You're not the only one. These trade talks--and even workshops convened by the better Oxfam folk to hammer out an African union/soc.mvt. line--are forever shrouded in opaque deal-making, alliance-building and short-vs.-long term considerations (African trade unionists are no different, there, than AFL bureaucrats). We'd be clearer if we could see a poli-econ solidarity strategy emerge from a vibrant mass-popular movement (let's say on the order of the Zapatistas, which has been under the microscope 6 years and continues to look at things very clearly). There aren't many such movements around, I concede. Supporting those that are there should, I submit, take a far higher priority than substitutionism ("we'll get rid of your child labour for you, poor dears, by boycotting your countries' output"). I was just reading Bill Greider's column in the 31/1/00 Nation, and I think he's probably got a good idea, namely using the precedent of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which explicitly targets multinational corporations for being naughty. If US labour can strengthen and really sharpen its direct, anti-corporate tools--and apply these tools in cross-border solidarity activism when both sides know what they're doing and have a clear strategy conscious of potential unintended consequences (like plant closures and job losses in the target company/country)--without going into the WTO with all that that entails, it might be a more productive strategy. (I debated with Bill about this in Bob Brenner's seminar at UCLA six weeks ago, and found him very sensitive and open to the idea that Third World solidarity requires taking a *lead* from Third World labour/social/environmental movements.)
> I found this passage from Patrick Bond's piece mystifying:
> > For after a second glance, many progressive African
> >social movements, NGOs, churches and women's groups,
> >development agencies, technical think-tanks and
> >intellectuals--some of them gathered in the Ghana-based
> >Africa Trade Network--began condemning the way in which
> >international institutions like the WTO, World Bank and
> >International Monetary Fund, as well as powerful
> >Northern governments, impose conditions on what they
> >argue is already a terribly unequal trade, investment
> >and financing relationship with the South.
> The only conditions I know of are pretty standard structural
> adjustment conditions - not labor or environmental clauses. What are
> you talking about here Patrick?
Gerard Greenfield puts it better than I do, in the post you just
forwarded:
> Back to Basics
> One of the basic problems with the social clause proposal is that
> worker and trade union rights cannot be balanced with the WTO's free
> trade regime. Free market policies, privatisation, the destruction
> of social welfare, labour market deregulation, increased
> unemployment and more powerful TNCs further destroy worker and trade
> union rights. How can workers organise unions and fight for their
> collective rights when they are faced with lower wages, higher
> living costs, less access to education and health, privatised
> pensions, growing unemployment and more powerful corporations?
> The very logic of the WTO is that everything is a commodity. Health,
> education, pensions, water, traditional knowledge, plant and animal
> life - everything - is a commodity to be bought and sold for profit
> by capitalists. The very purpose of the WTO regime is to break down
> any barriers that prevent capitalists, especially TNCs, from turning
> everything into a commodity.
Doug, you have to be more aware of the problem that anything that potentially legitimises the WTO in the Third World today really sucks (at least for many of Our People).
> Doug:
>> Patrick:
>> ...Vavi joined forces with the South African
> >government and local big business, in demanding from the
> >North a less-protectionist set of international trade
> >rules, but nevertheless including the Social Clause. The
> >joint delegation gained prized access to Green Room
> >deliberations, though came back to Johannesburg as
> >emptyhanded as Charlene Barshefsky.
> So the corporatist union sellouts
Well, at least South Africa's on that very unfortunate occasion, for reasons very much related to local conditions, alliances and unfortunate power relations. Alec Erwin came back bragging about it, and Vavi explicitly said that Cosatu doesn't want to shut down the WTO, it wants a seat. What's going on here, as far as I can read, is that very sophisticated folk in our clothing/textile sector (both workers and bosses) have persuaded Cosatu to take a position in favour of unilateral Social Clauses against imports of goods from the region (they complain a lot, not unjustifiably, that Zimbabwe for instance is merely a dumping-ground re-exporter of Bangladeshi fabrics). Along with Vavi and a slick business delegation, Erwin TRIED to push this line in the Green Room but got rebuffed by African and other Third World trade ministers (who Doug rightly critiques, e.g. in the current LBO). The fact that it comes from Cosatu doesn't mean it's a genuine line from the South African working class. I'd say the same about the ICFTU endorsers from African trade unions.
Do you get my point about distinguishing a genuine people's sanctions strategy from the wheeling-dealing associated with trade debates?
> demanded a "less protectionist" set
> of rules - i.e., very Friedman-pleasing ones. This doesn't advance
> the Bond-Bhandari line, does it?
Right, there's a good debate here now about whether Cosatu leaders have, in this and other recent actions, started slipping down the corporatist slope.
So I'll readily concede that this is very hilly terrain, with lots of ups and downs ahead. Keeping our eye on the bigger picture--really shutting down this emergent global economic state whose aim is simply the commodification and liberalisation of Everything--is at least one potential way for us all to transcend the wedges and move in the same direction. Would you not agree with that, Doug and Max?
(By the way, I just got an excellent argument from Jeremy Brecher on this, profoundly disagreeing with this last paragraph, which I'll try to incorporate in another Z column soon...)