>I would think that the way to go for Indonesia and Bangladesh would not be
>via sweatshops. No country every developed via free trade. Not the UK.
>Not the US. Not Korea .....
No country developed by practicing free trade ("'The system of protection,' says Marx, 'was an artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, of expropriating independent laborers, of capitalizing the national means of production and subsistence, and of forcibly abbreviating the transition from the medieval to the modern mode of production'"; & "Protection being a means of artificially manufacturing manufacturers, may, therefore, appear useful not only to an incompletely developed capitalist class still struggling with feudalism; it may also give a life to the rising capitalist class of a country which, like America, has never known feudalism, but which has arrived at that stage of development where the passage from agriculture to manufactures becomes a necessity" at <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade.htm>), but if there had been no hegemon that practiced free trade unilaterally (first the UK, then the USA, but only after becoming a hegemon -- "England thus supplemented the protection she practiced at home by the Free Trade she forced upon her possible customers abroad; and, thanks to this happy mixture of both systems, at the end of the wars, in 1815, she found herself, with regard to all important branches of industry, in possession of the virtual monopoly of the trade of the world" at <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade.htm>) while others were still practicing protectionism, no latecomer (first the USA, Germany, etc., & then later South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) could have developed its industrial capacity to the extent they did. What's wrong (within the horizon of capitalism, that is -- for socialists there are other stories) is for imperial nations to make poor nations, which have yet to industrialize fully, ditch their protectionist measures & yet to reserve for themselves an ability to practice protectionist measures (the MFA, steel quotas, politically motivated embargoes, etc.) selectively against poor ones.
All industrialized countries (the UK, the USA, Korea, etc.) developed via sweatshops (aka satanic mills), but they all had national sweatshops that had domestic parts suppliers, domestic customers, etc., not just foreign sweatshops assembling imported parts into products for re-export as is the case with today's free trade zones. (This is not to say that developing national sweatshops guarantees that your country will grow really rich -- in fact, global capitalism has a problem of overcapacity that prevents most nations from joining the core; it's merely that it's better than the package promoted by the IMF/WB/WTO combo.)
A great developmental no-no is to specialize in exporting cash crops to service international debts while becoming dependent upon food (esp. grain) imports (e.g., much of Africa). Better to default (preferably together with other indebted nations but alone if you must) & grow food locally instead.
>I would think that these countries would do better to first strengthen
>their rural economies so that people would not need to find sweatshop
>labor. Develop education, especially for young girls -- one of Summers'
>more enlightened policies. I happened to be in his hotel room borrowing
>his computer while he was on the phone. He seemed to passionately believe
>in that policy.
Educating young girls & practicing substantial agrarian reforms are good in themselves. Also, it's good to slow down the pace of proletarianization by strengthening rural economies, so as not to develop too big an informal sector (which is impossible to tax) rapidly swollen by the newly proletarianized who can't be all absorbed by the formal sector. Proletarianize they will eventually under capitalism, though.
Yoshie