AFL-CIO retreats from WTO confrontation

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Wed Oct 6 07:04:24 PDT 1999



>Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>Nope. So long as sovereign nation-states constitute the basis of
>>trade policy, labor law and environmental regulation and so long as
>>this remains (at least nominally) a democracy -- I will continue to
>>think the arena of national politics holds the greatest potential
>>for meaningful progressive action.
>
>And why oh why has the nation-state - or at least the nation-state
>you & I live in - proved so fruitless an area for such regulation
>over the last 20 years? Was it globalization that made Teddy Kennedy
>& Jimmy Carter deregulate transport? That made Ronnie fire PATCO?
>That inspired Bill Clinton to let the chainsaws rip in the national
>forests? It's nice to have someone else out there to blame, but it
>just ain't true.

The key words in my original post are "potential" and (as Angela noted in this thread later) "nominally." There is no question that American politics has long been a sham. As Dave noted in another comment made later: "We don't need a third party. We need a second party." That said, the U.S. government is the only ruling body where there is at least a *provision* for me, as a citizen, to provide direct input through my vote; there is no equivalent mechanism for me to influence the WTO. As another later post (by Michael) notes, "the WTO offers new levers of power to global capital that it would not otherwise have" -- and those levers are much further from voter influence than the deliberations of the Republican or Democratic National Committees.

Angela asks: "isn't the character of labour laws and environmental regulations, especially of the kind you or i would like to see, a result of working class organisation and resistance and not national sovereignty?" As the world now exists, the only way that I can see workers being able to help shape policy is by using their sheer force of numbers, as voters. The appeal to do that should be coming from the left, not from people like Buchanan.

Carl

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