Christoph Strawe
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GATS -
Service to Whom?
Civil Society's Alternatives
to The World Trade Organization's
Agreement on Services[1]
Escaping
from the vicious circle of wrong alternatives
// "Public"
does not necessarily mean "state-run" // What
are services? - About the difference between economy, state activity, and
cultural life, respectively intellectual production // The
puppet in the puppet: The concept of man in the GATS ideology // Economy
- servant of society or its master? // Right
is what is advantageous to the Global Players … // Is
acting out of discernment impossible? - The campaign against autonomous man
Orientations
for action and alternatives:
Regaining the
democratic states' capacity to act // For
a structural change of the public sector // Giving a chance to new forms of
social economy // From GATS to "GAFT"?
Do you know GATS?
An opinion poll certainly would cause more
than 99% of the citizens consulted to shake their heads and reply: "Never
heard of it." And yet, speaking of GATS, we are dealing with something that will deeply affect all our lives, much more deeply than what
happens on those levels of political decision making to which our attention is
drawn by the media - unless we manage to implement alternatives to the
"General Agreement on Trade in Services" ("GATS") which is
presently being negotiated within the World Trade Organization WTO.
Through the foundation of the WTO in 1995
the principle of the free movement of goods already proclaimed by the GATT[2]
was supplemented with the liberalization of the trade in services (GATS
agreement) and with the adjustment of the commercially relevant aspects of
intellectual property (TRIPS agreement)[3]
GATS is part of the globalization developments which have been systematically
pushed since the end of World War Two and speeded up dramatically with the
Falling of the Walls in 1989. So it is part of the world-wide linking-up of the
societies and the full establishment of the world market, with an unheard-of
mobility of capital, which has led to the global competition of the locations.
Former WTO Director-General Renato Ruggiero
has said something quite alarming, namely that the GATS extended the WTO into
areas never previously recognised as coming under the remit of trade policy.
"I suspect that neither governments nor industries have yet appreciated
the full scope of these guarantees or the full value of existing
commitments."[4] Indeed, the
agreement's tendency is to include all activities that have up until now been
considered non-commercial ("non-profit-sector") in the profit-making
(i.e. business) sphere. And this whole sphere is intended to be structured
strictly in accordance with the ideology of neo-liberalism.
Health care and education, the media, child
care and elder care - there is nothing that would not be declared a
private-branch of business. The question of "Cui bono?" is not too
difficult to answer: Over the last few years reference has been made to the
so-called sixth Kondratieff-(conjunctural)-cycle[5],
in which the new mega-trends are set by an increasing demand in the areas of
health, environment and education. If these fields of growth can be drawn into
the sphere of shareholder value economy, there will be tremendous profits in
store for the corporations in the branches of medicine and biotechnology, but
also in the environmental area (alternative energy, waste disposal etc.).
How far there will be any tolerated
exceptions to this principle of any service being of a private nature is
entirely unclear, even though government representatives reassuringly point to
such possible exceptions. What is clear, however, is that there are to be mechanisms that will make the observance of
the GATS rules enforceable, if need be.
Maude Barlow is right in saying in her
article "The Last Frontier" (published in "The Ecologist"
in February 2001[6]) that with
this the end of the very concept of not-for-profit public services could be
near. In the British newspaper "The Observer" of April 15th, 2001
there was an article which quoted from
a confidential document of the WTO secretariat.. According to that document,
the creation of an international agency is planned which is to have the power
of veto against any decisions of single states or governments concerning
environment, health, education etc., should these decisions constitute a
violation of the liberalization of the trade in services proposed by GATS. This is, says the
"Observer", obviously a plan to abolish the "out-moded political
idea of democracy".
In view of such developments large sections
of the organized civil society have woken up. The internet abounds with
information on the dangers of GATS, along with protests about the agreement.
