From "Eyes on Trade" at http://citizen.typepad.com/
November 14, 2007
AFL "unalterably opposed" to Colombia FTA
There have been recent ruminations that the Dems might actually consider bringing the Colombia FTA to the floor next year (ie the November 2 Inside U.S. Trade story entitled, "Rangel Willing To Consider Colombia FTA Next Year If Support Warrants"). But unlike with the Peru deal, the AFL-CIO is taking a hard line on this one, saying it "remains unalterably opposed" to the Colombia FTA. In a letter sent to both the House and Senate last Thursday, the day of the Peru vote, the AFL said:
"...two trade union leaders were murdered in Colombia within the last week... These murders are only the most recent and tragic reminders of the danger experienced by our Colombian brothers and sisters... More troubling, the vast majority of those responsible for the over 2,200 murders of trade unionists since 1991 are still at large and face no criminal charges. Even with the recent convictions, the impunity rate remains over 97 percent... passing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement at this time would cost the United States considerable leverage over Colombia to encourage continued progress on human rights."
Attached to the letter is a laundry list of issues of concern, which could be summarized thusly:
There are still more murders of trade unionists in Colombia than in any other country.
The rate of impunity for the murder of trade unionists from 1991-2007 is between 97 and 98 percent.
Dialogue between unions and the government is sorely lacking, and the ILO Office in Colombia lacks the political support, funding and staffing necessary to adequately fulfill its role (and its mandate will expire in October 2008).
Colombia's labor laws are not in compliance with core ILO standards.
Read the full text of the letter, as well as the attachment, here (PDF).
_______________________________________________
The Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) is a national coalition whose members include Americans for Democratic Action, Communications Workers of America, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange, IATPAction, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, League of Rural Voters, Natinoal Farmers Union, National Family Farm Coalition, Public Citizen, UNITE-HERE, United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, United Steelworkers of America, United Students Against Sweatshops, and the Western Organization of Resource Councils, as well as regional, state, and city-based coalitions, organizations, and individual activists throughout the United States.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Why on Earth Are Hillary and Obama Supporting Pro-Corporate Trade Deals?
Why on Earth Are Hillary and Obama Supporting Pro-Corporate Trade Deals?
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on November 13, 2007, Printed on November 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67680/
With the announcement that Hillary Clinton will join Barack Obama in supporting a new trade deal with Peru that passed in the House last week -- the first in a series of "free-trade" deals that are based on the deeply unpopular NAFTA model and being pushed through Congress by the Bush administration -- the divide between the two Democratic front-runners and the American electorate couldn't be clearer.
There's certainly no constituency for it within the universe of Democratic primary voters -- all of the Peruvian and most American unions oppose it, as do key environmental and anti-poverty organizations -- and it certainly won't win any "swing" voters to the party or make the Democratic brand more popular in any battleground states.
I asked Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, who really stands to benefit from the deal. He didn't hesitate before rattling off a dozen multinationals including Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum and Wal-Mart, all of whom, according to Tucker, have "put their full might into getting the Peru deal passed, including showering millions in congressional campaign donations since January alone." Tucker told me their wish list includes "privatized social security systems for Citi, rainforest-destroying oil extraction for Occidental, and a push to Wal-Mart's efforts to buy out Peru's retail sector, just as they did in Central America just days after Bush signed [the Central American Free Trade Agreement]." In addition, General Mills, (and the Grocery Manufacturers Association PAC, which supports it) wants the deal to go through because it grows most of its canned veggies in Peru (decimating onion, asparagus and pea farmers in the United States) and is now moving its processing facilities down there. Citibank, along with other financial services firms, wants the deal because it would allow the firm to sue the Peruvian government for damages if progressive activists succeed in reversing a disastrous social security privatization scheme that's screwed over millions of Peruvian retirees.
The rest of the field has come out in opposition to the Peru agreement, and one candidate, Dennis Kucinich, has gone so far as to call for abolishing the WTO. But like Obama and Clinton, Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson are all enthusiastic, self-described "free traders." It's John Edwards, considered a distant third in the race by the punditocracy, who is making the Peru deal into an issue that he hopes will speak to the candidates' overall judgment as well as their concern for issues of economic justice. "Like the failed free trade agreements before it," he said in a statement, "the Peru Agreement puts the interests of the big multinational corporations first, ahead of the interests of American workers and communities."
Supporting the NAFTA model does speak to the candidates' judgment. Obama said that he'd vote for the Peru deal because "it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO," but the AFL-CIO released a statement saying that, because of "several issues of concern to working families," the AFL-CIO "is not in a position to support the Peru FTA." "Labor and environmental protections" are a scam -- Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that his members were "encouraged" by assurances that the deal's labor provisions "cannot be read to require compliance."
Obama went on to insult the intelligence of a crowd of New Hampshire residents by explaining: "We cannot draw a moat around the U.S. economy because China is still trading, India is still trading." But objecting to these new NAFTA-style deals has nothing to do with moats. We already have a treaty with Peru, and 150 other countries, that established a rules-based trading system, complete with a dispute-resolution process. It's called the WTO, and fair trade activists -- many of whom also happen to make up a large chunk of the Democratic party's base -- already object to that institution's consistently giving too much to investors without paying more than lip service to protecting other stakeholders. No real Democrat should talk about "moats" when we have binding trade deals in place covering 98 percent of the planet.
The plain truth is that there's no half-way decent argument for supporting the Peru deal, and that may be the most offensive part of the whole thing: It shows that on a fundamental level, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and their respective campaign staff think that the American electorate -- you and I and all the people we know -- are stupid.
It's certainly difficult to interpret Clinton's justification for supporting the deal any other way. After waffling on the issue for a couple of days, her campaign released a statement saying she'll vote for the Peru FTA because it "levels the playing field for American workers." Apparently we're supposed to believe that Peru, mighty economic behemoth that it is -- it has an economy approaching the size of Connecticut's -- has been using its vastly superior technology, infrastructure, access to capital and its firms' huge economies of scale to run roughshod over its American competitors, and only the Peru "free trade" agreement will give America's working stiffs a fair shot to compete on a level playing field.
The deal's significance is not in its impact on American workers -- those who say it will kill jobs here don't appreciate how insignificant our trade with Peru is in the big picture -- but the opportunity it gives us to take a hard look at where the candidates stand on the model itself. Clinton said she'd oppose the next deals coming down the pike: treaties with Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Given that they are all substantially similar -- the Panama deal, in particular, is basically identical to the Peru agreement -- I asked democratic strategist and columnist David Sirota if he had any insight into what game she was up to. "What's going on here," he said, "is that she is endorsing the NAFTA trade model, but saying that she has problems with certain countries' specific behaviors. And that's what's really telling. She is saying she has no problem with trade deals rigged to crush American and foreign workers on behalf of Wall Street, and that the only real reason to ever oppose that model is if there are other problems/complications with the specific country in question."
But it's the model itself that's flawed. Just a few weeks before the House OK'd the deal, a study by the Economic Policy Institute's Josh Bivens found that our neoliberal trade policies have depressed the wages of 70 percent of the U.S. population. What's more, Bivens argued that much of what's wrong with the policy has long been known by D.C. lawmakers. As a summary of the paper by Public Citizen noted:
Anytime a pundit or politician invokes the notion that our trade policy is a "win-win" proposal, they are at worst lying or misleading the public, and at best equating the considerable gains going to the top end of the income distribution with a scenario where the gains are widely shared (something that has not happened and could not happen without massive tax increases on the wealthy and government redistribution of a magnitude that is not being at all discussed by leading presidential candidates of either party).
This needs to be put into a larger context: The benefits of a wide-open global economy are routinely and wildly overstated. In fact, what the pundits call "pro-growth" policies are not expected to yield much in the way of growth at all, and some data indicate they even slow down economic growth for most countries (PDF). According to a study by the World Bank -- no hotbed of democratic socialism -- eliminating every last "trade barrier" in the world, ever tariff and every import control would increase the world's economic output by less than a penny on the dollar by 2015. But those gains wouldn't be spread equally around the global economy, and for countries like Peru, they'd likely be more than offset by the costs.
Of course, politicians are in the business of being elected first and foremost, so I'd find Clinton and Obama's stance less offensive if there was the potential for a big political payoff at the end of the day. There isn't: Polls show that Americans are ambivalent about D.C.'s trade consensus at best, with about as many saying it's hurt working families as saying it's helped. As Ken Scheve and Matt Slaughter -- two boosters of so-called "free trade" -- noted in a recent article in Foreign affairs:
… An ongoing NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that from December 1999 to March 2007, the share of respondents stating that trade agreements have hurt the United States increased by 16 percentage points (to 46 percent) while the "helped" share fell by 11 points (to just 28 percent). A 2000 Gallup poll found that 56 percent of respondents saw trade as an opportunity and 36 percent saw it as a threat; by 2005, the percentages had shifted to 44 percent and 49 percent, respectively. The March 2007 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found negative assessments of [the current model of globalization] even among the highly skilled: Only 35 percent of respondents with a college or higher degree said they directly benefited from the global economy.
The interesting thing about opposition to corporate-led globalization is the degree to which it's independent of ideology or party loyalty. Republicans, Democrats and independents are all equally ambivalent. That "fair" rather than "free" trade is a winning position politically was made clear in last fall's midterm landslide, an election in which just about every candidate that knocked off an incumbent or grabbed an open seat ran against the bipartisan "free trade" consensus (PDF).
Given the political landscape and the very significant policy issues raised by labor and environmental groups, there's no reason in the world to support these deals. Accept, that is, for the campaign contributions that corporate America can generate. So while there exists a solid body of empirical research that's shown that most people's perception of the relationship between campaign cash and politicians' votes is overstated -- that there's no clear quid-pro-quo -- it's hard to see any other explanation for supporting a deal like the Peru FTA. The treaty itself is unlikely to hurt Americans all that much, so the calculus must be that they can make some donors happy without paying a price. It's hard to pretend that the two Democratic candidates' support for a deal opposed by U.S. labor but being lobbied hard by Citibank and JP Morgan has nothing to do with the fact that they're 1-2 in contributions from commercial banks and are both in the top three in contributions from securities and investment firms. As Bush has ridden the GOP brand into the gutter, the corporate money has been shifting to the Dems. It started with the lead-up to last year's midterms, when the New York Times described a "shift in political giving" from corporations that had "not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades." The trend has continued this year.
