SAN FRANCISCO — The demonstrations in November-December in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have rightly inspired activists in the labour movement.
Many have commented on the coming together of youth and students concerned about the destruction of the environment and US corporations imposing sweatshop conditions in their factories in what used to be called the Third World, with tens of thousands of trade unionists concerned with the loss of better paying jobs, the reduction of real wages and increasing economic insecurity.
The consciousness of most of these forces could be summed up as "anti-corporatism". The big corporations and banks are seen as dominating the world for their own greedy self-interests at the expense of the majority of humanity. But which way forward for this movement, if indeed it becomes a movement as we all hope it will, has become a burning question in practice. Key to this will be the struggle between two opposite political strategies.
One is the road of "America firstism" and US protectionism, advocated by the top bureaucracy of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO), and by some ultra-right politicians such as Pat Buchanan. The counterposed strategy is international working-class solidarity, which must include solidarity with the world's peasant masses and with the nations that are exploited by the imperialist countries.
The answer appears to be obvious for labour activists on the left: we are internationalists, opposed to US nationalism. But it is not so simple. Disagreements have arisen over just what internationalism means in the context of this movement.
The sharpest expression of these differences has been whether or not to join what has become the axis of the AFL-CIO's protectionist campaign, the drive to keep China out of the WTO and to prevent Washington from granting China normal trade status with the US. Some left labour activists say "yes" to this campaign. Others, like myself, say an emphatic "no".
Imperialism
Before discussing the case of China, let's recall some basic facts about the world. Fact number one is that the nations of the world are not equal. There are a handful of advanced capitalist countries, with about 15% of the world's population, in which the corporations and banks not only exploit their own workers and small farmers, but suck super-profits out of the so-called developing countries as well.
Since the early 20th century, this system of national oppression and exploitation has been referred to as modern imperialism, and the advanced capitalist countries as imperialist.
The Third World doesn't consist of developing countries, a term which implies that they will catch up with the imperialist countries sooner or later. A better term would be super-exploited countries, for the truth is that the gap between these countries and the imperialist ones is growing, not diminishing.
Within all countries, imperialist and super-exploited, the gap between the rich and the workers and peasants is growing. The neo-liberal policies being promulgated domestically and internationally have exacerbated the situation.
After more than a century of imperialism, the world has now 800 million hungry people, 1 billion illiterates, 4 billion in poverty, 250 million children who work regularly and 130 million people who have no access to education. There are 100 million homeless and 11 million children under five years of age dying every year from malnutrition, poverty and preventable or curable diseases.
The WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the governments of the imperialist countries are imposing ever worse conditions on the super-exploited countries. Due to imperialist policies, the Third World debt to the banks of the First World has ballooned to more than US$2 trillion, from $567 billion in 1980 and $1.4 trillion in 1992.
The spiralling debt has become a perpetual motion machine of money flooding away from the super-exploited countries, as recalculated interest payments dwarf the principal and new loans are needed to pay off a part of old ones. These debts are a club the imperialist countries hold over the super-exploited, forcing them politically to acquiesce to imperialist policies, such as opening their economies to more imperialist ownership, slashing social spending, etc.
Imperialist profits also flow to the advanced countries as a result of such investments.
Unequal exchange
A third way the super-exploited countries are ripped off is through unequal trade. Even if there were really free trade, which there isn't, because the imperialist countries routinely erect their own trade barriers, the gap between the have and the have-not countries would necessarily widen.
This is because of the big gap in the productivity of labour between the imperialist countries and the rest, due to the difference in when these countries adopted the capitalist system of production. The countries which adopted it first imposed on the others a stunted and distorted version of capitalism that made them dependent on, at the mercy of the First World. They were not and are not being allowed to develop into "normal" capitalist countries.
This gap in the productivity of labour means that when products are traded on the world market between the imperialist countries and the super-exploited ones, the hours of labour exchanged are far from equal. It takes more and more hours of labour in the super-exploited countries to produce the raw materials needed to buy one tractor, for example. While there is some high-tech investment in the poorer countries by imperialist concerns, this generalisation remains true overall.
Moreover, the wages in the super-exploited countries are very low due to the difference in labour productivity, and to massive unemployment. An aspect of this massive unemployment has been the driving of hundreds of millions of peasants off the land because they cannot compete with low-cost agricultural products from the First World.
Another aspect of the displacement of the peasantry has been reorientation of farming to the needs of the world market. These landless peasants stream into and around the cities of the Third World, seeking jobs that are very scarce. One need only think of the slums of Jakarta, Mexico City, Teheran, etc. Imperialist and local capitalist investments in these countries cannot meet the demand for jobs.
