January 30, 2010
Jagdish Bhagwati on NGOs and Fair Trade
Campaign & Advocacy
In his recent World Affairs article, Fair Trade: Beware the Beguiling Phrase, Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics and law at Columbia University, comments on NGO campaigns and the ways in which they force their understanding of the “social good” onto consumers. Are activist NGOs dictating the “personal social reasonability” efforts of individuals? That’s an interesting question in an age in which fair trade goods have become as ubiquitous as the arguments in favor of purchasing them over other products.
Below are select quotes from professor Bhagwati’s article. For the full story on the World Affairs website, click here.
"The current issue of Foreign Policy sketches the “anthropology” of the “fair trade” idea, unfortunately betraying an incomplete familiarity not only with the different ways in which this phrase has been used, but also with the considerable literature on why its extensive use by Oxfam, Bono, et al, has fed protectionism in the rich countries and, hence, caused immense damage to market access by the developing countries…
…mischief of a different kind comes from yet another set of fair traders, which include Oxfam and some activist NGOs, as well as the singing troubadours like Bono, who argue for us to pay what we used to call a “just” price, as distinct from the market price, to producers of coffee, textiles, etc. in poor countries. This amounts to embedding one’s altruism in a subsidy to these producers, of course. But I need not buy into this particular brand of altruism. There are countless other ways in which I may seek to direct my “personal social responsibility”, such as supporting women’s groups or building playgrounds for poor children. So, if such fair-trade coffee and fair-trade sweatshirts are available as alternatives, then that is agreeable. But if, as often happens, the aim is to proscribe (whether outright or by agitations mounted against non-capitulating firms and campuses) the availability of other coffees and sweatshirts, that is surely wrong. No group should have the right to force you or me into its version of the social good."
David Peyton is a program manager for Global Governance Watch.
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