Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 09:16:20 -0800
From: Murray Dobbin <[log in to unmask]>
To:   Bob Olsen <[log in to unmask]>,
Subject: Finpost column

Friends/colleagues:

In a slightly bizarre turn of events I am now a columnist for the
Financial Post, in their Counterpoint Column. My column appears
every two weeks, starting today.  As many/most of you do not
subscribe and those of who did are presumably boycotting the
National Post in support of the strikers at the Calgary Herald,
I am emailing the column for your perusal. I hesitate to do this
as it presumes a lot but make whatever use of the column that you
wish. The FP effectively gives me copyright and the column can be
reprinted freely so long as it is attributed.



The broken deal between big businesss and democracy

By Murray Dobbin

The post war period in the developed capitalist west was characterized
by a remarkable achievement. Those who ran the affairs of the world’s
largest corporations, decided that democracy would be considered a
legitimate cost of doing business. Like other costs in those heady
days, the costs and risks of democracy would be internalized. Legalized
trade unions, unemployment insurance and other measures empowering
labour, free public education, progressive tax systems, regulated
capital flows, public health care - all of these were accepted as
more or less in the interests of capitalism.

No more. The social contract expired some time ago. No formal
negotiations are scheduled.

Two key indicators of this new reality are now pretty much unmistakable.
The most recent was Paul Martin’s budget. That this was a profoundly
undemocratic budget in the most obvious sense, no one denies. Polls
showed time and again that  Canadians wanted  a re-commitment by the
federal government to medicare, not tax cuts. The Liberals’ own polling,
done by Ekos, showed that tax cuts placed seventh out of eight spending
priorities. The relentless campaign by the National Post notwithstanding,
their was no tax rage in the country.

But the budget was not just un-democratic, it was anti-democratic
because for a robust democracy to function it has to have enough money.
Beginning before the war ordinary Canadians redefined democracy by using
it to achieve a measure of equality and economic security that was
unheard of in the previous era. It was democracy as popular sovereignty
and it wasn’t cheap.

But Paul Martin now brags that the government spends relatively less
than it did in 1949. His recent five year budget with  $58 billion in
tax cuts, effectively declares that Ottawa will never again be a full
partner in social programs. Some of that money will come back as a
result of increased spending but not nearly enough. And let’s be clear
- this is not a budget for the middle class. Fully 42% of the personal
tax cuts will go to the top 10% of income earners.

Thus the budget severely erodes equality at a time when disparities in
market income are at their highest since the 1930s; institutionalizes
almost pre-war levels of spending, and makes it clear that a small
elite will determine broad government policy.

The other sign that democracy is no longer an accepted cost of doing
business has been the relentless efforts by transnational corporations
and their organizations to pursue multilateral trade and investment
agreements like the NAFTA, the MAI and the WTO. All of these agreements
promise to provide corporations with an unprecedented level of certainty
regarding the outcome of their investments.

This is no-surprises democracy. Tired of having to continuously lobby
governments against the introduction of new laws, regulations and social
programs, corporate brotherhoods like the BCNI had a better idea: Sign
treaties which permanently constrain governments from regulating capital.

This enterprise has been remarkably successful. Europeans have been told
by the WTO that they are not allowed to reject North American beef
because of hormone treatments; the US was forced to abrogate its own
Clean Air Act and allow in dirty gasoline from Venezuela; Canada, after
banning the neurotoxin MMT was obliged by NAFTA to reverse the ban and
compensate  its manufacturer $20 million; the Auto Pact is in violation
of the WTO; and Canada is using the WTO to stop France from banning the
use of asbestos, the most carcinogenic substance on earth.

Just how far will this corporate campaign for sanitized democracy go?
Driven by ideology it has none of the built in, practical limits
normally provided by history, tradition, political pluralism or
culture. Will it go as far as inferred by the Trilateral Commission,
the architect of the new elite consensus? Its 1976 study, “The
Governability of Democracy,”  pined for the days when “Truman had been
able to govern the country with the co-operation of a relatively small
number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers.” By the 1970s  there was
“..an excess of democracy. . ..[The public questioned] the legitimacy
of hierarchy, coercion, discipline, secrecy, and deception - all of
which are in some measure inescapable attributes of the process of
government.”

Will the campaign heed its own Fraser Institute: “Why should it follow
that we have an equal right to vote in elections? We don’t say
that everyone has an equal right to vote in IBM.”

The corporate negotiating team for the post-war social contract
understood that stability provided by political legitimacy was
preferable to that provided by coercion. This generation’s corporate
visionaries, if indeed there are any, had better pay attention. They
have been given fair warning. The thousands of young people battling in
Seattle were sending them a message: democracy is now in deficit and
they are the creditors.



Visit our Web Site for information about our Seniors Participatory and
Community Quality of Life Projects!  Free Reports Also.

  http://www.utoronto.ca/qol      http://www.utoronto.ca/seniors

  ********************************************************************
  Long have I looked for the truth about the life of people together.
  That life is crisscrossed, tangled, and difficult to understand.
  I have worked hard to understand it and when I had done so
  I told the truth as I found it.

  - Bertolt Brecht
  ********************************************************************

Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Associate Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
voice:    (416) 978-7567
fax: (416) 978-2087
e-mail:   [log in to unmask]