There's really nothing quite so conservative as a lefty agitator

Our example here is Nick Dearden, of Global Justice Now:

The WTO’s crisis is part and parcel of the greater crisis of free-market globalisation as a whole. It was formed in the mid-1990s, the high point of free-market capitalism, when the answer to every problem was more markets, more private sector, less government red tape.

GATT before it tried the same messaging and it was really in the early 80s that the mantra - trade is good, let’s have more of it - started. According to Me Dearden this is wrong, we must return to the system we had before that:

We can see the results all around us.

Well, yes, that’s true. Global poverty is down, global inequality is down. The world as a whole is richer and it’s the poor to middling who have been the major beneficiaries by numbers.

But apparently we must rip up this successful system and return to the one used before:

Developing states have always been especially constrained by this system. If we want change, these countries will have to work together to begin creating change on the ground: building up their own industries, supporting their small farmers, regulating and taxing big business and big finance, and using the proceeds to build up public services to remove people’s basic needs from the market.

State led economies with infant industry protections. This didn’t work last time so why does anyone think it will work this time? But then as we say there’s nothing quite so conservative as a lefty agitator.