>There is no bourgeois prejudice at issue, in the
>context of WTO. Seeing what is not there is a
>liberal trip. The header points this up. Vincent
>Chin did not die in the streets of Seattle. Nothing
>remotely like that happened.
First, there is the anti globalisation rhetoric from the anti WTO protests; now there is the *primacy* of non application for China as the concrete form of that anti globalisation stance post Seattle. Yoshie should have understood that I am 'alarmed' by the latter.
Both however distract from the organisation of the class struggle within the US. I suggested the latter may *redound* unfavorably upon Chinese Americans; that certainly seems to me to be a possibility worth guarding against a bit more carefully than Sweeney and Hoffa have hitherto done (however I give a lot to grassroot organisers like Nathan and others who have engaged in similarly heroic campaigns, but the leadership is retrograde). At any rate, Vincent Chin hasn't been my focus, yet you latch on to him as if he has been (Cindy Choi's movie is excellent). Debater's tactic.
I have yet to see you clarify whether hyping anti globalisation makes any quantitative sense (how responsible is it for real unemployment, income inequality, deunionization, etc:?), or is free from the rankest hypocricy (why no outcry over the massive capital inflows into the US along with third world imports? why no empathy for third world anti globalisation as their capital goods industries are eviserated thereby creating ever more high paying jobs to US workers in export successful high tech sectors?).
What does the AFL-CIO want? To have its anti globalisation cake and eat it too? But these are the incoherencies of a fundamentally nationalist outlook in the labor movement.
You have yet to justify the lack of real concern for the children in whose names import bans have been already imposed. You have not explained why if the AFL-CIO is so worried about third world imports they have not vigorously challenged their own govt's creation of an order hegemonized by the dollar, unequal terms of trade (based in part on a reactionary intellectual property rights regime), repatriation of profit, the problem of third world debt, the lack of commodity price stablisation mechanisms, etc.. All that must go to lessen the problem of distress exports for the purposes of securing dollars. What specific and concrete demands did the AFL-CIO make in regard to each of these problems? How hard will it fight on this front? As hard as it did for the Harkin Bill?
You have not explained why the AFL-CIO wants to apply the boycott against third world producers while not fighting for the right for boycotts, as well as secondary strikes, internally (think of how the UPS strike would have spread--that by the way was class struggle, not the tea party in Seattle). Why not turn out tens of thousands of workers in protest to secure the basic weapons of class struggle in the US? That would potentially help a lot more workers than would the prevention of the migration of a few Boeing jobs now in Seattle to China, which unlike small and poor third world countries has the power to make some demands with its purchases. But challenging China here is the #1 priority of the US labor movement?? This makes a mockery of the lives of the US working class.
But of course Sweeney, nationalist that he is, is committed to breaking down other countries' trade barriers, no matter how important they may be to ensure some kind of balanced development and extricate countries from unequal terms of trade. Again this kind of fierce globalisation makes nonsense of his anti globalisation. Yet it all begins to cohere once we understand him for the nationalist that he is.
Max, it is anti globalisation and China phobic stances within the US labor leadership that are responsible for the diversion of class struggle (actually this a position Doug has most doggedly articulated over the years). Plus, the latter will probably have the added unfavorable consequence of making the life of Chinese Americans hell. You don't want to see any of this, I suppose, because nationalism is the last refuge of a spurned Keynesian.
Yours, Rakesh