Thus an appeal called "Stop the GATS Attack" has already been signed
by 430 Non-Government-Organizations from 53 countries (by June 2001).[7]
Perhaps it will be possible to call forth a broad movement similar to the one
that brought down the international agreement on the protection of investments,
MAI, and the one that led to the failure of the Seattle WTO summit.
[Back]
There is wide agreement among "civil
society"[8] that GATS
involves a multitude of dangerous regulations hostile to man. What has to be
done now is to enlighten the general public on GATS and to broaden the front
against the agreement.
But at the same time the question arises of
civil society's positive alternatives. If it can be shown how the problems for
whose solution GATS is being praised can be solved in a different way, the
movement of civil society will be
greatly empowered.
The strategy of the inspiring forces that
stand behind the WTO is to cause confusion and lead mankind astray by means of
pseudo alternatives. Thus it is suggested that GATS is, so to speak, the
logical conclusion and the only possible consequence of the failure of the
attempts to regulate large areas of social life by way of planned economy and
bureaucratically. Only consequent liberalization and deregulation , they say,
sets people's innovative forces free and finally leads to general social
prosperity. This strategy obviously aims at mentally disarming the opponents of
the present form of globalization, describing them as the last Mohicans of a
quasi stone age bureaucratism, who have slept away the year 1989. What is
public is pretended to be generally identical with sovereign state-controlled
direction and petty-minded bureaucratic regimentation. At the same time it is
insinuated that, as a rule, non-governmental actors become active in the social
context purely out of commercial interest, their free initiative therefore
being essentially "private" (the Latin word "privare",
after all, means "take by force", i.e. appropriate selfishly).
Finally we are made to believe that there is a choice to be made between the
allegedly insurmountable opposites of liberty (along with economic efficiency),
on the one hand, and solidarity (which is equated with planned-economical
inefficiency) on the other. In this one-sided view, liberty, of course,
excludes any system of health care or education which would be financed consequently
on the basis of solidarity.
It is imperative to confront such ideological stereotyped thought patterns with
unbiased observation and appropriate formation of concepts in order to be able
to outline guiding ideas for the development of society which make real sense.
What counts here are not made-up "solutions" for all social problems,
but the question of social structures that give people on our globe the chance
to solve their problems by themselves, step by step.
[Back]
One stereotyped thought pattern which has
to be overcome is the equation "public = state-run". By no means is
this equation any longer obligatory in our times. There are many civil society
organizations which work in a self-administered and self-determined manner -
referred to as "in freier Trägerschaft (in independent
‘carriership')" - in other words, which are not state-run, but
independently run, but which at the same time assume public functions and are
therefore rightly financed publicly, wholly or in part. In many areas such
organizations are entirely indispensable for the functioning of the public
sector. This applies to certain areas of care of the elderly, nursing and
therapy, social work, curative education, and drug therapy among others, partly
also to the educational system, where non-commercial free schools play an
important part in the realization of the public task of realizing the human's
right to education.
Indeed, it complies with the spirit of an
age of individualization and pluralization that solutions born of free
initiative can take the place of state-controlled solutions wherever people
want this. Between the pseudo-alternative of "state-run" and "private"
there is a third option: free initiative for the community, financed on the
basis of solidarity. This third way is a way of balance between liberty and
solidarity. It does not lead to "deregulation", but rather to an
unbureaucratic regulation of problems through a variety of task-orientated
associations and self-governing networks which could simultaneously co-operate
with the state.
[Back]
GATS being concerned with services, the
question must be raised if the concept of services, which underlies this
agreement, is at all appropriate. Is there, latently, a certain one-sided conception
of man at the bottom of it, and if so - which?
To provide services means to do something
for others - to serve others. Looked at it in this way, any activity in a social context is a
service. In order to be able to do something for others long term it is necessary
to have an income that makes this possible. Income in the form of money, in
this context, means being entitled to use and consume a certain part of the
economic values created. In this respect everything anyone does for someone
else in our modern society necessarily has an economic aspect. Does this mean,
however, that every activity is an essentially commercially directed economic
activity per se? For this is what the logic of GATS implies!
