>From Monthly Review: Volume 51, Number 10
March 2000
After Seattle: Understanding the Politics of Globalization by William K. Tabb
{Cut, about the first 2/3rds of the article, go to www.monthlyreview.org for full article)
Similarly, an analysis is needed concerning the politics inherent in progressive forces gearing up to stop China from being admitted to the WTO. This can be criticized as contributing to displacement of class rage—rightly directed at transnational capital—onto the repressive Chinese ruling class. Without at all absolving Chinese market-Dengist cadre ("to get rich by exploiting the people is glorious") and their opportunist progeny, it is the unregulated power of western capital, the anti-working-class policies of the American government most particularly, which should be the focus of our efforts. China had little to do with the fact that real wages have been stagnant for U.S. workers for the last two decades or that, while the stock market has increased wealth by trillions of dollars for the richest 10 percent of the population who own 85 percent of the stock, most Americans own no stock at all but fuel these gains through downsizing and givebacks.
On the other hand, Chinese policies and the impact of their huge trade surplus with the United States brings some issues into better focus as it obscures others. It clarifies the way national leaders;in collusion with transnational capital;organize the super-exploitation of their own citizens and calls attention to the uneven development such export competitiveness at all costs brings in its wake. It also highlights the race toward the bottom that occurs as other competitors gain greater incentive to copy these policies. It focuses on the need to support other workers who are imprisoned for union organizing or attempting to speak freely to their comrades. It is a demand for a basic level of democratic rights for everyone and, in these demands, one witnesses an emergent internationalist solidarity. At the same time, the fact that China is hardly the main enemy of U.S. working people needs to be part of any such discussion.
For reasons which have everything to do with U.S. domestic politics;specifically the need not to offend the labor movement, which has endorsed Vice President Gore's run to succeed his boss;President Clinton, in a comment to a newspaper in Seattle, suggested he wanted to go beyond the usual empty rhetoric and mandate enforceable labor standards. The reaction was immediate from third-world delegates. A trade minister from Pakistan was quoted the next day as saying, "We will block consensus on every issue if the United States proposal goes ahead." The ruling elites of Pakistan and other third-world authoritarian (and even formally democratic) governments have never had an interest in labor standards which could reduce their ability to exploit the workers of their countries. This does not mean that they are wrong in suggesting that the United States would use labor standards as a pretext to impose sanctions when if might suit U.S. political interests. The United States, abusing its great power, has always used sanctions selectively and to advance other agendas, and there is little reason to think labor standards would be used differently.
The use of trade sanctions to enforce labor standards is also opposed by most third-world unionists, who see job loss resulting without necessary impact on their wages and working conditions. What they need is help organizing. International solidarity, exposure of local abuses, financial assistance to strikers, and pressure on governments who use police-state tactics against workers would be welcome. But the fact is that, in the past, the United States has supported the most repressive third-world regimes. People are rightly skeptical about Clinton's motives. The solidarity which needs to be extended is to the workers, oppressed and exploited not simply by transnationals, but by their own capitalists. Rather than counting on the kindness of passing imperialists, a class struggle perspective is in order. The same is true in making common cause with reactionary Republicans who wish to weaken China for their own reasons.
Similarly, we need to think more about China as related to a host of issues which arise from the reality that 95 percent of the world's population growth is taking place in what is euphemistically called the developing world (from which westerners fear immigration, job loss, the spread of epidemics, terrorism, and crime). There is a desire to build defenses, whether new versions of Star War missile defenses or economic protectionism. The cost of the left's inability to offer a coherent counter-interpretation of globalization's dangers and damage, and their sources and solutions, is great.