return to top page THE NEW PROTECTIONISM
by Tim Lang & Colin Hines
Earthscan Publications, London, 1993. 184 pages. £ 10.95.reviewed for Fourth World Review
by
Anton Pinschoff
December 1994
The subtitle, 'Protecting the Future against Free Trade' says more. It's all here between the lines. The implicit amoral force, the infra- and super-structure sucking all money and power to the centre. We may yet all vote to maintain our standards of living, with flush toilets for Mandela's millions, and all die of thirst. Composting is best.
Tim Lang & Colin Hines sketch out a world of Society plus Trade plus Environment and present it as the hapless victim of a nameless monster. They dissect world trade and lay bare all the devilish effects of the invisible hand without so much as hinting at its real causes. That such blinding clarity about the effects should fail to illuminate such a huge blind spot about the causes!
The authors then present an alternative vision, proposing changes in the world trading system which will 'fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and state'. Yet this relationship has long since been abolished and replaced by the one-way traffic of mass debt, mass taxation, mass democracy, mass media and mass transport all furiously well adjusted to the unspoken agenda.
And it is the lack of relationship between people and the land and each other, which relationship constitutes the State, that has permitted the 'ruinous competition' between rival contenders for power highlighted by Marcelle Papworth in her essay on the Middle Ages (FWR #16, 1986).
After an impressive amount of sound scholarship on the power of the Transnational Corporation (TNC) and on their global impact, our authors advocate sound policy on trade as the essence of their alternative vision, with Samir Amin's 'polycentrism' and a 'General Agreement For Sustainable Trade (GAST)' replacing the GATTastrophe.
Local self-reliance and diversity are the purpose of economies and trade. Control should be retained over capital, rather than letting it flow around the world in search of the highest interest, and power should be redistributed to ensure that small producers, on and off the land, in both North and South, get a higher portion of the consumer commodity dollar.
The transition to this new trading order will be paid for with various energy and pollution taxes, cuts in arms spending, and taxes on foreign exchange transactions aimed at bringing back into circulation the 90% of capital that sloshes around the money markets without ever touching the ground. First catch horse.
At the end is a ten point agenda which boils down to just one: building local and regional economies with their networks of human communities and power bases.
Tim Lang and Colin Hines have painstakingly worked out the job profile for a new free trade system by providing an admirable analysis of fox behaviour in the hen coop.
Detailed progress on their agenda for better times ahead seems then to be left to the hens and foxes to agree upon.
Copies Of This Document May Be Obtained From 26 The High Street, Purton, Wiltshire SN5 4AE, UK
Tel: 01793 77 22 14 Fax: 01793 77 25 21
e-mail: john.papworth@btinternet.com
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