Letters

...Its occupant can wield enormous influence over the architecture of the global economy...

...namely, that a reasonably efficient economy must include the whole world...

...There is no international equivalent of the House of Representatives (with members elected on a population basis) or even of the Senate (set up on an entity basis but directly elected...

...Only in this way can a market be created that is free for labor as well as for capital and goods...

...The issue before us is the nature of that polity: who makes the decisions in it...

...Finally, the global financial system must be democratized...

...124 n DISSENT / Spring 2001 LETTERS Editors: Each of the five contributors to your Winter 2001 symposium on globalization offered thoughtful and creative proposals...

...Yes, it's good that the Vietnamese stopped the genocide...

...If a region is large enough to permit effective production, it is sufficient, and furthermore offers the advantage of better understanding of regional circumstances— but it contravenes the program of the globalists...

...Compare, for example, the disciplined and effective Kosovar nonviolent resistance to the Milosevic regime to the consequences of the Kosovo Liberation Army's violent insurgency that led us into another of our just wars, that is, the one we just had...

...These goals are already recognized in the Conventions of the United Nations and the International Labor Organization...

...The United Nations must first be democratized to curtail the disproportionate influence of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (especially the United States) and to allow greater accountability of the institution to both national elected officials and to citizens...

...First, the legal constructs that enable corporations to exist must be redefined...

...But the dilemma contains a fallacy...

...Take Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide...

...In Portland, Oregon, the school system is making noises about shutting down schools, probably exclusively in poorer neighborhoods...

...labor must join workers around the world to resist the continued disenfranchisement of poor countries and their people from the global political economy...

...Rules that concern all should be made by all...

...Editors: I would expect to find a treatment of genetically modified organisms (GMO) like that of Elof Axel Carlson ("Genetically Altered Organisms," Winter 2001) from many publications but was disappointed to encounter it in Dissent...

...Of course, either number represents a moral calamity...

...Could any corporate PR department ask for more from a leading journal of "the left...

...In short, the left needs to keep its "eyes on the prize" of the White House...

...Food-safety activists are wise to demand a cautious approach...

...and Jordanian officials to observe "basic labor standards" is welcome, but is no substitute for the citizens of a U.S.-Jordanian single market determining by democratic process what their common standards should be...

...Certainly, it should not be hard to see that the Cambodian misery and genocide were contingent upon more than a few horrific and preventable acts by the French and then by the Americans and our allies...

...Debt cancellation should not be tied to the extensive conditions that have thus far prevented the most heavily indebted countries from receiving the relief that rich countries have already agreed to...

...My commendation to Dissent for publishing these valuable thoughts and observations of J. -P...

...Third, the World Trade Organization (WTO), along with the World Bank and IMF must be scaled back to a fraction of their current size or abolished altogether...

...The agreement of U.S...

...Third world debt should be canceled along lines similar to those proposed by the Jubilee 2000 Campaign (see www.jubilee2000uk.org...

...These corporations have the ability to overwhelm regulatory apparatus, bring new organisms quickly to market, and to introduce them on a global scale...

...We who work, we who produce, we who make actual the ideas of so many, we ought to remember this is ours, not theirs...

...Carlson makes the bizarre claim that "unease" about agribusiness is a "sudden" (that is, recent) phenomenon...

...As Louis Cooper says, these figures represent a moral calamity...

...The difference between three billion and "some two billion" means either that one of these statements is wrong or that the available income figures are so imprecise that they can be interpreted in strikingly different ways...

...Editors: The justification for globalization is that it achieves economies of scale, and thus opposing it identifies one as a narrow nationalist...

...Certainly, the long chain of events that followed upon the reassertion, with American support, of French colonial power in Indochina after World War II leaves a bloody trail we can easily follow...

...Counterfactual history has its difficulties, but it's more than reasonable, in almost all cases, to conclude that just as great fortunes arise from a great crime, so do just wars...

...Senate or Electoral College), this goal may have to be compromised for prudential reasons...

...In the January-February issue of Foreign Affairs, an article says that "some two billion people" earn less than two dollars per day...

...One may accept a situation in which Iceland and San Marino outvote India in one venue, but surely there must be venues in which nine hundred million Indians far outweigh citizens of Iceland and San Marino combined...

...There is a third way between the extremes of nationalism and globalism, and that is regionalism...

...Two specific changes would make this possible...

...This is a path that starts with a betrayal of both real anti-Axis allies and the ideals of freedom for captive nations for which the war was supposedly fought...

