Second American Revolution, Anyone? (was Re: Faux on Cockburn)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Doug:
>>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>The USA/UK/Japan had no "basic freedoms to associate and organize trade
>>unions" even on paper, not to mention in practice, when they were at the
>>current Chinese level of economic development.  How do you think Japan
>>joined the rich white guys' club???  Exploitation of the Japanese workers &
>>hegemony over Asia & later becoming a friend of Uncle Sam who wanted to
>>showcase Japan as the pillar of anticommunist prosperity in the East.
>>Capitalist or soon-to-be fully capitalist countries that want to pursue
>>export-led growth and product-cycle industrialization, I think, have only
>>low wages and lax regulations as their "comparative advantages."  Minus
>>those "comparative advantages," China's capitalist development will be
>>dead.  Under your social democratic guise, perhaps you are a militant
>>Maoist at heart!
>>
>>Then again, the U.S. government is not very likely to use the issue of
>>labor standards to exclude China in the near future (unless rabid
>>Sinophobes come into power).  The potential market and investment
>>opportunities are too large to lose, I think.  AFL-CIO, EPI, Naderites,
>>Greens, etc. do not have enough power to change the fundamental U.S. trade
>>policy, except possibly for a selective application of "voluntary" quotas,
>>etc. on an industry-by-industry basis.
>
>So what's your prescription? China should continue to go capitalist,
>and the first world left should just...well do what, exactly?

If I had any good idea, I wouldn't be teaching lit at the OSU!  It depends
on what the Chinese masses want to do -- sacrifice the present in the hope
of gaining future prosperity at the level of, say, South Korea, which may
or may not be possible, or come up with a socialist alternative to
capitalist development.  While a large number of the Chinese are suffering
from the turn to the market, a significant minority are prospering; the
latter have a stake in pushing China further onto the road to full-fledged
capitalism, while the former are disorganized and don't seem to have a
clear idea about how to raise living standards without going capitalist, so
they can only say, "let's organize unions, let's stop reforms, at least
slow down, etc."

Within the context of world capitalism, the masses on the periphery can't
aspire to higher living standards, workers' control over production, more
free time, cleaner environment, etc. all at the same time.  Scarcity and
opportunity costs rule, and all reforms have been and will be temporary
(until they affect the profit rates).

Besides, Asian doldrums show that the path of product-cycle
industrialization may have come to a dead end, with Japan stuck where it
has been for a while.  The fundamental problem of overproduction remains --
and imagine what might happen if the U.S. market experiences a steep
downturn.

The Second American Revolution, anyone?

Yoshie