Doug Henwood wrote:
> Can every small country in the world develop its own car,
> shipbuilding, chip, or aircraft industry? South Africa with 41
> million people? Zimbabwe with its 12 million? There's a lot to be
> said for an international division of labor - not the distorted
> exploitative one of capitalist reality, but a better one we can start
> to imagine. I don't see how retreating to national or subnational
> spaces is going to do anything for that re-imagining.
>
It's true, not every country can have a shipbuilding industry. Just like not
every person can be an autoworker. But we've found ways to transcend that
problem within national boundaries. Look at Sweden. Through centralized wage
bargaining, they redistribute each year's big productivity gains in advanced
manufacturing industries to the rest of the workforce. So in Sweden you can
be a service worker and still have high wages and excellent benefits.
Now, I'd love to see that model extended beyond national boundaries. And I think it's possible. But it's not going to happen between South Africa and the United States, at least not in this millenium. But it *might* happen between South Africa and Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Or between Brazil and Uruguay. So Brazil might have more shipbuilding and Uruguay less, but the productivity gains are redistributed. Something like that has already happened with the European Union, i.e. Ireland.
But all of these ideas are regional. They don't make much sense as global schemes without indulging in the kind of "global civil society" talk one hears from Chris Burford.
Seth