Yeah, increased protectionism and less investment in poorer countries is the best thing we can do for them!

And of course kind-hearted generosity is exactly why the capitalist moves his factory from Mexico to China.

Quite frankly, what the capitalistic ‘libertarians’ of the business class are trying to do is destroy unions in America before unions rise in the third world. This way, they can continue the cycle of exploitation. China is already starting to show signs of the labor unrest we experienced in the 1900’s to 1920’s.

Yeah, increased protectionism and less investment in poorer countries is the best thing we can do for them!

How is building a factory in Indonesia and paying the workers there 3 cents an hour an “investment”?

I think you’re taking this a bit far. There are plenty of real liberals who support generally freer trade than we currently have. See Krugman, Paul and Delong, Brad. Not to mention the entire Clinton economic team. You know, the ones who actually reduced poverty, helped increase median wages, and increased the EITC.

How is building a factory in Indonesia and paying the workers there 3 cents an hour an “investment�?

* investing: the act of investing; laying out money or capital in an enterprise with the expectation of profit

As for the argument against sweatshops in Indonesia? See Sachs, Jeff.

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/about/director/

Funny, I was just reading yesterday about how the Navigation Acts of 1651 took England from being a cruddy little country to an economic powerhouse. Free Trade is nice and all, a nice clean theory, except that life is messy and there are all these annoying examples of economic nationalism working. How inconvenient. I think the days of Free Trade being a nations default economic policy are numbered. In the future there will be a mixed approach.

Not to mention the entire Clinton economic team

you mean the refer to the buggers who went full blitz with the exact global finance & invenstment schemes the neolib/neocons are off and running with?

a shame general glut has gone off, but there’s lots to see and do at http://www.epi.org, http://www.cepr.net, http://www.bilaterals.org…. no point in being daft now, we have the think tanks, and the think thanks have the clever eggs.

lastly, the Korea US FTA talks pick up in seattle next week, a good turn to stand in solidarity with the seoul sisters and bruvs.

tomboy:

Wages for executives rose an average 471%, whereas wages for workers rose an average of 3%. When adjusted for inflation and the preceeding stagnation, that brought workers’ wages back up to where they were in 1979. Then the cycle swung back at the end of the 90s (when most businesses were already wired), and then 4% real inflation came back, and ate that “increase” and more.

To associate the trivial (and ultimately transient) wage gains at the end of the 1990s to “freer trade” and the Clinton economic team is a pretty far reach. One could easily argue that the sudden rush to “get wired” and onto the Internet (itself an entirely new marketplace, let alone market) was the real cause of the slim labor supply (and thus wage increases). The likely contribution of NAFTA and the Uruguay round was providing the wealthiest members of society enough petty cash that they could throw gobs of it at idiotic get-rich-quick dot-bomb ideas in the vain hopes that they would follow Netscape’s stock mania of 1995.

Well, you could always buy your clothes from American Apparel, made in downtown L.A.! (full discloser, yes, I work for them)

Look, setting up trade barriers and strangling trade with poor countries is not an answer. It just won’t work in the modern age, where technology makes borders more porous then ever. As to the question of how paying someone three cents an hour in Indonesia is an investment, first off, it’s more like thirty cents an hour ( I know, still sucks!), which may not appeal to the Notorious P.A.T., but I’m guessing that the Notorious P.A.T.’s other options for work don’t consist of sustinance farming or prostitution. China thirty years ago was a nation that had millions living on the brink of starvation, and globalization has benefited many Chinese workers who otherwise would be facing some of the worst poverty on the planet. So yeah, overseas factories can help overseas workers in the long run, and yeah, paying people in North Carolina to do a manual-labor-type job making non-perishables that can be made for a fraction overseas may not make sense in the end. I would hope, after all, that North Carolina textile workers want more for their kids then life on the sewing team. The key is for government to mitigate the negative effects of globalization. Let’s pass rules limiting trade with countries that don’t allow free trade labor unions (that would include, ehem, China) and that don’t protect workers from sweatshop conditions, instead of blanket protectionism that protects a few outmoded North Carolina factories at the expense of poorer nations. Let’s encourage companies that use innovation to keep jobs in the US (American Apparel does it by practicing “Vertical Integration”, keeping the whole garment process under one roof so that they can change styles more quickly, stay in front of the fashion industry, and charge a premium for their products, which gets passed on to the garment workers who have the highest wages in the industry) and let’s do everything we can to help Americans displaced by the slow shifts of the economy to find new, and hopefully better jobs for themselves through education and training.

The problem with Capitalism isn’t Capitalism, it’s Capitalism unfettered. Conservatives love to talk about the free market, but only the most cynical of them actually want a free market. Somalia has a free market, after all. What we all should want is a growing economy regulated and mitigated, but not strangled, by progressive government that protects workers from exploitation and harassment, while allowing business to still find a way to profit. “Progressives” who pine for the good old days of protectionism remind me of William Buckley’s famous description of Conservatives, namely that the wish to stand athwart the world and yell “Stop!”. The world isn’t going to.

Oh, and all those garment workers at American Apparel? Almost all of them are immigrants. Most native-born Americans just don’t want to sew clothes all day, decent wages or not. Which is just another reason why immigration is a good thing, which is a discussion for another day.

Served cold,

what exactly are
the exact global finance & invenstment schemes the neolib/neocons are off and running with?

What do you mean? Balancing the budget, running a surplus reducing poverty? Did Clinton try to bamboozle everyone out of their Social Security? I seem to remember his guy Gore talking about shoring up social security with a “lock box.”

I’m not trying to be dismissive, I just honestly cannot begin to see any similarities between the economic policies of Bush and Clinton.

and James Cape,

Wow, can you mischaracterize what I wrote a bit more, please?

First, what is “real inflation”? To my knowledge, that is a contradictory term. And when has inflation hit 4%? It may get there this year, but it certainly hasn’t been at 4% since 1999.

Second, I never tried to attribute the economic growth of the 1990s to freer trade. Did I? I just said that I am one of those people who feel that one can believe in capitalism generally, free trade generally, and be a liberal. So do Krugman, Delong, Reich, Rubin, Summers, Sachs…

Third, your interpretation of the economic boom is pretty humorous. Did you know that Agriculture and Forestry grew at almost an 8% rate from 1997-2000? It wasn’t just a rush to “get wired”. Almost every sector of the US economy experienced sustained growth. Just ask people in the non-profit sector how much better their lives were in 1998. Shoot, ask anyone outside the energy sector and they’ll tell you the same.

Fourth, I’m sorry you lost your savings by investing in pets.com. That is unfortunate, but it’s not Clinton’s fault. You sound bitter.

OK, but what is Kaye Grogans’ take, on “world trade,” and “health care”?

God save us as much from paternalist do-gooders as from wanking theorists and crapitalist exploiters.

It’s poop to argue in contrast to China of thirty-years ago, still reeling from the Cultural Revolution. It’s even more poopy to argue that were it not for benevolent crapitalists installing environmentally atrocious sweatshops often with slave labor and with working conditions that would scandalise a 19th Century Welsh coal miner, the victims only other choices would be starvation and prostitution. Gosh, Tom Friedman could not put it better, though he’d find a way to interject some sneer at the social-dem Euros along the way.

The best way to help the third world is medically. Then next is probably with birth control. But beyond that is by helping them with their democratic institutions.

The problem is that globalisation is enacted on these societies without their asking: our elected (or “elected”) technocrat elitists agree with their often unelected technocrat eltists and bring sweatshops to the masses for their own good (when, actually, it is done ONLY for business’ and some governments’ own good). Make their consent legitimate first and then we’ll see how many beg to be given brain-damage by glue fumes in a Nike sweatshop. The new nationalism as seen in Venezuela and Boliva didnt come from thin air nor is it, like wingnuts want to think, merely a manifestation of a few socialist demagogues. It’s a genuine populist movement and it comes directly from the reaction against the model described above.

