As production is moved to ever more distant locales, with ever lower labor and environmental standards, the corporations behind these moves want all barriers to the movement of raw materials and finished products removed. Thus the era of so-called “free trade” agreements. These agreements, which are written to elevate corporations to the level of national governments (and in practice, actually above governments), have become so unpopular thanks to the efforts of grassroots activists to expose them to public scrutiny that governments have become cautious about embracing new ones.
How to get around this impasse? The U.S. government has evidently believed it has found a solution: Claim a “free trade” agreement is not a “free trade” agreement. Not only as an attempt to avoid public scrutiny but to totally bypass Congress.
This latest offensive on behalf of multi-national corporations is the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Haven’t heard of it? That’s because the Biden administration, which has cooked up this scheme, would much prefer you didn’t. So far, the 13 other governments that have entered negotiations, including Australia, India, Japan and New Zealand, aren’t eager for their own citizens to know about it, either, and have agreed, whether explicitly or tacitly, to keeping quiet.
The countries negotiating the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (graphic by JohnEditor132)
Make no mistake, however. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) is a straightforward initiative to deepen U.S. domination in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. Activists across those regions have taken notice and have already spoken out against the IPEF. Interestingly, some of the governments of those countries, in particular Australia and New Zealand, are quite open in acknowledging the IPEF is a U.S. initiative designed to keep them firmly under the U.S. umbrella and away from China — and are supporting this in their limited public statements. So those social-movement groups sounding alarms are on firm ground, to which we will return below.
So what is this “free trade” deal that is allegedly not a “free trade” deal? A White House “fact sheet” issued by the Biden administration in May 2022, upon the announcement of the IPEF at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue meeting in Tokyo, declared that the “IPEF will enable the United States and our allies to decide on rules of the road that ensure American workers, small businesses, and ranchers can compete in the Indo-Pacific.” And how might this stated goal be achieved? Negotiations are to focus on “four key pillars to establish high-standard commitments that will deepen our economic engagement in the region.”
Those four pillars announced by the Biden administration are a “connected economy” that will harmonize standards on cross-border data flows and data localization; a “resilient economy” that seeks to “better anticipate and prevent disruptions in supply chains … [and] guard against price spikes that increase costs for American families”; a “clean economy” that “will seek first-of-their-kind commitments on clean energy, decarbonization, and infrastructure that promote good-paying jobs”; and a “fair economy” under which “tax, anti-money laundering, and anti-bribery” standards are used “to promote a fair economy. “
The same lies packaged for new consumption
Does this list sound familiar? Perhaps it does, as these are the sort of goals repeatedly promised in “free trade” agreements of the past, goals that never materialize because the draconian rules designed to unilaterally overturn health, safety, labor and environmental regulations always have words like “must” and “shall” attached to them in trade agreement texts, but any language purporting to safeguard such standards use words like “may” and “can.” And as disputes are settled in secret tribunals in which the lawyers who represent corporations against governments in these tribunals on one day switch hats and sit as judges on another day, the interpretation of what appears to be dry, technical, neutral-sounding language almost invariably is adjudicated in favor of the complaining corporation, without any appeal being possible.
Attempting to sidestep this history, the U.S. government is trying to claim the IPEF is not a trade deal at all, and thus can be approved by the White House unilaterally with no input by Congress. The Biden administration asserts that IPEF talks do not cover tariff liberalization or provisions that would require changes to key U.S. laws that Congress would have to approve and therefore has no intention of submitting the agreement for approval. Senators disagree, with 21 members of the Senate’s Finance Committee, including its Democratic (Ron Wyden of Oregon) and Republican (Mike Crapo of Idaho) leaders, sending the White House a letter telling the administration it must submit IPEF to Congress for approval.
Discussions during Indo-Pacific Economic Framework negotiations (photo via Prime Minister’s Office of Japan)
Washington is far from the only seat of government slapping happy faces on this subterfuge. Let’s start our survey with Australia and New Zealand, where the governments seem quite pleased at this opportunity to be sidekicks to U.S. imperial designs. And perhaps believe a sub-imperialist slice of the action could come their way given there are several developing countries taking part in negotiations. The full list of countries taking part in IPEF talks are Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam, although India is taking part in only some of the “pillars.”
The Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade claims that the IPEF “Supports the promotion of clean energy technologies and renewables to help address climate change impacts and the region’s energy transition” and will “accelerate growth in the digital economy, unlock green trade and investment opportunities, and improve labour and environment standards across the region.” The department also said the IPEF “Improves regional trade and investment conditions.” Unfortunately, Canberra does not specify how the IPEF will miraculously bring about those results, and any text circulating or positions taken in negotiations are unknown because the entire process is being kept secret from the public and legislators.
