Trade Area Agreements Damage Democracy

Everybody is aware of the effects of Trade Area policies like NAFTA and CAFTA.  They promise lower prices and prosperity, freedom and happiness, but deliver draconian policies and enforcement mechanisms that hurt workers, the environment, and democracy.  The latest maneuver in this bait and switch approach to trade, which some know as “NAFTA on steroids,” is called the TransPacific Free Trade Area proposal, or the TPFTA.

Gyatri Spivak

"...an acceptance of radical vulnerability..." - Gyatri Spivak

Jacques Ranciere

Rancière, Jacques: Rancière believes democracy is neither a governmental or societal structure. Rather, it is the underlying principle which makes both possible.  For Rancière, democracy is the equality at the heart of inequality. Democracy, equality, is the underlying condition of politics, and not a goal or structure to be attained.

Wendy Brown

Brown, Wendy: The word democracy means only that “the people” rule themselves, that the whole rather than a part or an Other is politically sovereign. However, as Brown points out, this definition does not necessarily entail “representation, constitutions, deliberation, participation, free markets, rights, universality or even equality.”

Giorgio Agamben

Agamben, Giorgio: Agamben suggests the word democracy has at least two, distinct meanings that often get mistakenly conflated. First, democracy refers to the political agreements (such as a constitution, public law, social norms) through which the people organize and make collective decisions. Agamben calls this a “political-juridical” rationality—meaning this aspect of democracy refers to the creation of laws, and the constant revision of law, by the people of any given collective.