A point of view re NATTA and the political process -- by Noam Chomsky

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

FROM:  Brad Dolan
SUBJ:  Best analysis I've seen of NAFTA spectacle


Here is an excerpt from a very lucid analysis by MIT Professor
Noam Chomsky of "The Clinton Vison", as exemplified by the passage
of NAFTA.  Chomsky comes from a different place in the ideological
spectrum than I do, but he is intellectually honest and writes with
devastating clarity.  I would be happy to e-mail the entire text to
anyone who is interested.   Brad Dolan   bdolan () well sf ca us
                                         71431.2564 () compuserve com
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The following article by Noam Chomsky:


     THE CLINTON VISION: UPDATE    (Part 1 of 2, 7 pgs., 21Kb)


appeared in the JANUARY 1994 issue of Z Magazine and is reprinted
here with the magazine's and the author's permission.  (The
article entitled "The Clinton Vision," of which this is an
"Update", appeared in the Dec. 1993 issue of Z.)  This electronic
version includes the original footnotes which were
not included in the Z magazine version (in angle brackets).


(...)
=================================================================


THE CLINTON VISION: UPDATE
==========================


1. Clinton's Bottom Line
------------------------


November 17 was a grand day in the career of Bill Clinton, the
day when he proved that he is a man of firm principle, and that
his "vision" -- the term has become a journalistic reflex -- has
real substance. "President Emerges As a Tough Fighter," the
_New York Times_ announced on the front page the next day.
Washington correspondent R.W. Apple wrote that Clinton had now
silenced his detractors, who had scorned him for his apparent
willingness to back down on everything he claimed to stand for:


     "Mr. Clinton retreated early on Bosnia, on Haiti, on
     homosexuals in the military, on important elements of his
     economic plan [namely, the minuscule stimulative package];
     he seemed ready to compromise on all but the most basic
     elements of his health-care reforms.  Critics asked whether
     he had a bottom line on anything.


     On Nafta, he did, and that question won't be asked much for
     a while."  <<<NB: Apple, _NYT_, Nov. 18, 1993.>>>


In short, on unimportant matters, involving nothing more than
millions of lives, Clinton is a "pragmatist," ready to retreat.
But when it comes to responding to the calls of the big money,
our hero showed that he has backbone after all.


The importance that the corporate world saw in the Nafta issue
was revealed with some clarity in the final stages.  Usually,
both the President and the media try to keep their class
loyalties somewhat in the background.  This time, all bars were
down.  Particularly striking was the bitter attack on labor for
daring to interfere in the political process, understood to be
the domain of business power in a well-ordered democracy.


The logic is familiar.  When ordinary people enter the political
arena, we have a "crisis of democracy"; things are OK, however,
when the President is able to "govern the country with the
cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers
and bankers," as the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government
at Harvard (Samuel Huntington) has explained, articulating the
vision of democracy propounded by elite opinion for hundreds of
years.


Accordingly, corporate lobbying was considered unworthy of
mention -- a reasonable decision; one also doesn't report the air
we breathe.


President Clinton denounced the "naked pressure" and "real
roughshod, muscle-bound tactics" of organized labor, "the raw
muscle, the sort of naked pressure that the labor forces have put
on." They even resorted to "pleading...based on friendship" and
"threatening...based on money and work in the campaign" when they
approached their elected representatives.  Never would
a corporate lobbyist sink that low; those who believe otherwise
merely reveal themselves to be "Marxists" or "conspiracy
theorists," terms that are the cultivated equivalent of
four-letter words or a punch in the nose, a last resort when you
can't think of an argument.  Front-page stories featured the
President's call to Congress "to resist the hardball politics" of
the "powerful labor interests." Business was reeling from the
onslaught, unable to face the terror of the mob.  At the outer
limits of dissent, Anthony Lewis berated the "backward,
unenlightened" labor movement for the "crude threatening tactics"
it employed to influence Congress, motivated by "fear of change
and fear of foreigners."


In a lead editorial the day before the vote, the _Times_
courageously confronted the "raw muscle," denouncing local
Democrats who oppose Nafta in fear of "the wrath of organized
labor" with its powerful political action committees that
"contribute handsomely to their election campaigns." A box within
the editorial headed "Labor's Money" records labor contributions
to Nafta opponents in the New York City area -- "an unsettling
pattern," the editors observe ominously. <<<NB: Gwen Ifill,
_NYT_; John Aloysius Farrell, _BG_, Nov 8.  Lewis, Nov. 5.
Editorial, _NYT_, Nov. 16, 1993.>>>


As some aggrieved representatives and others noted, the _Times_
did not run a box listing corporate contributions.  Nor did it
list _Times_ advertisers and owners who support Nafta, raising
ominous questions about their editorial support for the bill,
perhaps an instance of an "unsettling pattern." Such reactions
are not to the point, however, for several reasons.  First,
information about corporate lobbyists, owners and advertisers
would be irrelevant, since conformity of government and editorial
policy to their views is the natural order.  And if the hysteria
about the improprieties of working people was a bit crass, it is
after all understandable in a moment of panic, when the mob is
practically at the gates.  Furthermore, after endless wailing
about the terrifying power of labor and the unfair uses to which
it was put, the _Times_ did run a front-page story revealing
the truth: Michael Wines, "Off Stage, Trade Pact Lobby Had a
Star's Dressing Room."


