Some interesting discussion has come out of this, but I'm not sure it's got at what I was really asking about. Let me be more specific: In Massachusetts, we've seen Raytheon (one of the state's largest employers) whine for a huge tax abatement & the usual ripoff of the public infrastructure, at the very same time they've been engaged in a stock buy-back and paying their C.E.O nearly 2 Mil/ year -- and laying workers off, if I remember correctly. Now, what I'd like to see is the locality that companies like Raytheon live on (more and more like parasites on hapless host organisms) stand up to them and remind them that workers are not just 'inputs' in the production process, and that they have a real obligation not just to their workers, but to the locale they've been a part of. We've seen an astonishing stampede (at least it seems to me....I don't have statistics handy) by corporations that are more and more shameless about not paying their share for the public infrastructure that literally makes production possible, while at the same time they viciously slander this same public sector with unbelievable lies. Why do they get away with this? It seems to me that a huge part of the answer lies in the populace's (in some sense legitimate) focus on 'jobs, jobs, jobs' and the (more or less real) threat by corporations like Raytheon to take these jobs elsewhere. Now I think Mr. Cockshott's answer that we need a political movement to counter this political assault is on target, and so is the need for an 'international' analysis and organizing strategy. However....it's not clear to me exactly how one operationalizes these fine sentiments. For starters, I think we need to work to show people the social context of production: that for instance, the state makes capitalist profit possible and reliable, and corporations need to be made to take up some of the slack; that there never has been (& never will be) anything like a 'free market'-- capitalists are unsuprisingly terrified of such a thing; I think the most fertile ground for a political push to make capital more accountable is not in noble international organizations, but 'on the ground' in towns that are having their economic hearts and lungs ripped out. Linking these kind of movements together across national borders is critical, but much easier said than done. Anyway, I guess what I want to tell people who counter such a program with: 'they'll just take the plant to Mexico' is: I'd rather see them do that, than continue to fuck us over here, and in the meantime, lets work on raising the costs of that kind of behavior as high as we can. Why don't we organize around legislation that would levy serious confiscatory penalties on mobile capital? Finally, Ajit Sinha suggests: >lower the length of the work-week. How about that? I think this is a terrific idea, and I've wondered why there's so little talk about it in the US. Why did the movement for a shorter workweek peter out some 60 years ago? in solidarity, Mike Parkhurst UMass/Amherst