Economy is primarily the production of
goods, ultimately induced by the pull of the consumers' needs. Goods are
material things, such as food, clothing, housing, means of transport, which are
bought and sold. In order for them to reach the consumer, services are required
that are not material things in themselves, but do call forth material results
and are indispensable for the material goods to reach their destinations. Here
we find the work of the haulage contractor as well as that of the bank clerk,
the wholesaler and retailer, or the telephone company over whose lines business
appointments are made. These kinds of services are directly marketable, i.e.
saleable and purchasable.
It is somewhat different with the services
rendered by the "civil servants" (officials), parliamentarians etc.
They do, indeed, need an income, but they are neither indirectly nor directly involved
in the production of marketable material commodities. They receive their part
of society's wealth by way of tax revenues. It would make little sense to pay a
top government official according to the number of rules "produced".
What matters in government and state is something qualitatively different from
economic goods; what matters is that
everyone, as a peer, receives that which is his inalienable right. Thus this
area ensures (at least this has been its ideal so far) a certain social
infra-structure and social harmony, which is also vital for the economy. But
the state is only capable of doing this if its citizens - through democratic
consensus - are in a position to set certain limits to the economy by law,
regulatory frameworks, with which enterprises have to comply.
We have to recognize that there are
essentially different kinds of services, which cannot necessarily be equated
with each other. With a building contractor, for instance, we sign a contract
for work and labour, which connects the payment with the result, e.g. the
finished house; with a lawyer - at least in central Europe - we conclude a
service contract, which provides payment irrespective
of the result of the case.
In addition, all cultural work, all
intellectual production, in as far as it does not have a purely private
leisure-time character, can only be achieved if it is financially supported.
Teachers, doctors, and university lecturers need an income in order to be able
to devote themselves to their profession. In this respect their work becomes
directly comparable with that of any other occupational category. But they do
not produce any material goods or any accomplishments connected with material
production, either. What teachers help to develop in their students in the way
of key qualifications will no doubt become economically highly relevant in the
future; for the present, however, this relevance rests completely on the
"principle of hope". It is absurd, in fact contemptuous, to say that
pupils are "products". The teacher does not produce economic goods,
but assists in the development of the individual child by the manner in which
he faces him. His work is not a standardizable performance, but a subtle
"relational service"[9],
which requires a space of creativity where it must be possible to
individualize. Similar questions arise when we consider the relationship
between doctor and patient, between geriatric nurse or curative educators and those cared for.
The activities mentioned need a form of
financing that creates the free space necessary for them. Only when an
understanding of the importance of the cultural sphere prevails in our society
will there be the readiness to place that part of the economic values created
at its disposal which this sphere needs for its development. Wherever education
is viewed only from the angle of economics, the readiness to ensure the right
of being educated to every young person, irrespective of his parents' purse,
will eventually disappear. Something similar holds for the health system.
Marianne Hochuli has put it in a nutshell:
"Sectors like education and health should under no circumstances be
subject to the same rules as the trade with manufactured goods."[10]
[Back]
The ideology which is behind GATS obviously
leads to an intellectual blindness to the particular nature of culture and law
as opposed to the economy, absorbing, however, also certain aspects of economy
itself, while distorting others or making them appear oversized.
The neo-liberalism of the WTO ideologists
knows and acknowledges only selfish private interest as the motor of all economic enterprise. In the
neo-liberal ideology, the contradiction between this "self-interest"
and the fact that labour for others is necessary in our labour-dividing economy,
can only be resolved by combining pecuniary incentives with unlimited
competition. For only through this competition - in their way of thinking -
will the opposing egotistical motives wear each other down, and only the whip
of competition is believed to lead to permanent innovation and hence to an increase in productivity and a
cheapening of the products, so that finally - without the economic actors' will
and intention - a social redistribution takes place behind their back. In a
recent publication the underlying principle is described as the
"Mephisto-principle"[11].
