The Battle in Seattle

It is rhetoric, of course. The working group the administration seeks will be powerless, and the entry of China will effectively negate all subsequent attempts at protecting worker rights. But rhetoric, however insincere, can have an effect. In this case, it reflects not only the political needs of Al Gore, who can’t afford to have the administration estrange labor any more until the primary season has passed, but a shift in the intellectual climate. The momentum for laissez-faire policies in domestic affairs has peaked. The war on the state waged by Reagan, Thatcher and Gingrich has been called off. Only at the level of world trade does the cult of laissez faire continue to hold sway, but the case is getting harder and harder to make. If increased wage equity and environmental safeguards are once again valid concerns in national affairs, it grows harder and harder to argue that they’re mere sideshows to the transnational economy and society.

While elite opinion begins to waver, popular opinion has now gained a focus. At Monday night’s march for debt forgiveness, at Tuesday’s labor march, people came out of their shops and businesses to cheer the marchers on. While the trashing and gassing was proceeding apace on Tuesday afternoon, just three blocks away office workers laughed as a chorus sung mock Christmas carols with anti-WTO lyrics. There was anger at the inconveniences the marches caused, anger at the anarchists for sure. But on the whole, the protesters in Seattle were nobody’s outside agitators. These were the kids at U Wash, the ladies from church, the guys at Boeing. It was Seattle that was marching this week. To the WTO, Singapore has never looked better.