Agnus_Dei posted:Trump wants to engage in protectionism and bring manufacturing back to America, thereby no longer exploiting the third world.
We already have Protectionism; what Donald Trump is proposing is just a cruder form of it.
The biggest problem in American trade policy in relation to the rest of the world is not 'Free Trade' but its subsidizing of its own private olgipolies, its intensifying of rent extraction (such as through the strengthening of the IP rights of big pharma), and its creation of exclusive trading blocs through agreements like the TPPA that aim to encircle China and Russia while rewarding long-time sentry states (above all Japan).
http://iwallerstein.com/free-trade-treaties-are-anti-free-trade/
Reducing the exploitation of the global South would be better attained by the United States evening out the playing field of global competition, opening up its internal markets to foreign investment, and striking a blow against domestic plutocratic monopolies--not by retreating into a Quixotic economic isolationism that, however branded, would only reinforce its existing imperial privileges.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
"Protection beings a means of artificially manufacturing manufacturers, may, therefore, appear useful not only to an incompletely developed capitalist class still struggling with feudalism; it may also give a life to the rising capitalist class of a country which, like (19th century) America, has never known feudalism, but which has arrived at that stage of development where the passage from agriculture to manufactures becomes a necessity"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade/
But it is equally true, as Engels says in the same text, that Protectionism, even when justified by circumstances, "is an endless screw." And whatever advantages it may situationally have always diminish in the long term :
".....One of these symptoms(of Protectionism outliving its usefulness) is the formation of "rings" and "trusts" within the protected industries for the more thorough exploitation of the monopoly granted to them. Now "rings" and "trusts" are truly American institutions, and, where they exploit natural advantages, they are generally though grumblingly submitted to. the transformation of the Pennsylvanian oil supply into a monopoly by the Standard Oil Company is a proceeding entirely in keeping with the rules of capitalist production. But if the sugar refiners attempt to transform the petition granted them, by the nation, against foreign competition, into a monopoly against the home consumer, that is to say against the same nation that granted the protection, that is quite a different thing. Yet the large sugar refiners have formed a "trust" which aims at nothing else. And the sugar trust is not the only one of its kind.
Now, the formation of such trusts in protected industries is the surest sign that protection has done its work and is changing its character; that it protects the manufacturer no longer against the foreign importer, but against the home consumer; that is has manufactured, at least in the special branch concerned, quite enough, if not too many manufacturers; that the money it puts into the purse of these manufacturers is money thrown away...."
If industrial protection in the United States was arguably already a dubious policy in 1888, how much more so it must be in the 21th century.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
Agnus_Dei posted:So American factories in China are a good thing?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.
Agnus_Dei posted:So American factories in China are a good thing?
very carefully
getfiscal posted:What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
get this Maoist social imperialism theory outta here.
getfiscal posted:You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.
Is this from a Thomas Friedman article?
Agnus_Dei posted:So American factories in China are a good thing?
yes
Agnus_Dei posted:So American factories in China are a good thing?
This is a badly formulated question: "The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist." (From On Contradiction by Mao Tse-Tung)
To the extent that American factories in China do indeed advance the development of the productive forces, the evening out of global inequality, and the integration of the peoples by those material ties that make for peace, the answer is yes.
To the extent American factories don't accomplish such goals is the source of problems that are are best dealt with, above all, by the continued struggle of the Chinese working class, not by New York billionaires gifting for votes.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
gyrofry posted:anti-protectionism is anti-socialism
Neither Protectionism or anti-protectionism are socialism. They are only passing potential means among others for the real process within history whose essence is the "liberation and development of the productive forces, elimination of exploitation and polarization, and the ultimate achievement of prosperity for all."
Edited by RedMaistre ()
gyrofry posted:reducing the exploitation of the global south is not going to happen without violent proletarian revolution, and is not up to "the United States" (whatever that is)
Obviously, those who have the most to gain and the less to lose from change will always be the real motor of history. All I was suggesting was how the United States could best serve this process-namely by not getting in the way of the peaceful unfolding of economic progress in the Global South.
As for counting on the repetition of the epics of the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolution as the 'only' way of reducing exploitation in the future-- that sounds like, at best, a recipe for disappointment, at worst a way of setting oneself up to be a sucker for 'Springs' of all types. These days, it seems, the ones who have the most to gain from spreading the anarchic conditions of war are not the world's toilers but the American empire itself and the various networks of middle class compradors and lumpens who go in for holy gangsterism or Maidan Square style agitation.
