On Thu, 7 Aug 2008, nada wrote:
> On Aug 6, 10:19 pm, John Holmes <jhol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> The SL commented recently in the Workers Vanguard that McKinney was
>> about as good as one could expect from a bourgeois politician who has
>> served a number of terms as a Democrat in Congress, including on the
>> House Armed Services Committee.
>
> Of course she demonstrably broke with the Democrats to the left.
In a very bourgeois kind of way. She is not a socialist, and her
candidacy is not at all a working-class candidacy, just middle-class
liberalism shading over to radicalism. Kind of like the Peace and
Freedom Party here in California. Remember when Benjamin Spock, the
baby doctor, ran for President on the Peace and Freedom ticket? He got
a lot of votes, mostly from people who thought he was the Spock from
Star Trek, and wondered about why he didn't have pointy ears.
>
>> The statement that "globalization is bad for American workers" is a
>> nice sentiment, and true in an ultimate sense if you consider
>> globalism to be the contem****ary manifestation of capitalism, and the
>> only thing that is ultimately good for American workers is its
>> overthrow.
>
> Well, "Maximalist" sentiments aside, John, it would seem that a
> strategic line of march is opposition to, active opposition, to NAFTA/
> Globalization.
Opposition to NAFTA? Sure. As for "globalization," it depends on what
you mean by that, it's a vague and general term filled with many
different meanings. If you follow Webster's, you have to be "in favor"
of globalization if you are a Marxist. If you just use it as a catchy
synonym for imperialism, fine, we should all be agin' it.
>
>> Somehow, I suspect that is not what she meant.
>
> Don't be so sure...people evolve and get 'educated' often quite
> quickly.
How much do you want to bet? Capitalist politicians certainly have
been known to go over to socialism, when you have a powerful socialist
movement, and/or a revolutionary situation.
That is not a good description of the USA in the year 2008.
She is basically Barack Obama's extreme left wing. Everything she has
to say about him is very polite.
>
>> In the *immediate* economic sense, which is I assume what she meant,
>> it isn't really true. "Globalization" i.e. imperialism involves
>> transfer of wealth from countries like Mexico to America. Inevitably,
>> the upper crust at least of the American working class would get some
>> benefit, probably more in immediate economic terms than is lost by
>> factories moving south--not much comfort for the guys working there
>> naturally, but they are outnumbered by everyone else.
>
> That would be true under classic imperialism, but not under
> globalization. Both NAFTA and the WTO have done HARM to US workers and
> none have really benefited from it except a very small layer
> (longshore, actually, is one example). By and large, in the immediate
> sense, it's hurt the "upper crust" mostly.
Mmm... not sure. The maximum development of "globalization," insofar
as it can really be seen as something *other* than imperialism, which
I frankly doubt, was in the 1990s.
Surely all that "globalization," i.e. the much greater security US
investments had in the Third World after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, with the US being the only "superpower" so everybody had better
behave and not nationalize US companies or throw up tariff barriers
vs. America or whatnot, had something to do with the low unemployment
and slight increase in general wage levels in the USA during the
Clinton years.
Now that US control over the world is coming unstuck, the feces is
hitting the fan for the American economy. This is not coincidental.
>
>> In the argument for example between Bill Clinton and Ross P***** in the
>> 1992 elections, Clinton correctly if cynically pointed out that
>> Americans were the winners over NAFTA, and Mexicans the losers.
>
> He was wrong. You arguing as it it's an 'equal exchange of
> equivelants' as if imperailism has somehow, since it's decline in the
> mid-70s, have helped US workers maintain it's aristoctratic status. it
> hasn't. It's a race to the bottom...know of any national union
> contracts, for example, that are not take aways of late?
This is basically because of the remarkable cowardice and treachery of
US union leaders. On those few occasions where union leaders were
willing to allow the ranks to fight, e.g. the SF Chronicle strike in
1994, there was no race to the bottom in the aftermath, even though
the strike could hardly be called a victory, and basically was sold
out.
In the last few years you've had a true race to the bottom, starting
with the great auto sellout of a few years ago. I visited Detroit at
the time, a lot of auto workers were extremely ready to fight was my
impression. And, that was before the big oil price rise, with
people still buying American-made SUV's, minitruck and jeeps right
and left. So the disaster wasn't because of what the Detroit auto
manufacturers have done to the industry, although that was the UAW
leader****p's excuse at the time.
The unionized sector of the working class has been shrinking rapidly,
because of all this. It is a particular target, of course, of plants
going overseas. But for the 90% of the American working class that is
non-union, this is not the real problem, the problem is how wretched
American unionism has become, which is why they are not very
interested in signing up.
-jh-
>
> David
>
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