This is a difficult question. The global justice movement has, in general, been willing to align itself with old-fashioned protectionist interests in the US. They have more money than we do and more access to media and politicians. Activists recognize that the interests involved are fundamentally opposed, but they have taken this route anyway. We saw this around NAFTA, China/WTO, etc. I have been arguing (to those who will listen to my harangue) that this strategy is a mistake. The political costs outweigh the benefits, IMO. We alienate "soft" supporters of justice-oriented initiatives who are worried about protectionism; they think that, if liberalization is defeated, the most reactionary business interests will be the ones who pick up the pieces. My view is that every alliance risks a corresponding alienation. You have to decide who you want to reach out to, and who you are willing to write off. As a political matter, I would rather extend myself to hesitant left-liberals than cozy up to a North Carolina textile baron. (And I am very willing to piss off liberals in other contexts...)
Peter
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
June 11, 2003
After Winning the War The Empire Expands Wider and Still Wider By ERIC HOBSBAWM
<snip>
But the global empire of Britain, the first industrial nation, worked with the grain of the globalisation that the development of the British economy did so much to advance. The British empire was a system of international trade in which, as industry developed in Britain, it essentially rested on the export of manufactures to less developed countries. In return, Britain became the major market for the world's primary products (2). After it ceased to be the workshop of the world, it became the centre of the globe's financial system.
Not so the US economy. That rested on the protection of native industries, in a potentially gigantic market, against outside competition, and this remains a powerful element in US politics. When US industry became globally dominant, free trade suited it as it had suited the British. But one of the weaknesses of the 21st century US empire is that in the industrialised world of today the US economy is no longer as dominant as it was (3). What the US imports in vast quantities are manufactures from the rest of the world, and against this the reaction of both business interests and voters remains protectionist. There is a contradiction between the ideology of a world dominated by US-controlled free trade, and the political interests of important elements inside the US who find themselves weakened by it.
What should US leftists do about this contradiction -- the contradiction that has been ignored by the US branch of the so-called "global justice movement"? -- Yoshie
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>
