“Considering that this is in fact the philosophical background of the WEF, it is strange that the conference is being met by Marxist protestors. The WEF is probably one of the most socialist oriented international economic organizations in the world.”
In a break from precedent, the administration has announced that Donald Trump will attend the upcoming annual meeting of global business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland set to take place later this month. While heads of state frequently attend the Davos conference, U.S. presidents have often declined the invitation. Some claim this is due to the perceived “elitism” of the event. Trump is the first sitting president to attend since Bill Clinton went in 2000, during the final year of his presidency.
In response to questions as to why Trump would attend a globalist get-together, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told media sources that the Davis conference is not a “hangout for globalists” and the American delegation to the conference will use the platform to promote free trade and a message “consistent” with the president’s mantra of “America first.”
In response to Trump’s planned attendance at Davos, demonstrators took to the streets of the Swiss capital of Bern on Saturday, January 13. Participants in the street march that ensued carried banners that read “No future for capitalism,” “Eat the rich,” and “Kill Trump.” Some protestors got restive and began setting off flares. At the same time, an online petition has been circulating to demand Trump not attend the conference. The petition currently has over 13,000 signatories.
So, what is all of the fuss really about? What is the significance of the upcoming meet-and-greet in this small Swiss ski resort town?
The Davos conference is the biggest annual event of the Swiss-based World Economic Forum (WEF), the self-defined “international organization for public-private cooperation.” Understanding the ideological underpinnings of the WEF and the initiatives it spearheads gives some insight into the controversy surrounding Davos, and Trump’s attendance of the conference.
Donald Trump does not conform to any political framework, and will – for better or for worse – capitalize on any opportunity to promote his policy agendas, whether the chosen venue jives with that agenda or not.
According to the organization’s website, the mission of WEF is based on the so called “stakeholder theory” of markets, which asserts that a private “organization is accountable to all parts of society.” Stakeholder theory places responsibility on business managers to “take account of all interests” that may be affected by their business endeavors, “not merely of shareholders and customers, but of employees and the communities [in] which they operate.”
Of course the definition of what constitutes a stakeholder is a subject of some significant debate. Some stakeholder theorists take the relatively conservative stance of including “only” company suppliers, trade associations, and political groups. Others go so far as to include competitors in pantheon of stakeholders needed to be accounted for when engaging in business.
The criticism of stakeholder theory is obvious from a capitalist perspective. The theory goes way beyond demanding companies be aware of negative externalities of their operations such as effects on the environment, direct social consequences, and providing platforms for malicious actors and criminals.
The theory requires a broad level of responsibility for private firms and demands they account for seemingly any potential consequence of their business dealings. Since the theory was first formally presented in the 1983 book Stakeholders of the Organizational Mind, many criticisms of the theory have been put forth, particularly over the past 15 years.
The economist S.F.Mansel perhaps put the free-market critique of stakeholder theory best, by pointing out that the ideology uproots the basic tenets of competition from market systems and “in fact undermines the principles on which a market economy is based.”
Considering that this is in fact the philosophical background of the WEF, it is strange that the conference is being met by Marxist protestors. The WEF is probably one of the most socialist oriented international economic organizations in the world. Its whole self-defined raison d’etre is to get big corporations to start caring about their diverse stakeholders and take care of their “communities.”
The WEF certainly brings some important universal issues to the fore, detached from any economic platform. Past WEF conferences have dealt with global challenges such as sustainable food growth and locations around the world that have been ravaged by extremist and sectarian violence. However, there is no doubt that Davos and other conferences like it push a very specific agenda that is globalist by nature and often smacks of collectivism.
Consider the program laid out by the WEF in their conference in Durban held just this last May. The so called “Doughnut model” presented to participants was a plan for firms and governments to collectively provide for the bottom strata of the world’s population (represented by the Doughnut “hole”) while reaching a consensus on limiting the growth of enterprise so as to not “overshoot” global resources.
Alas, it seems that Davos is too elitist for the “true” socialists. WorldSocialism.org, widely regarded as a prominent mouthpiece for socialism the world over, has nothing nice to say when it comes to the WEF, and its Davos conference specifically. The group indeed recognizes the efforts of the WEF to convince the “capitalists” to broaden their goals “beyond the narrow realm of their own profit chasing.”
However, according to WorldSocialism, WEF focuses only on the symptoms of the fractured global system such as “unemployment, environmental devastation, gender inequality, poverty, corruption, armed conflict” while refusing to admit to the “dismal reality” that capitalism at its root is flawed. The conference in the end is merely a meeting of “greedy … global elites.” The wave of international protestors focused at this year’s Davis conference, amplified by Trump’s planned attendance, certainly hold this view as well.
Is Trump showing up to Davos a nod to collectivism, or a bolstering of the “global elites” as protestors claim?
The truth is that it is almost certainly neither.
Trump is looking for another international platform to promote his various economic agendas. These include breaking “unfair” trade agreements, and using the government to promote America’s primacy in the global market (a polite way of saying protectionism).
It is very likely that Trump is intentionally trying to make some noise in further advancing his policy goals. Perhaps Trump’s visit in Davos will result in one of his signature, unapologetic, pro-America speeches, similar to those that he’s given at other international forums like the UN.
What should be taken from the president’s decision to attend the WEF event should be just another confirmation of his modus operandi: Donald Trump does not conform to any political framework, and will – for better or for worse – capitalize on any opportunity to promote his policy agendas, whether the chosen venue jives with that agenda or not.
