The Toronto Star April 25, 2001 Quebec City: Paving way for battles on trade by Richard Gwyn Famously, the 18th-century British sage Samuel Johnson once described patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." To bring that aphorism up to date, it can now be observed, following last weekend's Summit of the Americas, that democracy has become the first refuge of the capitalist. Capitalism, of course, mostly sells itself. It means money, jobs, wealth. Nevertheless, capitalism in its contemporary form - global, and largely unrestrained by nation-states - is increasingly being attacked for everything from environmental degradation to widening income gaps to the destruction of local cultures to the sheer coarsening of society as money becomes the only measure of value. The so-called civil society protesters seem to occupy most of the moral high ground. The counter trump card of capitalists is democracy. Free trade and free markets and capitalism raise living standards, goes the argument, and so make democracy necessary - so that political freedoms will parallel economic freedom - or reinforce the democracy that already exists. At Quebec city, the 34 national leaders matched their commitment to creating a free trade area from Tuktoyaktuk to Tierra del Fuego, by committing themselves to the following democratic declaration: "Any unconstitutional alteration or interrupting of the democratic order in a state of the hemisphere, constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of that state's government in the Summit of Americas process." Translated into everyday English, that means that any state in the hemisphere that ceases to be democratic will be evicted from the free trade agreement. Actually, it doesn't mean that. Haiti, which signed the declaration, is more a corrupt anarchy than a democracy. Its president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, won an election last November that the opposition boycotted to protest the widespread vote-rigging in an earlier election. Haiti, though, doesn't annoy and embarrass the U.S. in the manner of Cuba, which was excluded from the summit. Moreover, the summit leaders didn't define any rules to determine when any member-state ceases to be democratic, nor did they set up any system to punish this offender. Thus, the democracy clause, in which the leaders took such pride, is mostly pretty words. Saying that, though, doesn't mean it should be dismissed out of hand. For one thing, hypocrisy is always revealing. It's a tacit admission of the strength of the argument of the other side, in this instance, civil society's argument that free trade undermines democracy by widening income gaps. Indeed, Vicente Fox, Mexico's new president, himself accepted the validity of the civil society groups' concerns when he remarked, while in Quebec city, "You cannot have genuine democracy in a society where there is so much inequality and poverty." For another thing, although the democracy clause doesn't amount to much, it does amount to something genuinely new. It's the first time a democracy rider has been attached to a free trade pact. Until now, free traders have always said that no other considerations - about the environment or about health and safety - should get in the way of free trade. At Quebec city, U.S. President George W. Bush repeated this argument. First he said that he and the other leaders were "strongly committed to protecting the environment and to improving labour standards." But then he added that no codicils of this kind should "endanger the spirit of free trade." Except that Bush and the others had just done exactly that by their democracy clause. Thus the debate is no longer about whether environmental and other codicils should be added to free trade deals but rather about whether these riders, once drafted, are merely symbolic - that is, pure propaganda - or are substantive. Without admitting it, perhaps without knowing it, the summit leaders have moved to the side of the civil society protesters, even though, of course, their codicils, as in the instance of the democracy clause, are much less substantive than the civil society types would wish. That's what's really interesting. If a democracy clause is valid, why not also an environmental clause and a health and safety clause? And not just strings of words on these subjects for the sake of political appearances but real declarations, with punishments for offenders in the same way that all free trade deals provide punishments for member-states that breach the trade rules. Mostly, the leaders just wanted to regain some of the moral high ground from the civil society protesters. Instead, they may have locked themselves into a prolonged trench war not about - as in the past - whether any riders should be attached to free trade deals, but about whether those actually proposed will really do the job or are just pretty words and pure propaganda. Richard Gwyn's column appears on Wednesday and Sunday.
