Imperialists can't deliver "free trade:" Mexican President 
has a point

The president of Mexico had a good point about the 
demonstrators in Quebec City opposing the "Free-Trade Area 
of the Americas." "'It's very easy to protest when you have 
a job, when you have food on the table, like those 
protesters have,' Mexican President Vicente Fox said."(1) 

This is part of the reason that MIM does not oppose the FTAA 
itself; even though MIM and RAIL attended the rally and 
spoke to the same issues. MIM's reply is "good, so then Mr. 
Fox, please organize some demonstrations for the FTAA to put 
food on people's tables." 

The fact that there were no 
counter-demonstrators at Quebec City and that Fox has not 
organized any rallies to support what he is doing with the 
FTAA shows that his rhetoric is shallow. MIM is not 
surprised to find comprador politicians like Fox in a hard 
spot. As the ruler of an oppressed and super-exploited 
country, Fox cannot help expressing a mixture of proletarian 
ideas sometimes or become too unpopular to rule at all. 

At the same time, being comprador bourgeoisie, Fox cannot 
mobilize his own people for what he says. It tends to 
underscore the message that these thousands of politicians 
who had to be walled in for their own protection in Quebec 
City are isolated pawns of monopoly capitalist companies, 
predominantly Amerikan ones: they have no popular support 
for what they are doing. 

Ever since economic theoreticians 
like Adam Smith and David Ricardo explained the advantages 
of free trade in the 1700s and since then, capitalist rulers 
have failed to deliver "free trade." The reason for that is 
that capitalist "free trade"--trade without tariffs, free 
movement of goods and peoples across borders--is an ultra-
utopian idea more far-fetched than anything the most 
ultraleft section of the communist movement would ever 
think. It is not only President Fox of Mexico who has no 
support for "free trade." The imperialists like Jimmy 
Carter, George Bush Sr. and Jr. and Bill Clinton could not 
deliver either. Free trade requires internationalist 
standards and cooperation and such is not possible within 
capitalism. Since anything goes for private property and 
profit within capitalism, it will always be possible for the 
rich to use nationalism to their advantage one way or 
another. That's why people like Ross Perot, Patrick Buchanan 
and Jesse Helms oppose "free trade" and other imperialist 
politicians only support it in rhetoric only, without 
thinking that they will ever accomplish it. 

"Free trade" rhetoric is a device by which one capitalist claims to be 
more fair than another. To think that global free trade is 
possible in a system training everyone to think "me first" 
is utopian. Global "free trade" requires the ability to 
understand the needs of others and how to interact with 
others across the world fairly. Some new members of the 
ruling class may have just learned how to satisfy customers 
in order to make money, but many members of the ruling class 
are from inherited wealth and have that outlook in which 
they are used to getting whatever they want for nothing. Not 
only can they not understand customers, but more 
importantly, both old and new money does not know how to 
"play fairly" with capitalist competitors. 

MIM agrees with 
Fox, because the respectability of the demonstrations in 
Quebec City stemmed from organized labor's muscle within the 
imperialist countries. The underlying economic content of 
the movement stems from fears of competing with Third World 
labor and ending up with lower wages. In essence, because 
the demonstration did not have proletarian leadership, it 
was a demonstration of people making $20 an hour against 
people making 20 cents an hour. Such a situation easily 
turns to fascism. 

MIM is happy to report that very little 
economic nationalism was evident in Quebec City, which is 
not to say it was not just under the surface. One of the 
main organizations present was aptly named the "Council of 
Canadians" and sports the national symbol, the maple leaf in 
its propaganda. Although it claims to be an all-volunteer 
organization, and sports the typical anti-FTAA issues of the 
environment and democracy, the Council of Canadians is 
spreading destructive economic nationalism. The headline of 
its web page reads on April 22nd: " In the next few years, 
Canada could lose control of its fresh water--forever. Find 
out about our campaign to stop bulk exports of Canadian 
water and keep control of water public."(2) Whether the 
Council of Canadians realizes it or not, it has adopted a 
failed social-democratic economic nationalist strategy, the 
same kind that paved the way for Franco, Mussolini and 
Hitler. 

Defending social programs and public resources by 
pointing to the supposed barbarians at the gates paves the 
way for fascism, because the fascists will profess the same 
thing and "really" deal with the barbarians at the gates 
wanting Canada's water in this case. As internationalists in 
principle, we at MIM can imagine circumstances in which we 
would like to see trade in water or water given free to some 
countries--not to pollute as in the case of the U.$. 
companies today but to use. Hence, we are not happy to see 
people taking the property approach to something like water-
-even if that resource is "public" for a whole country and 
only off limits to other countries. 

To MIM, the alternative 
to economic nationalism in the imperialist countries is to 
support a movement from the global "bottom up" to support an 
international minimum wage, an international work week and 
international child labor and environmental protections. We 
should not go down the failed road of playing with fascist 
economic nationalism, whether it is called social-democracy 
or the Reform Party of Perot and Buchanan. 

Fox is saying he 
wants more jobs from U.$. companies for the unemployed of 
Mexico. Such will pass as "pragmatism" even though it has no 
popular support and no chance of solving unemployment, 
despite what people like Fox have been saying for decades 
about how trade with the United $tates would solve Mexico's 
problems. 

The real solution is Mao's solution of socialism 
to end unemployment and hunger, thus doubling the life 
expectancy of his people. We Maoist demonstrators in the 
imperialist countries may have food on the table, but the 
Maoists in Third World do not and those Maoists in the Third 
World do not want to see their countries enslaved to U.$. 
monopoly capital and they have every reason to have faith in 
their own people to organize their countries for full 
employment and economic development.

Note: 1. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2001-04-21-
summit-riots.htm 2. http://www.canadians.org/