That the IPEF is a back-door attempt to resurrect the Trans-Pacific Partnership was broadly hinted in December 2022, when Foreign Minister Penny Wong “praised Washington’s commitment to Indo-Pacific security but said its departure from a regional trade pact was still being felt and that enhanced U.S. economic engagement with the region should be a priority,” according to a Reuters report.
Corporate interests already lining up in support
A clue to who will benefit comes courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which claims to be an “independent, non-partisan think tank” despite being established by the government, receiving some of its funding from the Australian military and says it reflects the opinions of Australian government officials and industry leaders. A report the Institute published is, like corporate interests in general, favorable toward the proposed pact. “The IPEF is viewed as a potentially innovative way to boost regional investment rather than as a mechanism to strengthen the usual substance of trade agreements, such as market access into the US,” the report said. This corporate vision appears to be to position Australia as a regional assistant to U.S. corporations. The report’s first recommendation: “The US, as the convener of the IPEF, should lean into Australia’s capacity-building expertise in the region” because “Australia has a long history of organising capacity building and training exercises in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.” In other words, Australia should position itself firmer as a junior imperialist country.
Canberra has been a good pupil, if you want to look at it that way, as symbolized in its decision earlier this year to spend up to $368 billion to buy nuclear submarines from the United States after the U.S. strong-armed the Australian government to cancel a previous cheaper deal to buy conventional submarines from France. The deal also will have U.S. and British submarines stationed on Australia’s Indian Ocean coast.
Much the same comes from Wellington. The New Zealand Foreign Affairs & Trade Ministry has declared, “The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity is an opportunity to strengthen economic cooperation with the United States and across our wider home region. The IPEF will provide an open and inclusive platform for the US to engage more deeply in the economic architecture of the Indo-Pacific, which we think is valuable for both New Zealand and the wider region.” Considering that when the Trans-Pacific Partnership was being negotiated, a key initiative for the United States was to weaken New Zealand’s health care system, it is reasonable to wonder why again negotiating a surrender to U.S. corporate interests would be a good idea.
The architecture of Melbourne (photo by Diliff)
U.S. government negotiators, on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry and its obscene profits, took direct aim at New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency program that makes thousands of medicines, medical devices and related products available at subsidized costs in Trans-Pacific talks. The agency’s cutting down the industry’s exorbitant profit-gouging was openly called by the U.S. corporate lobby group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America an “egregious example” to be eliminated because of its “focus on driving down costs.” Can New Zealand expect anything better this time?
Other participating governments have issued similar statements, with South Korea Trade Minister Ahn Duk-geun stating that “creating practical outcomes in areas like supply chain and clean energy is imperative.” Malaysian Trade Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali, discussing the supply chain talks, said “Malaysia believes that it is crucial to outline the tangible benefits of this trade and multilateral economic framework.”
With eyes open, grassroots opposition has already begun
Activist groups across the region and around the Pacific Ocean have already begun organizing opposition. This is a drill, after all, that groups organizing in opposition to always one-sided “free trade” agreements have had to repeatedly conduct.
A strong voice of opposition is that of Jane Kelsey, the University of Auckland law professor who long sounded the alarm on the Trans-Pacific Partnership from New Zealand.
Once again taking up the challenge, Professor Kelsey, in a May 2022 article in The Conversation, wrote, “[D]espite the high-profile launch, the IPEF remains an enigma, a high-level idea in search of substance.” She questions why the Australia and New Zealand governments are in these talks at all. “Realistically, the IPEF is a ‘pig in a poke’. Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia need to take a deep breath and realistically assess the opportunities and threats from such an arrangement. … Then they must weigh up the options: stand aside from the negotiations, pursue alternative arrangements, or establish a clear, public negotiating mandate that would truly maximise the nations’ interests for the century ahead.”
That commentary was written at the time of the IPEF’s creation. More recently, in December 2022, Professor Kelsey wrote more forcefully on the imperial nature of this trade deal, intended to reinforce U.S. dominance. Note that, in the U.S. government’s “fact sheet” quoted above that the purpose is to “ensure American workers, small businesses, and ranchers can compete in the Indo-Pacific.” Not even a pretense that working people in the other 13 negotiating countries might benefit. Writing in Bilaterals.org, Professor Kelsey said:
Lupin field, New Zealand (photo by Michael Button)
“It is extraordinary how quickly states across ‘the region’ (whatever we name it) have fallen into line. Old imperial powers have embraced the US’s re-assertion of its regional presence: Australia, with its increasingly strident anti-China stance; Canada, welcoming a new hybridised North-South version of the old Western hegemony; France, wary of its remaining colonies being seduced by China. … Predictably, New Zealand has also fallen into line.”
