Funny the "better trade union intellectuals" here think exactly the contrary.
Looks to me like you're casting this as reform vs. revolution in a way that simplifies the key problems away.
I see no automatic inconsistency between 'abolitionism' and the 'Social Clause' (SC) position, since 'abolitionism' leaves much to the imagination. One interpretation is that abolitionism (of the sort I favor, incidentally) is just the hard cop counterpart to the soft-cop SC campaign. Both envision some kind of WTO, IMF, and WB for at least the immediate future, since the immediate future I hate to tell you is capitalism.
An alternative interpretation is that abolitionism is a euphemism for world socialism. Insofar as such a posture has a practical sort of face (i.e., the bond boycott) I would say it is constructive, but self-deluded. Useful in spite of its underlying conceptualization.
The real distinction is not reform vs. revolution, but practical self-defense by the working class in the advanced countries, versus acquiesence to a corporatist trade regime. Why anyone should expect the U.S. (or European, or Japanese, etc.) working class to defend other workers before themselves is beyond me.
When people start saying things like, well the workers should denounce the U.S. military presence around the world rather than preoccupy themselves with mundane matters like their jobs, trade, and the WTO, then we slip out of politics and come to rest in the warm bed of fantasy. Then we cite Thomas Friedman as authority for our positions. In the same vein, Louie probably has brought more Tory propaganda to this and the PEN-L list then I would ever see otherwise. I've learned about German rightists I would never chance to contemplate thanks to LP.
Casting an interest in labor rights and environmental protection as somehow a ploy of U.S. capital is simply absurd. NO corporate interests have indicated any sympathy for this, except as a political sop to facilitate trade deals. Framing this as a U.S. national-corporate interest is precisely backwards and is contradicted by what all the elites in the U.S. are doing, which is denouncing labor on this every day. Calling a call for regulation "social imperialism" is just loopy. "Social protectionism" makes more sense, but why isn't it just good old regulation? What evidence is there that labor rights or environmental standards are used in any substantive way by corporate interests, other than the trivial role of some U.S. textile interests?
The stance of labor and other insurgents in LDC's is well-taken as a concern, at least in principle. But governing one's actions by this, or expecting the working class to do so, can be a pretty sticky wicket. I don't think any revolutionary took a poll before launching a revolt.
Although I don't work on trade, I hear a lot of the sound effects of the debate. There is NO "China-bashing," NO racism. There is criticism of conditions that deserve criticism. Should such critiques be extended to the U.S.? Of course, and the criticism of China opens up this very possibility, I would argue. But the argument cannot be made by abstaining from the defense of the working class in the country in which you find yourself. What better place than a labor action which attacked China's mass capital punishment practices to raise the U.S. issue? If Mumia for instance, whom I'm not crazy about, has a chance for a fair trial, I would say it would come from such a process.
In a different era, capital was national and would construct "free trade" and "protectionism" according to its narrow interests. If capital is transnational now, it has no more use for protectionism of any sort. Nor for social regulation. Marx et al may have been right about the 19th century, but some revisions are likely to be in order now.
mbs