On 8/12/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Strange, capitalists don't agree with you:
><http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=SaudiArabia>.
>:-> Saudi Arabia is ranked 62nd in the "Index of Economic Freedom -
>2006," compared to Iran (156th) and Venezuela (152nd).
>--
>Yoshie
I have no idea how they come up with these rankings. They state that the
Iranian government consumed 14 percent of GDP in 2003, while Saudi Arabia
consumed 23 percent. This statistic is obviously important to you since in
your view Venezuela's 7 percent pales in comparison to Iran. But Iran pales
in comparison to Saudi Arabia. What is the point?
It matters to capitalists, who favor greater economic freedom, from
which workers will suffer.
That you have to dig
beneath the statistics and do a class analysis. Iran, like Saudi Arabia, is
a class divided society. You can say the same thing about Venezuela, but at
least Chavez states that his goal is socialism. By contrast, Ahmadinejad's
revolutionary guards break up trade union meetings, which are seen as a
threat to the capitalist status quo.
There hasn't been any strike of significance in Venezuela -- except
the management-led lockout and the CTV-led strikes -- since the
beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution. One will see how they get
treated when they go on strike.
What of the rest of the Middle East? How do the other Middle Eastern
states treat their trade unions where they exist? It seems to me that
workers in Iran can and do strike more frequently than their
counterparts in the other Middle Eastern countries. It would be worth
an effort to analyze comparative labor laws, strike frequencies, etc.
in the Middle East.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