...Once steps toward even limited democratization are taken to promote popular legitimacy and accountability of the United Nations and to ensure that no superpower can wield undue influence, the United Nations should be substantially strengthened so that it can effectively carry out its mandate of promoting collective goods, such as a clean and sustainable ecosystem, universal access to basic human needs (including patented medicines), and the right to a decent work life that provides a living wage...

...S. Let the debates— and yes, the arguments—begin...

...There has always been a strong current on the left that welcomes technological advance as well as a current that is suspicious of it...

...Our times are strangely reminiscent, not only of the events of the forties, but also of the events surrounding "America" and its founding...

...DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 125 LETTERS The Editors Reply The World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001 says that 2.8 billion people live on less than two dollars per day...

...Without profound transformation, these institutions will continue to help further concentrate wealth and devastate the ecology, as many years of economic and environmental trend data show...

...Winter 2001) leaves out some key ideas that have emerged from discussions among the transnational groups of protesters who have filled both the streets and public meeting spaces to resist corporateled globalization...

...Contra Chang, democracy in world affairs does not mean that San Marino and India have equal weight in decision making...

...Active nonviolence, noncooperation, boycotts, sabotage, withdrawal of consent, and use of counter-institutions have proven often to be effective weapons of the weak against aggressors, empires, tyrants, and totalitarian regimes...

...Second is the role of nonviolence and nonmilitary defense...

...and leads us into the killing fields of Cambodia and the invasion by the Vietnamese Army...

...However, no one mentioned the relevance of the power of the American presidency to the question you posed...

...As Marx suggested, one possible result of capitalism is a single society that encompasses the world, a society that requires a single polity...

...Does it belong in Dissent...

...The corporate charter has provided a legal basis for corporations to act as "natural persons" in the court of law, allowing them to demand the same rights as all living, breathing citizens while they socialize many of the human and ecological costs of corporatedriven production...

...Again, when and how such resistance is organized is crucial...

...Third, I will conclude by noting that in the twentyfirst century, it is more than just desirable, but necessary as a matter of self-interest, to pursue global policies that lead to sustainability and ecological survival...

...Editors: Although I am glad Marshall Berman is hopeful about 126 n DISSENT / Spring 2001 LETTERS the future of some kids whose school was shut down ("Crossing Swords: Trees Growing in Brooklyn," Summer 2000), I would be more hopeful if he had told us that those kids and their community had put up a fight to save it...

...It is not inconceivable that the Democratic primaries may feature a serious contender who actively supports at least some key elements of a progressive agenda...

...Our wages (and the multiple deductions therefrom) fuel this nation...

...First is the matter of contingent and predicate acts that inevitably are stuck like bloody gum to the boots of even potentially favorite just wars...

...No market can exist without rules...

...We will continue this argument in our pages...

...Finally, Carlson's glib confidence in our regulatory agencies is laughable to anyone who understands their function...

...It means that the citizens of India and the citizens of San Marino have like weight, just as democracy in the United States means that a citizen of Wyoming and a citizen of California should have like weight...

...The disappointing aspect of these analyses is the authors' continued reliance on the legal fiction called the state and the suggestion that the one-state, one-vote general assembly is "more democratic" than other international institutions...

...The editors of Dissent disagree among themselves about Elof Axel Carlson's piece, as they disagree about many of the pieces we publish...

...I look forward to reading in future issues of Dissent some good ideas on promoting such student and community efforts...

...From the standpoint of a nonviolent activist and political theorist, I am not suggesting that there is never evil copious enough to justify the use of force...

...A second transformation would be to subordinate the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank, IMF, and later the WTO) to the United Nations, as is stipulated in the UN Charter...

...The trend described by Maxine Phillips on "The Last Page" (Fall 2000) is badly in need of organized community opposition...

...Editors: Susan George ("Another World Is Possible," Winter 2001) refers to three billion people—"half the world"— making less than two dollars per day...

...DISSENT / Spring 2001 n 127...

...First is the ease with which scientists can make genetic alterations to plants and animals...

...What we are in danger of getting is the nineteenth-century "night watchman" state, which is only able to protect property...

...Similarly, when transnational corporations enter the global political field, they undermine the sovereignty of (poor) states and further erode the possibilities for citizens to effectively advocate for public interests...

...Structural adjustment programs have diverted the resources of poor countries away from basic needs such as education and health care as they ostensibly promote (usually unsuccessfully) fiscal stability...

...I don't think so...

