LONDON -- The Seattle protesters who fought the World Trade Organization and those in Prague who demonstrated recently against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are a mixed crew: anarchists, anticapitalist thugs and groups anxious to help the poorer people of the world. None of them seem to have thought through their protests or assessed objectively what they are trying to achieve. They never gave a thought to the damage they were doing to the causes they claimed to be upholding. They remind me of the mobs that destroyed machinery in the early days of the industrial revolution in Britain in the mistaken belief that machines destroyed jobs. In fact, like information technology today, the machines created work opportunities and contributed to prosperity.

Unfortunately neither the organizations themselves nor the governments that support them have done near enough to explain and defend their work or tried hard enough to reform and revitalize these bodies. The increases in world prosperity in the 20th century could not have been achieved without the expansion of international trade as a result of the work of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade over many decades. Undoubtedly the developed countries have benefited more than developing countries, but that does not negate the value of working for freer trade.

More would have accrued to developing countries if obstacles to their exports, particularly textiles, had not been maintained by developed countries in a vain effort to protect their own textile workers. Exports of primary products from developing countries have been hampered by the distortions imposed by the agricultural policies of developed countries in their efforts to support their farmers. Europe's Common Agricultural Policy has been particularly unhelpful, but the attitude of Japan toward imports of foodstuffs and agricultural products has been damaging not only to the interests of developing countries, but also to those of Japanese consumers. The United States has been strongly critical of the European Union and Japan over these issues, but U.S. restrictions on imports, such as those on sugar and other measures to help U.S. farmers, show that there is a considerable element of hypocrisy in U.S. criticisms.