Would protective tariffs be an example? Tarrifs in the US were designed to shield the new American industrial sector from foreign (eg British) competition -- "fostering infant industries," in List's words. By the late 19th century, American industry was out producing the British in all the key sectors (like steel) but the tariffs were maintained. Only now they were maintained to "protect the wages of the American worker," -- or at least that became the publicly stated rationale. Now, I'm sure no one really believes that the American capitalist class was interested in protecting the wages of American workers from European competition, but the fact is that US wages WERE higher, and that protective tariffs enjoyed popular support.
>Patrick Bond wrote:
>>
>> On 24 Sep 99, at 15:57, rc-am wrote:
>> > btw, Patrick, i'd be interested in your comments.
>>
>> Who me? I'm still listening and learning...
>>
>> > ... you wrote in your previous post: "now that global capital has become so
>> > powerful, the nation-state is the only institution strong enough restrain
>> > it -- through capital controls, etc". this is a national strategy against
>> > global capital you are outlining here, is it not?
>>
>> I don't know what Adam has to say (though I like his hint at a
>> balance-of-forces analysis), but I would address this less, now, at
>> the level of worker-capital class struggle than do you, Angela, and
>> more in terms of the struggles within the circulation of K. And here
>> arises an issue I would assume Doug has previously disabused
>> anyone of raising on His list: the struggle between financial circuits
>> of K and "productive" circuits. (That's not between the "banks" and
>> the "manufacturers," by the way, since the interpenetration is well
>> advanced, but about the source of profits.) I'll come back to this in
>> a minute because I think there is a major relationship here to the
>> nation-state and its prospects (for Malaysia, e.g., the only way to
>> understand Mahathir's exchange controls of September 1998 is, as
>> Jomo KS has well documented, through considering the national-
>> based cabal's interests).
>>
>> But yes, of course, displaced modes of class struggle intervene as
>> always, particularly around the kinds of alliances that workers'
>> organisations make -- in either implicit or explicit territorial and
>> sectoral ways -- with different kinds of capitals. (Again, not
>> "capitalists," as definitive, but around different moments in the
>> circulation process.) (Here the nation-state is not merely the
>> exec.com. of the bourgeoisie, but quite a contested terrain, over all
>> manner of particular policies, tariffs, tax regimes, investment
>> location decisions, infrastructure provision, interventions in labour
>> markets, etc, etc.)
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