I appreciate the spirit behind Bello's piece (as exerpted here), but, stripped to
its elements, it strikes me as much too reformist. It hearkens back to the pre-1982
dispensation as a sort-of golden age, and it presents as its agenda all those
progressive things that governments were supposed to do back then but generally
didn't or at least not very well. Its call to dismantle the TNC seems to be hedged
by support for nationally-based private corporations that are supposedly more
responsive, and it seeks no discernable management over the global trading system.
Me, I would begin talking about concrete steps to socialize (which is not
necessarily to put under public ownership) corporations national and transnational,
and to craft a set of rules and governing procedures to make possible trade without
the lash of global competitiveness that has poisoned every national political
economy. The coalitions to do these things would be international and horizontal
(class and social interest based), not (as apparently with Bello) national and
vertical.
Peter
Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:
> <http://www.policyalternatives.ca/>
>
> Should corporate-led institutions be reformed or disempowered?
> It's not off the wall to think of dismantling corporations
> [Part II of The most crucial task facing the world's NGOs]
>
> by Waldon Bello
> The CCPA Monitor, February 2001, pp 14-16
