>>> Nathan Newman <nathan.newman at yale.edu> 04/13/00 02:04PM >>>
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.
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CB: The capitalist captains are the origin of the portrayal of China as some special kind of leading human rights, labor rights violator, undemocratic country, references as you made to Tinenamen Square, etc. etc . The whole "Buy American" campaign of the last 20 years, of which the current anti-China campaign is the latest expresssion, originates in ruling class , which at the same time was pushing its opposite free trade. Yes, the ruling class speaks with forked tongue.
You don't think Buchannan represents a sector of the U.S. ruling class ? How about Perot ? There are now a nationalist and transnationalist sections of the U.S. ruling class. ________
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.
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CB: They need to stop denouncing them and start a general strike against them. Talk is cheap. Stop targetting Third World "regimes" and target your own bourgeoisie. The central task of the American labor movement is to directly struggle against the American capitalists, not indirectly by opposing China directly on an issue the U.S. capitalists "support".
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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.
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CB: First of all the general idea around here that conspiracy theories are not a part of political analysis is really off the wall.
Secondly, if you don't recognize that this twosided game has been going on for a long time , you are missing an important part of recent U.S. bourgeois history. The union half of the bourgeois tongue has been saying "buy American" while the other half has been saying "free trade" for about 20 years now. The unions have been using "buy American" and anti-communism as an excuse not to fight the American big companies , for years.
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It is the capitalist elite that is cheerleading the Chinese regime
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CB: Not really. Anti-Chinese propaganda is growing bigger all the time. They are accusing Chinese Americans of stealing military secrets, there is a constant drumbeat in the capitalist media about the "terrible" human rights record of China , Hollywood stars are taking up the Dali Lama, etc., etc.
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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.
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CB: As if the bourgeois media is going to give equal time to the Left.
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Becker's rhetoric may be be wrong-headedly Cold Warish, but so are your comments.
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CB: No, my comments are corrrrrrect.
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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.
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CB: This has been debated here at length. Disagree.
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China's elite is the enemy, as is the US government.
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CB: uh , you forgot the US big bourgeoisie, the mainest enemy.
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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. _________
CB: I haven't and don't support them. I oppose the continuation of the anti-communist, racist, imperialist AFL policy of 50 years. Forget about China, attack the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, IMF, World Bank directly. Follow Fidel Castro's lead http://www.granma.cu/ingles/abr2/16fidel-i.html
You don't find Casto focussed on opposing China.
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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.
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CB: Sure they have "Buy American" bumper stickers on their car too. They are disciplined. Only the labor leaders are the lieutenants of capital. But the rank and file is not very independent or militant these days.
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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.
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CB: The bizarrest and most utopian snafu is that the US. labor movement is "opposing" the US bourgeoisie best indirectly by being anti-China, when it is not and has not been doing jack shit to oppose the bourgeoisie directly right here in the belly of the beast, at the point of production, on the main class war front. As Engels and Marx said in the Manifesto, the proletariat of each country must settle accounts with its own bourgeoisie first. The U.S. proletariat , led by the AFL, has been running away from this primary task for fifty years.
Like they can fool us into thinking that the most important way to fight the U.S. bourgeoisie is to fight the Chinese Communists ( who have been duly written out of the Communist movement by the US. left , such as it is , a left that hasn't even come close winning anything like the Chinese Communists have in the Chinese Revolution). The U.S. left and labor movement needs to get its own house in order. It has a long way to go before it can go around the world trying to win things for other working classes that have had communist revolutions already. Mostly likely is the reverse. It will be the Chinese working class that helps the U.S. working class to have its revolution.
It actually is embarassing. Do these people think we have been asleep for the past 50 years of AFL anti-communism, i.e. ultimately anti-working class ideology and practice ?
CB