Doug Henwood wrote:
> I'm not aware of many Thai ag products going to Mexico for
> processing, but aside from that
>
Sorry, bad example. Too many Dutch beers and Russian vodka shots last night.
> - capitalist production has always
> been about creating social production on a large scale. Since few of
> us work in giant factories any more, the networks are a lot more
> dispersed, but given modern communications technology, it's not
> impossible that people could make meaningful contact with each other.
> So why shouldn't Ford workers in Detroit, Hermosillo, and Durban make
> contact with each other, adopt common strategies against their common
> employer? What does it mean to "unravel" exploitative economic
> relationships? Return to some world where the workers of Detroit,
> Hermosillo, and Durban had nothing to do with each other? So then you
> have exploitative economic relations in a local or national scale.
> Just how's that any better than the status quo?
>
>
Well, for one thing, if South Africans are all buying their cars from local
Ford branch plants, how are they ever going to develop their own automobile
industry? Or shipbuilding or semiconductors or aircraft or any of the other
things that turn poor countries into rich countries? Don't they in some way
need to delink?
And couldn't the struggle to delink itself involve international solidarity -- wouldn't it have to? Why couldn't the AFL-CIO join with the Brazilian PT to kill the FTAA and promote a more progressive Mercosur as an alternative? Wouldn't this involve solidarity accross borders too?
Seth