> There is no chauvinism issue in this context.<
i beg to differ max: there has been a particular heightening of anti-immigrant politics and laws in Europe over the last decade. as well as in Asia. chauvinism is THE big thing, not least in places like Malaysia where the argument for capital controls was conducted with the spectre of a jewish world conspiracy in the wings.
peter wrote:
> The emphasis should be on bringing foreign workers' working conditions
up, not on defending native working conditions no matter the cost. The . .
.<
i agree. but i'd put it a little differently: whilst certain strategies are geared toward protecting local incomes (ostensibly, i've yet to see any evidence of this) at the expense of incomes elsewhere, focussing on raising incomes in places like mexico can only bring benefits to US workers, including that of limiting the disciplining force of capital flight. re-location only takes place on the condition that elsewhere is cheaper, more stable, etc.
and, a note to edwin, the kind of capital flight that people talk about as the shift toward speculation is as much a problem for capital as it might be for us. capitalists can and have figured out themselves how to haul speculative capital into production. we don't need to pretend we are doing the work for them by asserting a nationalist strategy that lines us up ready for at least one of those keynsian preconditions: war. i think peter is quite right to raise the WWI in this discussion.
max wrote:
> mbs: Not good. Who in the U.S. would rally to this, other than a gaggle
of leftists?<
who would rally to enhancing the rights and conditions of workers over the US-Mex border? err... are you saying that there isn't a significant proportion of US workers who are mexican, latin american, or that there can't be alliances built between these sections of the US labour movement and those across the border? whether those workers in the US are organised in unions or not might well be the fault (or design) of the histo ry of the AFl-CIO, but that doesn't mean there's no basis upon which to build that alliance. (eg., the various leaderships of the textile workers union here had up till very recently actively resisted organising asian workers into a section that was thereby capable of forging such links. this had to be done through the outworkers' association. but it's been shown just how much a bankrupt strategy the textile union pursued, since it's membership has declined to almost nothing, jobs in textiles have pretty well disappeared, and all the various agreements they made for their members to accept cuts in pay in return for keeping the factories here have come to nothing in every single case. the big strategy of the union consisted of these kinds of pay cut agreements and a 'buy australian' campaign! don't get me started about nationalist unions... they don't work for anyone.)
Angela _________