Malaysian social imperialism?

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Doug,

You have already argued that the WTO governing body will not get it
together to impose sanctions on any country that violates these
standards--so what does he think such standards would actually mean?

 We have already seen how this idiom of labor rights has worked in the case
of Cambodia; first as a condition imposed to secure a bigger quota and then
when met, increase in quota denied anyway. Did you ask Rajakekaran what he
thinks about that? Now of course  he is probably hoping that with such
standards, a Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or indeed Cambodia will face barriers
from the imperialist countries, thanks to US labor unions, and thus won't
be able to capture some of Malayasia's low value-end production now that
its attempt to develop a new Silicon Valley has foundered.

Yet will codification of core standards in the WTO prevent that flight of
productive capital? How real is the threat of such flight anyway? Instead
of actually organizing real class struggle within frighteningly
authoritarian Malaysia, is it in his interest to conceive the biggest
threat to the Malaysian working class as flight of productive capital as a
way of justifying spending his time (in august assemblies no doubt) and
wasting the union's resources hammering out a WTO that will putatively
check this putatively greatest (though in reality quite exaggerated)
threat?

And  if he thinks that only through the WTO can the Malaysian working class
confront its greatest threat, viz. loss of productive capital to very
infrastructure-poor countries in which illiteracy and health maladies are
severe.  isn't he then agreeing to accept all the rulings of that
institution, e.g., those on tech transfer, property rights, rights of
capital repatriation and mobility, liberalization of services, etc.

Doesn't the putative, crying need for core labor standards become a way of
accepting the WTO by AFL-CIA friendly third world union bureaucrats, no
matter its other faults? Did you ask whether he should chart a more
independent course?

And did you ask whether he was happy with the AFLCIO's silence, if not
tacit, support of the imperialist provisions in the WTO?

Or is he really the mouthpiece for business unionism that he seems?

Yours, Rakesh