What we have here is a replay of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the TPP agenda of dismantling national protections against the depredations of U.S. multi-national capital. Professor Kelsey wrote:
“Barack Obama famously and unsuccessfully tried to sell the TPPA to the American people, and the US Congress, as the vehicle for America to write the rules and call the shots in the 21st century, not China. Those power politics remain the same. As with the TPPA, the US initiated the negotiation and will set the agenda, dictate the script and approve the outcome, with other states attempting to influence at margins. Even when Trump withdrew the US from the TPPA, many of the US-driven texts were retained by the remaining eleven countries. We also expect parts of the TPPA to form the starting point for US demands. …
‘The prosperity’ promised by IPEF is principally for the US on terms it can manage politically. The Biden administration is determined to bypass the messy problem of securing approval in the Congress. An ‘executive agreement’ that does not contain market access commitments and does not require the US to change any of its laws avoids that problem. So, unlike the TPPA, IPEF will not include negotiations for other parties to access the US market, removing the most obvious means for other countries to point to any commercial gains. The pro-corporate regulatory settings will reflect the status quo in the US. Add to that the penchant for the US to invoke ‘national security’ exceptions to justify breaching its trade obligations, which makes a mockery of an ‘open rules-based system’ and any pretence that IPEF will be a reciprocal exchange of benefits by all the participating countries.”
Opposing a policy of total subservience
Such goals have not gone unnoticed in Australia. Writing in Green Left Weekly, William Briggs noted how fast the new Labor government of Anthony Albanese fell in line. “The first action of a new government is always steeped in symbolism,” he wrote. “The Anthony Albanese Labor government’s reaffirmation of Australia’s unswerving loyalty to the United States at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting was just so. … The new Labor government is facing almost impossible tasks. No capitalist economy can hope to overcome global crises. Any reform, any tinkering at the edges, is to be supported and welcomed, but a policy of total subservience to the interests of the US is hardly the way forward.”
The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework will be detrimental to the developing countries as well. The president of the Malaysian civil society organization Consumers’ Association of Penang, Mohideen Abdul Kader, said:
“US multinational companies are openly pushing for provisions that would prevent the Malaysian government from preferentially purchasing from our local companies. This undermines domestic manufacturing especially in current times. It also adversely affects the need for small and medium sized firms to recover from the effects of Covid-19. The US industry is also demanding stronger intellectual property protection that would, among others, make medicines, textbooks, agricultural and manufacturing inputs and climate change technology more expensive. The digital economy provisions sought by US big tech companies would undermine Malaysia’s privacy, consumer protection, health, environmental, financial, tax and other crucial regulations, while the privately held global food company Cargill wants provisions that allow foreign investors to sue the government in international tribunals.”
Tokyo at night (photo by Basile Morin)
And from the Philippines, Joms Salvador of Gabriela Philippines, in a statement issued through the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, a network of feminist organizations, sees through the attempt to promote the IPEF as benefiting women:
“The IPEF is not, and never will be, just about economic trade, but a link in the chain of US hegemonic dominance in Asia-Pacific, where it has maintained strategic military presence and client relations with its neocolonies in the region, often to the detriment of national sovereignty and the human rights of Asian women and peoples. Women must resist the IPEF and stand our ground in the face of intensifying US-China rivalry and its encroachment on our lives as sovereign peoples.”
Helping women? No, women have seen this movie before
Filipino women are far from alone in rejecting an attempt at whitewashing the corporate-oriented nature of the IPEF. In a statement titled “Statement Rejecting Pinkwashing in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,” more than 60 women’s rights organizations, labor unions and civil society organizations firmly rejected an “upskilling” program that is promoted as a way for young women to gain employment in technical fields but it seen as another initiative actually designed to deepen the dominance of U.S.-based Big Tech companies. The coalition of groups, in their statement, said:
“The Upskilling Initiative for Women and Girls promises training by fourteen US Big Tech companies to women in IPEF countries. However, it appears that much of the promise is simply re-packaged training that is already available, and primarily designed as a tool to increase market presence and profits. The initiative is designed to encourage developing countries to agree to ‘high-standard commitments’ on the ‘promotion of cross-border data flows’ which translates to the adoption of rules that have been included in other trade agreements at the behest of Big Tech. Rules that a) restrict governments being able to effectively regulate Big Tech, b) inhibit governments from implementing rights-enhancing data policies for political sovereignty and economic self-determination, c) enable algorithms to be kept secret, d) constrain governments from requiring tech companies to have a local presence, and e) stop governments from pro-actively developing digital industrial policies, including autonomous digital public infrastructure. All of these can be extremely harmful to women’s human rights.
