Thanks for keeping me honest, Doug, by demanding more clarity. I have two quick replies. First, would you not agree that given exceptionally uneven, imperialist power relations, any working-class movement operating from an oppressor nation (including Cosatu in South Africa, within this region) has got to be damn careful about the way in which their strategies correlate to others? I'm sure that ALL workers everywhere are pro-labour rights. But we're all having to go way beyond that kind of essentialism, and onto the nuanced ground, right? Here, "difference" (e.g., in geographical location and all that it implies) should neither be evacuated, nor used in a way that DIVIDES the world's working class, as has happened in the past and as is the danger with the Social Clause via WTO logic -- but instead should be incorporated into a common radical strategic approach. It's about confronting contradictions in strategy tossed up through those "militant particularisms" (you like the Harvey 1996 frame of reference?) and discovering a more general socialist politics. I think all marxists are/will be seeking that kind of naunce and transcendant strategy now, otherwise we're doomed to taking sides on wedge issues like Social Clause.
Here, then, as the second response, is something Susan George has posted this week, as part of a debate with some of the better Third World left/social movement intellectuals on whose list I eavesdrop. Since it was not public, I'll just put up her preface (I'm sure she won't mind that):
> The issue is labour and environment standards. It strikes me that
> if we [North/South progressives] keep focusing on these issues in
> oppositional ways, we will allow the transnationals to get on with
> their programme and then we will all be the losers. The WTO is just
> the domestic servant of the TNCs, though a good servant because it
> has authority.
>
> More and more it seems to me that every problem, even the ones we
> make progress on, like the MAI or the WTO in Seattle, hinges on the
> institutional question. We obviously can't trust the Bank, the Fund
> or the WTO. The only institutions we might trust like ILO or UNEP
> are too weak to matter. Yash has just said in no uncertain terms
> what he thinks of UNCTAD. Kofi Annan is completely in the pocket now
> of the US and the TNCs [e.g his Global Compact with corporations
> proposed at Davos last year]. Walden's piece concludes with the
> notion that we need a lot of smaller regional pluralistic
> institutions--this may well be so but to some degree begs the
> question of rule-making for an international system. If we don't
> make them, don't worry, the TNCs will be happy to do so de facto.
>
> I don't trust the WTO to deal with labour/envtl standards and I
> don't want any new areas added to its power--rather, like Walden, I
> want many areas removed from its jurisdiction. This is pretty much
> the consensus of anti-WTO progressive people in the North. But they
> and I are still troubled by a system which seems very good at
> pushing down standards world wide. Every time the WTO has decided a
> case with an environmental aspect, it has decided against the
> environment. As for labour, there is always someone who can produce
> more cheaply than you--even more cheaply than India or the
> Philippines--it's a matter of externalising more costs and
> repressing workers more than the other fellow. "We" always have to
> pay the costs for exploitation of workers and the environment--the
> whole question is to know who is the "we" who pays. This is not a
> system of comparative economic advantage in the classic sense but
> one of comparative political advantage where the advantage goes to
> the most oppressive [i.e. China--as you can tell from the huge fight
> now in the US to bring it into the WTO].
She identifies the problem very nicely (with the proviso that imperialism is the background context, so intervening in "institutional" matters is not done from a level playing field). Recall that my appeal is that the world's workers should focus first and foremost on shutting the neolib global-state institutions. Let the debate continue. I'll wait until Susan's latest solution gets discussed thoroughly in her circuits and then maybe we can have a go at it here...
P. 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