The corporate lobbyists, Wines reported, were "Chamber of
Commerce types, accountants, trade consultants," who "occupied a
stately conference room on the first floor of the Capitol, barely
an elevator ride away from the action in the House chamber," with
TV sets, cellular telephones, and other appurtenances in
abundance, and celebrities everywhere.  The picture was enough to
convince a former Carter official, now a lobbyist, that "It's
going to be a blowout." A look at labor's "raw muscle" only
reinforced the conclusion: "The boiler room for the forces
opposed to the pact, by contrast, was more of, well, a boiler
room," a "barren hearing room" far from the House debate, with
only one telephone, "basic black." "The dress was union-label,
inexpensive suits and nylon jackets inscribed with numbers and
insignias of various locals." Wines even spoke the usually
forbidden words "class lines," referring to the "nastier and more
divisive battle" over Nafta, unlike the "previous two battles,"
which left no scars: the battle over the $19 billion stimulus
(quickly lost) and the tax and spending cuts. <<<NB: Wines,
_NYT_, Nov. 18.>>>


True, the story that finally set things right was published the
day _after_ the vote.  But the newsroom is a busy place, media
savants explain, and sometimes things fall through the cracks --
in an oddly systematic way.


Before the vote, it wasn't only labor, with its awesome power,
that was pummelling Congress while the business world looked on
in helpless dismay.  The morning of the vote, a front-page story
in the _Wall Street Journal_ denounced "the muscle-flexing by
the broad antitrade coalition," which extends beyond labor
bureaucrats to "upscale environmentalists, suburban Perot
supporters and thousands of local activists nationwide." These
extremists believe that Nafta is designed "for the benefit of
multinational corporations.  Their rhetoric is pure
down-with-the-rich populism," laced with "conspiratorial,
antielitist arguments." A pretty scary crowd. <<<NB: Bob Davis
and Jackie Calmes, _WSJ_, Nov. 17, 1993.>>>


The news columns of the _Journal_ usually try to keep a
dispassionate tone, leaving Maoist-style ranting to the editorial
and opinion pages.  But in this case, the pain was too much to
bear.




2. Winners and Losers
---------------------


The Wines story on lobbyists was one of several interesting
post-vote contributions.  In another _Times_ story, also
curiously delayed, Thomas Lueck reviewed the expected economic
impact of Nafta, which had elicited such enthusiasm in the weeks
before, rising to virtual hysteria as the day of decision dawned.
Leading gainers would be those sectors "based in and around
finance," Lueck reported: "the region's banking,
telecommunications and service firms" -- that is, insurance
companies, investment houses, corporate law firms, the PR
industry, and the like. "A vast assortment of professional
service firms, from management consultants and public relations
to law and marketing, are poised to seek new businesses in
Mexico," while "Banks and Wall Street securities firms, which
would probably draw more benefit from the pact than any other
businesses, say that they are itching to buy Mexican businesses
or invest in them." There will be some gainers among
manufacturers too, primarily in high technology industry and
pharmaceuticals, which will benefit from one of the many
protectionist features that made Nafta so attractive to corporate
leaders: the increased protection for patents and "intellectual
property" generally, provisions designed to ensure that major
corporations, some of which dwarf many governments in scale, will
control the technology and products of the future.  Other
potential gainers include "the region's two largest manufacturing
industries," the capital-intensive chemical industry and
publishing -- more ominous signals about the _Times_ editorial
policy, by the logic of the editors.


Alongside this impressive array of beneficiaries, there will also
unfortunately be a few losers, "predominantly women, blacks and
Hispanics," and "semi-skilled production workers" generally.  But
that was inevitable anyway, and not important enough to merit
more than a few side comments in this upbeat analysis of the
"Free Trade Accord" -- the part that is "free" being "the amount
of money passed around Washington to pass it, said Representative
James Traficant," cited at the tail end of the column that
belatedly discovered the truth about corporate and labor
power. "Change can indeed be painful," as Anthony Lewis
admonished the labor movement -- for some, at least. <<<NB:
Thomas Lueck, _NYT_, Nov. 18; Wines, Lewis, _op. cit._>>>


Noted economists supporting Nafta made similar points about
winners and losers, observing that the only negative consequences
of Nafta would be "a slight fall in the real wages of unskilled
U.S. workers" (Paul Krugman) and ridiculing talk about job loss
because "only union leaders and Ross Perot would be surprised to
hear that the productivity ratio between U.S. and Mexican
workers...is higher than the ratio of hourly compensation" (Gary
Hufbauer).  These scornful rebuttals forgot to add, however, that
70% of the work force is categorized as "unskilled," and that at
comparable productivity levels Mexican wages are a fraction of US
wages, kept that way by harsh repression, destruction of unions,
and a huge army of unemployed. <<<NB: Krugman, _Foreign Affairs_,
Nov./Dec. 1993; Hufbauer, _NYT_, Nov. 15.  Samuel Bowles and
Mehrene Larudee, _ibid._, on productivity; labor economist
Harley Shaiken, cited by Steven Pearlstein, _WP weekly_, Nov.
8, 1993; Shaiken has done extensive studies on this issue.  On
the category of "unskilled workers," see Ian Robinson, _North
American Trade as If Democracy Mattered_ (Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives, Ottawa and International Labor Rights
Education and Research Fund, Washington, 1993), n. 224.>>>