>Does the coal miner jobs problem suggest an approach that the Swede's
>developed in their macroeconomic policies?
>This approach is their combination of labor market and solidaristic wage
>policies that keep employment and inflation low by moving workers out
>of unproductive firms? The crucial precondition for workers move
>from a reactive defense of their jobs in polluting industries is to guarantee
>their employment and wages.
>-Paul Meyer
There is much more flexibility in a highly developed country like Sweden.
One of the big environmental/labor issues over the past decade has been
around the decision to shut down the nuclear power reactors. After
Chernobyl, the Swedish parliament voted to close them all down. The unions
have campaigned to keep them open. I first came across this controversy on
the Spoons Marxism lists where an anti-green Maoist defended keeping them
open. It is entirely likely that the plants will be shut down and the
workers eventually absorbed into the workforce. Sweden's unemployment
benefits, while whittled away at in recent years, are light-years ahead of
other countries.
The biggest contradictions between corporate profits and the health and
safety of society are being felt not in Western Europe or the USA, but in
East Asia, Africa and Latin America. Since poverty runs so much deeper in
these areas, "greenmail" is much more effective. The NY Times reported that
the peasants of India tolerate filthy air and water because new industries
present the opportunity for jobs and cash. This is the reason for the
Bhopal disaster, as companies like Union Carbide can get away with lax
environmental and safety standards.
This gets to the heart of the failure of the modern environmentalist
movement. There is an enormous tendency to regard these problems as
corporate misbehavior that can be reformed. Some "Globalization" theorists
argue that the solution is to simply ban industry from agrarian societies.
What this fails to recognize is the underlying dynamics of the problem.
Capital is penetrating India and China because labor is cheap and
environmental regulations are lax. The falling rate of profit is driving
such expansion, not ill-will. And as long as Sweden can remain clean, there
will be scant pressure from its own citizenry to fight against abuses
overseas. This is the topic of Tom Athanasiou's "Divided Planet."
To tie these issues together requires a class analysis. The solution to
these problems also challenges socialism to come up with more intelligent
answers than have been given in past decades. It requires that socialism
think in global terms, which it tends not to do. Oddly enough, it has been
the "globalization" theorists who have taken this approach, while old-line
Marxists are absorbed with the "final showdown" with their own national
bourgeoisie, which, like a scene out of a Beckett or Ionesco play, never
seems to arrive.
Louis Proyect