Contrary to most of the reporting on the trade front, none of this is about whether the Democrats have an adequately "big tent." It goes beyond ideological diversity; these issues get to the core of what it's supposed to mean to be a Democrat: Are you or are you not working for the good of the majority? In a very important sense, the specifics of all of these trade deals are irrelevant. The real question that all political candidates should answer is this: Are you in favor of using all of the immense diplomatic and economic power of the United States to coerce foreign countries into accepting binding treaties, effectively written by corporate lobbyists, that limit their ability to manage their economies as they see fit and further concentrate wealth here at home?
When it comes to the Peru deal, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Christopher Dodd and even Joe Biden are saying "no" in response to that question. If that line of attack pushes any of their numbers in key primary states -- with Edwards positioned to make the most of it -- we may finally see a shift in the conventional wisdom on trade. The idea that there's a real political price to be paid for rallying around the status quo might just help move along the process of changing it.
In the meantime, progressives should look hard at the candidates who don't think that their party's base is made up of a bunch of suckers.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/67680/
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on November 13, 2007, Printed on November 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67680/
With the announcement that Hillary Clinton will join Barack Obama in supporting a new trade deal with Peru that passed in the House last week -- the first in a series of "free-trade" deals that are based on the deeply unpopular NAFTA model and being pushed through Congress by the Bush administration -- the divide between the two Democratic front-runners and the American electorate couldn't be clearer.
There's certainly no constituency for it within the universe of Democratic primary voters -- all of the Peruvian and most American unions oppose it, as do key environmental and anti-poverty organizations -- and it certainly won't win any "swing" voters to the party or make the Democratic brand more popular in any battleground states.
I asked Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, who really stands to benefit from the deal. He didn't hesitate before rattling off a dozen multinationals including Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum and Wal-Mart, all of whom, according to Tucker, have "put their full might into getting the Peru deal passed, including showering millions in congressional campaign donations since January alone." Tucker told me their wish list includes "privatized social security systems for Citi, rainforest-destroying oil extraction for Occidental, and a push to Wal-Mart's efforts to buy out Peru's retail sector, just as they did in Central America just days after Bush signed [the Central American Free Trade Agreement]." In addition, General Mills, (and the Grocery Manufacturers Association PAC, which supports it) wants the deal to go through because it grows most of its canned veggies in Peru (decimating onion, asparagus and pea farmers in the United States) and is now moving its processing facilities down there. Citibank, along with other financial services firms, wants the deal because it would allow the firm to sue the Peruvian government for damages if progressive activists succeed in reversing a disastrous social security privatization scheme that's screwed over millions of Peruvian retirees.
The rest of the field has come out in opposition to the Peru agreement, and one candidate, Dennis Kucinich, has gone so far as to call for abolishing the WTO. But like Obama and Clinton, Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson are all enthusiastic, self-described "free traders." It's John Edwards, considered a distant third in the race by the punditocracy, who is making the Peru deal into an issue that he hopes will speak to the candidates' overall judgment as well as their concern for issues of economic justice. "Like the failed free trade agreements before it," he said in a statement, "the Peru Agreement puts the interests of the big multinational corporations first, ahead of the interests of American workers and communities."
Supporting the NAFTA model does speak to the candidates' judgment. Obama said that he'd vote for the Peru deal because "it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO," but the AFL-CIO released a statement saying that, because of "several issues of concern to working families," the AFL-CIO "is not in a position to support the Peru FTA." "Labor and environmental protections" are a scam -- Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that his members were "encouraged" by assurances that the deal's labor provisions "cannot be read to require compliance."
Obama went on to insult the intelligence of a crowd of New Hampshire residents by explaining: "We cannot draw a moat around the U.S. economy because China is still trading, India is still trading." But objecting to these new NAFTA-style deals has nothing to do with moats. We already have a treaty with Peru, and 150 other countries, that established a rules-based trading system, complete with a dispute-resolution process. It's called the WTO, and fair trade activists -- many of whom also happen to make up a large chunk of the Democratic party's base -- already object to that institution's consistently giving too much to investors without paying more than lip service to protecting other stakeholders. No real Democrat should talk about "moats" when we have binding trade deals in place covering 98 percent of the planet.
The plain truth is that there's no half-way decent argument for supporting the Peru deal, and that may be the most offensive part of the whole thing: It shows that on a fundamental level, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and their respective campaign staff think that the American electorate -- you and I and all the people we know -- are stupid.
It's certainly difficult to interpret Clinton's justification for supporting the deal any other way. After waffling on the issue for a couple of days, her campaign released a statement saying she'll vote for the Peru FTA because it "levels the playing field for American workers." Apparently we're supposed to believe that Peru, mighty economic behemoth that it is -- it has an economy approaching the size of Connecticut's -- has been using its vastly superior technology, infrastructure, access to capital and its firms' huge economies of scale to run roughshod over its American competitors, and only the Peru "free trade" agreement will give America's working stiffs a fair shot to compete on a level playing field.
The deal's significance is not in its impact on American workers -- those who say it will kill jobs here don't appreciate how insignificant our trade with Peru is in the big picture -- but the opportunity it gives us to take a hard look at where the candidates stand on the model itself. Clinton said she'd oppose the next deals coming down the pike: treaties with Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Given that they are all substantially similar -- the Panama deal, in particular, is basically identical to the Peru agreement -- I asked democratic strategist and columnist David Sirota if he had any insight into what game she was up to. "What's going on here," he said, "is that she is endorsing the NAFTA trade model, but saying that she has problems with certain countries' specific behaviors. And that's what's really telling. She is saying she has no problem with trade deals rigged to crush American and foreign workers on behalf of Wall Street, and that the only real reason to ever oppose that model is if there are other problems/complications with the specific country in question."
But it's the model itself that's flawed. Just a few weeks before the House OK'd the deal, a study by the Economic Policy Institute's Josh Bivens found that our neoliberal trade policies have depressed the wages of 70 percent of the U.S. population. What's more, Bivens argued that much of what's wrong with the policy has long been known by D.C. lawmakers. As a summary of the paper by Public Citizen noted:
Anytime a pundit or politician invokes the notion that our trade policy is a "win-win" proposal, they are at worst lying or misleading the public, and at best equating the considerable gains going to the top end of the income distribution with a scenario where the gains are widely shared (something that has not happened and could not happen without massive tax increases on the wealthy and government redistribution of a magnitude that is not being at all discussed by leading presidential candidates of either party).
This needs to be put into a larger context: The benefits of a wide-open global economy are routinely and wildly overstated. In fact, what the pundits call "pro-growth" policies are not expected to yield much in the way of growth at all, and some data indicate they even slow down economic growth for most countries (PDF). According to a study by the World Bank -- no hotbed of democratic socialism -- eliminating every last "trade barrier" in the world, ever tariff and every import control would increase the world's economic output by less than a penny on the dollar by 2015. But those gains wouldn't be spread equally around the global economy, and for countries like Peru, they'd likely be more than offset by the costs.
Of course, politicians are in the business of being elected first and foremost, so I'd find Clinton and Obama's stance less offensive if there was the potential for a big political payoff at the end of the day. There isn't: Polls show that Americans are ambivalent about D.C.'s trade consensus at best, with about as many saying it's hurt working families as saying it's helped. As Ken Scheve and Matt Slaughter -- two boosters of so-called "free trade" -- noted in a recent article in Foreign affairs:
… An ongoing NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that from December 1999 to March 2007, the share of respondents stating that trade agreements have hurt the United States increased by 16 percentage points (to 46 percent) while the "helped" share fell by 11 points (to just 28 percent). A 2000 Gallup poll found that 56 percent of respondents saw trade as an opportunity and 36 percent saw it as a threat; by 2005, the percentages had shifted to 44 percent and 49 percent, respectively. The March 2007 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found negative assessments of [the current model of globalization] even among the highly skilled: Only 35 percent of respondents with a college or higher degree said they directly benefited from the global economy.
The interesting thing about opposition to corporate-led globalization is the degree to which it's independent of ideology or party loyalty. Republicans, Democrats and independents are all equally ambivalent. That "fair" rather than "free" trade is a winning position politically was made clear in last fall's midterm landslide, an election in which just about every candidate that knocked off an incumbent or grabbed an open seat ran against the bipartisan "free trade" consensus (PDF).
Given the political landscape and the very significant policy issues raised by labor and environmental groups, there's no reason in the world to support these deals. Accept, that is, for the campaign contributions that corporate America can generate. So while there exists a solid body of empirical research that's shown that most people's perception of the relationship between campaign cash and politicians' votes is overstated -- that there's no clear quid-pro-quo -- it's hard to see any other explanation for supporting a deal like the Peru FTA. The treaty itself is unlikely to hurt Americans all that much, so the calculus must be that they can make some donors happy without paying a price. It's hard to pretend that the two Democratic candidates' support for a deal opposed by U.S. labor but being lobbied hard by Citibank and JP Morgan has nothing to do with the fact that they're 1-2 in contributions from commercial banks and are both in the top three in contributions from securities and investment firms. As Bush has ridden the GOP brand into the gutter, the corporate money has been shifting to the Dems. It started with the lead-up to last year's midterms, when the New York Times described a "shift in political giving" from corporations that had "not been this pronounced in the final stages of a campaign since 1994, when Republicans swept control of the House for the first time in four decades." The trend has continued this year.
Contrary to most of the reporting on the trade front, none of this is about whether the Democrats have an adequately "big tent." It goes beyond ideological diversity; these issues get to the core of what it's supposed to mean to be a Democrat: Are you or are you not working for the good of the majority? In a very important sense, the specifics of all of these trade deals are irrelevant. The real question that all political candidates should answer is this: Are you in favor of using all of the immense diplomatic and economic power of the United States to coerce foreign countries into accepting binding treaties, effectively written by corporate lobbyists, that limit their ability to manage their economies as they see fit and further concentrate wealth here at home?
When it comes to the Peru deal, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Christopher Dodd and even Joe Biden are saying "no" in response to that question. If that line of attack pushes any of their numbers in key primary states -- with Edwards positioned to make the most of it -- we may finally see a shift in the conventional wisdom on trade. The idea that there's a real political price to be paid for rallying around the status quo might just help move along the process of changing it.
In the meantime, progressives should look hard at the candidates who don't think that their party's base is made up of a bunch of suckers.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/67680/
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
La democracia global, otro nombre del socialismo
La democracia global, otro nombre del socialismo
El senador Gustavo Petro en una conferencia dictada en Ecuador, analiza lo que él considera "los pilares precursores de esta nueva manera de pensar y actuar que llamamos socialismo siglo XXI desde una perspectiva colombiana".
