by Neil Deo

Created on: July 08, 2008   Last Updated: July 12, 2008

The only things "free" in "free markets" and free "trade" is the freedom of the big and powerful to prevent equality in the world. Remember, always, that TRADE is not the same as DEMOCRACY. Those who wish access to markets, do not necessarily promote free and fair elections. Hence the association with free trade and free markets with "super-exploitation" among the peoples of the developing world.

Now before you get holier than me, and accuse me of being a communist, let me say "competitive capitalism" is and always will be my religion. We left competitive capitalism behind in the dustbin of nineteenth century American history, and traded for it, "super capitalism" or corporatism, where "corporations" are treated as "persons" with rights in US law! My first hero remains Jesus Christ, and while He hated usury and "trade" at the entrance to the temple in Jerusalem (a week before he was hung, spat upon, beaten to death) I follow Him in not throwing out the baby with the bath water. After all, Jesus caught the Pharisees in their own trap by answering their trick and entrapment question by stating categorically, Render to Caeser what is Caeser's and to God what belongs to God. So responsible capitalism is what I pray for in this world beset with so many pollutants dumped in the global commons by those who preach capitalism and free markets. The real costs are borne by the poor and the planet.
There is one big blinder in our assessment of the question in this debate: the history of the Cold War. If one conflates and confuses "trade and free markets" with democracy, that is one's rational choice and I wish you and your progeny decades of wisdom and happinesss. But if one knows that the Cold War was waged for "free markets... [and] trade" prmarily, only incidentally and inconsistently for democracy, the fate of the poor begins to be understood in this age of so many technological miracles and, also, deepening disease, poverty and human rights abuses (Sudan, Rwanda, Apartheid of all kinds).
The Cold War was waged also for that subtly different agenda, "Western Dominance or Triumphalism." It is similar to previous contests such as Catholicism versus Protestantism - in Europe - or earlier among competing Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Moghals, Ottomans. The contest through the two World Wars between Germany (with and without allies, Italy and Japan) and the first west (Britain and France) was about dominance and not necessarily about capitalism or democracy. In fact, a better

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