>I know this speech by Marx has come up here (or pen-l) before so I hate to
>rehash it. But Marx's support for free trade is explicitly based on the
>immiseration of the proletariat thesis--that the
>concentration/centralization of capital will bring about social revolution
>by throwing small capitalists into the proletariat, and the resulting
>increased competition for jobs will drive down the wage.
Actually that's not all that different from your typical race-to-the-bottom anti-trade activist narrative
> Moreover, Marx's
>speech predates the development of the concept of imperialism. Marx
>thought workers should support the bourgeoisie against the landed
>aristocracy "in order to have only one enemy left to deal with." It's hard
>to see how these arguments can be transposed to our situation--which Doug
>argues is defined by imperialism--and where there is only one enemy left to
>deal with.
The enemy isn't foreign workers, nor foreign capital, it's capital in general, which knows no homeland.
The fight against NAFTA, the WTO, the Bretton Woods twins, and the MAI have created a very cosmopolitan, international opposition, with strong personal and institutional links that didn't exist even 10 years ago. While I have lots of problems with their rhetoric and political strategy, this new International looks to have great potential. I think it/they/we have lots of work to do in coming up with a positive agenda (and I'm as guilty as anyone for lacking one). So far, it/they/we has/have relied on a nostalgia for some old (and partly fantasized) structures - some golden age of localist, caring capitalism in a lot of North American discourse, and the era of import substitution in Latin America and elsewhere in the South. The first never really existed and the second has lots of problems (like repressive political structures and subsidies to local elites). What I take from Marx's speech is a need to be imaginative, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking. The bourgeoisie has captured a lot of that rhetorical ground, and with some political success.
Doug