Your one-stop shop for China-bashing and corporation-bashing!

In the WaPo, Harold Meyerson puts the last nail in the coffin of the "Starbucks Theory of Freedom" - the idea that free markets lead people to demand political freedom from their governments. He points out that not only have free markets failed to liberate China, but Western corporations are often complicit in keeping the Chinese people down:

Shanghai is swimming in Starbucks, yet, as James Mann notes in "The China Fantasy," his new book on the non-democratization of China, the regime soldiers on. Conversely, the American farmers who made our revolution didn't have much in the way of consumer choice, yet they managed to free themselves from the British. In New England, however, they did have town meetings, which may be a surer guide to the coming of democratic change. It's a growing civil society -- sphere where people can deliberate and decide on more than their coffee -- that more characteristically sounds the death knell of dictatorships.

Which is why the conduct of America's corporate titans in China is so disquieting. There, since March of last year, the government has been considering a labor law that promises a smidgen of increase in workers' rights. And since March of last year, the American businesses so mightily invested in China have mightily fought it...

As documented by Global Labor Strategies, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization headed by longtime labor activists, the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the U.S.-China Business Council embarked on a major campaign to kill these tepid reforms.

Disappointing. But to liberals who've long observed corporations' ruthless efforts to cut labor costs at any (social) cost, hardly surprising.

There are two distinct lessons here. The first is that corporations are, at heart, amoral creatures. Money is their bottom line, and always will be. That doesn't make them evil, but it does prevent them from being consistent forces for good. Rich individuals may do good in the world, but that's a different thing.

(I see corporations as similar to draft animals - big, not very bright, and always hungry. But, just as we'd be wrong to call draft animals evil because they want hay and sugar lumps, we shouldn't bash corporations because they want profit. Those very same corporations give us an efficient economy, employ people far better than the government ever could, drive advances in science and technology, and allow us the leisure time to direct more of our individual energies toward improving the world. To demonize corporations is as ridiculous as to worship them.)

The problem is when corporations and governments collude. In America, our democracy does a reasonable job of making sure corporations pay decent wages, provide good working conditions, allow employees family time, protect consumer safety, etc. But in China, the authoritarian government tends to put growth uber alles - so amoral corporations are thinking, in the words of Hyman Roth, "we have now what we have always needed, real partnership with the government."

Of course, this is a government that we Americans have no control over. But we do have some measure of control over companies based in America, and we should start thinking about exercising control to make sure crap like this Chinese union-busting effort doesn't happen.

Anyway, the second lesson is, as Meyerson says, that free markets and freedom are not the same thing. When the Cold War ended, free markets were a symbol of the newfound freedom of the former Soviet Union, since markets were the USSR's main enemy. But they may have been only a symbol - Russia has plenty of markets now, but it's hardly freer than it was under Gorbachev.

I'm generally a big Bill Clinton fan, but I think his biggest mistake was subscribing to the Starbucks Theory. Free markets haven't done a lot for the people of China and Russia. The Cold War is over, and it's time to rethink the grand project of spreading democracy through the world. Free markets and corporations are no longer our proxies in this battle. We must turn back to older weapons - ideas. It's time to start promoting freedom for its own sake, above and apart from wealth.


PS - Thailand just banned YouTube because Google refused to remove a video that insulted the Thai king. A few weeks ago, Turkey banned YouTube after Google refused to remove a video insulting Ataturk. It's becoming apparent that, when it comes to free speech, Google bows to China and China only.