El socialismo, afirma, implica Estados de Derecho, derechos y libertades extendidas para la ciudadanía, protección de la identidad individual, de la diversidad del género humano. Supremacía del ciudadano sobre el Estado. Las conquistas del liberalismo del siglo XVIII son parte de las conquistas del socialismo.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Artículos relacionados:
La democracia local o la conciencia de la multitud. Carlos Ceballos, PDA Alemania. Berlín.
Gustavo Petro
Lunes 12 de noviembre de 2007
Puntualización sobre la lucha armada, las Farc y un socialismo para el futuro, por parte del senador del Polo Democrático Gustavo Petro, en un reciente foro en Ecuador.
Tengo que confesar que esta es la primera vez que pronuncio una conferencia desde una iglesia. Deben ser las paradojas del socialismo del siglo XXI. Tengo que recordar, también, que en esta mesa se encuentra una persona a la que no veía desde hace muchos años, estábamos en alguna montaña colombiana vestidos de uniforme verde oliva, armados. Ella es Amaranta, para ustedes la ciudadana ecuatoriana Patricia, miembro de Alfaro Vive Carajo, quien luchaba al lado de nosotros en el M-19, en el batallón América, bajo ordenes de Carlos Pizarro.
Y me interesa recordar al M-19 y compararlo con las FARC, para empezar mi análisis sobre lo que considero son los pilares precursores de esta nueva manera de pensar y actuar que llamamos socialismo siglo XXI desde una perspectiva colombiana.
Las FARC y el M-19 con orígenes diferentes fueron parte de la insurgencia armada colombiana en la década de los setenta y ochenta. Para el año 1989 se separaron definitivamente en su transcurrir histórico. El M-19 decidió dejar las armas, ganó unos meses después de su desarme las elecciones a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente en 1991, fue la fuerza protagónica en la construcción de la democrática Constitución del 91, que nunca se aplicó y luego en 1994 desapareció definitivamente como organización. Las FARC se mantuvieron en armas y son hoy una poderosa organización militar convertida prácticamente en un ejército con raíces campesinas.
¿Era un error dejar las armas y, al contrario, conservarlas era un criterio de éxito y eficacia en Colombia? Cualquier mirada superficial ante el hecho que el M-19 se extinguió y las Farc se han fortalecido, diría que efectivamente, que tal era la evidencia histórica. Diría esa mirada, que las armas son esenciales para el desarrollo de las transformaciones en Colombia. El M-19 habría fracasado, las Farc habrían triunfado.
Pero una mirada más profunda extraería otra conclusión: El M-19 logró proponer un proyecto democrático para la Nación, sintetizado en la carta constitucional de 1991, que sin aplicar precisamente se convierte en el programa del Polo Democrático, segunda fuerza electoral del país. La perspectiva de lograr un pacto social y político que profundice la democratización del estado y la sociedad colombiana es una verdadera alternativa viable hoy para la salida pacífica del conflicto y la violencia, es una respuesta realista y posible a la crisis de la nación colombiana. El Estado Social de Derecho que recupera el espíritu filosófico democrático del liberalismo del siglo XVIII y lo articula a la bandera de la igualdad social, se cierne en el horizonte colombiano, desde la carta magna, como una posibilidad inquietante para quienes han detentado el poder: las mafias, y los monopolios económicos. En una economía rentista, profundamente desigual y depredadora, el aliento democrático del desaparecido M-19 sigue sembrando la zozobra en unos, la inquietud en otros y la esperanza en muchos por su justeza histórica, su hálito; su espíritu sirve de base para organizar un partido que hoy, siendo la segunda fuerza electoral, se constituye en una verdadera alternativa de poder similar a los movimientos progresistas que han conquistado pacífica y democráticamente la mayoría de los gobiernos de América del Sur.
Por otra parte, las Farc se han colocado como el movimiento más rechazado por el pueblo colombiano. A pesar de su fortaleza militar conquistada por la experiencia de sus cincuenta años de lucha armada y por recursos ingentes extraídos de la cadena productiva y especulativa del narcotráfico, han caído en el peor de los aislamientos políticos que movimiento insurgente alguno ha logrado experimentar. Las Farc son un movimiento autorreferenciado. Al contrario de la guerrilla clásica, y de su propio pasado, que prescribía la necesidad de un fuerte apoyo popular para lograr resistir y crecer, e incluso triunfar como Fidel, el Che y los sandinistas, las Farc se financian tanto de la actividad narcotraficante que se permite reclutar su ejército bajo la forma del mercenarismo y desdeñar por completo el apoyo popular para su resistencia y crecimiento. Gracias a esos recursos, las FARC pueden sustituir al pueblo para su sostén y crecimiento. La guerrilla se autorreferencia. No necesita más de construir políticas populares, de ampliar su espacio de opinión. Su lucha campesina degenera en la venganza, la barbarie, el crimen de guerra. Como Engels lo planteó en su estudio sobre las guerras campesinas en Alemania, esta degenera en una mera lucha militar despótica y vengativa sin posibilidades de poder, de transformación, de democracia.
Mientras el proyecto democrático del M-19 mantiene su vigencia histórica en la posibilidad de la Constitución del 91 y su estado Social de Derecho, las Farc han sido derrotadas estratégicamente en el corazón de los colombianos.
Esta experiencia colombiana sirve para analizar un concepto pilar de lo que considero debe ser el principio del accionar práctico del socialismo del siglo XXI. En Colombia un medio como las armas no alcanzó su fin: el socialismo, o si se quiere la democracia. Al contrario las armas degradaron a quienes las tomaron.
I. Primera ruptura: El fin no justifica los medios.
Racionalicemos un poco más la experiencia. En mi opinión la política moderna tanto de derechas como de izquierdas utilizó en el siglo XX el principio del "fin justifica los medios". Descrito por el florentino hace varios siglos, este principio fundamentó la política moderna y llevó a la derecha y a la izquierda al Estado totalitario. El nazismo, el fascismo y el estalinismo fueron la expresión del fracaso de los fines altruistas concebidos a través de la construcción de medios profundamente antidemocráticos y violentos. El racismo, la raza superior, la idea de una única clase portadora de la revolución, el centralismo seudodemocrático del partido único, la dictadura del proletariado, la violencia como partera de la historia, el desarrollismo de la fuerza productiva, las armas como instrumento de la violencia revolucionaria mostraron que no nos llevaban ni al tercer Reich, ni al comunismo terrenal como sede del paraíso de todos los pobres del mundo.
En lugar de la redención social, del reino de la libertad sobre la necesidad, de la nueva historia del hombre, o mejor del Hombre Nuevo, que no incluía a la mujer ni a los homosexuales, ni a la naturaleza, sobrevino el gulag, la muerte de la libertad, la agonía de la democracia. Bakunin fue reemplazado por Pol Pot, Marx por Stalin, la libertad por el Gulag. El Estado se impuso integralmente en todas las esferas íntimas del individuo, hasta asfixiarlo.
Por eso el socialismo del Siglo XXI debe implicar una verdadera ruptura con el socialismo del siglo XX.
Quiero confesar, como es propio en esta iglesia, que no soy un pacifista radical: yo mismo tome algún día las armas en el M-19, y creo que los pueblos en determinadas circunstancias históricas deben tomar las armas como último recurso de la resistencia, y muchas veces como medio de triunfo, de liberación. Pero las armas "per se" degradan. De eso debemos ser conscientes. Las armas implican automáticamente la posibilidad de destruir el ser humano y por ello, los individuos que las empuñan deben ser controlados de múltiples maneras. Las armas siempre deben estar bajo el control público. Siempre deben ser usadas de manera transitoria, ojalá nunca, mientras menos tiempo mejor.
En esto el comandante "Marcos" expresó una idea precursora. Mientras menos use el Ejercito Zapatista las armas, mejor, decía el comandante guerrillero sintetizando, sin saberlo y por defecto, la experiencia colombiana.
Las Farc han usado las armas durante más de cincuenta años en los campos de Colombia, por eso se han degradado. El M-19 las dejó prontamente por eso, aún su proyecto político pervive.
Pero el problema va más allá de la experiencia colombiana. De alguna manera u otra los socialismos del siglo XX perecieron en manos de sus propios pueblos. El segundo ejército más poderoso del mundo, el soviético, no pudo impedir, casi sin disparar, que las muchedumbres derrumbaran el supuesto paraíso proletario. Las multitudes corrían tras la libertad, tras la democracia, en realidad sin alcanzarla, pero destrozaron uno de los peores totalitarismos de la historia humana. Los medios: el Estado, el Partido Único, el centralismo seudodemocrático, la violencia de clase, las armas, la tortura, la prisión, la censura, el exterminio de la crítica, eran profundamente antidemocráticos. Su fin no fue sino el exterminio de la democracia y de la libertad.
La experiencia histórica muestra que los medios determinan el fin. Y que por tanto si el objetivo del Socialismo del siglo XXI es la construcción de una democracia global: el reino de la humanidad; entonces sus medios tienen que ser profundamente democráticos. Los medios son la escuela en donde se prepara el fin, son su método de construcción. En los mismos medios se encuba el contenido del fin. Por tanto el socialismo debe darle sana sepultura al "fin que justifica los medios".
Me gusta la democracia como condición social. Indudablemente la democracia no es solo un método sino un fin en sí misma, por eso la búsqueda de los revolucionarios del siglo XIX por una sociedad sin Estado, sin poder, no era más que una extensión de la búsqueda de los revolucionarios del siglo XVIII, por la democracia y la libertad. Hasta Lenin llegó a afirmar que el socialismo era la profundización de la democracia y la empezó a buscar en los soviets hasta que sus palabras fueron olvidadas bajo un manto de sangre y calaveras. El socialismo estaba llamado a incluir, profundizándolo, el liberalismo, no a destruirlo. Y el concepto de Estado de Derecho construido por las revoluciones burguesas no podía ser enterrado por los socialistas sino conservado como patrimonio de la humanidad y radicalizado.
El socialismo entonces implica Estados de Derecho, derechos y libertades extendidas para la ciudadanía, protección de la identidad individual, de la diversidad del género humano. Supremacía del ciudadano sobre el Estado. Las conquistas del liberalismo del siglo XVIII son parte de las conquistas del socialismo.
Segunda ruptura: El socialismo no se puede construir en un solo país.