I’m a little tired of the sneers at subsistence farming. There were plenty of subsistence farmers in Brazil who owned in a de facto way their own land, who did their own thing, and while they were poor by any standard they, like most third worlders before we meddled, were happier in every study than we Westerners who insist that the true way to happiness lies only in our model. But then big agri swept in Brazil. You know them — they are the folks who burned the Amazon forests. They dispossessed the subsistence farmers, but then HIRED them for pennies! Now, the “pulled-from-poverty” subsistence farmers live not in their own corrugated tin shack, but in a company’s, from which they can be evicted when they become old and lame or when they think about union activity! Also, the water that they formerly used communally is now privatised to a transnational — the peasant must pay to drink, bathe! They farm not their own land but a corporation’s! Behold progress! Meanwhile my soybeans are worth less than they were when Richard Nixon was President, food prices go up rather more modestly than oil’s but still go up, and everyone is worse off except the beloved transnational corporations, as always the true beneficiary of globalism.

I’m bored to death… Please someone amuse me.

Yes — all the third-world countries were absolute paradises until the evil white man “crapitalists” came into the picture!

Like you, Retardo, I like my natives poor and impoverished but pure in heart and mind.

Like you, Retardo, I like my natives poor and impoverished but pure in heart and mind.

Actually, troll, you do like them poor and impoverished, but “wealthy” in their new Western outlook. They have to be that way to be the instrument of profit that you want them to be.

Great post and follow-up comment, Retardo.

Lame comments, tebbit. Try to – ya know – actually formulate an argument with facts ‘n stuff.

Or Pastor Swank’s take on “Textile Trade Global” and “Care Health Personal”?

mikey

Actually, troll, you do like them poor and impoverished

I’m not the one who prefers them to be subsistence farmers.

hmmm, well what do you prefer “them” to be, tebbitt? since you haven’t actually said anything substantive yet.

tebbitt: no, you prefer them to be factory cogs with no rights, no real money, no recourse to justice — cogs that can be replaced when the machine wears them out in a few, short pitiful years.

And I do believe Kaye Grogan called it “‘health’…care!!!”, Roger you troll ;-P

Not poor and impoverished.

that was to kathleen.

teh l4m4:

I want them to crushed with no mercy so that the neo-liberal project can continue unimpeded.

I’m not the one who prefers them to be subsistence farmers

Call me silly and old-fashioned, but I’d prefer the workers own the means of production.

At the least, I want workers to have more say in the conditions of their employment than ‘work or die.’

*YOU* don’t want them to be subsistence farmers. However, if you look at actual statistics you’ll see that in all the countries that have accepted the neoliberal sweatshop model, the peasants had to be *FORCIBLY* removed from their land by *state interventionism* because the possibility of subsistence farming was more attractive to them than wage slavery.

I’d love to respond Retardo, but I wish you’d actually read what I had wrote, instead of just “feeling” it.
For a good example of your cursory read, let’s start with the first and easiest pitch. I made it clear in my original post that a progressive government would use tariffs as a tool to punish nations that did not allow for free trade unions and protect workers against sweatshop conditions. Throwing around the word sweatshop doesn’t change what I wrote. There are many sweatshop factories that produce goods for the American market, and there are also many factories that would not be considered sweatshops by even the most stringent union-supported American standards. It’s those we should encourage. It is perfectly reasonable to say that if a company is going to do business with the United States, it must meet American labor practices, where ever it’s factory is. In fact, I support a hard certification program and real enforcement of tariff rules concerning labor conditions, rules that are frequently included in trade deals but freqeuntly overlooked. The Clinton Administration made some strides towards improving this enforcement, but they didn’t go far enough. Of couse, in the last six years such rules have fallen by the wayside both in creation and application. What it gets down to Retardo is that a factory need not be a sweatshop just because it is outside the American borders. We need to do more to see that that is the case. This isn’t protectionism, it’s good governance.

Yes, China has benefitted from its wholesale economic growth, and that benefit has reached every level of Chinese society. Chinese poverty was not created by the Cultural Revolution. Undeveloped countries that rely on sustinance farming are always at risk to the slightest upheavel, be it political revolution in China or floods in Bangladesh or drought in Africa. Your romantic views of sustinance farming aside, it simply isn’t a good way to survive for long. We’re not talking about small family farms vs. corporate agriculture here; we’re talking about people with no resources at all but what they can scrape by hand from the earth in the most primitive manner. Your unsupported claims about that mostly unmeasurable state known as “happiness” aside, the hard statistics tell the story. The poorest of the poor, living off the land, are incredibly vulnerable.

You mention population control, and you are right, it is necessary to encourage smaller families in the developing world. But the population as it stands now has grown so dramatically in the last 100 years that basic agriculture can’t provide jobs for everyone; there is no way on this planet for there to be six billion farmers, Retardo. Instead, a good policy would be to, as the Peace Corps does so well, teach small farmers ways to increase their productivity and rise out of the most brutal poverty so many live in. There is also a good argument that we should by a lot more semi-perishables from developing countries; the idea that we heavily subsidize farmers in America to grow wheat that we could easily buy from developing countries such as Africa shows just how protectionism can hurt real farmers around the world while enriching American corporate profits.

There is no reason why the wealth of the developed world should be locked up in the developed world, Retardo. We are moving towards a world where borders mean less. Folks like you sometimes like to talk about this word, globalization, like it’s something controlled by some person or organization. The way you talk about globalization being “enacted” is telling. Globalization is a word that describes something that is happening way beyond the scale of even the World Bank’s often shortsided policies. Yeah, the world has shrunk. The idea of, fifty years ago, a designer in New York designing clothes that would be sewn in Singapore would have been silly because of the logistics envolved. That is no longer the case. Technology drives change, and technology makes the further integration of economies inevitable. The question is how we respond. I’m suggesting that we respond by using the power of government to control and mitigate the bad effects of this integration. We should wield Democratic power to support the rights of workers, to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor, to offset the disorientation that happens when an economy switches from rural to industrial to post-industrial. I want our government to do more to ease the pains of globalization.

You, on the other hand, want to cry about it. It’s damn close to the luxury of self-pity, my friend.

There are millions of people out there who are trying to be responsible consumers, responsible employers, responsible citizens, not just of North Carolina or America, but of the world. The decisions we have to make are not easy, they are a complex mix of dilemmas dealing with labor, money, the environment, and politics. Like Pat Buchanan, you claim that there is an easy answer to these hard issues, which is to seal the border, curl up in a ball, and try to keep our economy going through, well, I don’t quite know. But your response is not progressive, it’s not liberal, it’s a cold, hard, reactionary, nationalist response. But then again, a man who believes that a sustinence farmer is “happier “then a middle-class American would be, I would guess, someone who has spent very little time in the developing world. As a young man, I spent two years amongst that kind of poverty, witnessing it first hand. Yes, you can be poor and be happy, of course. As long as the rains come, and not more then half of your kids die, and you aren’t completely broken and worn-out by your mid-thirties, and you don’t require any medical care. If you think this life is heaven, I’d hate to know your version of hell. Stop making the perfect the enemy of the good Retardo, and start looking for practical fixes.

tebbitt said,

Not poor and impoverished.

and I bet your strategy for the Iraq War is “To Win”.

Wow, I never would have predicted someone with a paternalist attitude toward the third world would also be a condescending asshelmet in argument.

I made it clear in my original post that a progressive government would use tariffs as a tool to punish nations that did not allow for free trade unions and protect workers against sweatshop conditions. Throwing around the word sweatshop doesn’t change what I wrote. There are many sweatshop factories that produce goods for the American market, and there are also many factories that would not be considered sweatshops by even the most stringent union-supported American standards. It’s those we should encourage. It is perfectly reasonable to say that if a company is going to do business with the United States, it must meet American labor practices, where ever it’s factory is.

