Ed,
At 17:57 16/04/00 -0400, you wrote:
(Arthur)
>> Maybe I missed it, but have we adequately explored the creation of strong
>> trade unions in these countries, trade unions that are part of a movement
>> aimed at upward harmonization of living standards??
cut to>
(Ed)
>We mustn't forget that unions are a distinctly western phenomenon, the
>product of a long history of social change and experimentation. They are
>possible where there is a fundamental belief in the equality of man and a
>willingness to bargain and negotiate. They are far less likely to be
>possible where the fundamental assumption is inequality and force or corrupt
>backroom deals can be used as means of suppression.
I have a more pragmatic view on this point. It is true that a highly
oppressive, hierarchical social system can inculcate extreme deference in
segments of a population to the extent that even the poorest will accept
that the system is "natural" and even desirable, and will be more likely to
obey the establishment rather than resist. (We had a supreme example of
that in the UK in 1914 when millions of poor people volunteered to fight
against millions of other poor people in a war which should never have been
started.) Nevertheless, notions of fairplay and justice arise spontaneously
in any social system where supervision is not too pervasive. Poor people
anywhere in the world do not need to have read Tom Paine to acquire these
'fundamental' beliefs.
The real progenitor of trade unionism is communication -- and thus
opportunity to discuss strategy and organise themselves -- as on the
factory shopfloor or coal mines. At the turn of the last century, the
workers in the newly-created Japanese factories did not need, or even had
knowledge of, trade unionism in the west in order to create militant trade
unions de novo. However, this may be pre-emptied in the future (see my
remarks below) . . .
(Ed)
>Simply assuming that third world countries can adopt our systems and
>standards or even that they would want to adopt them will not get us very
>far. When I was in India, I saw ever so many poor children begging on the
>street. Some of them had been maimed, deliberately I was told, to give them
>an upper hand as beggars. Third world poor families knowingly sell their
>daughters into prostitution. If there are no options other than begging and
>prostitution, wouldn't working in a Nike sweatshop be preferable? Well
>perhaps not for everyone, but if one asked the little kids who are begging
>on the street or the little girls who are bound for prostitution (or their
>parents), I believe I know what the answer would be.
Yes, indeed. This is why the more responsible charities such as Oxfam do
not support embargoes on goods made by child labour. Often these children
are the only breadwinners in the family. If they're prevented from working
then the next stage is for their parents to sell their children into bonded
labour or prostitution -- sometimes hundreds of miles away so the
children.have no chance of escaping from their bondage. Like Ed, I saw this
in India and Nepal when I went there as a tourist three years ago. On
scores and scores of building sites I saw hundreds of beautiful young girls
of 14, 15, 16 (originally from Rajasthan 400 to 1,000 miles away) carrying
heavy loads and working like navvies. There were none above about 25 years
of age. They had died from their labours. The lucky girls in Rajasthan were
those who stayed at home and worked in local sweated labour factories.
However, one great problem which is now looming is that although cities and
largish areas in India and China are able to lift themselves up by means of
sweated labour (e.g. making footballs, footware, light bulbs, etc) and the
chance of trading with the West and bringing money into the area, some
industries (such as those mentioned) are now jumping straight into
automated production and missing out the stage of the large factory shop
floor where they would have had a chance of organising and raising their
standard of living fairly uniformly and fairly quickly -- as tended to
happen in the West and in Japan. The quantum jump into automated production
will mean that large numbers of people in Asia will be left out in the cold
totally for, probably, at least a couple of generations before prosperity
begins to diffuse into the general population.
>My apologies to the Washington protesters. I'm sure many of them are there
>out of deep conviction and high ideals. However, what upsets me a little is
>that going after agencies such as the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF has
>become something of a blood sport. Not everything these agencies do is bad,
>and I for one do not believe they are totally in bed with the MNCs. Perhaps
>partly, but not totally. They are responsible to governments, and many
>governments continue to be responsive to the whole of their constituents.
>But in saying that, perhaps I'm simply revealing that I'm Canadian, and
>therefore naive.
The recent protests at Seattle and Washington prove my point that
communication and the chance to organise are more essential than particular
brands of ideas -- uninformed by the real world as they are in this case,
their slogans being travesties of justice as regards the poor and oppressed
in the non-Western world. These protestors are not 'ordinary' protestors
-- that is, composed of 'ordinary' people as they were in the peasant
revolts of the Middle Ages, or the trade unions within a factory in the
last century -- but a very small minority of the population (intelligent,
but illiterate as to basic matters of economics). And how were they able to
communicate and organise? By the new version of the factory shop floor,
the Internet -- an unfortunate byproduct of the new technology.
Keith
