>Second, even if "ordinary people" actually saw a
>decline in their living standards themselves, instead
>of being told about it by left-wing intellectuals,
>what is the guarantee that this realization will
>produce cross-national solidarity as opposed to, say,
>populist or nativist fascism ? Of course, nobody
>really knows, and anyone's guess is as good as anyone
>else's, but the historical record seems to make the
>fascist outcome look more likely. Past performance is
>not a guarantee of future success, as we are
>constantly reminded, but it at least puts the burden
>of proof on those who claim that this time it will be
>different.
>
>
I'd go further. What is the economic basis of cross-border working-class solidarity? This might sound heretical, but the fact is that workers at grossly different levels of development usually don't have the same economic interests. At least not in any obvious way. The easiest way for Chinese workers to get richer is by taking advantage of their low wages to take away market share and investment from Western workers. There is no obvious basis for solidarity under those conditions. I'd like the opposite to be true.
There's an anecdote in David Montgomery's "Fall of the House of Labor" where (Socialist-led) GE workers in Schenectady during WWI went on strike after hearing a rumour that the company was planning to bring in blacks from the South (which at the time was a classic rural Third World economy accidentally housed within US borders). The company promised not to. A few days later, workers walked out when they noticed a black machinist, but they were persuaded to return to work when the company told them he was actually a Northern student.
Seth