And environmental standards. These criterion constitute the backbone of Fair Trade. So far so good, but then it goes downhill from there. Fine, you’re not a neolib on the same level as Mallaby and Friedman, but you share many of their false assumptions.

Yes, China has benefitted from its wholesale economic growth, and that benefit has reached every level of Chinese society.

Really? That’s maybe why I read about the dehumanization of the city underclass and most of the rural classes concomitant to your precious free trade. Also, it’s worked wonders for the liberlaization of their society hasnt it? I mean, anyone can go protest in Tiannanmen Square now! My, look at what “wealth” and McDonalds and pirated DVDs have done for Chinese freedoms! Actually, why “libertarians” really like China is precisely because it is only free economically, not socially. Because dollars trumps humanityy to such people, they like China because its dollars and labor are free, but its people are not. This is bald enough to disgust anyone decent so for backup the “Libertarians” lean on neoliberals, who for some reason still have humanist credentials. And for their part the useful idiot neolibs are glad to enable the totalitarianism-with-a-consumer’s-face for them, profits for us scheme because they’ve convinced themselves that depravity is, counterintuitively, humane policy.

Your romantic views of sustinance farming aside, it simply isn’t a good way to survive for long. We’re not talking about small family farms vs. corporate agriculture here; we’re talking about people with no resources at all but what they can scrape by hand from the earth in the most primitive manner.

Love that “romantic” sneer — very clever. If I had my way neoliberal cultural bigots would be beat on the head with a quality anthroplogy text until some sort of empathy — well, never mind that, some sort of objectivity — takes root. These arent people digging grubs out of the ground and walking to famine stations with distended bellies, barely able to swat the flies from their eyes, but its nice to evoke that sort of despair, I suppose, to argue for the humane and benevolent sweatshop. I know what I described happened in Brazil, and I take leave to doubt that it didnt happen elsewhere. While it’s true that the Brazilian or Chinese or Indian farmer is unlike, in mode quantity and means of production some Swedish-American family farmers in Iowa, to imply that the Juan Valdez of the pampas was formerly only on the cusp of survival (no different than, say, the teeming slumdwellers of Sao Paolo — or Shanghai for that matter) until globalization in the form of factory farming saved him is to be extremely disingenuous.

But the population as it stands now has grown so dramatically in the last 100 years that basic agriculture can’t provide jobs for everyone

Some good things are responsible for this explosion (and no matter what Brad DeLong says, these good things are not fucking inherent to “economic growth”), but some bad things are responsible for it, too. Care to take a stab where the bad things came from? Oh, I forgot! “Inevitability”! But I am getting ahead of myself.

Instead, a good policy would be to, as the Peace Corps does so well, teach small farmers ways to increase their productivity and rise out of the most brutal poverty so many live in. There is also a good argument that we should by a lot more semi-perishables from developing countries; the idea that we heavily subsidize farmers in America to grow wheat that we could easily buy from developing countries such as Africa shows just how protectionism can hurt real farmers around the world while enriching American corporate profits.

Yes, there was a good argument, but no longer. Here you are just ignorant. If you truly think that buying grain from the Third World is putting the profit into the farmer’s — rather than Cargill’s or ADM’s — hands, you have my sympathy. Now if we had bought such grain back when the “subsistence” farmers actually own the land they tilled, it would have done some good. Whereas now the transnationals have cornered both markets, taking subsidies here (ADM is without parallel) and profits there. And how, I wonder did the transnationals get the power to get in this position? Oh, could it be that they are partially enabled by “liberals” who gleefully point to the “inevitability” that borders (and, implicitly, the power of the democratic nation-state OVER business) are obsolete?

There is no reason why the wealth of the developed world should be locked up in the developed world, Retardo.

This is just stupid: even Brad DeLong has explicitly admitted that the 90s policies of free capital movement has only had the effect of enriching third world ELITES, who have taken the money they’ve made from the precious free trade and sent it back here to be locked up. But then policies enacted by technocrat elitists were bound to be for the mutual benefit of other technocrat elitists.

Folks like you sometimes like to talk about this word, globalization, like it’s something controlled by some person or organization. The way you talk about globalization being “enacted� is telling. Globalization is a word that describes something that is happening way beyond the scale of even the World Bank’s often shortsided policies. Yeah, the world has shrunk.

It is an organic phenomenon but the structures by which it is enabled consist of policies and people — which means that it’s not inevitable at all, but can be controlled and resisted, morally and materially. I must say that I deeply resent this “inevitability” attitude — it’s the same sort of fake sigh that can be heard from wingnuts when discussing the human costs of Globalization 1.0, by which I mean the conquest of the New World and the genocide that made it possible (and profitable, I must add).

There are millions of people out there who are trying to be responsible consumers, responsible employers, responsible citizens, not just of North Carolina or America, but of the world. The decisions we have to make are not easy, they are a complex mix of dilemmas dealing with labor, money, the environment, and politics.

This is true; pity it belies the balance of your post.

Like Pat Buchanan, you claim that there is an easy answer to these hard issues, which is to seal the border, curl up in a ball, and try to keep our economy going through, well, I don’t quite know. But your response is not progressive, it’s not liberal, it’s a cold, hard, reactionary, nationalist response.

For a minute there I thought I was going too hard on you; reaching this point disabuses me of that contrition. I’m not Pat fucking Buchanan and I’m not a xenophobe. OTOH, not all nationalism is reactionary,and there is a point at which helping people becomes a zero sum game (this is beside the point that the neoliberal version of helping people is having them work for 10 cents an hour in subhuman conditions instilling in them the hope that one day, if they suffer enough and are “lucky”, they too will eat at McDonald’s and buy a gas-guzzler and shop at Wal-Mart). It’s one thing to ask that American factory workers become janitors and burger-flippers to help another poor soul in the Third World. But it’s another thing to ask that knowing that that poor soul isnt being helped much if at all, and the difference in labor cost doesnt really go to the consumer as much as to the CEO and the shareholder. Talk about illiberal!

As a young man, I spent two years amongst that kind of poverty, witnessing it first hand. Yes, you can be poor and be happy, of course. As long as the rains come, and not more then half of your kids die, and you aren’t completely broken and worn-out by your mid-thirties, and you don’t require any medical care. If you think this life is heaven, I’d hate to know your version of hell. Stop making the perfect the enemy of the good Retardo, and start looking for practical fixes.

As opposed to the healthy and robust sweatshop workers, those with carpal tunnel and brain damage in Vietnam, the prison workers in China with the 9mm at their head, those in south america living and working in raw sewage, paying for tainted water. Yes, dear god, what an improvement to the peasant with his donkey cart and sickle, who at least had free water even if it was often tainted.

Well put Spencer. Although I’d quibble that Africa isn’t really a country.

What people in the first world need to fight for first and foremost are worker rights in the third world. Jeff Sachs (sorry to mention him again, but he is the expert)writes about this in his book, The End to Poverty. The right to organize is good, but more important is workplace safety. I really don’t care how much some seamstress makes in China – as long as the factory is clean and safe. Environmental regulations in the text of trade agreements need to be much stronger too, for the safety of the workers and the local population.

I’m not going to sneer, but believe it or not Retardo, those people in Guangzhou left subsistence farming – for a better life in a factory. Working in a factory is a way out for many people. Moving to a city offers educational opportunities and the prestige of a job that pays a wage; it’s not some fairy tale that those who return to their villages after sending home monthly remittences are greated like local celebrities.

Sounds crazy, but my great-grandparents did the same. Maybe they were sick of eating potatos in Ireland, but the money they sent home went a long way; my grandmother paid for 6 siblings to come to America during the depression.

I’ll let those people who leave the farm for what they consider a better life do the sneering.

