On Fri, 26 May 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >trade barriers. But I don't see any better way to get the winners to
> >compensate the losers than for the losers to threaten to block trade
> >as a bargaining chip.
>
> This strategy doesn't seem to be working, does it?
Depends on how things turn out. A number of Congressional Black Caucus defections were based on a whole new round of tax breaks and other subsidies for inner city areas agreed to by Clinton and the GOP leadership, so they rangled a price for agreement. A number of Congressmen demanded job retention money or rather traditionalist pork barrel job programs (often military-related) to compensate for possible job losses from the deal. In general, Gore has signed on for a range of labor law reforms to balance out his free trade stance. This is obviously a grab-bag of small gains, but if the margin of votes had been twenty more against the deal, the price would have started climbing higher, possibly towards the more comprehensive labor deal Reich was promoting.
A lot of votes disparage a "no vote" strategy but that is the basic weapon of labor, shutting down production until their demands are met. As long as capitalists run the system, such resistance apporaches to extracting reforms is the most basic weapon of left activists. To the extent they build positive programs for action, they must make deals with the existing power structure and parties, something those criticizing labor's "negative" strategy usually denigrate.
-- Nathan Newman