A graduate student in gender studies
Source text:
The characteristics of the capitalist market described by Wood lie at the heart of the exploitation that emerges in a capitalist system. All market agents – whether workers, small-scale farmers, or giant TNCs – must compete in a sink-or-swim environment where they must continually exploit others…or themselves…While the ethical aspirations of fair trade have been able to mitigate somewhat the worst effects of these imperatives, the fair-trade network has not been able to escape the power of the global capitalist market which has imposed strict limits on its development project. (2007, p.96).