I will not pretend to decide apriori what will or will not be made necessary in the future, however. The notrecht of the wretched of the earth will, in the last, instance, always find the means appropriate to correct the silences and exclusion clauses of the law.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
Edited by HenryKrinkle ()
"The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the
‘revolutionaries,’ the ‘overthrowers’—we are thriving far better on legal
methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The parties of order, as
they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by
themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité nous tue,
legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles
and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal. And if we are not so crazy
as to let ourselves be driven to street fighting in order to please them,
then in the end there is nothing left for them to do but themselves break
through this dire legality. . . . They can cope with the Social-Democratic
overthrow, which just now is doing so well by keeping the law, only by
an overthrow on the part of the parties of Order, an overthrow which
cannot live without breaking the law. Mr. Roessler, the Prussian bureaucrat,
and Mr. von Boguslawski, the Prussian general, have shown them
the only way perhaps still possible of getting at the workers, who simply
refuse to let themselves be lured into street fighting. Breach of the constitution,
dictatorship, return to absolutism, regis voluntas suprema lex! "
One can see how this paradox plays out on the international stage as well.
Ironically, his brand of accelerationism, with its separatist vision of independent 'cameralist' city-state entities is locked into a similar denial of the inevitability of globalism (in one form or another) as that of would be Neo-Hoxhists.
RedMaistre posted:I cited the (good) Freddie earlier in testimony to the fact that the interests of the masses can, in fact, be improved by ant-protectionism. Here is Engels again, in 1895, testifying to the advantages of the rule of law as well:
"The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the
‘revolutionaries,’ the ‘overthrowers’—we are thriving far better on legal
methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The parties of order, as
they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by
themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité nous tue,
legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles
and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal. And if we are not so crazy
as to let ourselves be driven to street fighting in order to please them,
then in the end there is nothing left for them to do but themselves break
through this dire legality. . . . They can cope with the Social-Democratic
overthrow, which just now is doing so well by keeping the law, only by
an overthrow on the part of the parties of Order, an overthrow which
cannot live without breaking the law. Mr. Roessler, the Prussian bureaucrat,
and Mr. von Boguslawski, the Prussian general, have shown them
the only way perhaps still possible of getting at the workers, who simply
refuse to let themselves be lured into street fighting. Breach of the constitution,
dictatorship, return to absolutism, regis voluntas suprema lex! "
and then what happened
sometimes i cant tell what implied argument/direction posts are meant to be going
Superabound posted:RedMaistre posted:I cited the (good) Freddie earlier in testimony to the fact that the interests of the masses can, in fact, be improved by ant-protectionism. Here is Engels again, in 1895, testifying to the advantages of the rule of law as well:
"The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the
‘revolutionaries,’ the ‘overthrowers’—we are thriving far better on legal
methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The parties of order, as
they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by
themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité nous tue,
legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles
and rosy cheeks and look like life eternal. And if we are not so crazy
as to let ourselves be driven to street fighting in order to please them,
then in the end there is nothing left for them to do but themselves break
through this dire legality. . . . They can cope with the Social-Democratic
overthrow, which just now is doing so well by keeping the law, only by
an overthrow on the part of the parties of Order, an overthrow which
cannot live without breaking the law. Mr. Roessler, the Prussian bureaucrat,
and Mr. von Boguslawski, the Prussian general, have shown them
the only way perhaps still possible of getting at the workers, who simply
refuse to let themselves be lured into street fighting. Breach of the constitution,
dictatorship, return to absolutism, regis voluntas suprema lex! "and then what happened
British encirclement and Tsarist backed provocation in the Balkans are what happened, Kamerad
tpaine posted:change getfiscal's username to Biscuits 'N' Garvey
Error: name joke too similar to existing lf white noise poster name
"A transnational coalition of labor unions and community groups in the United States and Mexico charged multinational retail corporation Chedraui Commercial Group with violations of municipal, federal, and international labor law on November 12, filing unprecedented dual claims under compliant mechanisms embedded within the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Lance Compa, an international labor law expert at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations told In These Times via email, “The simultaneous NAFTA and OECD complaints reflect an innovative union strategy for putting local and national labor disputes under an international spotlight. No one has ever tried this before. Unions have filed complaints under the NAFTA labor agreement, and under the OECD guidelines, but in unrelated cases.”
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18661/no_one_has_ever_tried_this_before_mexican_u.s._workers_bring_employer_charg
chickeon posted:capitalism is a piece of shit!@
RedMaistre posted:Best approach to NAFTA, short of actually abolishing it and creating more equitable trading pacts:
"A transnational coalition of labor unions and community groups in the United States and Mexico charged multinational retail corporation Chedraui Commercial Group with violations of municipal, federal, and international labor law on November 12, filing unprecedented dual claims under compliant mechanisms embedded within the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Lance Compa, an international labor law expert at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations told In These Times via email, “The simultaneous NAFTA and OECD complaints reflect an innovative union strategy for putting local and national labor disputes under an international spotlight. No one has ever tried this before. Unions have filed complaints under the NAFTA labor agreement, and under the OECD guidelines, but in unrelated cases.”
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18661/no_one_has_ever_tried_this_before_mexican_u.s._workers_bring_employer_charg
also indigenous organizations have used NAFTA to pressure Canada to uphold their own treaties and court decisions (that they've ignored at certain periods to try to force extermination and assimilation)