La tesis fundamental de Stalin, sobre el Estado socialista, que implicaba la construcción del socialismo en el territorio de un estado-nación, fue superada por la realidad misma del capitalismo. El Capital, como lo presuponían los socialistas del siglo XIX, traspasaba las fronteras, no tenía patria. En el siglo XXI, el capital es global, el taller o la fábrica dejaron de ser un establecimiento de barrio y se convirtió en un verdadero taller planetario. La cadena de producción abarcó en un solo proceso de trabajo, centenares de nacionalidades diferentes. El capital construyó la utopía de los arquitectos de Babel, a pesar del castigo divino de la dispersión de las lenguas. Su superación ya no es nacional porque su lógica es global. Un embate simplemente nacional contra el capital es un hazmerreír, a menos que sean muchos embates nacionales, o mejor aún a menos que sea una lucha concertada de la humanidad.
Peor aún, cuando los procesos productivos globalizados del capital conllevan en su seno la destrucción de la misma humanidad. Hoy la contradicción antagónica no es entre Capital y Trabajo sino entre Capital y Humanidad.
El calentamiento global que coloca el final de la vida inteligente sobre el planeta en un lapso de cien años, y que no es más que la aceleración, por razón del desarrollo económico, de las leyes de la termodinámica, como estudió Nicolás Georgescu-Roegen; la extinción paulatina de la diversidad cultural, civilizadora, de los seres humanos, fundamento de la misma humanidad, como afirmó Guilbert Hottois; y la posibilidad de la transformación genética de los seres humanos por la tecnología, extinguiendo la humanidad tal como la conocemos, según la Iglesia Católica, son apenas ejemplos de la enorme potencialidad destructora del Capital. La expansión del capital ya no supone simplemente la expansión de la explotación de los trabajadores, sino la eliminación de la humanidad misma. La lógica autónoma y global del capital en plena expansión global, como recordaba Rosa Luxemburgo, es tal que su autonomía ya no es regulada por el instinto de conservación de la especie humana. La lógica de la ganancia se enfrenta como nunca antes en la historia humana a la lógica de la vida.
Por eso el trabajo de Antonio Negri es tan estimulante. Para el filósofo italiano la clase obrera ha dejado de ser el sujeto revolucionario al abandonar el polo antagónico del capital, que para Negri, la dialéctica no fue sino una equivocación filosófica de los socialistas. El nuevo sujeto revolucionario para él es la multitud, que en la concepción de Spinoza corresponde a la unidad de las diversidades humanas sin suprimirlas, es una concertación de especificidades, una comunicación movilizadora entre particularidades colectivas e individuales, como su nombre lo indica una multiplicidad humana sin reducciones homogéneas. Yo pienso que la Multitud, en tanto global, no es más que la Humanidad misma, consciente de sí misma, responsable de si misma. Lo que nos lleva a la tesis que el socialismo no es más que el control de la humanidad sobre los procesos del capital que la pueden destruir. Pero también que la "Humanidad", a diferencia de "El Hombre" de los liberales del siglo XVIII, es un concepto plural, múltiple, diverso, multicolor como el arco iris.
Un control de la humanidad sobre la capacidad del capital de destrucción planetaria no se puede expresar sino como la aparición de un poder público global, Negri lo llama Democracia Global, yo socialismo del siglo XXI. El poder público global implica diversidad, dialogo entre civilizaciones, un nuevo cosmopolitismo, una sensación de interconexión global no basada en el mercado sino en las luchas, en los propósitos comunes, esencialmente humanos. La sensación de humanidad que no deja de ser sino la expresión del simple instinto de conservación de una especie, que a diferencia de las demás es consciente de sí misma, pero que se expresa como lo definieron los liberales del siglo XVII y XVIII, en leyes, en regulaciones, esta vez, globales, democráticamente construidas, léase cosmopolitas, intercivilizatorias, de carácter planetario. La regulación del capital, los impuestos mundiales para erradicar la pobreza, el control sobre lo estratégico para la continuación de la vida: tecnologías destructivas, armas de destrucción masiva, agua, culturas, medicamentos esenciales para la vida, alimentos, saber, etc., son las dimensiones concretas de una verdadera lucha de la humanidad por su conservación, quizás la primera lucha de la humanidad como un todo en la historia de nuestra especie.
Tercera ruptura: Entonces el socialismo no es la propiedad estatal de los medios de producción.
Si el socialismo no se puede construir en un solo país, porque es global, entonces tampoco se pude definir como la propiedad estatal de los medios de producción, dado que el estado tiene apenas una jurisdicción nacional, error en el que no cayó Lenin, que llamó a su "NEP" "capitalismo de estado" pero que magnificó Stalin de manera aberrante bautizando el Frankistein como socialismo. La estatización de las formas de creación de la riqueza y la cultura extinguió la libertad y el individuo. El Estado al ser el propietario de la producción, se convirtió en el único propietario de la vida y del individuo, pasó a ser un Estado totalitario. De la destrucción del Estado propuesto por Bakunin y Marx, se pasó a la magnificación y potenciación del Estado de Stalin.
Pero el mismo capital comenzó la destrucción de su propia obra: el estado-nación. Útil para ampliar mercados a escala nacional y regular las relaciones capital-trabajo en el marco nacional, se volvió inútil para la ampliación de los mercados en el ámbito mundial y para desregularizar los movimientos del capital. Los procesos de planificación dejaron de ser públicos y estatales y pasaron al mundo privado de las corporaciones, y las mismas corporaciones lograron magnitudes financieras más fuertes que la mayoría de los Estados existentes. Finalmente el socialismo estatal cayó derrumbado por el empuje de fuerzas productivas que no dejaba progresar en el seno de sus sociedades.
Pero si la aparición de un nuevo poder público democrático a escala planetaria permite volver a plantear el socialismo, cabe preguntarse que papel concreto debe desempeñar el estado-nación en las nuevas realidades que plantea el socialismo del siglo XXI.
Se trata de construir estados de derecho, democratizados y democratizadores. El estado-nación con poderes disminuidos en la nueva realidad tiene que ser articulador de movimientos sociales que no deben ni pueden suplantar. Gobiernos para el dialogo intercivilizatorio, democratizadores de los poderes locales, propiciadores de la pluralidad económica, de la democratización de la propiedad de los activos productivos, ayudantes de la reconstitución del territorio bajo democracias locales y quizás, espacios públicos transitorios en caminos de extinción hacia realidades supraestatales y hacia democracias locales profundamente interconectadas a escala global con importantes intermediaciones culturales. En nuestro contexto los estados latinoamericanos bajo gobiernos progresistas, prosocialistas, deben ser profundos democratizadores de nuestra vida social, impulsores nada menos que de la rica y compleja diversidad latinoamericana, distribuidores de los activos productivos y constructores de una supraestatalidad: la nación, o quizás, la civilización latinoamericana. La democratización de los estados y de las sociedades nacionales es imprescindible para plantear la construcción de espacios públicos mundiales con poder, con capacidad de control, de tal manera que la lucha social por la apropiación de los estados sigue vigente y es determinante, solo que dicha lucha no se puede contener ya, para su eficacia, en solamente los cascarones estatales desalojados de poder, sino que su eficacia depende de su interrelación mundial.
Este vaciamiento del poder de los cascarones estatales deja sin sentido la propiedad estatal de los medios de producción a menos que se trate del control de recursos estratégicos para la sociedad nacional en concreto, y abre la posibilidad del pluralismo económico: diversas formas de producir en manos de la sociedad.
El pluralismo económico en el espacio nacional debe propiciar un control público de los medios de producción, que no significa estatal, sino una apropiación de medios ampliamente distribuidos en la sociedad. La pequeña y mediana empresa, la cooperativa, el colectivismo indígena, la iniciativa privada, la propiedad privada, el monopolio estatal sobre recursos estratégicos para la sociedad, la regulación pública mundial sobre recursos estratégicos para la humanidad, el sistema tributario global, y aún la corporación privada capitalista bajo regulación, la corporación pública cosmopolita, pueden ser muestras de un amplio espectro del pluralismo económico que garantice en última instancia el control público sobre la producción. Indudablemente transición hacia una humanidad activa consciente de si misma. Socialismo del siglo XXI, tan plural como el arco iris, pero tambien profundización de la democracia a escala global.
POR GUSTAVO PETRO, SENADOR DEL PDA
*El texto original de este artículo aparece en el Numero 62 de la Revista Foro, a quien agradecemos el permitirnos su publicación; es el resumen de la intervención del autor en un evento académico en Quito, Ecuador, en Septiembre de 2007.
* Tomado de eltiempo.com.co
El senador Gustavo Petro en una conferencia dictada en Ecuador, analiza lo que él considera "los pilares precursores de esta nueva manera de pensar y actuar que llamamos socialismo siglo XXI desde una perspectiva colombiana".
El socialismo, afirma, implica Estados de Derecho, derechos y libertades extendidas para la ciudadanía, protección de la identidad individual, de la diversidad del género humano. Supremacía del ciudadano sobre el Estado. Las conquistas del liberalismo del siglo XVIII son parte de las conquistas del socialismo.
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La democracia local o la conciencia de la multitud. Carlos Ceballos, PDA Alemania. Berlín.
Gustavo Petro
Lunes 12 de noviembre de 2007
Puntualización sobre la lucha armada, las Farc y un socialismo para el futuro, por parte del senador del Polo Democrático Gustavo Petro, en un reciente foro en Ecuador.
Tengo que confesar que esta es la primera vez que pronuncio una conferencia desde una iglesia. Deben ser las paradojas del socialismo del siglo XXI. Tengo que recordar, también, que en esta mesa se encuentra una persona a la que no veía desde hace muchos años, estábamos en alguna montaña colombiana vestidos de uniforme verde oliva, armados. Ella es Amaranta, para ustedes la ciudadana ecuatoriana Patricia, miembro de Alfaro Vive Carajo, quien luchaba al lado de nosotros en el M-19, en el batallón América, bajo ordenes de Carlos Pizarro.
Y me interesa recordar al M-19 y compararlo con las FARC, para empezar mi análisis sobre lo que considero son los pilares precursores de esta nueva manera de pensar y actuar que llamamos socialismo siglo XXI desde una perspectiva colombiana.
Las FARC y el M-19 con orígenes diferentes fueron parte de la insurgencia armada colombiana en la década de los setenta y ochenta. Para el año 1989 se separaron definitivamente en su transcurrir histórico. El M-19 decidió dejar las armas, ganó unos meses después de su desarme las elecciones a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente en 1991, fue la fuerza protagónica en la construcción de la democrática Constitución del 91, que nunca se aplicó y luego en 1994 desapareció definitivamente como organización. Las FARC se mantuvieron en armas y son hoy una poderosa organización militar convertida prácticamente en un ejército con raíces campesinas.
