While the nominal focus of both delegates and protesters at the meeting of the World Trade Organization is trade itself, the real issue of concern is whether democracy can prevail in a world ruled by the managers of global enterprises. Pacific News Service associate editor Andrew Reding directs the Americas Project of the World Policy Institute in New York.

The real conflict in the streets of Seattle is not about trade. It's about democracy.

The World Trade Organization is gradually assuming governmental powers heretofore reserved to national governments. The global economy requires global coordination, but it does not require plutocracy -- government by technocrats, on behalf of the managers and shareholders of global business corporations. The real challenge is to democratize the WTO, before public disgust with its policies leads to protectionism.

Imagine what it would be like if we had a Federal Trade Organization instead of the federal government in the United States. Decisions would be made by corporate lawyers and business-oriented technocrats appointed by state governors rather than elected representatives. There would be no federal labor or antitrust laws.

Panels of "trade judges" would take the place of the Supreme Court, meeting behind closed doors and issuing rulings that would invalidate state legislation designed to protect labor, the environment, consumer health and safety, and other human values.

That is what is happening at the international level. In the name of free trade, the WTO is gutting the welfare state. It has failed to address labor issues. This endangers the standards that have given employees in developed countries reasonable working hours and conditions, and respectable wages. Those standards have created majoritarian middle classes that have buffered the conflict between rich and poor, providing the socioeconomic base for genuine democracy.

The WTO's frontal assault on national environmental and consumer legislation signals its subordination to special interests. Why should we be compelled to buy shrimp that is caught by methods that kill endangered sea turtles? Why should Europeans be forced to admit beef laced with hormones? The only answer to such questions is "because it's cheaper." But this is merely another way of saying that the costs are shifted onto the environment or at the expense of human health.

WTO apologists respond by trying to characterize labor, environmental and consumer legislation as efforts by the pampered citizens of developed countries to shut out developing countries. Such claims ring hollow, however, in light of complaints from developing country delegates. Eastern Caribbean countries, for instance, depend on banana trade deals with the European Community. Yet the WTO, responding to pressure from the Clinton administration acting on behalf of Chiquita Brands, is seeking to terminate that relationship.

This brings us back to the underlying fact -- the WTO presently serves only multinational business corporations. Almost a century after the American robber barons were tamed by national legislation, a new breed of global robber barons seeks to turn the clock back. The Seattle protests are but the first hints of the global social chaos that lies ahead unless this critical issue is addressed.

The Clinton administration calls for inclusion of labor issues in trade talks. That's a useful first step, but it does not go far enough. Corporate lawyers and technocrats are not the appropriate representatives for the task of ensuring that labor, environmental and consumer standards are taken as seriously as the need to ensure free trade practices.

If the WTO is empowered to intervene in issues that have such a powerful impact on the quality of life, it must be democratized. The only thing that would give it legitimacy to act on issues peripheral to trade but central to the public welfare is for those issues to be referred to a consultative body consisting of representatives of the general public.

In the long run, such a body should be a proper legislature, whose members would be directly elected by the public. Yet since many WTO members, notably including member-to-be China, do not yet have democratic systems, a short-term alternative would be to invite representatives of international labor, and environmental and consumer organizations to join trade experts on a consultative body.

That would at least move the dialogue from confrontation in the streets to consultation in the suites, helping avert a public backlash that could trigger a return to protectionism and incite a global trade war with unforseeable consequences. That is ultimately in no one's best interest.