Ok, I have no intellectual standing in this argument. I don’t know enough to know what’s right. I read both arguments and they both have me nodding in agreement. Maybe it’s a case where there is no right? I dunno, but I can address one part of this. I’ve seen first hand what happens when the first world shows up at a third world “subsistance farm”. And yeah, you could see that generations had worked the land and didn’t have much to complain about. Except in some cases discrimination from the government. But also, no real education or health care. I won’t say they were unhappy, but they also couldn’t change anything. It was 1970, and they had a stone-age existence. But they weren’t hungry and they did know how to make clean water, rice, vegetables and meat. They had chickens and some goats and a fairly wealthy family had a water buff. Which, by the way, if we wanted to make sure they could not produce enough food, put a burst into the water buff. He was the family tractor, and without him they couldn’t feed the extended family. But I also saw that as soon as the trappings of civilization were available, TV and music and travel and beads and a new ao dai? They were no longer interested in farming. That’s when they realized that what stood between them and what they saw that they wanted wasn’t food and water and beer, but hard currency. THATS when you got the prostitution and the stealing, but also the entrepreneurship that helped some of these kids get out of the villiage. So I dunno who’s right, but I do know this. There’s no going back – the third world knows we’re here, and they’d very much like to have our vaunted “standard of living”, which means nothing more than the very basic desire of humans for more, cooler shit….

mikey

One more thing to lay at the feet of the supposedly forward-thinking neolibs:

In their haste to Americanize China and India they somehow forgot just what kinds of scales they were messing with.

It’s true that there is an emerging middle class in these countries. It’s also perfectly true that such a fact doesnt make up for the upheaval and suffering of other classes in these countries. But the point is that neolibs somehow forgot the one fact everyone knows about India and China: that they are the most populated nations on earth, and so the scale being messed with in changing a portion of their people into American style consumers is very scary indeed.

Oh wise neolibs, since you know that America is the most wasteful and environmentally dangerous country on earth, especially in proportional regard to its population, why the fuck didnt you think for a minute before deciding that the Chinese and Indians should adopt the American model of consumerism? Did you expressely *desire* environmental holocaust and the spectre of resource wars, or was that one of the unintended consequences of your innate ethno-centrism which so joyously wears the mask of humanitarian concern?

OTOH, not all nationalism is reactionary,and there is a point at which helping people becomes a zero sum game

Really? I don’t believe that at all.

Don’t forget how many American farms, families, and lives have already been ruined by Cargill, Monsanto, and ADM. We’re just finding out how much we’ve given up, right here in The Best Country Evah, how much of our joint patrimony we’ve destroyed by allowing the mega-corporations to turn huge swathes of the red states into monocrop agri-factories under the rubric of the “inevitable” market forces of unrestricted growth and consolidation. Farming’s a tough life, but having your farm taken away from you by laws designed to reward multinationals for buying off lawmakers, and then being poisoned by the ever-increasing chemical loads required to keep the monocrops viable & “profitable”, almost redefines the concept of adding insult to injury.

Perhaps the best argument against the half-bright, I’ve-got-mine-Jack-bugger-you-all Sebastian Mallabys is the cancer analogy. Any organism must be able to absorb resources, to grow, to allocate and re-allocate materials to survive and thrive. But unconstrained growth for its own sake — growth for the sake of growth — growth that absorbs all available resources, choking off competition just to keep expanding — that’s what a tumor does, and that’s how cancer kills. And choosing to remove that tumor, even though such removal greatly stresses the host organism, is sometimes the only way to save a life. Nobody decides to undergo surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation lightly, but sometimes the alternatives are even worse.

Oh wise neolibs, since you know that America is the most wasteful and environmentally dangerous country on earth, especially in proportional regard to its population, why the fuck didnt you think for a minute before deciding that the Chinese and Indians should adopt the American model of consumerism? Did you expressely *desire* environmental holocaust and the spectre of resource wars, or was that one of the unintended consequences of your innate ethno-centrism which so joyously wears the mask of humanitarian concern?

So the poorer they stay, the better for you. How nice. Just keep subsistence farming, third world. That way we won’t have to change shit about how we live and how wasteful we are.

Who is ethnocentric?

RETARDO

Maybe the reality is that China and India modernizing will force us to think a wee bit harder about how we consume? This is happening already, if slowly since gas prices have risen. If America and the rest of the first world were to change what it meant to be a first world consumer – by buying hybrid cars, building energy efficient building, etc – then the Chinese and Indians will chase that new first world.

Keeping the third world as subsistence farmers, with the requisite famines, etc – your way – is just cruel. But I guess as long as they don’t have flies landing on their eyes everything is cool.

It’s so easy to throw bombs from your internet bunker man, but like all ideologues, your hyperbole is more important to you then the facts. In every negative case you mentioned, I’m suggesting courses of action to try and correct the problem, while you’re sitting in the corner mumbling “fuck ’em all” to yourself. It’s really the difference between someone who wants to do something about these issues, and someone who wants to stroke their ego with the heady intoxication of self-righteousness. I can’t really respond to many of the cases you cite here, because they are imprecise and unsubstantiated (do you really believe that if we bought more grain from Africa, this would fail to benefit any Africans at all?) but I will say that you are appointing to me opinions that I don’t have. If I was a laissez-faire believer in “inevitability” then I wouldn’t be arguing in favor of a deep moral democratic commitment to using government power and oversight to improve the rights and conditions of workers around the world. That’s what I believe. Yeah, I’m not going to condemn all trade as a bad thing, and no, not every dollar made in trade goes into the pocket of American corporations or third-world despots, even if far too much of it does right now. So, these things are complex and beg for nuanced responses that address the problems of each individual case, not Manichean rhetoric that lumps in the dross with the ore. If you want a good recent breakdown, for example, of what goes on in a typical Chinese textile factory making goods for American consumption, you might want to start with this article here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/03/business/produce.php

The truth is that a lot of people benefit from such production, including the workers on the sewing floor. Should they be able to organize and ask for better wages and benefits? Yes. Are there nine millimeters being held to their heads?

Don’t be such a drama queen.

Really bad economic exploitation happens, and Americans should do everything they can to stop it, both here and abroad. I spend my day every day working for one company that is trying to do that. But the response to these bad things that are happening should not be the kind of over-reaction you are suggesting. In tone, you sound much like the folks who freaked out after 9/11 and decided we now had to put every Muslim on the planet in our crosshairs. I’ll say to you the same thing to you I would say to them. First, calm the fuck down. Second, gather your facts. Then act accordingly. If we had done so in that regard, we wouldn’t be stuck in this atrocious war. If on the other hand you were President, we would be putting up trade barriers to protect a handful of Americans at the expense of a much larger and needier population outside our borders, damn the negative effects on developing economies and our own as well. I’ve read what Pat Buchanan has to say about free trade, and I will say that you have said nothing here that separates what you believe from what he also espouses. That may be uncomfortable for you to accept, but when a fact makes me uncomfortable, it also makes me question what I believe, and wonder how these new facts fit in. Until you are ready to show a little bit of an open mind on this issue, as long as you keep drudging up the most extreme examples to argue the most extreme position on what is a complex and difficult subject, you shouldn’t be surprised to be lumped in with other extremists, no matter what “side” they may be on. Throwing bombs is easy, indeed. It’s trying to actually make the world a somewhat better place that’s a bitch and a half.

P.S. The only good nationalism is that which involves sporting events.
P.P.S. Helping people is never, ever a zero-sum game.
P.P.P.S. In addition to Mcdonalds, Wal-Mart, and gas guzzlers, the modern economy also produces wine, antibiotics, and really good pornography. But I guess seeing the complex benefits of modern life would take away from your romantic vision of life as a yeoman farmer.
P.P.P.P.S. You’ve never been on a farm, have you?