¿Era un error dejar las armas y, al contrario, conservarlas era un criterio de éxito y eficacia en Colombia? Cualquier mirada superficial ante el hecho que el M-19 se extinguió y las Farc se han fortalecido, diría que efectivamente, que tal era la evidencia histórica. Diría esa mirada, que las armas son esenciales para el desarrollo de las transformaciones en Colombia. El M-19 habría fracasado, las Farc habrían triunfado.
Pero una mirada más profunda extraería otra conclusión: El M-19 logró proponer un proyecto democrático para la Nación, sintetizado en la carta constitucional de 1991, que sin aplicar precisamente se convierte en el programa del Polo Democrático, segunda fuerza electoral del país. La perspectiva de lograr un pacto social y político que profundice la democratización del estado y la sociedad colombiana es una verdadera alternativa viable hoy para la salida pacífica del conflicto y la violencia, es una respuesta realista y posible a la crisis de la nación colombiana. El Estado Social de Derecho que recupera el espíritu filosófico democrático del liberalismo del siglo XVIII y lo articula a la bandera de la igualdad social, se cierne en el horizonte colombiano, desde la carta magna, como una posibilidad inquietante para quienes han detentado el poder: las mafias, y los monopolios económicos. En una economía rentista, profundamente desigual y depredadora, el aliento democrático del desaparecido M-19 sigue sembrando la zozobra en unos, la inquietud en otros y la esperanza en muchos por su justeza histórica, su hálito; su espíritu sirve de base para organizar un partido que hoy, siendo la segunda fuerza electoral, se constituye en una verdadera alternativa de poder similar a los movimientos progresistas que han conquistado pacífica y democráticamente la mayoría de los gobiernos de América del Sur.
Por otra parte, las Farc se han colocado como el movimiento más rechazado por el pueblo colombiano. A pesar de su fortaleza militar conquistada por la experiencia de sus cincuenta años de lucha armada y por recursos ingentes extraídos de la cadena productiva y especulativa del narcotráfico, han caído en el peor de los aislamientos políticos que movimiento insurgente alguno ha logrado experimentar. Las Farc son un movimiento autorreferenciado. Al contrario de la guerrilla clásica, y de su propio pasado, que prescribía la necesidad de un fuerte apoyo popular para lograr resistir y crecer, e incluso triunfar como Fidel, el Che y los sandinistas, las Farc se financian tanto de la actividad narcotraficante que se permite reclutar su ejército bajo la forma del mercenarismo y desdeñar por completo el apoyo popular para su resistencia y crecimiento. Gracias a esos recursos, las FARC pueden sustituir al pueblo para su sostén y crecimiento. La guerrilla se autorreferencia. No necesita más de construir políticas populares, de ampliar su espacio de opinión. Su lucha campesina degenera en la venganza, la barbarie, el crimen de guerra. Como Engels lo planteó en su estudio sobre las guerras campesinas en Alemania, esta degenera en una mera lucha militar despótica y vengativa sin posibilidades de poder, de transformación, de democracia.
Mientras el proyecto democrático del M-19 mantiene su vigencia histórica en la posibilidad de la Constitución del 91 y su estado Social de Derecho, las Farc han sido derrotadas estratégicamente en el corazón de los colombianos.
Esta experiencia colombiana sirve para analizar un concepto pilar de lo que considero debe ser el principio del accionar práctico del socialismo del siglo XXI. En Colombia un medio como las armas no alcanzó su fin: el socialismo, o si se quiere la democracia. Al contrario las armas degradaron a quienes las tomaron.
I. Primera ruptura: El fin no justifica los medios.
Racionalicemos un poco más la experiencia. En mi opinión la política moderna tanto de derechas como de izquierdas utilizó en el siglo XX el principio del "fin justifica los medios". Descrito por el florentino hace varios siglos, este principio fundamentó la política moderna y llevó a la derecha y a la izquierda al Estado totalitario. El nazismo, el fascismo y el estalinismo fueron la expresión del fracaso de los fines altruistas concebidos a través de la construcción de medios profundamente antidemocráticos y violentos. El racismo, la raza superior, la idea de una única clase portadora de la revolución, el centralismo seudodemocrático del partido único, la dictadura del proletariado, la violencia como partera de la historia, el desarrollismo de la fuerza productiva, las armas como instrumento de la violencia revolucionaria mostraron que no nos llevaban ni al tercer Reich, ni al comunismo terrenal como sede del paraíso de todos los pobres del mundo.
En lugar de la redención social, del reino de la libertad sobre la necesidad, de la nueva historia del hombre, o mejor del Hombre Nuevo, que no incluía a la mujer ni a los homosexuales, ni a la naturaleza, sobrevino el gulag, la muerte de la libertad, la agonía de la democracia. Bakunin fue reemplazado por Pol Pot, Marx por Stalin, la libertad por el Gulag. El Estado se impuso integralmente en todas las esferas íntimas del individuo, hasta asfixiarlo.
Por eso el socialismo del Siglo XXI debe implicar una verdadera ruptura con el socialismo del siglo XX.
Quiero confesar, como es propio en esta iglesia, que no soy un pacifista radical: yo mismo tome algún día las armas en el M-19, y creo que los pueblos en determinadas circunstancias históricas deben tomar las armas como último recurso de la resistencia, y muchas veces como medio de triunfo, de liberación. Pero las armas "per se" degradan. De eso debemos ser conscientes. Las armas implican automáticamente la posibilidad de destruir el ser humano y por ello, los individuos que las empuñan deben ser controlados de múltiples maneras. Las armas siempre deben estar bajo el control público. Siempre deben ser usadas de manera transitoria, ojalá nunca, mientras menos tiempo mejor.
En esto el comandante "Marcos" expresó una idea precursora. Mientras menos use el Ejercito Zapatista las armas, mejor, decía el comandante guerrillero sintetizando, sin saberlo y por defecto, la experiencia colombiana.
Las Farc han usado las armas durante más de cincuenta años en los campos de Colombia, por eso se han degradado. El M-19 las dejó prontamente por eso, aún su proyecto político pervive.
Pero el problema va más allá de la experiencia colombiana. De alguna manera u otra los socialismos del siglo XX perecieron en manos de sus propios pueblos. El segundo ejército más poderoso del mundo, el soviético, no pudo impedir, casi sin disparar, que las muchedumbres derrumbaran el supuesto paraíso proletario. Las multitudes corrían tras la libertad, tras la democracia, en realidad sin alcanzarla, pero destrozaron uno de los peores totalitarismos de la historia humana. Los medios: el Estado, el Partido Único, el centralismo seudodemocrático, la violencia de clase, las armas, la tortura, la prisión, la censura, el exterminio de la crítica, eran profundamente antidemocráticos. Su fin no fue sino el exterminio de la democracia y de la libertad.
La experiencia histórica muestra que los medios determinan el fin. Y que por tanto si el objetivo del Socialismo del siglo XXI es la construcción de una democracia global: el reino de la humanidad; entonces sus medios tienen que ser profundamente democráticos. Los medios son la escuela en donde se prepara el fin, son su método de construcción. En los mismos medios se encuba el contenido del fin. Por tanto el socialismo debe darle sana sepultura al "fin que justifica los medios".
Me gusta la democracia como condición social. Indudablemente la democracia no es solo un método sino un fin en sí misma, por eso la búsqueda de los revolucionarios del siglo XIX por una sociedad sin Estado, sin poder, no era más que una extensión de la búsqueda de los revolucionarios del siglo XVIII, por la democracia y la libertad. Hasta Lenin llegó a afirmar que el socialismo era la profundización de la democracia y la empezó a buscar en los soviets hasta que sus palabras fueron olvidadas bajo un manto de sangre y calaveras. El socialismo estaba llamado a incluir, profundizándolo, el liberalismo, no a destruirlo. Y el concepto de Estado de Derecho construido por las revoluciones burguesas no podía ser enterrado por los socialistas sino conservado como patrimonio de la humanidad y radicalizado.
El socialismo entonces implica Estados de Derecho, derechos y libertades extendidas para la ciudadanía, protección de la identidad individual, de la diversidad del género humano. Supremacía del ciudadano sobre el Estado. Las conquistas del liberalismo del siglo XVIII son parte de las conquistas del socialismo.
Segunda ruptura: El socialismo no se puede construir en un solo país.
La tesis fundamental de Stalin, sobre el Estado socialista, que implicaba la construcción del socialismo en el territorio de un estado-nación, fue superada por la realidad misma del capitalismo. El Capital, como lo presuponían los socialistas del siglo XIX, traspasaba las fronteras, no tenía patria. En el siglo XXI, el capital es global, el taller o la fábrica dejaron de ser un establecimiento de barrio y se convirtió en un verdadero taller planetario. La cadena de producción abarcó en un solo proceso de trabajo, centenares de nacionalidades diferentes. El capital construyó la utopía de los arquitectos de Babel, a pesar del castigo divino de la dispersión de las lenguas. Su superación ya no es nacional porque su lógica es global. Un embate simplemente nacional contra el capital es un hazmerreír, a menos que sean muchos embates nacionales, o mejor aún a menos que sea una lucha concertada de la humanidad.
Peor aún, cuando los procesos productivos globalizados del capital conllevan en su seno la destrucción de la misma humanidad. Hoy la contradicción antagónica no es entre Capital y Trabajo sino entre Capital y Humanidad.
El calentamiento global que coloca el final de la vida inteligente sobre el planeta en un lapso de cien años, y que no es más que la aceleración, por razón del desarrollo económico, de las leyes de la termodinámica, como estudió Nicolás Georgescu-Roegen; la extinción paulatina de la diversidad cultural, civilizadora, de los seres humanos, fundamento de la misma humanidad, como afirmó Guilbert Hottois; y la posibilidad de la transformación genética de los seres humanos por la tecnología, extinguiendo la humanidad tal como la conocemos, según la Iglesia Católica, son apenas ejemplos de la enorme potencialidad destructora del Capital. La expansión del capital ya no supone simplemente la expansión de la explotación de los trabajadores, sino la eliminación de la humanidad misma. La lógica autónoma y global del capital en plena expansión global, como recordaba Rosa Luxemburgo, es tal que su autonomía ya no es regulada por el instinto de conservación de la especie humana. La lógica de la ganancia se enfrenta como nunca antes en la historia humana a la lógica de la vida.
