That comment sums up the feelings of the thousands who demonstrated atSeattle. Simply put, the protesters say that globalisation, of which the WTOis a potent symbol, has been driven not by the people of the world actingtogether in their common interest, but by multinational corporations.

In this kind of globalisation, people are seen as just another resource tobe used, and spat out when no longer needed. That is the reason why 25 yearsof globalisation has been accompanied by higher poverty, increasedinequality, unprecedented financial volatility, great insecurity, and thedestruction of the environment. The statistics are telling: in the UnitedStates, real average wages were $9 per hour as of 1973 and had decreased to$8 per hour as of 1998, 25 years later. The median family income was $1,000less in 1996 than it was in 1989.

The combined wealth of the three richest individuals in the world is greaterthan the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest countries in theworld, which represent one-quarter of the nations in the world. Obscenitiessuch as these should at the very least lead us to ask the question: whogains what from globalisation?

One complaint of the protesters has been that it is anti-democratic. Twoexamples would prove the truth of that contention. Most of the rules drawnup are hammered out behind closed doors, and corporations with inside accessto the negotiations have disproportionate influence. One has only to readthe history of the imposition of the TRIPS agreement by some of the majormultinationals to realise that fact. Citizen, labour and consumer rights arenot even considered. Developing countries in particular get short shrift.

The dispute panels, which rule on whether domestic laws conflict with WTOrules and should therefore be abolished, consist of three trade bureaucratswho are not even screened for conflict of interests. But then, as theenvironmentalist Susan George has pointed out, neo-liberalism claims thatthe economy should dictate its rules to society, not the other way around.Democracy is therefore an encumbrance.

What is to be done? The protests on the streets may be spectacular, but theyoffer no coherent alternative. Yet one common refrain has been the call forfair trade. That should be fair trade not just for America's poor, but forthe far poorer people of the developing countries. This has been most aptlysummed up by Joseph Stiglitz, whose outspoken views could not be stomachedby the World Bank. In a speech on the Millennium Round of the WTO, he said:"We know that developing countries face greater volatility, that opening totrade in fact contributes to that volatility, that developing countries haveweak or non-existent safety nets, and that high unemployment is a persistentproblem in many if not most developing countries.

The developed and less developed countries play on a playing field that isnot level. Thus, provisions that look fair on the surface may have verydifferent and unequal consequences for the developed and less developedcountries. Accordingly, the power imbalances at the bargaining table areexacerbated by the imbalance of consequences." That about sums up theargument against the way the WTO is constructed at the present. If theprotests will help make the WTO a fairer place, it will have achieved amajor objective. Fifty years ago, the economist Karl Polanyi prophesied that"To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of humanbeings and their natural environment...would result in the demolition ofsociety."

The point all gung-ho globalisers must note is that the market is just amechanism to deliver prosperity, not an end in itself. It has to be made theservant of the people, not its master. If the world leaders now gathered atSeattle can understand this, the WTO could well be worth preserving.