So the poorer they stay, the better for you. How nice. Just keep subsistence farming, third world. That way we won’t have to change shit about how we live and how wasteful we are.

That’s a non sequitur. I deeply resent, and battle against, the American consumption model as best I can. I know it’s an awful and unsustainable model, which is exactly why I don’t want to forcibly export it on another society. The earth has trouble enough dealing with the environmental havoc we wreak on it; ergo the real earth-hating thing to do is have more people take up that model. This is what anti-globalists are talking about when they mention “monoculture” and “cultural imperialism”. It’s the forcible exportation of western means of production *and* consumption which is fueled only implicitly by the barrel of a gun but explicitly by treaties (neolibs, pointedly, think the UN which has something to do with supernational concern human rights needs reformed — i.e. neutered — but think that the WTO and IMF, supernational entities which nullify the soveriegnty of nations in the name of international capital, need strengthened: a clue to what their real priorities are) and by cultural browbeating.

Annie Laurie is onto something with the cancer analogy. The benevolent humanist neolibs seek to turn everyone into Americans because they are convinced that cancer is actually healthy tissue. As such the neolibs are the vectors not only of suffering in the name of growth and progress, but also agents of the world’s demise. Broadly speaking, in biology heterogenity is the bulwark against disaster: mutations and variety ensure against disaster and extinction. I see no reason why the same principle doesnt hold true for societies and political-economies. Sameness will kill, especially when we know that the model chosen for enforced sameness is dangerous in its own right. Yet they blather on and on, like the neoconservatives who want to remake Iraq into a Republican kleptocracy (while calling it democracy), neolibs want to remake the world in the worst of America’s image and, while doing so, say that it’s for the largely unconsulted victims’ own good.

P.P.P.P.S. You’ve never been on a farm, have you?

I work and live on a farm, and forgotten more about farming than you’ll ever know, thanks.

Retardo,

I certainly don’t want to turn anywhere else into America, nor could America be replicated anywhere else. But keep going with the strawman, if it helps you.

I work and live on a farm, and forgotten more about farming than you’ll ever know, thanks.

Have you ever been to China, Indonesia, India, or sub-saharan Africa? Because I have, and not just in a Tom Friedman way. A couple places I went as a student, a few more as a pretty adventurous tourist, and a few on business. One thing I would say is that the factory workers – at least in China where my friend was doing research on Guangzhou – don’t quite resemble your Marxist nightmare. Sure, some factories are horrible, and people quit those jobs and go to work in the ones with better working conditions and higher pay.

And earlier, you noted that people cannot demonstrate today in Tienammen Square. True enough. But daily work and environmental demonstantions now number in the hundreds. That wasn’t the case 15 years ago, and the average Chinese citizen is much better off today. Some might see increased demonstations as bad. I think it is pretty obvious that it is a good sign.

By the way, the Purchasing Power Parity for each chinese Citizen is like $6000 – that’s is the US equivalent how much stuff each person can buy, on average. And by far, the wealthiest city as far as wages is Guangzhou – it passed Beijing and shanghai in 2001 – because of the factories.

And the cancer analogy? I’m not sure I understand it, other than it is suggesting that growth is bad. I certainly don’t think that growth at any cost is what any of the people commentingon this website is advocating. I’m pretty sure that all us people who think that free trade is generally better than protectionism are still advocating increased environmental controls, greater worker rights, and safe working conditions. My point is that if we can attain those preconditions, and I think that it is possible, I’d be more than willing to sacrifice some American jobs temporarily so that other countries could attain higher living standards.

But hey, I don’t think the world is a zero sum game.

Maybe the reality is that China and India modernizing will force us to think a wee bit harder about how we consume? This is happening already, if slowly since gas prices have risen. If America and the rest of the first world were to change what it meant to be a first world consumer – by buying hybrid cars, building energy efficient building, etc – then the Chinese and Indians will chase that new first world.

Talk about heightening the contradictions! So you’re saying that the only way to get America out of its filthy habits was to force its filthy habits on others?

Actually, an exercise of democratic power over corporate power (which is what even such a laissez-faire man as Jefferson always intended) would have gotten us well on the way out of our problems before now, had it only been allowed to happen. But no, that wouldn’t have been fun, nor would it have made the right sort of people money.

Talk about heightening the contradictions! So you’re saying that the only way to get America out of its filthy habits was to force its filthy habits on others?

What filthy habits am I “forcing on others?” But I thought all factory workers were underfed waifs who couldn’t consume because they are held down by some capitalist pig? Apparently now they are becoming like rich americans. Oh the contradictions in your argument continue.

They are adopting more of our lifestyle, whether you like it or not. People in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Mumbai, Bhupal, Banglore…… they are choosing to work in factories. I couldn’t make them if I tried. And they are doing so because they want cell phones, autos, tvs, and for their kids to have more opportunities and a better life than they did. They just don’t have your vision of what the good life is. I’m not making a value judgement about that, it is reality.

I really think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I’m saying. Besides you failed to answer the point. You want the third world to stay where it is because you don’t want them to consume your precious oil, copper, aluminum, etc. I want the average third world person to have a shot at an education, and the opportunity to be better off than their parents. Just like I want for my kids. Because I don’t feel the world is a zero sum game.

And yes, Americans will need to radically shift our lifestyles in the near future. That is I hope a generally good thing. The sooner the better. And people will experience pain – unemployment, poverty, and other awful things as a result. It is inevitable. But keeping the third world in its condition of 15 years ago will not change that reality. It will only delay the inevitable.

My point is that if we can attain those preconditions, and I think that it is possible, I’d be more than willing to sacrifice some American jobs temporarily so that other countries could attain higher living standards.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Outsourcing will absolutely stall if envirnmental and labor conditions are put worldwide to US standards. The entire basis of the model and the “success” of the model is that that corps can treat people and the environment like garbage elsewhere! That’s what makes it cheaper and therefore, more profitable. I say Free Trade should be put into abeyance until such conditions can be met. Neolibs argue that someday, some magical day when corps no longer control US trade policy (haha), these conditions will be met, but until then we should just keep chugging (meanwhile nothing is done: object of the exercise). Such arguments are carrots on sticks designed to fool well-meaning people into buying the scheme. The carrot — those conditions — will in actuality never be had because its purpose, I believe, is that literally that of a lure, not a reward or a noble correction. I simply dont believe Fair Trade arguments when they come from people of neoliberal disposition — I’ve seen you guys in action, after all. I’m simply calling your bluff. Fine, Fair Trade uber alles! Let’s see you do it.

There’s a lot of irony here I admit. The main vice of the neolibs is forcibly exporting America but at the same time their policies thus far intentionally omit from exportation the good parts of America. And in point of fact, neolibs are almost as bad as wingnuts when it comes to whittling away what little bit of a social safety net that does exist in America — another reason why I view them with cynicism and contempt.

I certainly don’t want to turn anywhere else into America, nor could America be replicated anywhere else. But keep going with the strawman, if it helps you.

How is it a strawman? Have not the Chinese middle class gone on shopping binges for impractical cars, KFC, Nikes, plastic surgery, overpriced real estate? WTF are such tastes if not American, and inculcated by Americans? Such habits are awful enough on scale when practiced by, what, 300 million Americans. What did you expect to happen if when it’s practiced by a sizable portion of a country of 2 billion people?

They are adopting more of our lifestyle, whether you like it or not. People in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Mumbai, Bhupal, Banglore…… they are choosing to work in factories. I couldn’t make them if I tried. And they are doing so because they want cell phones, autos, tvs, and for their kids to have more opportunities and a better life than they did.