Fair trade
So what trade policy would help reduce the gap between the rich and poor countries, even without the overthrow of imperialism on a world scale?
There are two sides to the question. The first is that the super-exploited countries need protectionist measures of their own, to allow their industries to develop in the face of competition from the advanced countries. Otherwise, the gap will grow.
The second is that the imperialist countries should end all tariffs and quotas on goods from the super-exploited countries, especially for goods these countries can produce competitively because they do not require massive capital investment and are labour intensive, such as textiles and garments.
These two trade policies should be complimented by cancellation of the debt the super-exploited owe the super-rich.
In the longer run, trade between the advanced countries and the poorer ones should be based, not on world market prices, which are largely determined by the labour productivity in the advanced countries, but on exchange of equal hours of labour. This would help the super-exploited countries build up their economies and improve their labour productivity.
Cuba succeeded in forcing the former Soviet Union to move in this direction, a fact which is expressed in the assertion by capitalism's apologists that the Soviet Union "subsidised" Cuba. The adoption of such a policy, however, would probably require a victory of the socialist revolution in one or more of the advanced capitalist countries.
Imperialist protectionism
Of course, the imperialists are pressing in exactly the opposite direction from eliminating tariffs on goods from the poor countries, and allowing those countries to implement protectionist policies. They are demanding that the poor countries open their markets, while maintaining protectionist policies for the imperialist countries.
A 1992 United Nations Development Program report (and things have gotten worse since) put it this way: "20 out of 24 industrialized nations are generally more protectionist than they were 10 years ago and their protectionism is exercised largely to the detriment of developing countries ... Overall, we can estimate that world market restrictions cost developing countries approximately US$500 billion a year. Those $500bn in losses are equivalent to around 20% of the global GDP of developing countries and represent seven times the amount such nations currently allocate to spending on priorities related to human development."
A good example is Latin America, where protectionist measures were put in place by many nationalist governments. In addition to tariffs to protect local industries, there were substantial sections of nationalised industries protected from imperialist ownership.
Under the whip of imperialist-dominated international competition and debt owed to the imperialist banks, countries like Mexico and Argentina are privatising like mad, including allowing imperialist investment in former nationalised industries.
And they have been forced into accepting cheaper imperialist goods. This has been good for some sections of the local capitalists, at least while the "Asian flu" can be kept at bay, but it has been a big setback for the living standards of the masses.
It is in this context that we have to view the proposal by the AFL-CIO brass that the WTO should erect tariff barriers against countries where there is child labour and low wages.
Why is there child labour and low wages in the super-exploited countries? Because of imperialist exploitation, of course! Because of this exploitation, many families cannot survive without their children working. And wages in these countries cannot match in dollar terms wages in the US.
The AFL-CIO's call is phoney through and through. It is an attempt to make more palatable the real demand of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy: more protectionism against the poor countries.
What the AFL-CIO should be doing instead is building solidarity with workers and farmers in those countries as they fight for the right to organise to better their conditions. Calling on the imperialists to bar goods from those countries only punishes the workers in those countries. It will mean more child labour and still lower wages.
The talk about child labour and low wages is a fig leaf to cover the top union bureaucrats' collaboration with the US bosses against the workers and peasants of the Third World. For example, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) officials are lobbying for higher tariffs on garments from the Third World, supposedly to fight against sweatshops and low wages there. But barring those goods does nothing to help workers in those countries to improve their conditions.
This protectionist campaign is being waged in the context where Washington imposes 3000 tariffs on clothing and textiles brought into the US. The countries of sub-Sahara Africa are among the poorest in the world. At a time when they are ravaged by AIDS, and 290 million Africans — more than the entire population of the US — are living on a dollar a day, UNITE has "united" not with the African garment workers, but with the US garment employers' organisation to stop Congress allowing these countries to export clothing to the US duty free (currently there is a 17% import tax).
This proposed bill should be opposed, but not for the reasons UNITE and the garment bosses do. What's wrong with the bill is that it demands that the African countries accept pro-US-imperialist conditions in return for the elimination of the duties.
Jobs and protectionism
Another argument the labour tops use in defence of protectionism is that US jobs are at stake. Capitalists can threaten their workers that they will build plants in countries with lower wages if the workers won't accept the bosses' terms.
The imperialists have built plants all over the world, in other imperialist countries as well as in super-exploited countries, to be nearer potential markets, to take advantage of lower wages and for other reasons. This cannot be stopped by raising tariff barriers.
Calling for protectionism is a substitute for really fighting for jobs here, by calling for a reduction in the work-week with no reduction in pay, a massive public works campaign to improve deteriorating infrastructure and poor housing, etc. But that would mean waging a fight, including on the political level, which is not on the agenda of these labour "leaders".
