Where is "Nation"? / "Anti-Globalization" movement

Kevin Robert Dean qualiall_2 at yahoo.com
Wed Aug 1 21:12:58 PDT 2001


I may have told this little anectode to LBO before, but I remember watching an interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Channel with Canadian media mougel Conrad Black. In addition to a home in Canada he has a home in the UK and a few other places. The interviewer asked Mr. Black if he considers Canada his home, and he replied "No"

Now a rich man like Black has the luxury of choosing what he considers his home or nation, but the majority of people do not and have to be concerned with the conditions in their own locality and nation and tend to feel that other localities and nations are a threat to their 'way of life'.

While this position may be shown to be false, probably the only thing I disagree with about the Old Man is the line Doug brought up about having no homeland. The Capitalists have no homeland as they can go set up business anywhere in the world and leave after they drained the soul of wherever it was they landed and the workers need to bear the burden of the results in their own homeland. They don't have the luxury to pick up and move as they please.

And yes, this leads to some rather reactionary (In my opinion at least) positions by labor unions, such as anti-immigration, anti "Mexican Truckers", ect. I fear also that the majority of the "Anti-Globablization Movement" at least started out on these reactionary principles.

(Goes off on Tangent here) We really need to sit down and think about what our goals are in this "Anti-Globalization" (which I always put in quotes because I don't really like that phrase) movement before we can be concerned about what means (violent or non-violent, ect) we use within this movement. So what our our goals? Are we looking for protectionist policies? If not, what are we proposing as a global alternative?

This I think is one of the problems with the Anti-Globalization movement--being in general, a coalition based movement, we can't get a clear assesment of what our goals are. We have everyone from anarchists, to commies, to Greens, to labor unions, environmentalists, ect. and this is a great thing--its much more effective to get together with people from all movements, because it is a lot more productive than counting on my five or six comrades from the local Socialist Party chapter. But at the same time, its one of our most prevalant weaknesses. With such diverse groups it's hard to get a good readout of what our goals should be. Some orgs have goals which are extremely incompatable with other orgs which tends to water down our power because we have to pick actions which won't offend other orgs within the coalition which makes me fear that one of us will be interviewed by the press who ask "What are you trying to accomplish?", or "How would you suggest doing things different?" I don't know if speaking for a coalition anyone could give a clear answer on that....

ooooooooo Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY

_________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list