it. (I find it always amusing when staunch political conservatives shudder at the phrase "one world" in the governmental and/or spiritual sense, but they applaud the corporate one-worldism as promoted by the WTO. I wonder if they appreciate their hypocrisy.)
Berry, in "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community," says:
…if you are dependent on people who do not know you, who control the value of your necessities, you are not free, and you are not safe.The industrial revolution has thus made universal the colonialist principle that has proved to be ruinous beyond measure: the assumption that it is permissible to ruin one place or culture for the sake of another. Thus justified or excused, the industrial economy grows in power and thrives on its damages to local economies, communities, and places. Meanwhile, politicians and bureaucrats measure the economic prosperity of their nations according to the burgeoning wealth of the industrial interests, not according to the success or failure of small local economies or the reduction and often hopeless servitude of local people.
The industrial revolution was just the first step, and it mucked up plenty of places, but it was overtaken by the technological revolution which enabled the destruction of so much more, land-wise and people-wise.
Berry believes in the necessity of local economy as espoused in the commitment by the residents to the community. This commitment includes living in a manner that is careful of the place and the people of the community. This is the antithesis of what is being promoted by the World Trade Organization, whose catch-word is "globalization."
Hawken says, in "N30":
Globalization leads to the concentration of wealth inside such large multinational corporations as Time-Warner, Microsoft, GE, Exxon, and Wal-Mart. These giants can obliterate social capital and local equity, and create cultural homogeneity in their wake… Under WTO, even decisions made by local communities to refuse McDonald's entry (as did Martha's vineyard) could be overruled. The as-yet-unapproved draft agenda calls for WTO member governments to open up their procurement process to multinational foreign corporations. No longer could local governments buy preferentially from local vendors.
Montague's major point is that "citizens can use government purchasing policy to guide their regional economy onto the path most likely to improve their quality of life…to impose human values on their local and regional economy." He is emphasizing that a community can improve its physical environment by choosing what it purchases. (And that was certainly echoed again and again at the personal level in the discussion postings on the CNAD.)
Montague further states that:
the overarching goal of the WTO (and of "free trade" policies in general) is to diminish the power of governments, and thus to reduce governments' capacity to influence the behavior of transnational corporations…the real purpose of the WTO is "global corporatization" – increased corporate control over all the nations and economies of the world.
He notes that if the WTO and its directives had been in place during Nelson Mandela's imprisonment, the subsequent efforts by Americans and Europeans to use divestiture of financial investments and other economic means to convey our opinions to South Africa would have been barred by the WTO.
We already know how it affects the Congress of the United States as corporations pour millions of dollars into lobbying for direct benefits and into political action committees for less direct benefits. Many communities have felt the effects: positive if your Congressional representative managed to pork-barrel a local project through the budgeting process bringing to the community jobs, and negative if your community happened to be on the receiving end of an environmentally degrading industry or project (and they could be one and the same).
It is the point of all these writers that it is the local and regional economies that create financial good health, based on the recycling of goods and services and money through businesses that aren't siphoning off money to corporate headquarters in some other state…or in some other country.
And that compassion I mentioned in the title, I think you'll find that compassion generally runs deeper at the community level, the one-on-one level. And it feels better to know that your vegetables (if not being grown by yourself) are being grown on a farm within, say, 20 miles, or even 150 miles (thinking of the fruit and veggies from the Western Slope of Colorado that migrate to Denver in the summer and fall).
As you can tell, I am not in favor of the World Trade Organization, nor genetic manipulation of plants…or animals, nor maquiladoros situated on the south side of the Rio Grande, spewing out toxic pollutants into the Mexican landscape and paying wages American companies couldn't offer teen-agers, with no employment benefits. The corporations are making money hand over fist because there are no environmental regulations to comply with and they can transport the finished products back north and sell at American prices. No matter that the health of the factory workers and their families are constantly endangered by such conditions.
Perhaps if the WTO enforced living wage regulations across the world, it might be of some use. But that will be the day…
More later…
Action be within you and around you,
Cherie