Bill Fletcher Jr. on Internationalism (Jim O'Connor)

[Barbara Laurence]

It's interesting to see what Bill Fletcher Jr. left out of his account of
globalization and neoliberalism - namely, the imperialist role of the US
and its instruments, IMF, etc. He defines "globalization" as an
"orchestrated process by governments and economic elites to address many of
the problems which capitalism has been facing over the last 20-30 years, by
reorganizing the world economy at the expense of working people." But it's
the U.S. that "orchestrates" this process.  Japan and EU are moving however
slowly toward a multipolar world, often opposed to U.S. globalization
schemes.  The US government and US finance capital are or should be our
targets, not "governments and economic elites" in general. I like much of
what he has to say, especially about international labor solidarity, but
this idea remains much too abstract unless we understand the (rough)
equation between globalization=neoliberalism=US imperialism.  Just how much
and in what ways US workers or some fraction or fractions of US workers
"benefit" from globalization=neoliberalism is something to discuss and
debate. But even if US workers are all in the same boat as workers in the
South, as Fletcher implies, that doesn't make US imperialism any less
globalistic or neoliberal. Fletcher puts his finger on one big difference
between US unions and, e.g., South African unions - that the latter think
of themselves as representing all workers, not just union workers, while US
unions rarely act as if they are representing the US working class as a
whole. He doesn't try to explain this difference, perhaps because one of
many explanations that makes sense is that class politics within the only
imperialist power is or would be regarded as treason.
Jim O'Connor