-----Original Message----- From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of JW Mason Sent: Friday, December 03, 1999 12:18 PM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: FW: Seattle
Dhlazare at aol.com wrote:
> Still, making labor rights violations sanctionable under
> the WTO strikes me as madness, an example of trade union bureaucrats
> attempting to use the instruments of big capital in order to advance their
> own parochial interests. The legal position of labor in the U.S. is
> egregious. Unions are busted with impunity, union organizers are fired by
> the thousands, -- yet AFL-CIO is calling upon this self-same government to
> penalize other govts for failing to adhere to proper labor standards.
Talk
> about failing to get one's own house in order before criticizing others!
> What next -- sending in U.S. B-52s to bomb other countries for failing to
> respect minority rights? (Oops, sorry, but that's already been done....)
Hi Dan.
Yes, there does seem to be a tension between calls for restoring national sovereignty and calls for further infringing on it with labor and environmental standards. The real problem is that organizations like the WTO are purely creatures of the national govenrments making them up, so enforcement of anything by them comes down to the stronger countries bullying the weaker. That's the problem with agendas like the admirable program Max Sawicky suggested--the WTO has no independent power and no democratic legitimacy, so who's going to carry it out?
One way out of this dilemma is thru humanitarian/green imperialism--for which, as you note, the precedents are already in place. Another would be a restriction of trade to the scale on which political institutions already exist. But the resolution it seems like we on the left should be working toward is the creation of true global democratic institutions. In its inchoate way that's what Seattle seems to be pointing towards.
Maybe the story of the 21st century will be the bourgeois revolution on a global scale--a possibility you, I would think, could get at least a little excited about.
Then again, maybe this globalizaton stuff is all overblown; maybe it's still true that "the proletariat of each country must first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie."
Josh
PS "Trade union bureaucrats" is a term one might want to be cautious with.