The initiative involves companies that have undermined labour rights, refused to recognise workers as employees, have used tax havens to avoid making tax contributions to public services essential for gender equality. Previous trade agreements have included commitments to gender equality, but those agreements have instead harmed women’s human rights by liberalising services, promoting the privatisation of public services essential in addressing discrimination and exclusion, deregulating the labour market, and promoting a race to the bottom in wages and conditions, and denying governments the policy space required for people to progressively realise their economic rights.”
Opposition also arises in the imperial center
Opposition has begun to be organized across the Pacific, in the United States itself. A letter initiated by Citizens Trade Campaign, a national coalition including unions, community groups and other organizations, released on March 2023 a petition signed by more than 400 labor, environmental, community and religious groups calling for the Biden administration to include strong labor rights based on International Labour Organization standards, binding commitments to combat global warming and digital standards to protect consumer rights and privacy while reining in Big Tech abuses. The letter also asks for transparency during IPEF negotiations: “A more transparent and participatory negotiating process for IPEF would allow for a wider set of interests to provide informed input and ensure equitable treatment of communities which are not part of the official U.S. trade advisor system most representing corporations who now have access to U.S. proposals and other confidential IPEF texts.”
A separate U.S. effort, by a group of consumer advocates, calls on the Biden administration to eliminate IPEF language that they say could undermine efforts to hold Big Tech accountable for their privacy practices. The consumer advocates have not seen any IPEF text because it remains secret from the public, but in their letter they said they “understand from policymakers and others who have reviewed the draft” that its digital trade section could help let U.S. tech companies off the hook when it comes to privacy safeguards, The Washington Post reports. The letter adds that the IPEF contains “problematic terms” giving “Big Tech firms control of our personal data” while limiting other countries from applying regulations.
A third negotiating round is scheduled for May in Singapore. The first round of talks, in Brisbane in December 2022, ended without a status report by participants but reportedly negotiators set aside more challenging issues. The second round, in Bali, Indonesia, ended with a commitment “to an aggressive negotiating schedule throughout 2023,” with nothing of substance revealed.
Activists on both sides of the Pacific had to organize a years-long campaign to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an effort that can only be said, at best, to be partially successful because most of the countries involved did eventually sign it, albeit with somewhat less draconian rules because the most hard-line government, that of the United States, dropped out due to intense domestic pressure. As with the TPP, and the many other “free trade” agreements that have been implemented, the purported benefits for working people are illusions. Fanaticism and fantasy have long driven government propaganda in promoting these deals. Once the TPP text was released, it could readily be seen why it had been secret throughout the negotiations.
“Free trade” agreements — even when falsely advertised as something else — have very little to do with trade and much to do with imposing corporate wish lists, including sweeping away health, safety, labor and environmental standards that can’t be eliminated through democratic means. As with all “free trade” agreements, the fault lines are along class, not national, interests. Industrialists and financiers around the world understand their class interests and are united to promote their interests. Working people uniting across borders, in a broad movement, is the only path toward reversing corporate agendas that accelerate races to the bottom.
Monsanto is going on trial! Not, alas, in an official legal proceeding but instead a “civil society initiative” that will provide moral judgment only.
The International Monsanto Tribunal will conduct hearings in The Hague this weekend, October 15 and 16, and although not having legal force, its organizers believe the opinions its international panel of judges will issue will provide victims and their legal counsel with arguments and legal grounds for further lawsuits in courts of law. The organizers also see the tribunal as raising awareness of Monsanto Company’s practices and the dangers of industrial and chemical agriculture. The tribunal web site’s “Practical Info” page summarizes:
“The aim of the Tribunal is to give a legal opinion on the environmental and health damage caused by the multinational Monsanto. This will add to the international debate to include the crime of Ecocide into international criminal law. It will also give people all over the world a well documented legal file to be used in lawsuits against Monsanto and similar chemical companies.”
There certainly is much material on Monsanto, a multi-national corporation that has long sought to control the world’s food and which is able to routinely bend governments to its will.
March Against Monsanto in Chile (photo by Mapuexpress Informativo Mapuche)
For example, there was the “Monsanto Protection Act,” quietly slipped into an appropriations bill in 2013 that had to be passed to avoid a U.S. government shutdown, requiring the Department of Agriculture to ignore any court order that would halt the planting of genetically engineered crops even if the department were still conducting a safety investigation, and rubber-stamp an okay. This past July, a piece of legislation known as the “DARK Act” was signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama that, under the guise of setting national standards, nullified state laws that mandate labeling genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and substituted a standard that makes it almost impossible for any GMO food to be so labeled.
