<< Yeah, wonderful. What's next on your agenda? Tell me about the world
trading system you envision.
Doug >>
This is only half fair, Doug. Of course we need (a) a coherent vision of an alternative to the current order, (b) a plausible transitional program, (c) a powerful, articulkated, institutionalized movement based on our own political organizationto to move us from (b) to (a), and several other good things besides.
However, most of all, just now, we need movement, some degree of some sort of organization that is doing something that might havea hope of attracting more people, and a something that might be caused some victories to inspire hope. Seattle provided movement, in this sense, if not the other stuff. It's a way sattion towards those desiderata, a sine qua non, in any case.
Seattle was more than that, as well. It was a real world instance of what we used to call a worker-student alience, Teamsters and Turtles, as they put it there. There were 20,000 unionists on the street, and Sweeney and Hoffa didn't run and hide when windows started breaking. We haven't seen that in an age and a half, if ever in out lifetimes.
That gives a clue to what we might want to have for a transitional program or a medium range goal. We aren't going to end the horrible game of comparative disadvantages until capital can't flee to Indonesi without facing an organized, militant, unionized working class there. So a first step towards fair trade is to get the idea of genuinely internationalist unionism into the heads of organized workers here. That's not the whole picture, but it's a piece of it, and Seattle pointed us taht way.
Btw, what about coming here in February? E-mail me on the side.
--Justin Schwartz