On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>
> >Michael Pollak pointed me to this editorial in today's NYT
>
> Rakesh, how interesting to see you quoting Tom Friedman approvingly.
> Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows.
Doug, gimme a f...g break, BEDFELLOWS! I thought I had clarified what I found interesting and correct about his editorial--his objection to the textile mfg's demand that Africa import yarn, etc if tarriffs are to be lowered. I also think he is correct that greater African exports would be largely non competing with American (though not Chinese or Honduran) production--which raises the question of why exactly UNITE is fighting this bill. Well we know that Mazur or Sweeney or any of the new "internationalist" labor leaders is not holding out for a more liberal technolgy transfer policy!
I have expressed much criticism of the neoliberalism imposed on the third world (have I not repeated ad nauseum my opposition to trim, trip, absence of commodity stabilization mechanisms, etc--surely this should cause some pause before I am lumped in with Friedman). And I have said all along that the threat of social protection led by self proclaimed internationalist union leaders could turn out to be the mechanism by which US imperialism would wrench further concessions from the third world, so I faulted Friedman for faulting the unions instead of imperialism.
It's true that I was not impressed (but rather sickened by) the Sweeney and Hoffa presence at the Seattle protests and the new alliances with AFL-CIA friendly third world union bureaucrats (one of whom you interviewed). It's true that I tend to follow Slaughter, Lynd, Rachleff in terms of their criticism of the new unionism but this is no reason to imply that I am now a bedfellow of union busting Friedman who celebrates the PATCO defeat as the birth of the new economy (though there is no reason to doubt the rise in the rate of exploitation has helped capitalism to grow and prosper).
But I can see that given the stature of those leaders of the left whom I am criticizing, I should expect that my criticism will be lumped in with the right wing. Yet for my objections to be lumped in with the right by the left only suggests in my opinion what Marcuse would have called the closing of the political universe.
Yours, Rakesh