This would be fine if we were dealing with a level playing field, but we’re not. And until we are, we are going to see more loss and no gain. Because the factories in Guangzhou and Mumbai are not paying enough for any of these aspirations. No cell phones or tvs are being purchased by these sweatshop workers. They are doing better than they were, but now instead of sick and hungry, they are sick and tired. woohoo. Aren’t our American corporations benevolent?
You’re right, tomboy, we do have to shift our lifestyles in favor of a more global economy, but we also have to stop treating the rest of the world as slave labor.
I can only assume that your rose-colored glasses don’t allow you to see that the corporations in need of saving a buck and doing their humanitarian bit by raising the standard of living in New Delhi are forcing Americans into the “lifestyle” that you so blithely assert is being vastly improved in most of Asia.

I edited the above because i posted too soon.

As for contradictions, I already noted that yes there is a Chinese middle class that has money. I also noted that such a fact does not negate the suffering of other affected classes.

You want the third world to stay where it is because you don’t want them to consume your precious oil, copper, aluminum, etc.

No, I do not. You, on the other hand, wish for them to adopt our model which wastes said oil, copper, aluminum, etc.

I want them to use it as best they can. Venezuela’s doing this with oil, spending almost all the profits, which they know will not last, on education and healthcare. Yet they determinedly keep their own identity and in many ways are as culturally protective as the French wrt American encroachment. Of course there are exceptions.

I want the average third world person to have a shot at an education, and the opportunity to be better off than their parents.

Jesus christ, your fucking (American) version of “better off” is not universal! It is not a *fact* but an opinion. This is what i mean by ethnocentrism. Now there are some universal “better offs”, and they pertain to medical care. That kinda shit should be provided, for free I’d say, to whoever wants it in the world. But such is not the same as the “better off” idea of the average American neoliberal, who means that he wants the good Chinese peasant to be a consumption machine, living in the suburb equivalent to the Chinese equivalent of Dallas or Seattle, driving a sport-utility vehicle and sending the kiddieos to a good private school away from the darkies, all the while enjoying Ruper Murdoch’s tv programming: IOW, the bourgeois American dream.

Again, the neolibs forget the inconvenient fact that it was *state interventionism* that drove the peasants towards the city and into the wage slavery of the factories.

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/03/corporate-welfare-for-third-world.html

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/11/vulgar-libertarianism-watch-part-xiii.html

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/01/so-called-green-revolution.html

Outsourcing will absolutely stall if envirnmental and labor conditions are put worldwide to US standards.

You are soo funny!!! Outsourcing will be profitable regardless of standardized environmental regulations and working conditions. Because wages are so much lower. If you think every factory outside america is the Marxist comic book version you discribed, then you are naive. Some companies know that unsafe = inefficient. Some don’t.

Let me be clear that I’m not stupid enough to think that all or even most factories live up to these standards. But fighting for them is EXACTLY what Spencer and I have been suggesting – ignoring the reality of trade is pointless; shaping it is essential. Like I said, I don’t care if people make 35 cents an hour. I really don’t care if they work 12 hour days. Not something I would want for myself, but I have worked 100 hour weeks before. As long as their working conditions are safe and environmentally sound, and they have freedom to choose whether to work in a particular place? God bless.

For example, Toyota just built a factory in Tijuana, where I used to work (not at the factory, but in TJ). They can pay lower wages, but have to keep a clean and environmentally safe factory. The factory has a union. FUCKING TERRIFFIC. Fuck ross perot and his sucking sound. Mexicans need to feed thier kids too.

Neolibs argue that someday, some magical day when corps no longer control US trade policy (haha), these conditions will be met, but until then we should just keep chugging (meanwhile nothing is done: object of the exercise).

That is certainly not what I’m saying, nor Krugman, nor Sachs, nor most of the Clinton team. What generally happens is a country with whom we are negotiating will object to a particular environmental standard – usually because it is so far above what they hold already. That is a hard situation. But honestly, China is really begining to catch flack on this – FROM THIER OWN FACTORY WORKERS. Just google china environmental protests. You’ll see. Though I’m not sure if I’m what you call a “neolib”, I’d agree that these protests didn’t exist 10 years ago and they will force changes internally in China in the next 5-10 years. That is another benefit of globalization.

And in point of fact, neolibs are almost as bad as wingnuts when it comes to whittling away what little bit of a social safety net that does exist in America — another reason why I view them with cynicism and contempt STRAWMAN!!! You are good at these.

How is that? Have I advocated for the destruction of Social Security or medicare, medicaid, school lunches? Has Paul Krugman? That Paul Krugman, what an asshole. Always whittling away at the social safety net.

Have not the Chinese middle class gone on shopping binges for impractical cars, KFC, Nikes, plastic surgery, overpriced real estate?

Certainly, they have, which is their choice. These of course, are freedoms they have today that their parents never had. Unfortunate that you feel such things are just fine for yourself – or have you never owned a pair of nice shoes, never gone on a shopping spree – but not for someone because she was born in another country.

Your argument is a strawman because you ascribe an amount of control to me. The Chinese woman left the farm. She worked somplace where she made more money. She bought a cell phone and some Manohlo knock-offs. Who cares?

Also, nobody in China’s middle class is buying anything close to the size of a honda civic. So as far as oversized cars go, we americans are pretty much alone.

But the future? Worldwide culture is set by Americans and a few other first world nations. If all future Hollywood movies show people driving in small cars and living in energy efficient buildings then that is what third world people will aspire to. If americans live more like Europeans, then the Chinese and Indians will aspire to that lifestyle. If we don’t? I don’t think it is fair for Americans to continue living as we do and to tell the rest of the world to stop modernizing. Which seems to be your position.

Because I don’t feel the world is a zero sum game.

…. And people will experience pain – unemployment, poverty, and other awful things as a result. It is inevitable. But keeping the third world in its condition of 15 years ago will not change that reality. It will only delay the inevitable.

Talk about contradictions! It’s not zero sum, yet Americans will suffer — take from one, give to the other. Except, of course, that what you take from the former is perverted and degraded before it’s given to the other.

Anyway, I didn’t mean zero sum in the strictly economic sense — I know that capitlaism makes money.

Still, it’s interesting that you say, finally, that yes it is “inevitable” and gloriously so, neatly skewering your comrade Spencer’s arguments to the contrary that there were no notions of inevitability and resignation among your lot. But it’s okay: I know what neolibs really believe.

BTW, Spencer plainly relished compraing me to Pat Buchanan. Well, ok, are Buchanan’s conclusions are the war are wrong? He’s against the Iraq operation, does that mean the argument against the War in Iraq is tainted? According to Spencer’s calculus, it is. So let me use this calculus against your side. You’re relishing the prospect of people experiencing awful things – unemployment, poverty — for the sake of progress. I rather liked this argument for misery better when nutjob batshit Libertarians like Virginia Postrel euphemise crapitalist-caused misery as “dynamism”; her excuses for “progress” sound remarkably like your own. Still want to play this game?

Actually, Pat Buchanan is right about a few things but for the wrong reasons. He’s a racist and xenophobe, which is why he wants to shut down the border and be protectionist. I wouldnt shut down the border, and I wouldnt willingly do any corporate criminal any favors, but then, as Seeing The Forest asks, “Who is our economy for?” Answer that question and you’ll know why zero sum games should always be decided in favor of one’s own citizenry provided that doing other does not increase misery elsewhere to the point that a nation with a conscience can tolerate it. As I’m certain that Free Trade doesn’t alleviate suffering in the Third World but rather causes more of it, this decision is easy (and made easier by the fact that a bigger corporate whore than a neoliberal cannot be found on earth).

Certainly, they have, which is their choice. These of course, are freedoms they have today that their parents never had. Unfortunate that you feel such things are just fine for yourself – or have you never owned a pair of nice shoes, never gone on a shopping spree – but not for someone because she was born in another country.

Your argument is a strawman because you ascribe an amount of control to me. The Chinese woman left the farm. She worked somplace where she made more money. She bought a cell phone and some Manohlo knock-offs. Who cares?

