>From Monthly Review: Volume 51, Number 10
March 2000
After Seattle:
Understanding the Politics of Globalization
by William K. Tabb
{Cut, about the first 2/3rds of the article, go to www.monthlyreview.org
for full article)
Similarly, an analysis is needed concerning the politics inherent in
progressive forces gearing up to stop China from being admitted to the
WTO. This can be criticized as contributing to displacement of class
rage—rightly directed at transnational capital—onto the
repressive Chinese ruling class. Without at all absolving Chinese
market-Dengist cadre ("to get rich by exploiting the people is glorious")
and their opportunist progeny, it is the unregulated power of western
capital, the anti-working-class policies of the American government most
particularly, which should be the focus of our efforts. China had little
to do with the fact that real wages have been stagnant for U.S. workers
for the last two decades or that, while the stock market has increased
wealth by trillions of dollars for the richest 10 percent of the
population who own 85 percent of the stock, most Americans own no stock
at all but fuel these gains through downsizing and givebacks.
On the other hand, Chinese policies and the impact of their huge trade
surplus with the United States brings some issues into better focus as it
obscures others. It clarifies the way national leaders;in collusion
with transnational capital;organize the super-exploitation of their
own citizens and calls attention to the uneven development such export
competitiveness at all costs brings in its wake. It also highlights the
race toward the bottom that occurs as other competitors gain greater
incentive to copy these policies. It focuses on the need to support other
workers who are imprisoned for union organizing or attempting to speak
freely to their comrades. It is a demand for a basic level of democratic
rights for everyone and, in these demands, one witnesses an emergent
internationalist solidarity. At the same time, the fact that China is
hardly the main enemy of U.S. working people needs to be part of any such
discussion.
For reasons which have everything to do with U.S. domestic
politics;specifically the need not to offend the labor movement,
which has endorsed Vice President Gore's run to succeed his
boss;President Clinton, in a comment to a newspaper in Seattle,
suggested he wanted to go beyond the usual empty rhetoric and mandate
enforceable labor standards. The reaction was immediate from third-world
delegates. A trade minister from Pakistan was quoted the next day as
saying, "We will block consensus on every issue if the United States
proposal goes ahead." The ruling elites of Pakistan and other third-world
authoritarian (and even formally democratic) governments have never had
an interest in labor standards which could reduce their ability to
exploit the workers of their countries. This does not mean that they are
wrong in suggesting that the United States would use labor standards as a
pretext to impose sanctions when if might suit U.S. political interests.
The United States, abusing its great power, has always used sanctions
selectively and to advance other agendas, and there is little reason to
think labor standards would be used differently.
The use of trade sanctions to enforce labor standards is also opposed by
most third-world unionists, who see job loss resulting without necessary
impact on their wages and working conditions. What they need is help
organizing. International solidarity, exposure of local abuses, financial
assistance to strikers, and pressure on governments who use police-state
tactics against workers would be welcome. But the fact is that, in the
past, the United States has supported the most repressive third-world
regimes. People are rightly skeptical about Clinton's motives. The
solidarity which needs to be extended is to the workers, oppressed and
exploited not simply by transnationals, but by their own capitalists.
Rather than counting on the kindness of passing imperialists, a class
struggle perspective is in order. The same is true in making common cause
with reactionary Republicans who wish to weaken China for their own
reasons.
Similarly, we need to think more about China as related to a host of
issues which arise from the reality that 95 percent of the world's
population growth is taking place in what is euphemistically called the
developing world (from which westerners fear immigration, job loss, the
spread of epidemics, terrorism, and crime). There is a desire to build
defenses, whether new versions of Star War missile defenses or economic
protectionism. The cost of the left's inability to offer a coherent
counter-interpretation of globalization's dangers and damage, and their
sources and solutions, is great.
