3071-The political economy of new slavery

210 Strategies for Change
‘believe’ an international financial market should or should not be
doing? In whose interest is this international financial market operating?
One’s view on how financial markets should operate is ultimately influenced
by one’s perspective on what or who they exist for. Theory and
practice are in this sense inextricably linked as the Critical (International)
Theorist Robert Cox states:
Theory is always for someone and some purpose. All theories have
a perspective. Perspectives are derived from a position in time and
space, specifically social and political time and space...the more
sophisticated a theory is, the more it reflects upon and transcends
its own perspective...there is, accordingly, no such thing as theory
in itself, divorced from a standpoint in time and space. When any
theory so represents itself, it is more important to examine it as
ideology, and to lay bare its concealed perspective.
Cox, 1986, p. 207
With regards to the Tobin tax, theories that present the tax as unfeasible
contain a perspective that does not desire a change in the present unjust
economic system. The ideology of neo-liberalism is the powerful
ideology that constructs itself as common-sense, perpetuated by those
who benefit from it and who occupy influential positions within the
existing system.
Obstinate resistance to the Tobin tax signals that massive economic
interests are at stake for those benefiting from the current system, who
happen to be those that control it. The introduction of a Tobin tax will
take away profit opportunities of several billion US dollars from certain
speculators (Wahl and Waldow, 2001, p. 5). In the remainder of this
chapter I will analyze the arguments of the actors involved in the debate
in terms of their interests and the underlying ideologies that inform
their arguments in order to show that the real issue revolves around
conflicting wishes and unequal power relationships that inform the
theories employed and the policies adopted.
The actors involved in this debate are private investors, financial institutions
such as banks and the IMF, international organizations such as
the UN, NGOs, national governments, the EU, economists, academics,
journalists and the general public. All have particular motivations for
arguing in the way that they do. Private investors, financial institutions
and economists that argue against a Tobin tax are the ones benefiting
from the current situation. They argue that the Tobin tax is ‘nonsense’,
‘unfeasible’ and often appeal to complex technical arguments that they