Are you the stupidest man on earth? You actually had the opportunity to travel, and yet you still cannot see beyond your own culture’s nose!

Of course the Westernized Chinese did not “choose” to by a new face or Lincoln Towncar or Chicken Bucket or whatever on his own, in any sort of sense of free will, he “chose” to buy such things because our cultural hegemony forced him to become like US, and so value what we value, which is, largely, crap.

Of course I have shopped — does that make me a hypocrite? Sadly, No! I am of this culture, and while I rebel against it as much as I can, it’s nearly impossible to strip oneself completely of the culture one grew up in while still continuing to live within the unchanged said culture.

In many ways the Chinese are culturally conservative and it will serve them and the world well, but it’s not enough in the face of the ways their authoritarian goverment, in partnership with our corporate criminals, has chosen American culture as the get rich quick model for its people to emulate. And so it has. The Chinese is no longer Chinese. He is actually Chinese-American. As Globalism has its way with the world, if it is not resisted, there will indeed eventually be no Other left out there. Only variations of Americans. Though pointedly and blessedly for the capitalists, no Bill of Rights or EPA or Department of Labor to go with it.

Thus the Historical Inevitability of the Monocultural Revolution, eh comrade?

BlackBloc,

Your blog profile is hilarious. You know Marx never anticipated the fact that two classes could be beneficial to each other, as the American 20th century showed (the middle class made the wealthy richer and vice versa.)

I think we can generally agree that government intervention into the economy is very necessary, but I could never agree with the zero sum game mentality. To me, that is incredibly sad to hear another human being say that. Usually is is just conservatives who espouse such viewpoints.

Anyway, have a good night guys. I’m sort of sorry to see that there is such an active socialist movement on blogs I have previously enjoyed. People who view Paul Krugman as a right wing economist. Wow, you folks are in a class by yourselves.

How is that? Have I advocated for the destruction of Social Security or medicare, medicaid, school lunches? Has Paul Krugman? That Paul Krugman, what an asshole. Always whittling away at the social safety net.

Two words: Welfare Reform. I dont remember if Kurgman has ever defended it, but the Clintonoid neolibs sure enacted it.

but I could never agree with the zero sum game mentality. To me, that is incredibly sad to hear another human being say that. Usually is is just conservatives who espouse such viewpoints.

Why, yes, I’m a Freeper! Please continue to ignore my caveats to those Zero sum Game opinions I’m sharing!

Wanted to go to bed, but you drag me back in.

No, I’m not the stupidest man on earth. Silly me, I ascribe intelligence to others, and the ability to choose freely. Society wants me to buy crap, e.g. backstreet boys albums, watch red-neck comedy tour, buy the new H3. Yet I resist.

Is that too much to ask of people from other cultures?

Of course I have shopped — does that make me a hypocrite? Sadly, No! I am of this culture, and while I rebel against it as much as I can, it’s nearly impossible to strip oneself completely of the culture one grew up in while still continuing to live within the unchanged said culture.

I am of this culture. So I can be a hypocrite. Hoping others won’t live like me, hoping they’ll just stay on their farms. Wahhhh.

The Chinese is no longer Chinese. He is actually Chinese-American.

I dare you to go to china and say shit like that. They’ll love it.

Why not just let them choose how to live their own fucking lives? If they think they want to be Jet Lee or Brad Pitt or Pierce Brosnan and drive a fast car, let them dream. I don’t ascribe positive or negative values to a particular culture the way you do. I do believe that having choices and freedoms is generally good, and Chinese, Mexican, and Indian people have many more freedoms and choices than 15 years ago. To me, that’s good, regardless of the choices they make. (maybe decisions are being forced down their throats, but I’ll wait for them to tell the world if that’s the case)

But if they choose American shit, to you that’s bad.

[…] Uhhh. Hmm. I think I know the type of whom he writes. Everything I have written about in this space points to the same conclusion: Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again. […]

>>Marx never anticipated the fact that two classes could be beneficial to each other, as the American 20th century showed (the middle class made the wealthy richer and vice versa.)

Funny how the working class isn’t mentionned in this great class collaboration. But no one with a brain is surprised that the professional class (lawyers, priests, academics, Wanker Pundits) is getting richer in this class system when their entire schtick is to be paid to provide ideological support for the capitalists’ domination of society.

====
Jack London’s The Iron Heel:

`Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity,’ Ernest continued. `You are sincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your strength and your value–to the capitalist class. But should you change your belief to something that menaces the established order, your preaching would be unacceptable to your employers, and you would be discharged. Every little while some one or another of you is so discharged. Am I not right?’

This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with the exception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:

`It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign.’

`Which is another way of saying when their thinking is unacceptable,’ Ernest answered, and then went on. `So I say to you, go ahead and preach and earn your pay, but for goodness’ sake leave the working class alone. You belong in the enemy’s camp. You have nothing in common with the working class. Your hands are soft with the work others have performed for you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude of eating.’ (Here Dr. Ballingford winced, and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth. It was said he had not seen his own feet in years.) `And your minds are filled with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the men of the Swiss Guard. Be true to your salt and your hire; guard, with your preaching, the interests of your employers; but do not come down to the working class and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be in the two camps at once. The working class has done without you. Believe me, the working class will continue to do without you. And, furthermore, the working class can do better without you than with you.’

Jesus christ, your fucking (American) version of “better off� is not universal! It is not a *fact* but an opinion. This is what i mean by ethnocentrism.

There is nearly no policy so awful that it can’t be justified by this twisted logic. Indeed, you want us to protect people whose services are in lower demand due to globalization, but why can’t we just say they’re “better off” poor? Why don’t they just pawn the TV and get back to a glorious time when people huddled around the fire telling stories for fun? This simplicity is what you prescribe for foreigners, why not for Americans?

Holy fuck, someone quoted The Iron Heel. Kudos.

The funniest part about the book, of course, is that London noted quite prominently in the second part of the book that Ernest & Co. were every bit the exploiter of the working class as the Iron Heel ever was. I’ve never been able to figure out if it was a hole in his thinking or deliberate irony.

NobodySpecial, I’m not sure I understand your comment.

I personally do have some critiques of London’s work because he was a state socialist while I am an anarchist. For one, his work clearly shows he supported electoralism as a strategy but believed in the inevitability of civil war because this ‘Iron Heel’ would not allow electoral victory for the socialists. As an anarchist I agree with this analysis, except I don’t understand why one would then pursue electoralism as a strategy since it is not only going to fail (because of the oligarchic hold on the electoral process) but is also an unacceptable compromise of the main socialist tenet: to wit, the full empowerment of the workers, which IMO can only occur from below upward and not in a top down manner, whether from dictatorship or the representative democratic sham.

Second, all his heroes are basically ‘converted’ middle class people, except for Ernest (and one might argue that after marrying up, he might have lost touch with the working class a tad). It seems to betray a quasi-Leninist belief in the necessity of an intellectual vanguard of the revolution, outside of the working class itself, which is anathema to the anarchist vision of socialism.

But I am not sure why you consider they are mere exploiters of the working class, when they do seem to be mostly disinterested and altruistic in their goal of bringing about the worker’s society. I personally have issues with their praxis, but I have no doubt with their sincerity (as much as a fictional character can be sincere).

Reread the earliest parts of the time in Chicago to see what I mean – there’s quite a bit there about having to guide the working classes to the figurative light, since they’re only up on short term stuff like food and shelter. It’s also referenced back in the conversation you linked up, when Ernest admits that he’ll work it just like the Iron Heel, the only difference is what will happen when he works it. I’d argue it in more detail if I actually had an intellect to heft.

Anyways, the book reminds me of the best Galbraith quote ever:

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.

