BY AUSTIN WHITTEN
SYDNEY — The large audience that attended the sold-out Valhalla Cinema talk given by George Monbiot on July 15, titled, "Future Implications For World Democracy", greeted Monbiot's ideas with a great deal of enthusiasm.
Attendees wanted to extend the question and answer period beyond the allotted time, but had to settle for queuing up to buy a copy of Monbiot's book, The Age Of Consent — A Manifesto For The New World Order.
The talk was co-sponsored by Oxfam Community Aid Abroad, Gleebooks and the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. Monbiot spent last month promoting his book in England before coming to Australia.
The question and answer period indicated a sizable number of grass-roots activists were present at the talk.
Monbiot spoke about a number of ideas from his book. He argued that in the past 50 years, our so-called democratic institutions have become clearly undemocratic. The UN Security Council, with its five permanent members with veto power, never was democratic and the general assembly, based on one country, one vote, gives the same voting power to a small island nations that China, with its billions, has.
Monbiot advocates doing away with the UN Security Council and changing voting in the General Assembly to proportional representation based on a country's population. His solution to world debt is to turn a weakness into an advantage. If all debtor countries defaulted on their loans at the same time, it would bring the rich countries to their knees. "When you owe a small amount of money to a bank and can't pay it back", he said, "you are in trouble. When you owe a large amount of money and can't pay it back, the bank is in trouble."
Monbiot advocates having a "Fair Trade Organisation" (FTO), designed to formulate rules for trading fairly. He pointed out that the US became rich through protectionism, protecting its infant industries with tariffs, import restrictions and export subsidies. Now that their trading industries are established, the US is attempting to stop industries in other countries by trumpeting free trade principles. In Monbiot's world, rich countries would be required to remove all barriers to trade that keep out imports from poorer nations.
While some attendees found Monbiot's ideas utopian, with little practical hope of being put in place or allowed to work, he is not a lightweight thinker. An academic with past and current affiliations with several British universities, he is also a regular columnist at the Guardian.
Socialists, especially, are sceptical about capitalism allowing itself to be "fixed" — history is not encouraging.
Monbiot cheerfully said a number of times during his talk: "You may not agree with me or my ideas and that is fine. But it is up to you to come up with better ideas for how to address the current state we are in."
It is encouraging to see intelligent people formulating ideas and strategies that address what is going on. Monbiot's ideas generated a great deal of heat, and the audience came away thinking and talking, with hopes for a more rational, humane future.
From Green Left Weekly, July 23, 2003.
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