To its supporters, any attempts to infuse the economy with social and
ecological reason, through processes of agreement among the partners involved -
in production, distribution and consumption - are suspected of cartelizing and
are therefore to be prevented by strict application of the competition law.
This gives the competition law priority over the law of contract, which surely
- as an aspect of the general freedom of action of the individual - is an
inviolable human right.
The underlying view is determined by
distrust of the developmental possibilities of man. Its credo reads: Human
beings can't help being as they are. Man's selfish side - undoubtedly existent
- is simply blown up to equate with the whole of man's nature. The fact that
responsibility and social qualities develop only through taking part in social
processes is faded out systematically in this context. This distrust also
explains the seeming inconsistency of the advocates' of elite globalization
insisting on apparently limitless freedom in the economic sphere while opposing
both an extension of the principle of democracy and a consistent autonomous
self-government of a free cultural life. Neo-liberalism does harmonise well
with a "Singaporization" of large parts of the globe, that is with
authoritarian structures.
[Back]
The economic sector, thus conceived, is
preparing - through GATS - to make itself irrevocably the master of society..
More precisely: Money reigns over the economy, and the economy ruled by money
is supposed to rule society. To this economy, for which the principle of
universal saleability does not stop at the goods, but which extends it also to
the factors of production (land, labour, capital), human beings are necessarily
cost factors so long as they cause wage costs or social costs. The economy,
therefore, tends to become anti-human and presumes to derive law from its
feigned inherent necessities instead of yielding to the law, by which the
societies set limits to it.
The state used to raise taxes and social
revenues to be able to finance public services - social systems, culture, but
also the actual state activity itself. Today the economy is evading its grip by
putting pressure on the states in the course of the competition of the
locations with the aim of re-adjusting the social costs and taxes to a lower level. Eighty percent of the
people will be dispensable to the economy in the future anyway and will at best
receive what a former American safety advisor has called
"Tittytainment" - a combination of covering basic living costs at a
relatively low level and cheap entertainment. Resistance is essential, if this
is not to be tomorrow's reality.
[Back]
The critics of GATS are therefore justified
in emphasising that the creative authority of the democratic states, that means
the law-developing power of the citizens, which is perforated through
globalization, anyway, will be even further reduced by the agreement. At the
same time, so the critics, the principle of subsidiarity, whose supposed
purpose is to permit the problems to be handled as close to the basis as
possible, will be thus undermined.
An investment, according to the logic of
GATS, is a service rendered - in fact, not only a real-economic investment, but
also one at the financial markets. Thus any independent legal regulation,
which, for instance, provides control of the financial markets, can be
unhinged. What if people advocated a certain level of environmental protection
and social security? The answer would be: This is an offence against the
freedom of the trade in services! - What about imposing regulations on
foreign-based investors? This would be an offence against the freedom of trade!
- What about the state supporting and financing institutions which are
independently run, work community-orientated and do not accept commercial
principles as the basis of their management? Again: Offence against the freedom
of trade! - What if economic partners in a global chain of economic value added
in a certain branch stipulate measures to safeguard fair prices? This would be
a violation of the freedom of competition! - What about people claiming their
freedom of action and of contract making? Well yes, but only if there is no
impingement on competitive freedom! - And what about promotion of local
businesses or publicly set ecological and social standards in the case of
orders placed by public institutions? This would be a violation of the
worldwide obligation of open prize competition!
Particularly affected by such regulations
are poorer countries. Some governments of these countries rightly demand a
"protective clause in the GATS permitting steps to be taken whenever a
country is flooded with services activities that threaten the existing domestic
service-providers."[12]
[Back]
The attack launched by GATS goes even
beyond this, however: In the Universal Rights of Man the dignity of the
individual is centrally placed and under the protection of the global legal system.
