Charles wrote:
>No these show the anti-workers of the world essence of these opportunist,
>company union laborites. These are the labor lieutenants of capital ,
>doing the bidding of their capitalist captains.
Except they are not. The capitalist captains want the Permanent MFN for China passed. The unions are opposing them.
This is what is bizarre about the anti-anti-China position. It sounds all radical, accuses the unions of selling out to business, but ignores the basic fact that passing the China deal is US business's number one priority, supported by both Clinton and the GOP leadership.
The unions are out there denouncing the leadership of both parties, denouncing international capitalism and multinational corporations. You may not like the union rhetoric but it takes a conspiracy theorist of the highest order to see this as some elaborate two-sided game by the capitalist elite. It is the capitalist elite that is cheerleading the Chinese regime and expanded trade, and it is their so-called "labor lieutenants" who are opposing them while a lot of the Left is hanging out at the sidelines.
Becker's rhetoric may be be wrong-headedly Cold Warish, but so are your comments. Mao is not running China anymore; a bunch of rich capitalist roaders are running the show, preaching "to get rich is great", launching multi-billion dollar IPOs on the capitalist stock exchanges, and suppressing their workers far more drastically that the imperialist powers could.
China's elite is the enemy, as is the US government. And guess what, the unions are opposing both in the China deal, yet you seem to be siding with Clinton, Jiang, Trent Lott and the Chamber of Commerce.
And re: the discussion on diversity in the movement; the crowd denouncing the China deal on Wednesday was as racially diverse a rally as I've ever seen, heavily black with strong latino and some asian (mostly UNITE folks). I was sitting with a bunch of black female UAW members who were cheering along with the speeches denouncing corporations and the US government ganging up to sell out workers in the China deal. They had come a long way from Michigan to make those cheers. Maybe they are wrongheaded in your view but you are throwing a heck of a lot of people into the ranks of imperialist capitalist collaborators.
But the bottom-line is that the unions are fighting the capitalists and the leadership of both political parties on this fight. Usually, folks would be ecstatic at this "break" with the elite, but there seems to be some kind of bizarre nostalgia for Maoist China that pretends that today's regime is some kind of workers state, rather than the emerging capitalist sweatshop for the world. The capitalists sure recognize the change; it amazes me that so many lefties don't.
-- Nathan Newman