This is part of a talk I gave to a handful of socialist activists at the University of Winnipeg last year. I owe much of the research to Gavin Fridell and Ian Angus.
What are the goals of Fair-Trade?
One of the main goals of Fair Trade is the decommodification of products. Under capitalism all workers must sell their labour as a commodity on the market, in return they get money to purchase abstract commodities like coffee. Because of this relationship between labour and commodities, social relationships appear as relationships amongst things. This is also known as the ‘fetishism of commodities’ as Marx put it. Fair trade proposes that it can change this relationship by making commodities direct relationships between human beings. With most products, we have no connection to the workers who grew our coffee. Fair trade bags of coffee often come complete with information about the co-operative, conditions and pay of the workers. So what it does in this sense is reveal to many northern consumers the global inequalities under which their goods are produced and how they are making a difference by purchasing a certain product. So fair trade brings together producer and consumer in Starbucks by revealing the environmental and labour conditions under which goods are produced, this is just one side of the ethical consumerism that proponents of fair trade promote.
In this light ethical shopping is depicted as more than just consumerism, but as political act of solidarity. It is interesting to note that most fair trade consumers in Canada are middle to upper class women. The income of these consumers allows them to buy fair trade coffee, but their class position couldn’t be further from the farmers who grow it. As a result, Fair trade is usually based on class solidarity between poor workers and farmers and rich consumers. So this solidarity is based more on a moral relationship than against a common oppressor.
At a psychological level, it can be argued that we buy fair trade products to make us feel better about ourselves. This psychological motivation lies at the heart of many fair trade advertising strategies that show rural farmers and their families. This psychological sense of validation is supposed to challenge the typical commodity that has no connection to the workers that produced it.
Other Goals of Fair Trade
Increased wages and better working conditions for southern farmers are also central aspects of fair trade. What this often means is fair trade allows small southern farmers access to the global market, which is otherwise dominated by large agri-business and corporations.
So how then does fair trade challenge traditional market economics? Most of the profits that are generated are used to build local infrastructure for the community, and producers and importers often work together to get the fairest trading relationship. This fair trade economy has been able to bring important benefits to communities in the south. For example, the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region is a fair trade coffee co-operative in Oaxaca Mexico with a membership of over 2,500 families. By selling their coffee fair trade, they have gained higher incomes, better access to social services and constructed a sustainable economic infrastructure. They have also developed bonds of solidarity with northern partners where their coffee is consumed.
But while fair trade’s values of international solidarity and co-operation are valuable, are they able to pose a real challenge to capitalism?
Fair Trade as an alternative system within capitalism
Most advocates of fair trade would argue that its ethical values and educational mission represent a significant challenge to the core values of global capitalism and it imperatives of accumulation and profit maximization. What fair trade presumes is that the negative aspects of global capitalism can be changed while still keeping the same basic structure.
The problem with this argument is that capitalism is greedy and exploitative by its structure, not just because it’s run by some nasty people. From mining in central America to cotton farms in India and sweatshops in Malaysia, capitalism will always seek to maximize its profits at the expense of the working class. It is not a lack of ethical values that makes capitalism act the way it does—pitting farmers and workers against each other—but it is the nature of the beast itself. We cannot change this unless we change the relations of property and class.
Fair trade consumers also exist as isolated individuals whose primary contribution to social justice is to engage the market. This limits their power in creating global changes to the way people live and work to their purchasing power. This lack of momentum within this movement also presents a problem for broader social change.
Fair trade represents an important symbolic challenge to the principles of market exchange, but it is unable to move beyond its market driven approach and challenge the core values of commodification and inequality. To be successful, Fair Trade must inevitably seek its own demise.
A Fair Future?
So what are we proposing if Fair Trade seems like a band-aid solution? Well, we must take the very spirit of Fair Trade and extend it. The solidarity and empathy expressed in its mission are important tools that we can use. A free association of producers, democratically organized and producing for the needs of all is what we need.
I’d also argue that we cannot argue for alternatives that turn back the clock of history, we have to face the reality of a globalized planet and globalized systems of trade based on ever expanding technologies–these too need to be democratically created and utilized.
What is needed right now is for the WTO to be dismantled, for the debt of postcolonial countries to be cancelled, and third world economies to be independent from the demands of northern capital. These countries can no longer feed their own populations when their economies are based on exports and our demand.
But it is essential that we don’t unfairly criticize fair-trade for the important benefits and solidarity it brings to southern communities. In many ways the Fair Trade movement has succeeded in harnessing the exact political elements in society that socialism should appeal to, because fair trade offers solutions instead of further criticism. We can’t limit our economics to pure rejection, we need to envision a future society of producers and consumers working together instead of one for the other.
Chris Webb is an activist and journalist living in Winnipeg. He is currently publishing assistant at Canadian Dimension. Read other posts by Chris Webb.
