3071-The political economy of new slavery

220 Modern Slavery and Fair Trade Products
development; (c) make partial advance payments when requested by
producers; and (d) sign contracts that allow for long-term planning and
sustainable production practices. Fair Trade products include textiles,
crafts and agricultural products. A Fair Trade label has been developed
for use on coffee, tea, rice, fresh fruit, juices, cocoa, sugar, honey and
sports balls.
In this respect, Fair Trade can be said to positively impact upon
alleviation and/or prevention of forced labour for it renders the socioeconomic
environment less conducive to it, as we will see when we
discuss some specific examples of Fair Trade initiatives. However, this
chapter argues that despite a few encouraging experiences, Fair Trade
does not deal with the underlying causes of poverty and underdevelopment
perpetuated by the structure of world production and distribution,
nor with the fact that the economies of numerous developing states
depend virtually exclusively on exports of agricultural and primary
products such as coffee, tea, cocoa or minerals. Such commodities are
exported by many countries (encouraged by IMF and World Bank strategies)
and as a result their abundant supply drives world prices down.
Fair Trade does not question this arrangement and its historical roots;
all it does is to ensure that certain farmers receive a better price for their
produce. Nor does Fair Trade question the existence of global capitalism,
of production for the market, of wage labour or of private property and
accumulation of capital for its own sake. It presupposes these capitalist
institutions, takes them for granted and contributes to their reproduction.
Hence, the core argument that runs through this chapter can be
summed up as follows: in the existing structure of global trade each one
of us, in his/her routine daily shopping may make a difference to the
lives of some individual producers and small communities by simply
choosing products with a Fair Trade label; however, the root causes of
poverty and practices of forced labour, associated with it, lie deeper and
Fair Trade is not a sufficient strategy to deal with them.
Global poverty, global civil society and Fair Trade
The late-modern world has been characterized by two dialectical
processes: perpetuation of human rights abuses on the one hand, and
attempts to prevent or stop them, on the other. Many of the human
rights abuses are, in one way or another, causally related with the
growing power of transnational capital over the ‘state/society complex’
(van der Pijl, 1998), with liberalization of world trade and finance and