By Barry Sheppard
SAN FRANCISCO — The Battle of Seattle, the days of protest in December against the World Trade Organisation, has focused many people's minds on global inequality and "corporate capitalism" and inspired many to join the struggle against these.
It has also sparked considerable debate and discussion, on the internet and elsewhere. One such debate concerns which political direction this potential new movement should take. The issue is whether the movement will support United States nationalism, or whether it will seek to build the international solidarity of the world's exploited and oppressed.
In Seattle, both conceptions were expressed, sometimes in the same meetings and even in the same speeches.
The leaders of the US's big union federation, the AFL-CIO, have for some time advocated protectionism and "Buy American": seeking to preserve the jobs of US workers at the expense of workers in other countries, especially in the underdeveloped (over-exploited) countries where the great majority of humanity live.
Other unions have taken a similar path. The United Steelworkers, for example, came to Seattle to demand that foreign steel be kept out of the US. In a full-page advertisement in the New York Times coinciding with the WTO meeting, the United Steelworkers joined with chief executive officers from major US steel companies to demand just that.
Such a policy not only pits US steelworkers against steelworkers elsewhere, it also puts the United Steelworkers in bed with the companies. The false notion that the rights, jobs and future of US steelworkers rest with supporting "our" stockholders' interests, is strengthened.
There has even been some speculation that James Hoffa Jr, the president of the Teamsters, would become Pat Buchanan's vice-presidential candidate in that fascist-minded politician's bid for the Reform Party nomination. Hoffa has declined, but said he agrees with Buchanan's "position on trade." Buchanan makes no bones about being a US chauvinist on trade, and every other matter.
Such "America First" sentiments were expressed at the AFL-CIO rally in Seattle. But the federation also brought to Seattle workers from Mexico, South Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. They expressed quite different, internationalist sentiments and were roundly cheered by the rank-and-file unionists present. A Ford factory worker from Mexico got a huge response when she shouted, "Long live the Zapatistas!".
Official AFL-CIO leaflets to build the Seattle actions sought to deny the charge of protectionism, and cast their opposition to the WTO in terms of international solidarity, which is all to the good.
The AFL-CIO tops say they are for "fair trade, not free trade". But this is a sleight of hand. In the real world, there is not and cannot be "fair trade" while a handful of rich countries, including and mainly the US, dominate the conditions of trade. How can it be otherwise? To think there can be anything like fair relations between India, China, Mexico and the US on anything is ludicrous.
The world is divided between the advanced capitalist countries on the one hand, and the underdeveloped countries on the other. And the latter are exploited by the former, with the gap consequently widening. For example, in 1960, the difference in income between the wealthiest 20% of the world's population, living in the developed countries, and those of the poorest 20%, living in the Third World countries, was 30 to 1. By 1997, that ratio was 74 to 1.
The AFL-CIO tops pushed President Clinton to demand that the WTO work for better labour conditions in the Third World, which he did as a sop to the labour federation.
We all should be for better working conditions, wages and human rights around the world, of course. But do we really expect institutions like the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which are imposing austerity and demanding an end to pro-worker labour laws in the Third World in the name of free trade, to implement such a program?
And what does the AFL-CIO advocate the WTO do in the unlikely event that it does try to propose better labour standards in the poorer countries and some country is deemed to be non-compliant? Block their goods from coming into the US — again, protectionism!
The labour federation also declared that it would fight against China being admitted to the WTO, which China has to do in order to expand its trade with the rest of the world.
Even though China is rapidly becoming capitalist, this stance by the AFL-CIO is a thinly disguised appeal to anticommunism among US workers, with the purpose of keeping out Chinese goods. Supporting the Chinese workers' and peasants' fight against their own government and the new capitalists for better wages, working conditions and more rights is one thing, supporting big power bullying is quite the opposite.
The big financiers and transnational corporations of the advanced countries dominate the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. Instead of trying to find ways to blame the poor countries and their workers for these attacks on our jobs and living conditions, we should be seeking ways to unite with them in a struggle against our common enemy.
The internationalism expressed in Seattle shows that this can be done.