MHL:
"Keeping China out of the WTO will not defend living standards or the trade
unions or the capacity of the state to provide a greater social wage. It
is a distraction relative to all of those. It will however lead many
workers to think that the main cause of problems in the US is the behavior
of OTHER GOVERNMENTS which pursue economic strategies DIFFERENT FROM THAT
OF THE US. . . . "
Here's what the Int'l Brotherhood of Teamsters thinks:
"On November 15, the Clinton Administration announced
it had reached a trade deal with Communist China that
will ease its accession to the World Trade Organization
(WTO) and grant it Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status.
The Clinton Administration claims that this agreement will
benefit the United States. This is not true! It will hurt
American workers and their counterparts in China and
instead will benefit large, multinational corporations that
seek to maximize profits no matter what the costs are to
workers and the communities in which they live. . . . "
That seems to satisfy your criteria for naming and
attacking the right culprits. You could regret the
reference to 'communist' China, but this is clearly
irrelevant to the thrust of the paragraph and is
obviously added as a useful epithet.
It is true that later in the article, you can find
references to the PRC's lack of democracy and how
this reinforces the same deficiency in the WTO.
You can also find jaundiced allusions to China's
'industrial policies,' which are portrayed as
local content type rules, the same sort supported
by labor in the U.S.
So the statement is not a model of socialist internationalism.
But it targets a fundamental problem for workers -- support
for unrestricted capital mobility by trade law and institutions.
As far as the ILO is concerned, on Henwood's list somebody
posted a quote from Robert Litan of Brookings to the effect
that it would be nice if the globalization protests could
be diverted to the ILO, since that was a nice "sandbox"
they could play in without putting sand in the gears
of commerce.
" . . . Short run victories can lead in any direction. It depends on the
nature of the victory and the movement that powers it. And by extension the
next demands that arise from the struggle. As for the latter, what new
demands will likely arise from a "victory" here; new initiates to defend the
now pure WTO? . . . "
[mbs] Social clauses in trade agreements, of course.
How could you fail to see that? It's the whole
point of the WTO actions.
MHL:"Highlighting the nature of the system means making clear that the
system
itself is a major cause of problems. It has nothing to do with strategic
struggles around work day length, labor reform, living wages, debt
cancellation, etc. The point is that the demands need to illuminate the
structural nature of problems. Making China the problem, and keeping it
out of the WTO the solution, is of little help."
[mbs] From a political standpoint, "the system" cannot
be a problem because it admits of no unitary, accessible
solution. I also detect the notion that the purpose of
demands is to educate people. I would say the purpose
of demands is to fight for the things you want and have
a chance of getting. Education is a by-product, not the
be-all. This sounds like more all-or-nothing politics,
with no way of getting from nothing to all.
I said:
> One of the inconsistencies in your argument goes to
> your idea that labor is targeting China, rather than
> either the US Gov or MNC's. But our trade relations
> with CHina (the actual target) clearly derive from
> the policy of the U.S. state, and in other contexts,
> it is asserted w/o qualification that the policies
> of the State are dictated by MNC's.
MHL: I do not get the statement above. If the target is the US Govenment
and
MNCs, and not china, then demand the withdrawal of all governments from
the WTO that are subservient to US MNCs and the US governemnt. Demand an
end to the WTO, demand better labor laws in the US, a higher minimum wage,
demand greater capital controls. Make those your main demands. Marty
[mbs] Sounds like we're abandoning internationalism here,
not to mention the need to govern the links between national
economies. If the WTO is the shell behind which the U.S.
(or, if you like, the U.S., EU, and Japan) run the world
trading system, then the WTO is a legitimate target and,
insofar as transnational capital mobility is important,
a necessary one. Targeting the WTO and trade agreements
is what constitutes a monkey wrench in the system, not
communing with the disenfranchised bodies in the United
Nations or the ILO.
mbs