Por eso el trabajo de Antonio Negri es tan estimulante. Para el filósofo italiano la clase obrera ha dejado de ser el sujeto revolucionario al abandonar el polo antagónico del capital, que para Negri, la dialéctica no fue sino una equivocación filosófica de los socialistas. El nuevo sujeto revolucionario para él es la multitud, que en la concepción de Spinoza corresponde a la unidad de las diversidades humanas sin suprimirlas, es una concertación de especificidades, una comunicación movilizadora entre particularidades colectivas e individuales, como su nombre lo indica una multiplicidad humana sin reducciones homogéneas. Yo pienso que la Multitud, en tanto global, no es más que la Humanidad misma, consciente de sí misma, responsable de si misma. Lo que nos lleva a la tesis que el socialismo no es más que el control de la humanidad sobre los procesos del capital que la pueden destruir. Pero también que la "Humanidad", a diferencia de "El Hombre" de los liberales del siglo XVIII, es un concepto plural, múltiple, diverso, multicolor como el arco iris.
Un control de la humanidad sobre la capacidad del capital de destrucción planetaria no se puede expresar sino como la aparición de un poder público global, Negri lo llama Democracia Global, yo socialismo del siglo XXI. El poder público global implica diversidad, dialogo entre civilizaciones, un nuevo cosmopolitismo, una sensación de interconexión global no basada en el mercado sino en las luchas, en los propósitos comunes, esencialmente humanos. La sensación de humanidad que no deja de ser sino la expresión del simple instinto de conservación de una especie, que a diferencia de las demás es consciente de sí misma, pero que se expresa como lo definieron los liberales del siglo XVII y XVIII, en leyes, en regulaciones, esta vez, globales, democráticamente construidas, léase cosmopolitas, intercivilizatorias, de carácter planetario. La regulación del capital, los impuestos mundiales para erradicar la pobreza, el control sobre lo estratégico para la continuación de la vida: tecnologías destructivas, armas de destrucción masiva, agua, culturas, medicamentos esenciales para la vida, alimentos, saber, etc., son las dimensiones concretas de una verdadera lucha de la humanidad por su conservación, quizás la primera lucha de la humanidad como un todo en la historia de nuestra especie.
Tercera ruptura: Entonces el socialismo no es la propiedad estatal de los medios de producción.
Si el socialismo no se puede construir en un solo país, porque es global, entonces tampoco se pude definir como la propiedad estatal de los medios de producción, dado que el estado tiene apenas una jurisdicción nacional, error en el que no cayó Lenin, que llamó a su "NEP" "capitalismo de estado" pero que magnificó Stalin de manera aberrante bautizando el Frankistein como socialismo. La estatización de las formas de creación de la riqueza y la cultura extinguió la libertad y el individuo. El Estado al ser el propietario de la producción, se convirtió en el único propietario de la vida y del individuo, pasó a ser un Estado totalitario. De la destrucción del Estado propuesto por Bakunin y Marx, se pasó a la magnificación y potenciación del Estado de Stalin.
Pero el mismo capital comenzó la destrucción de su propia obra: el estado-nación. Útil para ampliar mercados a escala nacional y regular las relaciones capital-trabajo en el marco nacional, se volvió inútil para la ampliación de los mercados en el ámbito mundial y para desregularizar los movimientos del capital. Los procesos de planificación dejaron de ser públicos y estatales y pasaron al mundo privado de las corporaciones, y las mismas corporaciones lograron magnitudes financieras más fuertes que la mayoría de los Estados existentes. Finalmente el socialismo estatal cayó derrumbado por el empuje de fuerzas productivas que no dejaba progresar en el seno de sus sociedades.
Pero si la aparición de un nuevo poder público democrático a escala planetaria permite volver a plantear el socialismo, cabe preguntarse que papel concreto debe desempeñar el estado-nación en las nuevas realidades que plantea el socialismo del siglo XXI.
Se trata de construir estados de derecho, democratizados y democratizadores. El estado-nación con poderes disminuidos en la nueva realidad tiene que ser articulador de movimientos sociales que no deben ni pueden suplantar. Gobiernos para el dialogo intercivilizatorio, democratizadores de los poderes locales, propiciadores de la pluralidad económica, de la democratización de la propiedad de los activos productivos, ayudantes de la reconstitución del territorio bajo democracias locales y quizás, espacios públicos transitorios en caminos de extinción hacia realidades supraestatales y hacia democracias locales profundamente interconectadas a escala global con importantes intermediaciones culturales. En nuestro contexto los estados latinoamericanos bajo gobiernos progresistas, prosocialistas, deben ser profundos democratizadores de nuestra vida social, impulsores nada menos que de la rica y compleja diversidad latinoamericana, distribuidores de los activos productivos y constructores de una supraestatalidad: la nación, o quizás, la civilización latinoamericana. La democratización de los estados y de las sociedades nacionales es imprescindible para plantear la construcción de espacios públicos mundiales con poder, con capacidad de control, de tal manera que la lucha social por la apropiación de los estados sigue vigente y es determinante, solo que dicha lucha no se puede contener ya, para su eficacia, en solamente los cascarones estatales desalojados de poder, sino que su eficacia depende de su interrelación mundial.
Este vaciamiento del poder de los cascarones estatales deja sin sentido la propiedad estatal de los medios de producción a menos que se trate del control de recursos estratégicos para la sociedad nacional en concreto, y abre la posibilidad del pluralismo económico: diversas formas de producir en manos de la sociedad.
El pluralismo económico en el espacio nacional debe propiciar un control público de los medios de producción, que no significa estatal, sino una apropiación de medios ampliamente distribuidos en la sociedad. La pequeña y mediana empresa, la cooperativa, el colectivismo indígena, la iniciativa privada, la propiedad privada, el monopolio estatal sobre recursos estratégicos para la sociedad, la regulación pública mundial sobre recursos estratégicos para la humanidad, el sistema tributario global, y aún la corporación privada capitalista bajo regulación, la corporación pública cosmopolita, pueden ser muestras de un amplio espectro del pluralismo económico que garantice en última instancia el control público sobre la producción. Indudablemente transición hacia una humanidad activa consciente de si misma. Socialismo del siglo XXI, tan plural como el arco iris, pero tambien profundización de la democracia a escala global.
POR GUSTAVO PETRO, SENADOR DEL PDA
*El texto original de este artículo aparece en el Numero 62 de la Revista Foro, a quien agradecemos el permitirnos su publicación; es el resumen de la intervención del autor en un evento académico en Quito, Ecuador, en Septiembre de 2007.
* Tomado de eltiempo.com.co
Monday, November 12, 2007
FREE TRADE = INSECURITY
FREE TRADE = INSECURITY
A Positive U.S. Trade Agenda Would Support Security
in the Andean Region and the World
by Sarah Anderson
At a time of heightened concerns about global security, it is in everyone’s interest to develop trading and investment relations that promote “real security,” encompassing economic, human, financial and political security. Unfortunately, the proposed trade pacts with Peru and Colombia are not likely to advance this important agenda. Instead, they would perpetuate a failed U.S. trade model that primarily benefits the few, while exacerbating the root causes of instability -- namely poverty, weak human rights protections, and financial and political volatility.
• FREE TRADE AND ECONOMIC INSECURITY
The Colombia and Peru free trade deals would restrict the authority of governments to play responsible roles in ensuring that trade and investment benefit the poor and the middle class. It would prohibit governments from employing selective trade barriers and investment restrictions that were used by most successful economies in the world (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan and even the United States) as part of their national development strategies. Studies also show that overall in the developing world, economies with high import barriers performed better in the 1990s than those with low barriers.
With regard to the Andean trade deals, there is particular concern about how the agriculture provisions will affect poverty. In Colombia, where some 23 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture, the lifting of agricultural tariffs could be devastating. Although the Colombian government promised throughout the negotiations to defend sensitive products, it ultimately caved under U.S. pressure and agreed to open the door wide to heavily subsidized U.S. imports of key crops. For example, it agreed to allow tariff-free imports of more than 2 million tons of corn and 79,000 tons of rice during the first year of the agreement, with a commitment to raise that amount by about 5 percent per year. It also agreed to immediate tariff-free entry to other commodities of importance to rural income and employment, including cotton, wheat and barley.
Impact on Drug Production
The U.S. government will have spent $5.4 billion to reduce coca cultivation in Colombia between 2000 and 2007, and plans to continue to spend over $600 million per year for the next several years. Yet a trade agreement that eliminates or reduces tariffs on products grown by small farmers, the major producers of illegal coca, would likely lead to a surge of heavily subsidized U.S. imports, forcing Colombian farmers lacking other options to join or return to illegal drug production. According to a Colombian Agriculture Ministry report, “If Colombia [does not take] adequate measures in defense and support of agricultural producers, rural problems could worsen and many of its inhabitants would have no more than three options: migration to the cities or to other countries (especially the United States), working in drug cultivation zones, or affiliating with illegal armed groups.”
• FREE TRADE AND HUMAN INSECURITY
Current U.S. trade policies lack meaningful provisions to strengthen human rights protections. With regard to labor rights, the Andean deals require only that governments enforce their own laws, with no incentives for bringing deficient laws up to international standards, addressing systemic problems, or preventing a rollback of labor protections. Thus, while the deals expand investor rights, they give working people no new protections against oppression and violence. In Colombia, freedom to organize is under attack in the most severe way imaginable -- more than 2,200 trade unionists have been murdered since 1991, more than in any other country. Most murders of trade unionists are in connection with their regular trade union activity. The government has failed to bring to bring to justice those responsible for the several hundred murders that have taken place in the past three years.
Impact on Indigenous Communities
The Mexican Zapatistas launched their uprising on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, declaring that the deal would be “a death sentence for indigenous people.” In Ecuador, indigenous groups have recently staged massive protests against free trade negotiations between their government and the United States. In Colombia, leaders from the Nasa indigenous community organized a referendum on the proposed free trade agreement in the province of Cauca in which 51,330 out of 68,448 registered voters participated and 98 percent voted “no.” Indigenous representatives gathered at the 2005 Summit of the Americas issued a statement rejecting free trade agreements “because they affect the integrity of our lands, territories and resources, thus restricting, alternating and diminishing the exercise of our rights as Indigenous Peoples.”