Dignity of man, in its quintessence, is the possibility of the individual to
make use of his own thinking without any direction from outside and to act out
of his own insights. This fact substantiates individual rights of freedom, on
the one hand, and - on the other hand -
democratic rights of participation wherever rules for larger communities of
people sharing a common territory are concerned. Ensuing from this fact are, at
the same time, social rights of man, without which freedom would exist on paper
only and social protection would at best be an act of grace dependent on the
cash balance of the state.
The mode of thought on which GATS is based
offends this concept of human dignity in its very essence. This frequently
happens in a disguised form, though, so that you have to look very closely to
notice it. If everything is economy - and if economy is promoted only by man's
self-interest - then there is basically no practice that flows out of free
insight, out of love of the aim of the action or, respectively, for the person
opposite to whom the action is directed - in no case, however, a practice
relevant for the social sphere. There are only calculating and selfish actions.
For this reason man's capacity to act must be squeezed into a system. Such a
system is the set of rules of competition, supplemented with the control of a
state totally orientated to the economy. The governmental activity itself is
thereby supposed to undergo a transformation, which is already underway
everywhere under the slogan of New Public Management. This transformation
consists in the fact that the governments, in the first place, are meant to
align their own activities to the criteria of market economy and, in the second
place, to enforce the commercial alignment of cultural life - if need be by
creating artificial market-like conditions in education, social therapy,
kindergartens, the public health sector etc.
At first sight competition between services
providers seems to safeguard the
autonomy of the cultural sector at the same time: anyone may offer now whatever
he likes. In reality, though, "solidarity-financing" of culture as a
component of the public sector is weakened without any achievement other than
that "partial autonomy" which, particularly in education is being
invoked as a slogan everywhere in these times of the New Public Management.
Partial autonomy means: Apart from ensuring freedom of trade the state also
sees to the securing of an adequate "output" of the cultural
institutions, the catchwords being: performance orders, comparability and
cost-cutting through standardization and establishment of "competition-like"
conditions, implementation of quality assurance systems and, at the same time,
downward delegation of detail responsibility. As far as public financing still
takes place at all, it is coupled with the fulfilment of corresponding
requirements.
What does it mean to class the activity of
a teacher, a doctor, a researcher in the realm of economics? It means that a
certain way of thinking appears which in the long run cannot but change the
quality of the activity of the teaching, the researching, etc. Research becomes
liable to economically utilizable results, also fundamental research basically
becomes applied research. Liability, warranty and consumer protection become
relevant categories for the tuition. There is a dimming of the understanding of
culture as an antipole of the economy, as a sphere of inner growth as opposed
to outer growth, of meaning as opposed to gratifying the outer needs, etc.
Where everything is buyable, inevitably also the spirit is for sale. That the
other central WTO agreement, TRIPS, ensures the saleability of intellectual
property, including the utilization of plant species and the patenting of life,
is founded on the same fatal logic.
[Back]
What can be done to restore the legal
communities' capacity to act? Certainly: First of all, the crudest assaults
against democracy must be parried , GATS and the foundation of the practically
uncontrollable agency for the monitoring of its observance must be prevented.
But this will not suffice. The powerlessness of the legal community, of the
democratic state has its root in the possibility of the Global Players to evade
any territorial regulation by simply transferring job sites or to enforce
social curtailments using the argument of competitiveness. At the same time
there is a worldwide increase of unemployment through the very development of
increasing labour productivity, and this means that more and more people can no
longer earn their income through gainful employment and are dependent on
"social income". How can the exclusion of these people be avoided?
Moreover, how can the poorer countries be enabled to build up their own social
security systems?