Protectionist campaigns in the imperialist countries make it appear that the problems workers face there are due to other countries, and not to their own capitalist class, the way the capitalist system works and the capitalist government. It puts workers in the position of defending "our" company or "our" industry, against the world, including the workers of the world. It cuts across what is needed, international working-class solidarity.
China
Just before the Seattle demonstrations, a full-page ad in the New York Times (and possibly other papers I didn't see) calling for protectionism for the US steel industry was signed by various steel magnates — and the head of the United Steelworkers! It claimed that Chinese steel companies were "dumping" their steel in the US.
Every capitalist firm will "dump" their goods — try to undercut the prices of competitors — if necessary and it makes economic sense. Steel from China, Russia and other countries presently has the price advantage of a strong dollar, so their prices can be lower in dollar terms.
The AFL-CIO's anti-China campaign is straight-out protectionism, designed to protect "our" industries from competition. It appeals to anticommunism, the "threat" of "Red China", and the racist fears of the "yellow horde" in the midst of a major anti-China campaign by the right wing, backed by the White House, although with more moderate language.
The most hypocritical of all the "left" arguments on why US workers should oppose China being able to trade with the US and other countries is that we must punish China for its government's trampling on human rights and workers' rights.
Why single out China for such treatment? The AFL-CIO never proposed such a "remedy" for Suharto's Indonesia, Pinochet's Chile, Mobutu's Zaire, Franco's Spain, Rhee's South Korea, Somoza's Nicaragua, the regimes of the Greek, Brazilian, Argentinian, Uruguayan and Guatemalan colonels, and so on.
Does anyone think the AFL-CIO would call for stiff tariffs on oil from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, countries where most workers are not even citizens and have no right to organise, where half of those considered citizens (women) cannot vote and are subjected to extreme discrimination and brutality? Why not call for a trade embargo on Israel, which has carried out the biggest campaign of ethnic cleansing (of Palestinians) in the world since World War II?
The bigger hypocrisy, however, is to look to the US as world disciplinarian and protector of human and labour rights. Didn't Washington support all of the above regimes, and helped put in power most of them? Didn't Washington atom bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and initiate the atomic arms race? Weren't these actions detrimental to human rights?
How many million Koreans and Chinese did the US kill and maim in the Korean War? Doesn't the destruction of 2 million Vietnamese say anything about human rights? Didn't the USA keep millions under the heel of the Jim Crow system of legalised racial segregation, and doesn't it still oppress blacks and other minorities? And are the other imperialist powers any better?
Why call on these forces to protect human and workers' rights in China or anywhere else? And why does anyone think that trade boycotts and blockades and high custom duties by the imperialist powers will improve human rights anywhere? They raise and lower trade barriers only in their own interests, and are for "free trade" one day and for "protectionism" the next, or sometimes both on the same day.
The anti-China campaign strengthens Washington's hand in trade negotiations with China. The agreements reached with China just before the WTO conference were spelled out by a State Department communique released on November 15. These are some of the unequal trade positions the US forced China to agree to:
- China will reduce, on average, custom duties on imported cars from about 22% to 17%, and from 85% to 20%.
- China agreed to progressively increase quotas for importing cereals, rice and cotton, and that an important part of these imports could not be distributed by the state.
- China will do away with the state monopoly on soy oil.
- China will stop state support of exports.
- US firms will have new access to set up banks, insurance companies and telecommunications.
- US exporters to China have the right to control distribution of their goods.
- Concerning textiles, the USA and China agreed to take measures to prevent disorder on the markets after the elimination of quotas — which Washington takes to mean that China should erect no barriers to the free flow of US-made products, while the US has the right to stop made-in-China products coming into the US.
This is an unequal treaty in the most elementary sense of the term. If workers in China organise to oppose these terms, we should give them all-out support. But they would not be demanding that China not be allowed to trade with the US; they would be demanding more equal terms of trade.
Workers in the US should demand from the US government exactly the opposite of what the AFL-CIO is saying. Instead of trying to block Chinese goods from entering the US, we should be for ending all trade barriers for such goods.
Instead of opposing trade with China, we should attack the unequal terms of trade Washington seeks to impose on China. As against Washington's demands on China to further open its markets to US goods — which is the other side of the protectionist coin — we should defend the right of China and all super-exploited countries to protect their own industries.
The "don't trade with China!" slogan is not just wrong, it is reactionary. It pits US workers against Chinese workers. It cuts across the only road forward for those who want to oppose imperialist globalisation — the international solidarity of all the workers and oppressed.
[Abridged from an article being circulated among labour activists in the US.]
BY BARRY SHEPPARD