> From: sawicky at epinet.org (Max Sawicky)
> I see no automatic inconsistency between 'abolitionism' and the
> 'Social Clause' (SC) position,
Right, if a) the WTO isn't the enforcer of the Social Clause (people should be, whether university students studying sweatshirt labels or dockworkers) and b) the working class and popular movements affected by such people's sanctions are the ones calling for them. Right?
If people-to-people sanctions movements want to use a Social Clause formulation, I'll be there.
> since 'abolitionism' leaves much
> to the imagination.
It shouldn't. The most concrete way to abolish something like the WB/IMF/WTO is to take away their money -- through growing popular pressure on investors and donor parliaments, both of which are happening as we speak.
> 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.
By which you mean neoliberal capitalism powered by financial/merchant circuits of capital, with an authoritarian global state giving out orders about what kind of economic policy to follow? Or can we not change some of those features by reducing the influence of neolib global statecraft so that nation-states have a bit more space to shift development strategies towards mass, popular interests? And if we're socialists, isn't that space a necessary if insufficient condition for a more radical rupture in local relations of production?
> 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.
"World socialism" -- under balance-of-power constraints prevailing the foreseeable future? Are you on Chris Chase-Dunn's email list? Go for it... but you do know, I'm sure, that most of us in WB bond-boycott mode don't want to build a global state, on the contrary, Job 1 is to smash it!
"Self-deluded" to think of shifting financial markets around? Same reaction greeted MLK when he suggested a credit boycott of apartheid South Africa (which a few years later SDS students activated at Chase Manhattan Bank and 15 years on became a decisive weapon in the liberation struggle).
Or self-deluded to think that such financial pressure would make a difference to the WB? It already has... last year when a republican congressperson suggested that debt relief be funded by the US in exchange for a lower capital infusion to the WB, the bond markets really panicked.
I'd say the strategy is extremely realistic on both scores, Max.
> 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.
Rebut this, Max: Practical self-defense through int'l solidarity would be excellent, while practical self-defense through watching Sweeney-Hoffa get a seat at the WTO table to beg for Social Clauses is self-delusional.
> Why anyone should expect the U.S. (or European, or Japanese,
> etc.) working class to defend other workers before themselves
> is beyond me.
They did in relation to SA workers, didn't they, taking a slight hit on pension fund and church endowment holdings, in order to engage in solidarity? Burma shows it wasn't a once-off. The key thing that Washington-based Social Clause advocates don't have (except maybe with the mid-1990s Chilean CUT), as far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong), is an example of a mass democratic movement demanding Social Clause sanctions against its own product, as part and parcel of a strategy to change the balance of forces within its national boundaries (as in the cases of SA and Burma). (Don't rebut that all these ICFTU members support Social Clauses, because they haven't yet been tested in fire, and we know the ICFTU has never been a particularly good place to find militants, democrats or anti-imperialists.)
> When people start saying things like, well the workers
> should denounce the U.S. military presence around the
> world rather than
Not "rather than," Max, try both/and.
> 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.
Now now Max, calm down. I doubt Louis is even listening.
> 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.
That's the point. Now we can talk about who wins in the trade deals, right?
> 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.
It's imperialist when the people affected by the actions of an oppressor nation's working class aren't playing a central role in the strategy. That's not a loopy argument, it's common progressive sense, isn't it?
> "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.
That's all it ever is, though, Max, "in principle" as an afterthought. How about building Third World workers and communities into the strategy from day one?
> 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.
No one needs a poll. We need a strategy that unites the workers of the world, rather than dividing them.
> 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.
Then I do owe an apology to anyone I've mistakenly smeared. There it is.
> 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.
Still, without there being a Third World movement driving this kind of sanctions strategy, I'd submit that there ARE battles that "we" on the left should abstain from, if the conditions for an honest victory--including pretty clear signals from Chinese workers themselves (or reliable proxies such as the excellent labour journals out of Hong Kong)--aren't evident.
Anyhow, I still insist, Max, that there's merit to debating whether millions of dollars of US workers' lobbying bucks shouldn't be turned towards shutting down the WTO instead of merely keeping China out. Do your democratic comrades in ACILS (and I think highly of many of them) have any capacity to run that kind of debate in the US working class? If not, then that really IS a problem.
> 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.
Agreed, China's capital punishment should be opposed. What strategies are Chinese democrats proposing? Is there a critical mass of human-rights exiles demanding solidarity from the US working class, including, say, dockworkers who can keep Chinese goods out the way they did with SA goods? I ask out of ignorance... but my impression is that compared with the Burmese struggle, with equivalent resources in exile and contact with comrades inside the country, the Chinese movement hasn't chimed in visibly yet. Again, correct me if I'm wrong.
> 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.
It's late at night, eh, Max? There are lots of capitals. There are lots of protectionisms still left. SA has had a bad time recently trying to get a (self-delusional) free-trade deal going with the EU because southern European farmers don't want their names port, sherry, grappa and ouzo used on SA-originated bottles anymore (doesn't matter what's inside, it's the damn label that the ad man has got us used to judging things by!). So even SA free-trader minister Alec Erwin is on a big anti-protectionist campaign (you may have heard him whinging in Bangkok last month when he turned the Unctad presidency over to the Thais). Don't pretend it's not the primary tool of trade policy today, Max, not after the steel decision a couple of weeks ago.
> 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
Someone just posted a nice piece (on lbo?) about how Monsanto blew it by also believing there's now no need for social regulation... and its shareholders have taken such a big hit that they've subsequently gone back to the drawing board.
Whenever we talk abolition, Max, they concede "social regulation." We need to keep being as militant as conditions demand. That was really the point of my screed. Sorry if it pissed you off -- down thisaway many of my friends think I defend the Washington lefty strategies too much!
Patrick Bond email: pbond at wn.apc.org * phone: 2711-614-8088 home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa work: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa email: bondp at zeus.mgmt.wits.ac.za phone: 2711-488-5917 * fax: 2711-484-2729