Insert “Londonist socialism” for the term of your choice. 😉

Retardo Montalban said,

September 1, 2006 at 3:02

…But the point is that neolibs somehow forgot the one fact everyone knows about India and China: that they are the most populated nations on earth, and so the scale being messed with in changing a portion of their people into American style consumers is very scary indeed.

Oh wise neolibs, since you know that America is the most wasteful and environmentally dangerous country on earth, especially in proportional regard to its population, why the fuck didnt you think for a minute before deciding that the Chinese and Indians should adopt the American model of consumerism? Did you expressely *desire* environmental holocaust and the spectre of resource wars, or was that one of the unintended consequences of your innate ethno-centrism which so joyously wears the mask of humanitarian concern?

Careful Retardo. As long as people have had goods to trade, it has been a given that one is free to possess and use as much as he or she can afford–regardless of the resources consumed in production. To imply otherwise is the “third rail” of environmental politics. For Americans and Europeans, who have exploited the resources of the third world for centuries, to simply tell emerging markets that their people can’t consume on the same scale as we have because there are too many of them, requires unmitigated hubris.

While liberals may wholeheartedly agree with Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance,” how many of these proud Prius owners, who choose energy-efficient appliances and purchase organic foods, are willing to seriously evaluate their consumption of virtually everything else? Americans have “supersized” more than their caloric intake. Does a family of 4 really need a house with more than 4,000 square feet or 3.5 bathrooms? Do any families where the adults work outside the home need a house with separate rooms for 2 home offices? Does everyone in the family need his or her own computer or TV? I won’t even go into what passes for fashion in clothing, these days. And, god knows, do ANY of us really NEED plug-in air fresheners?

On a macroeconomic scale, the issue is not so much jobs as it is the allocation of resources: e.g., is the highest and best use of oil for petrochemicals used in the manufacture of fertilizers for farmland in marginal countries, polyester and other synthetic fabrics for manufacturing goods in emerging markets that are sold worldwide, or plastics so Americans can have a cheaper iPods, TVs and Cuisinarts?

Well, technically “The People of the Abyss” is not about the working class, but about the lumpenproletariat…

Though I see what you mean. It is an expression of this Leninist vanguardism I was talking about.

Indeed, you want us to protect people whose services are in lower demand due to globalization, but why can’t we just say they’re “better off� poor?

Oh, my own Sebastian Mallaby chimes in!

You do, basically, say exactly this!

However, to somewhat answer the lame “guh, relativism!” objection. Some are being deprived of what they had within a culture that values what they had. Others are being given a pittance of what the former had, within a culture that heretofore hadnt valued such things until we remade them in our own image.

Some are being deprived of what they had within a culture that values what they had.

Not all of our culture values it. Read Bowling Alone or any Adbusters -type stuff. Both the US and China have people who think their country’s material gains have brought greater cultural losses, and both have people who (like me) disagree. It’s fairly presumptuous to point to the largest population in the world and tell us what they really want.

Some are being deprived of what they had within a culture that values what they had.

Not all of our culture values it.

I dont mean personally values it, I mean the society values it in a macro way: its structures make such things necessary or almost necessary; as such, it’s inevitable that the culture places a high value on these things. We have been arguing this shit a long long time, and from the start you’ve never seemed able to do more than shrug in a “dynamist” sort of way about people who lose everything they have because of outsourcing. It’s easy for you to start over if you have to: you’re single with no kids and you probably rent. What about those who have kids or elderly to take care of and a house that would be forclosed? Oh, well! Crapitalism is dynamic and churning! Plus, you.. yes, saved money at Pier 1! Also, your conscience is salved in a bullshit way because you think someone in the third world is being “helped” by being given an extremely degraded version of that job. And no, RETARDO, I’m not a corporate whore, but you’re a protectionist! When, actually, the first best most fellating gift in the world to corporations is allowing them to race to the bottom as they see fit: the neoliberal-libertarian solution; YOUR solution.

If one has kids especially, in most parts of the country one needs a car and a decent one. The car is something the culture values (indeed as Marvin Harris always said, it, not the Indian Brahma, is the real sacred cow of the world), then, even if the good people at Adbusters or James Howard Kunstler hate automobiles and car culture for the excellent reason that cars are killing the planet. But you have to be able to pay for the car and everything else. Good luck doing that being a janitor or working at Mcdonalds! But that’s EXACTLY the “remedy” idiot neolibs advocate! But, they say, all would be well if the minimum raise was raised and infrastructure were changed away from the car-coddling paradigm (or, even more humorously, if former factory workers could be re-trained as… what? some other shittily-paid service industry peon?) Maybe so. But until such is done the conscientious thing to do would be to throw whatever monkeywrench there was at hand into the outsourcing model. Obviously, they ain’t gonna do that, so obviously, in turn, I can tell what they value more, not their fellow citizens fucked into destitution, but the “principle” of free trade itself.

Both the US and China have people who think their country’s material gains have brought greater cultural losses, and both have people who (like me) disagree. It’s fairly presumptuous to point to the largest population in the world and tell us what they really want.

Shall I generalize? Those who think so have been fucked by the wonders of “material gain”, and/or they have a personal value system strong enough to resist said change — they are either religious and fret over the morality of such a system, or ethical and.. feel the same way. Also, their eyes are fucking open. The “Jihad” in the Jihad vs. McWorld dialectic need not be Muslim nor violent.

On the other hand, those who disagree are superficial and crass and no doubt obtain their spiritual nourishment from buying gadgets or playing yuppie meta-games along the lines of keeping up with the Joneses or the Wangs. They are supremely selfish beings who have got theirs, and believe in never giving a sucker an even break because that’s the system and you gotta… IOW, the worst possible version of Americanism, Babbitry on a worldwide scale, culturally colonizing a country near you! The symbol for this crassness is perfect and something you, I recall, defended: the Wal-Mart the Mexican technocrat elitists allowed (no doubt with proper kick-backs) to be built next to the Temple of the Sun; you thought it was wonderful, but then you’re not capable of recognising sacrelige. But then again, you’re of and in-love with a culture that values strip malls in the same way that greener, saner cultures valued temples, so all that goes without saying.

I just could never understand how *you* could understand so well the issues of consent and resistance and blowback and “the Other” with regard to imperialist war, but be so clueless when it came to different, relatively more subtle manifestations of imperialism. Whatever.

If one has kids especially, in most parts of the country one needs a car and a decent one.

If I suggested we stop propping up that unsustainable way of life with federal dollars, you’d smash your computer in a rage, so I won’t.

The car is something the culture values (indeed as Marvin Harris always said, it, not the Indian Brahma, is the real sacred cow of the world), then, even if the good people at Adbusters or James Howard Kunstler hate automobiles and car culture for the excellent reason that cars are killing the planet. But you have to be able to pay for the car and everything else.

My point is that there are people in China who could say exactly the same thing.

Oh, and you can’t say neoliberalism = libertarianism (the original post) and then say neoliberal = Clintonism (the Sep 1 5:47 post), because that implies the obvious falsehood that Clinton = libertarian.

There’s a reason that the more stable and balanced libertarians out there have taken to calling themselves “classical liberals”, you know.

If I suggested we stop propping up that unsustainable way of life with federal dollars, you’d smash your computer in a rage, so I won’t.

Yes, I would because I know what you mean by that: cut the funding and let “nature” sort out the rest.

Oh, and you can’t say neoliberalism = libertarianism (the original post) and then say neoliberal = Clintonism (the Sep 1 5:47 post), because that implies the obvious falsehood that Clinton = libertarian.

You’re not this silly. Clinton’s trade policy was libertarian — or, as Jillian notes, classical liberal. Such doesnt mean that Clinton was libertarian in other areas.

My point is that there are people in China who could say exactly the same thing.

Which is pretty dense because my point is that they didnt say such things before they were perverted into Americanism. We were always that way; we invented car culture, and just because we fucked up in doing so doesnt mean that we should export that fuck-up on others.