Its reach by no means limited to its home country, Monsanto has pushed to overturn safety standards across Europe, and among the goals of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is to reverse EU laws mandating GMO labeling and eliminate laws banning GMOs in food.
A long-term goal of ending corporate impunity
Because it is not possible to bring criminal charges against Monsanto, tribunal organizers say, it is necessary to initiate civil actions. They write:
“Critics of Monsanto claim that the company has been able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products and pursue its devastating activities through a systematic concealment strategy through lobbying regulators and government authorities, lying, corruption, commissioning bogus scientific studies, putting pressure on independent scientists, and manipulating the press. Our endeavor is based on the observation that only through civic action will we be able to achieve compensation for victims of the American multinational.”
The tribunal organizers also recognize that a company like Monsanto does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is part of a larger system that is imperiling the world’s environment:
“Monsanto’s history is a paradigm for the impunity of transnational corporations and their management, who contribute to climate change and the depletion of the biosphere and threaten the security of the planet.
Monsanto is not the only focus of our efforts. Monsanto will serve as an example for the entire agro-industrial system whereby putting on trial all multinationals and companies that employ entrepreneurial behavior that ignore the damage wrecked on health and the environment by their actions.”
Tribunal will follow customary international law
Lawyers and judges from five continents will be involved in hearing evidence; they expect to hand down their legal findings in April 2017. Customary international law will be followed in all proceedings, tribunal organizers say:
“The Tribunal will employ as its legal guidelines: the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the Council of the UN Human Rights June 2011; the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) giving it jurisdiction to try alleged perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is the international authority on the responsibilities of business with regard to human rights. The guidelines state that companies must respect all human rights, including the right to life, the right to health and the right to a healthy environment. They define society’s expectations vis-à-vis businesses. They will serve as the basis on which plaintiffs will build their case for demanding compensation from Monsanto for damage caused by the company’s activities. The Court will consider whether Monsanto’s conduct could be considered criminal pursuant to existing international criminal law, or under the law of ecocide, which is gaining support for consideration as an offence.”
Using international treaties as a basis for adjudicating these questions, the tribunal will focus on six topics:
The right to a healthy environment.
The right to health.
The right to food.
Freedom of expression and academic research.
Complicity in war crimes.
The crime of ecocide.
Monsanto has been invited to present a defense and supporting documents against any evidence presented against it. The company has declined to participate, calling the tribunal a “publicity stunt” by people “not interested in dialogue,” and saying it is “is not against organic agriculture” in a statement issued last December. In announcing its latest financial results earlier this month, it predicted “continued strong penetration of key soybean traits, global corn germplasm upgrades and spend discipline” for 2017. So no change in its behavior should be expected.
Monsanto wants to tell you what to eat
Monsanto’s march toward control of the world’s food supply is focused on proprietary seeds and genetically modified organisms. Standard contracts with seed companies forbid farmers from saving seeds, requiring them to buy new genetically engineered seeds from the company every year and the herbicide to which the seed has been engineered to be resistant.
The U.S. environmental group Food & Water Watch, in its report “Monsanto: A Corporate Profile,” summarizes the corporation’s power:
“Monsanto is a global agricultural biotechnology company that specializes in genetically engineered (GE) seeds and herbicides, most notably Roundup herbicide and GE Roundup Ready seed. GE seeds have been altered with inserted genetic material to exhibit traits that repel pests or withstand the application of herbicides. In 2009, in the United States alone, nearly all (93 percent) of soybeans and four-fifths (80 percent) of corn were grown with seeds containing Monsanto-patented genetics. The company’s power and influence affects not only the U.S. agricultural industry, but also political campaigns, regulatory processes and the structure of agriculture systems all over the world. …
Because of Monsanto’s market dominance, its products are changing the face of farming, from the use of Monsanto’s pesticides and herbicides, to the genetic makeup of the food we eat. … Monsanto has a close relationship with the U.S. government, which helps it to find loopholes or simply create regulations that benefit its bottom line. Monsanto and other corporations have increasingly funded academic research from public universities, which they use to justify their latest products. Monsanto’s international power has grown at an alarming rate, much to the dismay of developing countries that have inadvertently been exposed to its relentless business strategy. For all of these reasons, Monsanto has become a company that farmers and consumers around the world should fear.”
