>Why anyone should expect the U.S. (or European, or Japanese,
>etc.) working class to defend other workers before themselves
>is beyond me.
How do core labor standards in Africa defend American (as opposed to Honduran or Chinese workers)? When do you think the US capitalist state will agree to slap sanctions on a country for having violated them? Any time Jay Mazur makes a phone call?
>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.
You know that I have argued from the beginning that this anti WTO and social clause business is a diversion from class struggle. And militarism corrupts the economy, the polity and the culture--it should be denounced.
>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.
Oh, that's right, you don't consider Clinton a corporate hireling. And if it's merely a political sop--a gesture in these deals that has no practical consequence--should we not be clear that this is a dead end strategy that US labor leadership has pursued?
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.
Didn't Clinton laud Sweeney at Davos?
Calling a call
>for regulation "social imperialism" is just loopy.
Yeah, those who want the WTO to defend labor got their feet firmly planted on the ground.
>"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,
Well they are not used in a substantive way to improve conditions of labor or environment either. They are either a false solution or a legitimate mechanism by which to punish countries insufficiently subordinated.
>
>The stance of labor and other insurgents in LDC's is
>well-taken as a concern, at least in principle.
Mighty nice of you to recognize as a legitimate fear that substitute (social) protectionist devices are being forged to substitute for MFA.
But the argument cannot be made by abstaining
>from the defense of the working class in the country
>in which you find yourself.
You are the one diverting from it.
Good nite, Rakesh