I tried to unsubscribe; perhaps Michael P will help me.
Erased all the messages. Just checked through the archive.
As to whether Lind's view of the job displacing and welfare using effects of
the immigration of "poor, uneducated" Mexicans can be accurately characterized
as demagogic racist scapegoating in the best tradition of the American nativism
that gave us Prop 186 I shall let others decide. It seems to me clear that Lind
is not only calling for an end to any guest worker program but for immigration
restrictions aimed at poor Mexicans. Max is convinced that Lind is not a
nativist as Lind himself defines the term. Max somewhere recognized that poor
Mexican immigrants--whether they are here without papers or--are probably not
parasites off the welfare system, but he didn't explain why the non nativist
Lind characterized them that way. Let's not forget that anti black racism is
not the only kind.
As to whether I should be accused of hallucinating that Lind remains a right
winger I shall let others decide as they review his views on Vietnam. THat
Alterman blundered in bringing Lind to the left by featuring him in The Nation
is hardly surprising if one understands what kind of leftist Alternman (and
evidently Max) is.
But I want to make another point here. Max has argued that unionized AMerican
labor has the right through the use of trade sanctions to prevent the migration
of industries to third world locales in which labor may not be unionized. I am
not going to say this is wrong, but it is more complicated in the light of
economic history. Before I raise that point, I shall quickly rehearse my
criticism of the anti globalization goals.
I think due to nationalist myth American labor has put too much focus on
global outsourcing and foreign non unionized competition when the union busting
outsourcing is more often domestic,that is where are the Seattle like orgies
about this kind of outsourcing which is probably several more times important
in magnitude; it is possible that to the extent American labor succeeds in
protecting declining industry, it will raise the value of the dollar and cost
jobs elsewhere, as Eisner noted; it strikes me as hypocritical that the
American labor leaders are happy to view as an opportunity the FDI from
unionized countries into American right to work states while fighting to
prevent other poor third world countries from at least receiving some
investment (that is American labor has not fought US domestic content laws and
VERS as a way of encouraging investment into the US even when that investment
happens in right to work states--US power to coerce investment within its
borders is several times higher than that of even the biggest third world
countries); I don't think the US should be in a unilateral position to
determine whether the Core Conventions have been met (there is no way the ILO
would have invoked article 33 against Cambodia for example); it is not clear to
me trade restrictions will be applied on goods which are truly competitive
with American production (there is no good evidence that African exports are
competitive with American made goods yet the trade act with Africa was saddled
with protectionist measures); it seems unfair to me apply trade sanctions on a
whole country when the mnc which may be at least partially responsible can get
up and flee and stick the burden on the people left behind; it also seems clear
that trade sanctions cannot be defended in the name of the children whose lives
were evidently at the least not on the whole improved by the Harkin Bill.
But there is another point. What Max and Doug never ask themselves is why the
First World has had a historic monopoly on industrial production that has
allowed over time for the unionization of some workers. It is only in the last
couple of decades that we have seen a substantial decline in the percentage of
industry that is located in the West. It is obvious that the industrial working
class will not have the same rights in places which are now only beginning to
assert their some significant share of global industrial production. Should the
underdevelopment of industrial worker rights then be a reason to slow down the
weakening monopoly of the West over industrial production? Max confidently
asserts that the answer is obvious. I don't think so.
The US would not have been so quickly and successfully industrialized had
India and China not been oppressed under colonial domination. That is, once we
understand that the development of American industry which has raised living
standards (with or without unionization) and indeed created the opportunities
for worker organization was allowed by oppression of other peoples I think we
should be a bit more reflective about the more global distribution of industry
today. I think we should be more careful about protests and policies that will
slow down a more even global distribution of industry.
I'll just quote a little from Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts, a book
which I can't imagine Max would otherwise read:
"Britain earned uge annual surpluses in her transactions with India and China
that allowed her to sustain equally large deficits with the US, Germany and the
white Dominions. True, Britain also enjoyed invisible earnings from shipping,
insurance, banking and foreign investment but without Asia, which generated 73
percent of British trade credit in 1910, Anthony Latham argues, Britain
'presumably would have been forced to abandon free trade' while her trading
partners would have been forced to slow down their own rates of
industrialization. The liberal world economy might otherwise have fragmented
into autarkic trading blocs, as it did during the the 1930s
"'The US and industrial Europ, in particular Germany, were able to continue
their policy of tariff protection only because of Britain's surplus with Asia.
Without the Asian surplus, Britain would no longer have been able to subsidise
their growth. So what emerges is that Asia in general, but India and China in
particular, far from being peripheral to the evolution of the international
economy at this time, were in fact crucial Without the surpluses which Britain
was able to earn there, the whole pattern of international economic development
would been been severely constrained.'
"India, of course, was the greatest captive market in world history, rising rom
third to first place among consumers of British exports in the quarter century
after 1870. 'British rulers,' writes Marcello de Cecco in his study of the
Victorian gold standard system, 'deliberately prevented Indians from becoming
skilled mechanics, refused contracts to Indian firms which produced materials
that could be got from Britain, and generally hindered the formation of an
autonomous industrial structure in India.' Thanks to a 'government stores
policy that reserved most govt purchases to British products and by the
monopoly of British agency houses in organizing the import-export trade,' India
was forced to absorb Britain's surplus of increasingly obsolescent and non
competitive industrial exports. By 1910, this included 2/5ths of the UK's
finished cotton goods and 3/5ths of its exports of electrical products, railway
equipment, books and pharmaceuticals."
As I have said to Max, I do think we do need to find ways to ensure that the
Core Conventions are enforced everywhere as industrial production is dispersed,
but I do not think the US should have the unilateral right to impose trade
sanctions or import quota denials. Several means should be implemented before
such trade restriction.
Rakesh
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