nation-states and financial Kism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Sep 26 13:56:25 PDT 1999


Edwin Dickens wrote:


>Do your comments about "tariffs" also apply to "managed trade," the
>struggle against NAFTA, etc.?

I have mixed feelings about anti-free-trade struggles. I wanted to see NAFTA defeated just to stick it in the bourgeoisie's eye, but I was really bothered by lots of the rhetoric around NAFTA, which was deeply nationalist and often anti-Mexican. A lot of it seriously alienated Mexicans, with whom we should be allying with, not offending.

In general, I think too much attention is paid to treaties rather than underlying processes, and too much attention paid to "globalization" it itself as the source of all misery. I got a flyer from Preamble the other day that blamed everything but athlete's foot on globalization. If we're talking about imperialism, that's fine with me; the last two decades have been all about an intensification of imperialism. In accordance with that, I'd say that Mexico has suffered far worse from NAFTA than the U.S., but Lori Wallach doesn't point that out too often.

A lot of U.S. trade discourse tacitly assumes the autoworker to be the modal worker, but only about 1% of U.S. workers work in the auto industry. Two-thirds work in private services. There's a tendency on the left to romanticize factory work in itself; to me it seems dangerous and mentally numbing. What's "good" about factory jobs is that they sometimes come with high wages and good benefits. I think more attention should be paid to making service jobs more like that.

Doug



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