In May, an international trade
agreement was signed that effectively serves as a kind of legal backbone for
the restructuring of world markets. While the Trade
in Services Agreement (Tisa) negotiations were not censored outright, they
were barely mentioned in our media. This marginalisation and secrecy was in
stark contrast to the global historical importance of what was agreed upon.
In June, WikiLeaks made public the
secret draft text of the agreement. It covers 50 countries and most of the
world's trade in services.
It sets rules that would
assist the expansion of financial multinationals into other nations by
preventing regulatory barriers. It prohibits more regulation of financial services,
despite the fact that the 2007-08 financial meltdown is generally perceived as
resulting from a lack of regulation. Furthermore, the US is particularly keen
on boosting cross-border data flow, including traffic of personal and financial
data. Despite all this, we heard little about it.
Yet is this discrepancy
between importance and secrecy really surprising? Is it not rather a sad but
precise indication of where do we, in western liberal democratic countries, stand
with regard to democracy? A century and a half ago, in Das Kapital, Karl Marx
characterised the market exchange between worker and capitalist as "a
very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality,
Property and Bentham." For Marx, the ironic addition of Jeremy
Bentham, the philosopher of egotistical utilitarianism, provides the key to
what freedom and equality effectively mean in capitalist society. To quote The
Communist Manifesto: "By freedom is meant – under the present bourgeois
conditions of production – free trade, free selling and buying." And by
equality is meant the legal formal equality of buyer and seller, even if one of
them is forced to sell his labour under any conditions (like today's precarious
workers).
The main culprits of the 2008
financial meltdown now impose themselves on us as experts leading us on the
painful path to financial recovery. Their advice should trump parliamentary
politics. Or, as Mario Monti put it: "Those who govern must not allow
themselves to be completely bound by parliamentarians." What, then, is the
higher force whose authority can suspend the decisions of the democratically
elected representatives of the people? As far back as 1998, the answer was
provided by Hans Tietmeyer, the then governor of the Deutsche Bundesbank, who
praised national governments for preferring "the permanent plebiscite of
global markets" to the "plebiscite of the ballot box".
Note the democratic rhetoric
of this obscene statement: global markets are more democratic than
parliamentary elections, since the process of voting goes on in them
permanently (and is permanently reflected in market fluctuations) and at a
global level, not only within the limits of a nation state.
This, then, is where we stand
with regard to democracy, and the Tisa agreement is a perfect example. The key
decisions concerning our economy are negotiated and enforced in secret, and set
the coordinates for the unencumbered rule of capital. In this way, the space
for decision-making by the democratically elected politicians is severely
limited, and the political process deals predominantly with issues towards
which capital is indifferent (like culture wars).
This is why the release of the
Tisa draft marks a new stage in the WikiLeaks strategy: until now its activity
has been focused on making public how our lives are monitored and regulated by
the intelligence agencies – the standard liberal topic of individuals
threatened by oppressive state apparatuses. Now another controlling force
appears – capital – which threatens our freedom in a much more twisted way: by
perverting our very sense of what the word means.
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