STWR - Share The World's Resources

Prof. Sidney Gluck

Professor Emeritus (Specialising in Marxism)
New School of Social Research
Former President, New York Chapter
U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association

The Principle Of Sharing Wealth
“Fair Trade” vs. “Free Trade”

Capitalism from its beginning, when it first fought against Feudalist restrictions of trade, inaugurated the slogan "Free-Trade" which then became the shibboleth of capitalist expansion from proletarianization of the peasantry to form a wage working class in its primitive accumulation drive followed by a number of stages of industrialization and imperialism to the present stage of "single super-power imperialism" of the U.S.A., the prime progenitor of "Free Trade" today. Witness U.S. driven Globalization in the current (and hopefully last) stage of imperialism and domination of economic integration through the WTO, IMF, and the World Bank in their present modes.

Opposition to this highest form of imperialism is evident in resistance from many directions, not alone from developing countries that seek a share for their own people in economic growth, but also among capitalist countries defending themselves against unbridle US competition and empire building. Resistance is also evident in mass movements around the world against the imperialist content of WTO driven Globalization, augmented by world-wide mass anti-war movements against occupation of Iraq under questionable motivations and misrepresentations.

There appears to be a growing demand to counter "Free Trade" with a 21st-century challenge to systemic capitalist world domination. There has emerged a movement for "Fair Trade" among liberal and reform minded elements around the world, including groups in the U.S.A. and EU. What gives impetus to a "Fair Trade" movement is the maturing of the modernized segment of China in its Eastern and Southeastern areas as distinct from Central and Western under-developed regions which, for historic and geographic reasons, will take a good deal of time to integrate through new infrastructure, enterprise, land improvement through fertilization and water supply and encouragement of entreprenuerism, conquering unevenness and achieving the benefits of overall development and modernization.

It is China as a trading and investment partner in high tech and scientific means of production and distribution, a new major player advocating "Fair Trade," that extends the opportunity for mutual development in the chain of world economic integration. Ironically, it was Lenin in 1924, before his death from the bullet wound that incapacitated him after the end of the Civil War, who regretted that world capitalism turned down the offer to invest in Russia under his New Economic Policy with the remark that "World integration will inevitably force them to come to us". Following the demise of the Soviet Union which never did integrate into the world economy, the success of modernization in ¼ of China which emerged as a consequence of fundamental structural change from a rice-bowl economy to planned inclusion of market mechanisms and opening to the west for a surge of technology and capital investment, establishing world economic relations. This has bolstered the possibility of making "Fair Trade" a growing reality in world development. The new “fair trade” slogan will become a more and more acceptable principle until it grows to dominate relations among many nations, reflecting an underlying concept of the United Nations and making possible consensual arrangements as nations move forward to a higher level of economic and political interplay, each in its own way and pace, into an era that moves away from single superpower domination.

If in fact this is so, we are entering another phase in the march to a new system of social relations. It will take time and struggle against the established wealth, controlled by ultra-conservatism. Nonetheless we must be confident that mass forces will achieve the extension of economic democracy. Hail the possibility and the struggle to create a new "Fair Trade" epoch."

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