At present the financing of the public
sector is mostly attached to the working income in the form of incidental
labour costs or income tax. This results in the social welfare expenditure of
the rich countries being exported to the south by way of prices and goes hand
in hand with a kind of social dumping through imports (from the south). The
countries of the south cannot build up any social systems without jeopardising
their competitive advantage of low labour costs, while, at the same time, the
social systems of the north are coming under considerable pressure. If there
was world-wide acceptance of the principle that the financing of the public
sector is achieved through taxing the consumption, we would have a different
situation, as consumption is location-bound. The "legal communities"
(i.e. states) would be able again to guarantee a legally intended protective
social level without its discriminating against the respective home industry in
their competition. In future it would be much more difficult for legal
conditions for industry and business to be thwarted by economic arguments.[13]
[Back]
What matters is to defend the public sector
as a sphere of non-profit services! But don't let us blunder into the trap -
let us not be made to defend the status quo! In fact, in the past there has
been too much petty regulation by the state. The alternative to this, however,
is not GATS, but a structural change in the public sector corresponding to the
inner impulse of civil-society's commitment. The principle of civil society is
the struggle against conformism of any kind, it is diversity and individuality.
For the public sector this would necessarily mean: moving away from the
traditional sovereignty and prerogative of the state, and moving towards
systems of education and health that are funded "in solidarity", but
at the same time also stamped by being independently run, by diversity, and,
therewith, by the respective direction of the volition of the receivers of
their benefits. Let us put a real partnership between institutions and
enterprises which are self-determined and at the same time obligated to the
common interest, on the one side, and the state-run institutions, on the other,
in the place of distorted forms of Private Public Partnership.
We do not need performance orders given by
a government to cultural institutions dependent on directions and forced into
an artificial ruinous competition, given by a government which on its part is a
an order receiving lackey of an economy soaked with neo-liberalistic ideology,
which defines the "output" expected of the cultural institutions.
What is promising is, rather, solutions where free institutions, in a
self-obliging manner, take over public functions as independent responsible
bodies and enter into contractual relationships with government partners on eye
to eye level.
And as for the government itself, what
matters here is a transformation towards more basic-democratic participation,
including the right of citizens' initiative, popular demand and plebiscite.
[Back]
The GATS ideologists obviously want us to
forget that there have always been - and still are - attempts to counter the
liberal and neo-liberal economy with an economic system that is
polity-orientated and socially responsible without being planned-economic: The
business enterprises of the Labour movement, Ernst Abbe's foundation idea,
Gottlieb Duttweiler's idea of social capital, the concept of the Grameen Bank,
the initial stages of similar ideas in
the Prague Spring, and the movements of upheaval of 1989 towards a Third Way
should be mentioned here; not to forget either the manifold attempts at
cooperating and fair trading from production to consumption, nor new forms of
handling money, land and capital, nor initiatives for a new agriculture.
Even though many of these approaches failed
at first or presently only have a limited radius of operation - to call them to
mind is enough to refute the thesis that an economic system which is based on
maximum profit of the capital owners is the epitome of economy. Civil society
has no reason to be "anti-business”, but it does have every reason to
support new approaches of doing business in an ecological and social manner
which might also be capable of forming associations to balance regional and
global interests on a basis of mutual trust and cooperation.
Only such an economic system where services
are not a vehicle of profit making, but where cost-effectiveness and profit are
a means to fulfil social and ecological tasks, can be called humane.
[Back]
Let us develop a broad global movement
against GATS! Within this movement and at the round tables of trisectoral
partnerships, let us develop, at the same time, a dialogue on civil society's
visions of a social future stamped by structures that enable people to solve
their social problems more and more fruitfully and to put into practice ever
more freedom, justice and solidarity.
This GATS - we don't need it. What we do
need at best is an agreement which does not yet exist and which we might call
"General Agreement on Fairness in Trade" ("GAFT"). This
would be an agreement which creates global basic conditions for the
gradual development of a global economic
life, which is only shaped by the agreements of the partners concerned and
which is efficient and structurally and regionally well-balanced - in a word, a
socially responsible economy, which is based on the equalization of interests
and aims at setting fair prices.
[Back]
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November 2001
Translation by Wilfried Hüfler
© Christoph Strawe
