On Thu, 5 May 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
> At a particular odd historical moment, when corporate America was willing
> to give a little to avoid losing a lot (the ultimate threat being the
> USSR), and when the likes of GM had no meaningful competition.
Okay, let's put this differently: you still have high wages and high productivity in Sweden, no?
So if we're just focussing on productivity it's still possible to combine the two under conditions of contemporary global competition. Sweden trades a larger percentage of its GDP than we do.
The arguments you put above seem to be less about productivity and more about profitability, which always drives wages down everywhere and is never stopped except by workers power. (And the institutionalization of that power in laws and norms and social inertia which makes it look like it's just standing on air sometimes until it gets rolled back.)
Probably if Costco never had any unions, or thought it was cost-beneficial to crush them all, it never would have evolved like this. But once it has, perhaps it can compete.
We both agree that we'll never get a counter-Walmart model without more worker's power. But theoretically, I don't see why it's a given that such a counter-model can't win in the market place. We're not talking about worker-owned socialism here. Just capitalism with a human face. Which we've seen before, and which we've seen win before in the marketplace. The problem would seem to be in coming up with the right and sufficient form of organized people power to force it about.
Michael