India has no laws Monsanto is bound to respect
Vandana Shiva, a member of the International Monsanto Tribunal’s steering committee, last year provided a case study in Monsanto’s practices with an examination of how it forced its way into India. The introduction of corporate agriculture has been so catastrophic in India that more than 300,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1995, with Dr. Shiva reporting that 84 percent of farmer suicides have been attributed to Monsanto’s genetically engineered cotton.
Baskets of many different kind of Brinjal (aka “Eggplant”) put out by protesters during the listening tour of India’s environment minister relating to the introduction of BT Brinjal. Spring 2010 in Bangalore, India. (photo by Infoeco)
She explains what she calls Monsanto’s “outright illegality” in India as based on Monsanto claiming patent rights to its products even though patents on life forms are illegal in India; that its collections of royalties on unpatenable products have led to a wave of bankruptcies by farmers who struggle to survive in the best of times; and its “smuggling” of unapproved genetically modified organisms into India that “pose grave risks” to health. Dr. Shiva writes:
“India’s laws do not permit patents on seeds and in agriculture. But that hasn’t stopped Monsanto from collecting close to USD 900 million from small farmers in India, pushing them into crushing debt. This is roughly the same amount of money Monsanto spent buying The Climate Corporation — a weather big data company — in a bid to control climate data access in the future. … [L]ocal seeds used to cost [a tiny fraction of the cost of Monsanto’s seeds] before Monsanto destroyed alternatives, including local hybrid seed supply, through licensing arrangements and acquisitions.”
Local pests developed resistance to Monsanto’s GMO cotton, which releases toxins, forcing farmers to use more pesticides — an extra expense and environmentally destructive. Although this is bad for farmers, consumers and the environment, it is highly profitable for Monsanto. Dr. Shiva writes:
“Genetic engineering has not been able to deliver on its promises – it is just a tool of ownership. [Monsanto’s genetically modified] Bt Cotton is not resistant to Bollworm, RoundUp Resistant varieties have only given rise to super weeds, and the new promises being made by biotech corporations of bio-fortification are laughable. There is no benefit to things like Golden Rice. By adding one new gene to the cell of a plant, corporations claimed they had invented and created the seed, the plant, and all future seeds, which were now their property. Monsanto does not care if your cotton field has Bollworm infestations, just so long as the crop can be identified as theirs and royalty payments keep flowing in. This is why the failure of Bt Cotton as a reflection of bad science does not bother them — the cash is still coming into St Louis. At its core, genetic modification is about ownership.”
Farmers become Monsanto’s hired hands
Seeds containing genes patented by Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, account for more than 90 percent of soybeans grown in the U.S. and 80 percent of U.S.-grown corn, according to Food & Watch Watch. Standard contracts with seed companies forbid farmers from saving seeds, requiring them to buy new genetically engineered seeds from the company every year and the herbicide to which the seed has been engineered to be resistant. Farmers have become hired hands on their own farms under the control of Monsanto.
Worse, Monsanto has agreed to sell itself to Bayer A.G., the German chemical conglomerate with its own history of abuse. Should regulators allow these two corporations to merge, it would create the world’s largest supplier of seeds and pesticides. Bayer’s chief executive officer, Werner Baumann, enthused that the proposed deal would “deliver substantial value to shareholders, our customers, employees and society at large.” That “value” for “shareholders” was mentioned first is all you need to know that profits and control are what this deal is really about.
What better monopoly could a corporation achieve than a monopoly in food? That has long been Monsanto’s goal, and a merger with Bayer would only tighten its grip. This is not reducible, however, to simple greed or evilness. Grow or die is the ever-present mandate of capitalism and one result of that tendency is the drive toward monopolization — a small number of enterprises controlling an industry. Just because food is a necessity does not mean it is exempt from capitalism’s relentless competitive pressures.
When “markets” are allowed to dictate social outcomes, actions like those of Monsanto are inevitable. Capitalist markets are nothing more than the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and financiers. And they have no interest in you knowing what is in your food, or even that it is safe.
With the rise of a working class rooted in the global South comes worker militancy in the same geographies. This is militancy that has yet to attract much notice in the advanced capitalist countries of the North.
One reason lies in the withering of labor movements across the North, and a belief in some circles, flowing from that withering, that the working class is shrinking and perhaps ceasing to be an instrument of social change. In part such viewpoints are due to a failure to see office workers in “white-collar” professions to be part of the working class. (Surplus value is extracted from them just the same.) In another part it is myopia — believing labor acquiescence in the North to be universally representative while failing to appreciate the rise of militancy on the part of super-exploited workers in the developing world.
