Marx on free trade

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Sep 27 05:57:58 PDT 1999


Oiboy27 at aol.com wrote:


>mbs, I salute you. I am overjoyed to see that someone is addressing what I
>perceive as nonmasturbatory leftism here. I think your observation is pointed
>and accurate and as obvious as it may seem to people such as you and I, it
>yet needs to be hammered home. The American left's current abandonment of the
>workers (in this case, obviously, American workers)

Ahem. I said that most leftish trade rhetoric seems to assume the average worker is a factory worker. But 15% of U.S. workers are employed in manufacturing - slightly less than the share employed by government. Almost two-thirds - 64% - work in the private service sector. Campaigns like Justice for Janitors and agitation for a higher minimum wage would do more for most U.S. workers than blocking NAFTA would have.


> in favor of increasingly
>bizarre "identity factions," or freakish syphilitic philosophers whose ideas
>cannot possibly sustain a huge and complex civilization, or the plight of the
>endangered titmouse, is a continuation of the downward spiral that the
>American Left assumed when it wantonly embraced the 1960s "counterculture".

You sure Lyn didn't send you?

Doug



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