...Indeed, the immensity of the corporate globalization project demands more transformative proposals than some of the Dissent contributors propose...

...He cites our history of "welcoming" the efficiencies of agribusiness while overlooking the genuine fears about the American diet that, over the past quarter century, have led to organic products becoming the growth sector of the food industry...

...But the corporate elite has worked to ensure that these institutions lack the enforcement capacities they need while they advanced a trade regime with the strongest multilateral enforcement body of any global institution...

...Although the AFL-CIO might support a WTO with a labor side agreement (see Thea Lee's essay in the symposium), solidarity with workers in the developing world demands firm opposition to any proposals that would strengthen the WTO...

...passes through a couple of decades of intervention, neocolonialism, corrupt client regimes, revolution, war, bombing, defoliation, invasion...

...Whoever the editor was who decided to publish the articles of JeanPaul Sartre—all published in Europe during a major conflict (ideological and actual) of our entire planet—deserves praise...

...Editors: I've received the new issue of Dissent (Winter 2001) and am reading it (and re-reading it) as I write...

...Incorporating a principled and pragmatic (they need not be mutually exclusive) electoral strategy into our overall response to globalization should be of the highest strategic importance for the left...

...The UN Development Program says that 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar per day...

...Proposals for a world parliament or citizens' assembly have been circulating since the dawn of the United Nations, and the idea has support even among the powerful...

...Institutions designed to promote profit-seeking and trade-oriented development models cannot be allowed to continue driving the global political economy...

...It was at that final, and preventable, point necessary...

...If, for example, a complete international boycott of Nazi Germany had been undertaken as soon as Hitler's policies became clear in the 1930s, before successful Nazi remilitarization, what came next would likely have been quite different...

...Much of the twentieth century shows that when "Citizen GE" enters the "democratic" political playing field, "Joe and Jane Citizen" don't stand a chance of having much voice in government...

...Second is the incredibly wide range of potential alterations...

...Second, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) must end structural adjustment lending...

...And third is the control of these technologies by big corporations whose priorities are dictated by profits not by concern for public health, social well-being, or ecological sustainability...

...As the American example shows (think of the U.S...

...With the Republicans now holding the reins of presidential power, any prospects for reforming the global economy look dim at best...

...If democracies such as the United States act as imperial powers, military behemoths, and arms merchants to the world, it should be no surprise that just war will follow just war...

...I am saying that in almost all cases the practice of nonviolence, combined with the pursuit of peace and justice by democratic regimes, will mitigate and minimize the need for military measures...

...In any case, nonviolent activists will continue to act in the circumstances we find ourselves...

...Carlson's entire piece reads like a neoliberal apology for the GMO industry...

...Surely, Dan Coleman doesn't read Dissent looking only for arguments that he agrees with...

...Carlson places GMO foods in the respectable tradition of Luther Burbank, reviews the "fears, legitimate and illegitimate," and concludes that our policy toward such foods should be "monitor, debate, regulate...

...However, anyone with a passing knowledge of Amefican history knows that resistance to agribusiness goes back at least as far as the Populist movement of the 1890s...

...That path is one of democratization, demilitarization, peace, and justice...

...But that is a matter of dynamics that are far from that of war, just or otherwise...

...But only by being oblivious to the river of blood that surrounded and created the Cambodian killing fields could you call anything that happened "just...

...Although humans have used breeding techniques to modify their food sources for millennia, there are three unique factors in the current situation...

...An unwillingness to extend the concept of citizenship beyond the state, to trust the person living in territory flying a different flag, has meant that decisions at the international level belong to elites with only the most tenuous ties to ordinary citizens...

...Editors: Three points occurred to me that seem relevant to the Laurie Calhoun-Michael Walzer discussion of just war ("Violence and Hypocrisy," Winter 2001...

...Within the protester discussions, one finds some degree of international consensus around several key goals: First, the net flow of financial resources from poor to rich countries should be stopped immediately...

...The "good news" is that less than four years from now, the presidency will be up for grabs...

...The left should work to reverse corporate-led globalization and replace it with a globalization consisting of solidarity, human dignity, and sustainability...

...Editors: The analyses in your Winter 2001 issue by Chang, Faux, Lee, and Pereira shed considerable light on globalization...

...Although ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and the New Party have launched a campaign against these possible closings, it would be good to see some student activists created by this fight and great to see a national movement develop...

...If Canada, the United States, and Mexico are to form a single market, as Delaware, New York, and Texas have come to form a single market, this requires common rules on matters such as labor and the environment...