Nexus - 0403 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

tions are legal persons with First Amendment rights of free speech—and corporate cash is a form of speech. Two years later, in First National Bank v. Bellotti, Justice Lewis Powell's opinion was that corporate spending to influence votes during a referen- dum campaign "is the type of speech indispensable to decision- making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual." Three justices, Byron White, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, dissented in the Bellotti case. They argued that corpo- rations are "artificial entities" whose "special status" has "placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power... The State need not permit its own creation to consume it." Two other decisions in 1986 expanded the rights of corpora- tions in elections. In a dissent to one of these decisions, Justice Brennan added that "resources in the treasury of a business corpo- ration...are not an indication of popular support for the corpora- tion's political ideas."* tions the clout to stop generic drugs, which are available there at a fraction of the cost.’ Transnational economic agreements, beginning with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank 52 years ago, have escalated in the last decade with NAFTA, GATT, and now the WTO. In response to the 1982 debt crisis in the South, the IMF and World Bank imposed "structural adjustment pro- grams" on poor countries as a condition for new loans. While the loans themselves are guaranteed by the US taxpayer, the "adjust- ments" benefit only the rich investors. The aim is to weaken domestic entrepreneurial groups in poor countries by eliminating protectionist barriers, price supports and government services. Frequently the currency is devalued, communally-held lands are privatised, and production is reoriented towards export rather than subsistence. The official justification is that government bureaucracies are holding back development. What's good for business is good for the whole community, for free trade is the rising tide that lifts all boats. But, in practice, this means the deregulation of economic activity, the privatisation of functions once public, and the com- mercialisation of activities once social. In short, it means a net transfer of power from governments and the people to transna- tionals and private wealth. Although governments are too often undemocratic, their man- date is to represent the public interest. Sometimes they stand or fall based on how well they fulfill this mandate. Corporations, on the other hand, are never democratic and frequently claim that their only obligation is to the bottom line of their shareholders. Their transnational character makes them almost immune to organising. If you manage to restrict their activities in one loca- tion, they can come back to haunt you. The most tragic example of this occurred during the early 1970s, when transnationals were just beginning to feel invincible. A coalition of international banks and corporations, led by ITT, secretly worked together to put pressure on a new democratic government in Chile. Eventually Richard Nixon and the CIA joined the effort, which resulted in a bloody coup and years of repression. Presumably it also resulted in happy shareholders. Poor countries have always wanted foreign exchange for indus- trial machinery, but now they need foreign exchange just to feed their people. The model imposed by the World Bank requires poor farmers to plant high-margin export crops in order to earn enough to buy import- ed food. This becomes risky at best, as international commodity prices can fluctuate unpredictably. In Mexico, government sup- port of domestic agriculture has declined by 70 per cent since the mid-1980s. Many Mexicans, whose buying power declined by 60 per cent during that decade, cannot afford imported corn and beans. The export model encourages migration from the land to the cities, and, to the extent that city slums offer little hope, it also encourages migration across national bor- ders. The logic promoting this is that small farmers are ‘inefficient’ producers compared to export-driven agribusiness. About a quarter of all fruits and vegetables imported into the US are now from big companies operating in Mexico where labour and land are cheap, exchange rates are attractive and THE IMPACT ON LOCAL ECONOMIES Democracies don't stand a chance against these giant treasuries. Corporations can control the way the world thinks simply through the power of saturation. In 1989 they spent over US$240 billion on advertising and another $380 billion on packaging, design and other promotions. This amounts to a total of $120 per person around the world, or double what the average citizen of Mozambique earns in a year.* And it seems that one result of sat- uration advertising in the Third World is a decline in the percep- tion of class differences. By focusing on the product rather than the lifestyles of the rich, a semblance of equality is projected: everyone has access to the same thrills in a can of Coca-Cola.’ Farmers in India had better hope that Coca-Cola will suffice, because transnational corporations want them to stop what they've been doing for generations—namely, swapping seeds for the mutual benefit of the community. Under the intellectual property- rights provisions in GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which are now enforced by the WTO, farmers are expect- ed to pay royalties to patent-holding companies such as Cargill, the world's largest grain company.’ And in Canada, one effect of the free-trade agreements is to give US pharmaceutical corpora- 14 = NEXUS APRIL - MAY 1997