Workers in the South, however, are developing new forms of resistance, and are now an integral part of a global working class, under-appreciated developments brought to vivid life in Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class* by Immanuel Ness. The industrial working class has not disappeared, but rather has been reconstituted in the South and in larger in numbers than ever before, in contrast to scholars on the right and left who “declared the working class dead.” In his book, Professor Ness argues:
“While the right wing declared the working class dead and a false construct, leftist scholars were also challenging the legitimacy of the working class as a force for social equality and transformation. Yet, more than 40 years after the onslaught of the economic, political, and intellectual offensive against organized labor throughout the world, the working class has a heartbeat and is stronger than ever before despite the dramatic decline in organized labor. … While it may be the case that the labor movements in Europe and North America are a spent force, it is their very defeats that have marginalized their existing supine and bureaucratic order and regenerated a fierce workers’ movement in the early 21st century.” [page 3]
The percentage of formal-sector workers holding industrial employment in the South has grown from about 50 percent of the global total in 1980 to 80 percent. This increase is of course central to corporate strategy in the neoliberal era — as organized labor achieved successes, capital responded by moving production. This process has repeated, as Northern multi-national capital continually seeks out lower-wage Southern labor to exploit. That Northern capital has intensified its exploitation is demonstrated by the fact that profits being taken out of the South are rising faster than the inflow there of investment capital.
Southern traditional unions lost whatever militancy they may have once had through their co-optation into state and capitalist institutions. But in contrast to working people in much of the North, workers of the South have begun to build new types of organizations. Professor Ness writes:
“In more and more industries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, this new proletariat is forming bonds of solidarity through independent organizations demanding improved conditions for all workers, pushing existing unions to represent members and non-members, and forming alliances within communities to improve the quality of life for all impoverished workers. The workplace and community demands that are now made by the new industrial proletariat reveal the motivations of workers rooted in solidarity, and a fundamental opposition to neoliberal capital, inequality, and poverty.” [page 58]
Migrant workers are the most vulnerable, and suffer particularly unsafe and exploitative working conditions and pay. Liberal theories of migration ignore the structural reasons for migration, Professor Ness notes — neoliberalism creates unemployment and inequality, forcing involuntary movements; forced displacement in turns leads to slums, poverty and exploitation. Capital needs these migrations, and immigration, to increase competition for jobs and thus make work more precarious. Guest workers tend to earn barely enough to ensure their own survival and don’t contribute to their home economies, in contrast to World Bank and International Monetary Fund propaganda.
Precarious labor in India
The core of Southern Insurgency are case studies of three of the largest Southern economies: India, China and South Africa. The intensity of exploitation in each of these countries is high and resistance ongoing despite the use of force on the part of both capital and government. The first of these case studies, India, represents “a leading example of neoliberal imperialism,” Professor Ness argues:
“The actions of the Indian state have been decisive for multinational capital and its local agents by facilitating foreign investment in new manufacturing industries, safeguarding foreign investments, and commonly using legal rulings against workers and unions and unions fighting for democratic representation at the workplace. Moreover, state police are readily available to intervene on behalf of multinational investors seeking to thwart labor organizations. In India, the state police and the criminal justice system are not impartial intermediaries but partisans in support of corporations against the working class as it seeks equity and humane conditions in the workplace.” [pages 105-106]
Only about one-quarter of Indian workers enjoy regular employment and are eligible to be in a state-recognized union; three-quarters of workers are “contract workers” who have no security, are prohibited from unionizing and are paid 25 to 50 percent of the low wages of regular workers, barely enough to eat and pay rent. Although Indian law has permitted unions since independence, labor law has been flouted since the early 1990s by the state, capital and sometimes even unions. With traditional Indian unions, who are aligned with weakening political parties, failing to defend workers, a new independent formation, the National Trade Union Initiative, is attempting to organize non-union and informal workers, although the government refuses to recognize it.
Splitting the working class is at the core of multi-national capital’s strategy in India, actively encouraged by the state. One example is a fierce fightback at a Suzuki auto plant in 1991. Workers there used hunger strikes and two-hour “tool-downs” to press their demands, which included an end to the contract system. Management responded with a lockout, enforced by a police blockade, and a demand that workers sign a draconian “good conduct” letter to be allowed to return. Ultimately, Suzuki restarted production with scabs, enthusiastically backed by the state.
When Suzuki opened a second plant, the same scenario repeated, but this time the company hired goons who instigated violence, leaving more than 100 injured but only worker leaders jailed. Organized resistance continues in India despite continued repression, Professor Ness writes, and organized fight-backs, which consistently include demands for equal pay and conditions, are building needed class consciousness.