In addition to agricultural concerns cited above, indigenous communities throughout Latin America have objected to intellectual property rights provisions promoted by the U.S. government that give large corporations the right to obtain patents on indigenous medicines and other traditional knowledge. They have also opposed reforms carried out as conditions for trade pacts that open the door to logging and development in native lands or otherwise subject indigenous rights to the interests of international investors.
• FREE TRADE AND FINANCIAL INSECURITY
The U.S. government continues to require provisions in trade agreements that ban countries from using controls on capital flows to protect against international financial insecurity. This ignores the lessons of the global financial crisis of the late-1990s, when uncontrolled capital flight resulted in tens of millions of lost jobs and other negative impacts for hundreds of millions of people around the world, including in the United States. Because countries which had capital controls (e.g., Malaysia and Chile) fared better than others, even the International Monetary Fund has changed its position and is recommending that some countries keep such controls.
• FREE TRADE AND POLITICAL INSECURITY
Current U.S. trade and investment policies undermine the role of citizens in shaping their economic futures. Negotiations are conducted in secret, with little opportunity for citizen input. Provisions in the deals favor the rights of corporations. Most egregious are investment rules that allow private foreign investors to sue governments directly in secretive international tribunals over laws that might diminish their profits, including public interest regulations. These limitations on the democratic process are particularly troubling in the Andean region, where political and economic marginalization has stoked widespread protests and political insecurity.
A New Trade and Investment Agenda that Supports Security
in the Andean Region Would Include:
• democratic and accountable negotiation processes
• protections for small farmers and indigenous communities
• increased community-based alternative development to help small farmers turn away from drug crops
• mechanisms to strengthen labor and environmental standards, as defined by international law
• investigations and prosecutions of attacks on trade unionists in Colombia to ensure freedom of association
• space for national governments to pursue development strategies that support social and environmental goals
• debt cancellation and aid targeted at serving the poor to help level the playing field between rich and poor countries and regions
----------------------------------------------
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies and is the co-author of Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2005). IPS is an independent center for research and education founded in Washington, DC, in 1963. Contact: saraha@igc.org or 202 234 9382 x 227.
A Positive U.S. Trade Agenda Would Support Security
in the Andean Region and the World
by Sarah Anderson
At a time of heightened concerns about global security, it is in everyone’s interest to develop trading and investment relations that promote “real security,” encompassing economic, human, financial and political security. Unfortunately, the proposed trade pacts with Peru and Colombia are not likely to advance this important agenda. Instead, they would perpetuate a failed U.S. trade model that primarily benefits the few, while exacerbating the root causes of instability -- namely poverty, weak human rights protections, and financial and political volatility.
• FREE TRADE AND ECONOMIC INSECURITY
The Colombia and Peru free trade deals would restrict the authority of governments to play responsible roles in ensuring that trade and investment benefit the poor and the middle class. It would prohibit governments from employing selective trade barriers and investment restrictions that were used by most successful economies in the world (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan and even the United States) as part of their national development strategies. Studies also show that overall in the developing world, economies with high import barriers performed better in the 1990s than those with low barriers.
With regard to the Andean trade deals, there is particular concern about how the agriculture provisions will affect poverty. In Colombia, where some 23 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture, the lifting of agricultural tariffs could be devastating. Although the Colombian government promised throughout the negotiations to defend sensitive products, it ultimately caved under U.S. pressure and agreed to open the door wide to heavily subsidized U.S. imports of key crops. For example, it agreed to allow tariff-free imports of more than 2 million tons of corn and 79,000 tons of rice during the first year of the agreement, with a commitment to raise that amount by about 5 percent per year. It also agreed to immediate tariff-free entry to other commodities of importance to rural income and employment, including cotton, wheat and barley.
Impact on Drug Production
The U.S. government will have spent $5.4 billion to reduce coca cultivation in Colombia between 2000 and 2007, and plans to continue to spend over $600 million per year for the next several years. Yet a trade agreement that eliminates or reduces tariffs on products grown by small farmers, the major producers of illegal coca, would likely lead to a surge of heavily subsidized U.S. imports, forcing Colombian farmers lacking other options to join or return to illegal drug production. According to a Colombian Agriculture Ministry report, “If Colombia [does not take] adequate measures in defense and support of agricultural producers, rural problems could worsen and many of its inhabitants would have no more than three options: migration to the cities or to other countries (especially the United States), working in drug cultivation zones, or affiliating with illegal armed groups.”
• FREE TRADE AND HUMAN INSECURITY
Current U.S. trade policies lack meaningful provisions to strengthen human rights protections. With regard to labor rights, the Andean deals require only that governments enforce their own laws, with no incentives for bringing deficient laws up to international standards, addressing systemic problems, or preventing a rollback of labor protections. Thus, while the deals expand investor rights, they give working people no new protections against oppression and violence. In Colombia, freedom to organize is under attack in the most severe way imaginable -- more than 2,200 trade unionists have been murdered since 1991, more than in any other country. Most murders of trade unionists are in connection with their regular trade union activity. The government has failed to bring to bring to justice those responsible for the several hundred murders that have taken place in the past three years.
Impact on Indigenous Communities
The Mexican Zapatistas launched their uprising on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, declaring that the deal would be “a death sentence for indigenous people.” In Ecuador, indigenous groups have recently staged massive protests against free trade negotiations between their government and the United States. In Colombia, leaders from the Nasa indigenous community organized a referendum on the proposed free trade agreement in the province of Cauca in which 51,330 out of 68,448 registered voters participated and 98 percent voted “no.” Indigenous representatives gathered at the 2005 Summit of the Americas issued a statement rejecting free trade agreements “because they affect the integrity of our lands, territories and resources, thus restricting, alternating and diminishing the exercise of our rights as Indigenous Peoples.”
In addition to agricultural concerns cited above, indigenous communities throughout Latin America have objected to intellectual property rights provisions promoted by the U.S. government that give large corporations the right to obtain patents on indigenous medicines and other traditional knowledge. They have also opposed reforms carried out as conditions for trade pacts that open the door to logging and development in native lands or otherwise subject indigenous rights to the interests of international investors.
• FREE TRADE AND FINANCIAL INSECURITY
The U.S. government continues to require provisions in trade agreements that ban countries from using controls on capital flows to protect against international financial insecurity. This ignores the lessons of the global financial crisis of the late-1990s, when uncontrolled capital flight resulted in tens of millions of lost jobs and other negative impacts for hundreds of millions of people around the world, including in the United States. Because countries which had capital controls (e.g., Malaysia and Chile) fared better than others, even the International Monetary Fund has changed its position and is recommending that some countries keep such controls.
• FREE TRADE AND POLITICAL INSECURITY
Current U.S. trade and investment policies undermine the role of citizens in shaping their economic futures. Negotiations are conducted in secret, with little opportunity for citizen input. Provisions in the deals favor the rights of corporations. Most egregious are investment rules that allow private foreign investors to sue governments directly in secretive international tribunals over laws that might diminish their profits, including public interest regulations. These limitations on the democratic process are particularly troubling in the Andean region, where political and economic marginalization has stoked widespread protests and political insecurity.
A New Trade and Investment Agenda that Supports Security
in the Andean Region Would Include:
• democratic and accountable negotiation processes
• protections for small farmers and indigenous communities
• increased community-based alternative development to help small farmers turn away from drug crops
• mechanisms to strengthen labor and environmental standards, as defined by international law
• investigations and prosecutions of attacks on trade unionists in Colombia to ensure freedom of association
• space for national governments to pursue development strategies that support social and environmental goals
• debt cancellation and aid targeted at serving the poor to help level the playing field between rich and poor countries and regions
----------------------------------------------
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies and is the co-author of Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2005). IPS is an independent center for research and education founded in Washington, DC, in 1963. Contact: saraha@igc.org or 202 234 9382 x 227.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Hillary Clinton Statement on Pending Trade Agreements
Hillary Clinton Statement on Pending Trade Agreements
"I have long said that we need smart trade policies that advance labor rights, the environment, and our economic standing in the world.
"I support the trade agreement with Peru. It has very strong labor and environmental protections. This agreement makes meaningful progress on advancing workers' rights, and also levels the playing field for American workers. Most Peruvian goods already enter the U.S. duty free, but our exports to Peru have been subject to tariffs.
"However, I will oppose the pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. The South Korean agreement does not create a level playing field for American carmakers. I am very concerned about the history of violence against trade unionists in Colombia. And as long as the head of Panama's National Assembly is a fugitive from justice in America, I cannot support that agreement. Accordingly, I will oppose the trade agreements with these countries.
"We need to vigorously enforce our trade agreements. As President, I will appoint a trade enforcement officer and double the enforcement staff at the office of the United States Trade Representative. I will also systematically review every trade agreement to ensure that it is delivering benefits to American workers. I will also expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance program so that workers negatively affected by the global economy get the help they need. And as President, in my first months in office, I will take a time out from new trade deals to assess their impact before going forward."
HillaryClinton.com - Media Release
"I have long said that we need smart trade policies that advance labor rights, the environment, and our economic standing in the world.
"I support the trade agreement with Peru. It has very strong labor and environmental protections. This agreement makes meaningful progress on advancing workers' rights, and also levels the playing field for American workers. Most Peruvian goods already enter the U.S. duty free, but our exports to Peru have been subject to tariffs.
"However, I will oppose the pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. The South Korean agreement does not create a level playing field for American carmakers. I am very concerned about the history of violence against trade unionists in Colombia. And as long as the head of Panama's National Assembly is a fugitive from justice in America, I cannot support that agreement. Accordingly, I will oppose the trade agreements with these countries.
"We need to vigorously enforce our trade agreements. As President, I will appoint a trade enforcement officer and double the enforcement staff at the office of the United States Trade Representative. I will also systematically review every trade agreement to ensure that it is delivering benefits to American workers. I will also expand the Trade Adjustment Assistance program so that workers negatively affected by the global economy get the help they need. And as President, in my first months in office, I will take a time out from new trade deals to assess their impact before going forward."
HillaryClinton.com - Media Release
Una muy seria publicación de Estados Unidos asegura que relación de Uribe con los paras es ‘sospechosa’
Articulo Una muy seria publicación de Estados Unidos asegura que relación de Uribe con los paras es ‘sospechosa’
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR
Una muy seria publicación de Estados Unidos asegura que relación de Uribe con los paras es ‘sospechosa’
La alianza entre Estados Unidos y Colombia jamás había estado tan en veremos, argumenta una prestigiosa académica en un artículo en ‘Foreign Affairs’, la revista de análisis político más importante de Norteamérica.
