The View From 1776

Keith McHenry, co-founder of the Food Not Bombs movement, emailed the following message in response to Free-Trade Hypocrisy.

Mr. McHenry:

While you were correct that Food Not Bombs is against the exploitation and hardship caused by the globalization of the economy your sources you quote in Free-Trade Hypocrisy are so factually wrong it makes your article a joke.

Just one point, the IWW has never in it over 100 year history been a communist organization. A quick look at their website will show you that. Its am anarchist movement and has nothing to do with communism.

My reply:

As Mr. McHenry notes, it was not I, but DiscoverTheNetwork.org that wrote: [Food Not Bombs] also has ties to the Communist organization Industrial Workers Of The World, a neo-Marxist group that embraces a radical form of socioeconomic anarchism.

That characterization appears to be more correct, however, than Mr. McHenry’s.

Rebel America: The Story of Social Revolt in the United States (1934) is wholly sympathetic to the socialist movement and to its manifestation in Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  With regard to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), it states (page 245):

[The IWW] was in its beginning thoroughly native, essentially pragmatic and socialistic rather than anarchistic in character.

From its birth the IWW was directly identified with the more radical forms of socialism, which amounts to identity with communism.  Karl Marx, the co-author of the Communist Manifesto, described Communism as scientific socialism.

The organizers of the IWW in 1905 included Eugene V. Debs, head of the Socialist Party, and Daniel De Leon, head of the Socialist Labor Party, as well as Big Bill Haywood, head of the Western Federation of Miners. 

Haywood, the long-time IWW leader, jumped bail after his 1918 conviction under the 1917 Espionage Act and fled to the Soviet Union.

Mr. McHenry:

Second the police caused the damage in Seattle not the nonviolent protesters. There is no evidence that the protesters did any more than block streets.

My reply:

A writer for the far-from-conservative BBC reported the 1999 Seattle melee in this way:

Thursday, 2 December, 1999, 23:46 GMT
Eyewitness: The Battle of Seattle

So the masked figures roamed the downtown area, blocking traffic, shouting their slogans, spraying walls and windows with their graffiti and trying - and in some cases succeeding - in smashing windows of the elegant shops which are in the heart of Seattle.

Mr. McHenry:

But the most important thing is that millions of people have lost their jobs and poverty is at much higher levels as a result of free trade. There are no facts to support the idea that free trade has helped the poor. The examples are every where. I have visited many parts of the world and I don’t see any thing other than more pain and poverty.

My reply:

This Washington Post article reports that the number of millions of poor people lifted out of poverty by free trade may be less than previously estimated, if the projected degree of liberalization does not take place.  But even in the most pessimistic estimates, millions of poor people will see marked improvement in their standards of living.

One argument by opponents of free trade is that, in poor countries, it benefits wealthy exporters, but permits them to enslave the poor workers.  Free trade is not the cause of that sort of problem.  It would be more accurate to say that in oligarchic societies the top dogs use free trade as one of many causes to oppress the poor.  Such oppression was in full stride centuries before free trade.

Another argument against free trade is that, as exports rise in poor countries, some businesses become large and powerful, making competition difficult for new and small export-related firms.  The rising cost of entry keeps many individuals from establishing export businesses.

But exactly the same thing happens in any economy, free-trade or protectionist, as an industry matures and businesses consolidate.  Small business entrepreneurs everywhere usually find their opportunities mostly in newly developing fields.  And free trade is far more likely to open such new fields than a static, protectionist economy.

Protectionism, the opposite of free trade, booted the American economy into the Great Depression.  European countries imported massive amounts of farm and manufactured products to rebuild after World War I, but were unable to sell enough of their own output to the United States to continue importing from us.  The problem was our high tariffs, made yet higher by the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

See this link for the report of the United States Trade Representative on results of NAFTA.

This OECD report has some numbers and graphs showing that average annual growth in GNP per capita is more than six times as great for free-trade countries as for those with barriers to free trade.

For a summary of free trade benefits, see http://www.ncpa.org/pd/trade/pdtrade/pdtrade10.html .

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas annual report has an extensive essay, replete with numbers, demonstrating the enormous increases in standards of living effected by free trade.

Mr. McHenry:

Your entire article seems to be written by some one with little or no brains.