Organizing beyond unions in China
Although Chinese workers face the strongest state among the three case-study countries, they are also making the biggest strides. The very weakness of the Chinese union federation, Southern Insurgency argues, may give workers there more space to act collectively outside the constraints imposed by union bureaucracies and labor law. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions has been the sole national federation since 1949, and because good benefits and security were the norm during the Mao Zedong era, member unions have little experience in negotiating. Local branches don’t function as active organizations but respond only to rank-and-file disruptions of production. Unions are subservient to capital and negotiate without member input, but this makes them little different from Western unions, Professor Ness argues:
“Most existing union models throughout the world do not want competition from independent unions, so why should the [All-China Federation]? Labor unions in liberal democracies that fail to represent members’ interests are thus a poor model for the Chinese working class.” [page 126]
Labor law is largely not enforced in China; in part this is due to enforcement being devolved to the city level. Struggles tend to be ignited by failures to pay wages and thus tend to be spontaneous single-factory actions. Ironically, because workers are circumscribed by an inability to revolt regionally, nationally or across industries, the number of local revolts is higher than it would be otherwise. Younger workers are becoming more assertive in demanding better pay and retirement benefits, and privatizations and layoffs at state-owned enterprises are also behind a rising number of strikes.
Workers in the heavily industrialized Pearl River Delta region, sometimes led by floor supervisors, have forced companies to pay back owed wages and retirement benefits. Police repression has been deployed outside plants but the state has also pressured companies to pay what they owe their workers. Throughout, workers have relied on self-organization as they have received no help from their unions.
Wildcat strikes are the standard model of Chinese workplace bargaining, Professor Ness writes, a “class struggle” unionism outside official channels. A future Chinese labor movement may be emerging from these battles.
State and capital vs. South African labor
Parallel to the contract-labor system of India and the hukou migrant-labor system of China, South Africa extensively uses contract and migrant labor at the behest of multi-national capital. Neoliberalism has an added bitter component there because harsh labor policies are enforced by the African National Congress (ANC), which granted political rights to the country’s oppressed Black majority but left economic relations untouched.
The largest South African labor federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), formed as an ANC affiliate during the 1980s but became a “distinctly junior partner” to the ANC and the ANC-aligned South African Communist Party and began to lose credibility in the 2010s as it failed to oppose the harsh neoliberalism dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Working conditions are particularly poor for miners — mining is controlled by multi-national capital and is by far the country’s biggest industry.
COSATU and its National Union of Mineworkers affiliate have supported an increase in the use of informal labor because they can hold a dominant position by representing only regular workers and thus without the support of the majority of the workforce. When a wave of strikes nonetheless began in 2009, the unions declared the strikes “illegal” and backed management. In at least one case, the union called for a harsher punishment than management did!
Workers organized themselves, and asked a new union unaffiliated with COSATU, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, to negotiate on their behalf, which in turn won much greater pay raises. The National Union of Mineworkers reached a new low in 2012, however, after striking workers left that union and joined the Association during a strike. When management obtained a court order against the strikers, the National Mineworkers sided with management and sent goons to join with company goons to impose a violent denouement; 34 were killed and scores injured in what became known as the Marikana Massacre.
A fresh wave of strikes commenced in 2014, with Association negotiators obtaining significant wage increases. In parallel, a metal workers union has called for more militancy and for nationalizations; in response, COSATU expelled it. Worker militancy continues to rise and with the fracturing of the union movement, a realignment seems to be coming. Professor Ness writes:
“While the future configuration of the unions remains to be determined, it is clear that rank-and-file workers are helping to build oppositional unions that are shaping a struggle against economic imperialism, insisting on ending the system of exploitation and inequality that remains a fixture in the post-apartheid era.” [page 178]
Strength in worker radicalism
Southern Insurgency concludes by asking if existing labor unions can contain the development of independent working-class organizations. The actions of Indian, Chinese and South African industrial workers are reshaping traditional unions, and workers can’t rely on bureaucratic unions leaders to defend themselves, the book argues:
“It is the development of worker radicalism that will shape the form and survival of decaying traditional unions. … [T]he results of these rank-and-file struggles are mixed, but the evidence … demonstrates that these movements are gaining traction, and achieving real wage gains and improvement in conditions.” [page 189]
This latest book by Immanuel Ness is a needed corrective to the false idea that resignation to neoliberalism is universal, and the examples of militancy that he presents are not simply a necessary corrective but demonstrate that improvements are only possible with organized, self-directed actions. In a world more globalized then ever, workers of the world truly do need to unite — a global working class can only liberate itself through a global struggle.
Systemic Disorder 