Lea aquí el artículo completo en su versión en inglés: ‘La agonía de Uribe’
La agonía de Uribe, versión en español
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR
Una muy seria publicación de Estados Unidos asegura que relación de Uribe con los paras es ‘sospechosa’
La alianza entre Estados Unidos y Colombia jamás había estado tan en veremos, argumenta una prestigiosa académica en un artículo en ‘Foreign Affairs’, la revista de análisis político más importante de Norteamérica.
Lea aquí el artículo completo en su versión en inglés: ‘La agonía de Uribe’
La agonía de Uribe, versión en español
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Majority of House Democrats Stand up for Constituents, Vote No on
Majority of House Democrats Stand up for Constituents, Vote No on
Peru NAFTA Expansion, Demand a New Direction on Trade
Statement of Lori M. Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch Division
Despite intense pressure and lobbying from some Democratic leaders, a massive corporate coalition and the White House, a majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives today opposed Bush's Peru NAFTA expansion agreement, echoing the American public's widespread discontent with the status quo trade policy.
That a majority of Democrats opposed the Peru NAFTA expansion - theoretically the least controversial of Bush's remaining trade deals - will put the final nails in the coffins of any further Bush administration expansions of NAFTA to Panama, Colombia or South Korea.
The opposition from 117 Democrats - including nearly three-fourths of Democratic freshmen and a majority of the party's committee chairs- shows that significant work remains to create a framework for trade agreements that can earn public support nationwide and thus bipartisan support in Congress.
Despite the fact that many more Democrats occupy House seats, the Peru "free trade agreement" (FTA) obtained less Democratic support than the 2004 Australia FTA, the 2004 Morocco FTA, and the 2005 Bahrain FTA. The Peru FTA, because it fell short of approval by the Democratic majority, has proven itself an unacceptable framework for future trade deals.
Hopefully the next trade debate in the Congress will be about how to create a new template for future trade agreements that will benefit the majority of Americans and thereby be able to win the support of the Democratic majority.
In light of the 2006 elections, when Democrats took control of Congress after 37 freshmen successfully campaigned against the Bush trade agenda and replaced 37 anti-fair traders, many Americans likely will wonder how President Bush managed to eke out this rare victory and get a NAFTA expansion agreement through the Democratic-majority Congress. That a Democratic-majority Congress would pass a Bush trade agreement opposed by most Democrats may be especially puzzling since the vote came a week after Bush announced he would veto Democratic legislation to help workers who lose jobs to trade, and after Bush vetoes of Democrats' priorities - children's health insurance and anti-war legislation.
This vote reveals that many in Congress understand that what determines the effects of a trade agreement is not mainly the economic size of the country involved but instead the scope of the extraordinary corporate rights established under the agreement - rights that undermine U.S. domestic and foreign policy goals.
Trade per se was not the issue today. The Peru NAFTA expansion was opposed by so many Democrats because it establishes new corporate rights that promote offshoring of U.S. jobs; expose our environmental, food safety and health laws to challenge in foreign tribunals; empower foreign corporations to skirt Buy America and anti-off-shoring policies; provide Big Pharma with extended patent rights that undermine affordable access to medicine; and empower U.S. firms, such as Citibank, to demand compensation if Peru reverses its disastrous social security privatization.
No U.S. labor, environmental, consumer, faith, family farm or development group supported this agreement, which also is opposed by both of Peru's labor federations, its major indigenous people's organization and its leading archbishop.
The passage of the Peru NAFTA-expansion, which was overwhelmingly opposed in the United States and Peru, is bad foreign policy, bad domestic policy and egregiously bad politics.
###
Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org .
30 Freshmen Democrats Voting No Peru FTA
1. Arcuri (NY)
2. Altmire (PA)
3. Boyda (KS)
4. Carney (PA)
5. Cohen (TN)
6. Courtney (CT)
7. Donnelley (IN)
8. Ellison (MN)
9. Hall (NY)
10. Hare (IL)
11. Hirono (HI)
12. Hodes (NH)
13. Johnson, Hank (GA)
14. Kagen (WI)
15. Loebsack (IA)
16. McNerney (CA)
17. Murphy C. (CT)
18. Murphy P. (PA)
19. Richardson (CA)
20. Rodriguez (TX)
21. Sarbanes (MD)
22. Shea-Porter (NH)
23. Shuler (NC)
24. Space (OH)
25. Sutton (OH)
26. Tsongas (MA)
27. Walz (MN)
28. Welch (VT)
29. Wilson (OH)
30. Yarmouth (KY)
Braley (IA) missed vote, issued news release in opposition
11 Freshmen Democrats Voting Yes Peru FTA
1. Castor (FL)
2. Clarke (NY)
3. Ellsworth (IN)
4. Gillibrand (NY)
5. Hill, B. (IN)
6. Klein (FL)
7. Lampson (TX)
8. Mahoney (FL)
9. Mitchell (AZ)
10. Perlmutter (CO)
11. Sestak (PA)
Chairs:
12 House Chairs voting no: Brady, Conyers, Filner, Miller, Markey, Obey, Peterson, Rahall, Slaughter, Spratt, Thompson, Velazquez
7 House Chairs voting yes: Dingell, Frank, Gordon, Rangel, Skelton, Waxman, Reyes
Missing: Oberstar and Lantos, both opponents of Peru FTA
David Edeli
Field Director
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
215 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Washington DC, 20003 USA
dedeli@citizen.org & www.tradewatch.org
Ph: + 202-454-5111, Fax: + 202-547 7392
Cell: +202-246-4943
++ Check out our new blog at www.EyesOnTrade.Org! ++
Peru NAFTA Expansion, Demand a New Direction on Trade
Statement of Lori M. Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch Division
Despite intense pressure and lobbying from some Democratic leaders, a massive corporate coalition and the White House, a majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives today opposed Bush's Peru NAFTA expansion agreement, echoing the American public's widespread discontent with the status quo trade policy.
That a majority of Democrats opposed the Peru NAFTA expansion - theoretically the least controversial of Bush's remaining trade deals - will put the final nails in the coffins of any further Bush administration expansions of NAFTA to Panama, Colombia or South Korea.
The opposition from 117 Democrats - including nearly three-fourths of Democratic freshmen and a majority of the party's committee chairs- shows that significant work remains to create a framework for trade agreements that can earn public support nationwide and thus bipartisan support in Congress.
Despite the fact that many more Democrats occupy House seats, the Peru "free trade agreement" (FTA) obtained less Democratic support than the 2004 Australia FTA, the 2004 Morocco FTA, and the 2005 Bahrain FTA. The Peru FTA, because it fell short of approval by the Democratic majority, has proven itself an unacceptable framework for future trade deals.
Hopefully the next trade debate in the Congress will be about how to create a new template for future trade agreements that will benefit the majority of Americans and thereby be able to win the support of the Democratic majority.
In light of the 2006 elections, when Democrats took control of Congress after 37 freshmen successfully campaigned against the Bush trade agenda and replaced 37 anti-fair traders, many Americans likely will wonder how President Bush managed to eke out this rare victory and get a NAFTA expansion agreement through the Democratic-majority Congress. That a Democratic-majority Congress would pass a Bush trade agreement opposed by most Democrats may be especially puzzling since the vote came a week after Bush announced he would veto Democratic legislation to help workers who lose jobs to trade, and after Bush vetoes of Democrats' priorities - children's health insurance and anti-war legislation.
This vote reveals that many in Congress understand that what determines the effects of a trade agreement is not mainly the economic size of the country involved but instead the scope of the extraordinary corporate rights established under the agreement - rights that undermine U.S. domestic and foreign policy goals.
Trade per se was not the issue today. The Peru NAFTA expansion was opposed by so many Democrats because it establishes new corporate rights that promote offshoring of U.S. jobs; expose our environmental, food safety and health laws to challenge in foreign tribunals; empower foreign corporations to skirt Buy America and anti-off-shoring policies; provide Big Pharma with extended patent rights that undermine affordable access to medicine; and empower U.S. firms, such as Citibank, to demand compensation if Peru reverses its disastrous social security privatization.
No U.S. labor, environmental, consumer, faith, family farm or development group supported this agreement, which also is opposed by both of Peru's labor federations, its major indigenous people's organization and its leading archbishop.
The passage of the Peru NAFTA-expansion, which was overwhelmingly opposed in the United States and Peru, is bad foreign policy, bad domestic policy and egregiously bad politics.
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Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org .
30 Freshmen Democrats Voting No Peru FTA
1. Arcuri (NY)
2. Altmire (PA)
3. Boyda (KS)
4. Carney (PA)
5. Cohen (TN)
6. Courtney (CT)
7. Donnelley (IN)
8. Ellison (MN)
9. Hall (NY)
10. Hare (IL)
11. Hirono (HI)
12. Hodes (NH)
13. Johnson, Hank (GA)
14. Kagen (WI)
15. Loebsack (IA)
16. McNerney (CA)
17. Murphy C. (CT)
18. Murphy P. (PA)
19. Richardson (CA)
20. Rodriguez (TX)
21. Sarbanes (MD)
22. Shea-Porter (NH)
23. Shuler (NC)
24. Space (OH)
25. Sutton (OH)
26. Tsongas (MA)
27. Walz (MN)
28. Welch (VT)
29. Wilson (OH)
30. Yarmouth (KY)
Braley (IA) missed vote, issued news release in opposition
11 Freshmen Democrats Voting Yes Peru FTA
1. Castor (FL)
2. Clarke (NY)
3. Ellsworth (IN)
4. Gillibrand (NY)
5. Hill, B. (IN)
6. Klein (FL)
7. Lampson (TX)
8. Mahoney (FL)
9. Mitchell (AZ)
10. Perlmutter (CO)
11. Sestak (PA)
Chairs:
12 House Chairs voting no: Brady, Conyers, Filner, Miller, Markey, Obey, Peterson, Rahall, Slaughter, Spratt, Thompson, Velazquez
7 House Chairs voting yes: Dingell, Frank, Gordon, Rangel, Skelton, Waxman, Reyes
Missing: Oberstar and Lantos, both opponents of Peru FTA
David Edeli
Field Director
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
215 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Washington DC, 20003 USA
dedeli@citizen.org & www.tradewatch.org
Ph: + 202-454-5111, Fax: + 202-547 7392
Cell: +202-246-4943
++ Check out our new blog at www.EyesOnTrade.Org! ++
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