Whose Trade Organization?: Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy

Author: Lori Wallach, Michelle Sforza, Ralph Nader
List Price: $15.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 1582310017
Publisher: Public Citizen Inc (07 October, 1999)
Sales Rank: 66,243
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5
Looking on WTO info? This is the one!
Just what are all those protesters so upset about, anyway? This book will tell you. It's a quick, accurate, well-composed book examining the effects of the WTO on developing countries' poverty, health care, natural resources, and human rights.

This review doesn't need to be lengthy: Look, there are lots of books on the WTO. If you want the accurate summary to understand this issue simply, this is it.


Rating: 3 out of 5
Useful data on WTO, slim analysis
Contrary to the typical rantings of Neo-cons and neo-liberals, this book is not a book by and for Socialists (or, more accurately, anti-capitalists of any sort). This book does not have any kind of critique of capitalism. Only the sort of ideologues who lust after Latin American dictatorships like Pinochet's, which meant 'small government' (no social welfare type apparatus) and a strong state (death squads, political executions, smashing of dissent), will find this book threatening.

The book does have a lot of useful information on how the WTO runs and how it is focussed on the needs of corporations, most of which reside in the most developed capitalist countries, and which seek a set of global rules that allows them greater freedom of movement to invest and exploit (wow, I already hear the neo-cons whining because I used the 'E' word.) It also shows that the balance between global capital and the nation state has shifted, though this does not have the dire anti-democratic consequences claimed herein. That would be the liberal assumption that the nation state 'represents the people' and that that is a good thing.

At the same time as some people claim that the WTO is killing the nation state, this book makes it clear that the WTO is a body run by and through nation states. Corporations cannot directly intervene, but must have their concerns addressed through nation state mediators.

The book also does a good job of exposing the total lack of accountability of the WTO, as well as one of its unique features: unlike previous UN organizations, the WTO has disciplinary powers which it can use to enforce its rulings, something no 'humanitarian' part of the UN ever had.

The abscence of any kind of class analysis hinders this book theoretically and means that some possibly interesting questions do not get answered.

This book is better read alongside some other texts, which, even with their failings, fill in some of blanks here, such as Negri and Hardt's Empire.

Overall, a pretty useful and utilitarian overview of the WTO.


Rating: 5 out of 5
An alternative perspective
This book did a wonderful job of thoroughly covering dispute cases and pointing out structural flaws in the WTO. The writing style was easy to understand and appealed to a broad audience.

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