WTO, nationalism.

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Steve:
>Why not consider William Tabb's thoughts on the potential role of an
>'interventionist' US, from his "Labor and the Imperialism of Finance",
>Monthly Review, October 1999:
>
>"Social control of capital is necessary for the greater freedom and well
>being of working people...Concretely it is possible to envision capital
>controls. The argument that banks and hedge funds would simply go offshore
>to jurisdictions where regulation is minimal is not a strong one. If the
>US said that it would not accept monetary transfers into its domestic
>banking system from banks and other financial institutions located in
>jurisdictions that do not regulate capital flows in strict fashion, those
>havens would quickly conform, or the footloose capital would soon leave
>them for zones where they were allowed access to U.S. markets. If the US
>were to adopt such procedures, other nations would quickly fall into line.
>it is the political force needed to make governments regulate--not some
>natural economic one--that is relevant.." (p. 13).
>
>Tabb doesn't lay out how such a political force could be developed or how
>it could effect such dramatic changes in the nature of US foreign policy.

Tabb doesn't lay it out probably because (a) there won't be any such
changes unless the USA becomes socialist and (b) it's pointless to
reiterate (a) in the Monthly Review, (a) being a part of assumptions for
its readership.


>But if we aren't able to develop an alternative to intervention that
>leaves us with nothing better than the uterior motives of a Patrick
>Buchanan/Lenora Fulani or Jeff Sachs..., we could indeed end up with a
>non-interventionist foreign policy someday that will have us reminiscing
>for the days of intervention...

I don't think that ordinary Americans are as enamoured of U.S.
interventions (military or otherwise) as left-liberals think that they are.
Why not make a case that James Petras and Morris Morley made in _Empire or
Republic?: American Global Policy and Domestic Decay_, or Rakesh on this
list, for instance?  Isn't it much more preferable to offer a
straightforward leftist analysis, instead of hoping for an impossibility
(e.g. the U.S. government [as it exists] using its power to raise the labor
standards elsewhere)?

Yoshie