The Guardian commented recently: "Nowhere is the anti-American mood sweeping Europe better exemplified than in trade. The US is at the receiving end of a series of escalating rows that threaten to spiral into a trade war. Arguments about steel, GM foods and subsidies paid to US multinationals are souring relations between the two commercial titans. Trade between them amounts to $2.1 trillion a year. When George W Bush moved to protect the market share of the ailing US steel industry, based in three electoral 'swing' states, by raising tariffs on imports, he attracted worldwide condemnation. The tariffs were last week ruled illegal by the World Trade Organisation. Europe is threatening to retaliate with $2bn worth of sanctions. These could hit innocent yet politically charged industries, such as Florida's orange growers." And today the Guardian reported: "On the eve of Mr Bush's state visit to Britain, Mr Byers, an arch-Blairite, will set out proposals to help Democrats in key swing states if the White House refuses to abandon punitive trade sanctions against the UK. Acting with the tacit approval of Blair supporters, who were enraged when Mr Bush imposed tariffs on imports of British steel to shore up his vote, the former trade and industry secretary will call for sanctions to be imposed on four key marginal states which the president will need to win."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1086792,00.html Doesn't this reveal very clearly how democracy is a tradeable commodity in capitalist society, and how the democratic system is pressed into the service of commercial advantage ? When Greg Palast published his book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" they called him a muckraker. But you can see the muck in the newspaper headlines if you're not too blind. I recall vividly how, as a student at university in New Zealand two decades ago, I had to listen to an academic sociologist pronouncing verities about the "autonomy of the state" and how it was all a crude, mystifying error to depict the capitalist state as "an executive committee of the ruling classes", as Marx had done with a wry rhetorical flourish. I'm having the same response to that argument as I had then - bollocks. Another sociologist more to my liking used to clip the newspapers, a sort of newspaper sociology. But that was in the days before the Internet. Jurriaan
