AT WTO MEETS
Fortune 500 bleed world's workers, poor
U.S. imperialism, not china, is the problem
By Fred
Goldstein
The gathering of the so-called World Trade Organization in
Seattle is meeting angry mass protests in the streets by
workers and militants from all sectors of the movement.
This meeting was convened, not by the oppressed and the
workers who create the $7 trillion worth of commodities traded
annually on the world capitalist markets, but by governments
representing the big bankers and multinational corporations
that profit and get rich from this trade.
The trade ministers of 136 member states are meeting in this
"Millennium Round" to launch a new round of regulations
designed to create more opportunities for the
multinationals.
Both oppressor and oppressed
The WTO, however, is divided between imperialist countries
and oppressed countries. The giant banks and corporate
monopolies of the former control the technology and dominate
the production, transportation and communication arteries of
the world. The latter have been plundered for centuries and
driven into a state of underdevelopment.
Any protests should be directed against the plunderers.
In this regard, no one should be diverted by the reactionary
position taken by AFL-CIO head John Sweeney and by many
liberals. They are using the Seattle demonstrations to attack
the People's Republic of China over its negotiations with the
U.S. government arranging terms for China's acceptance into the
WTO.
The present AFL-CIO leadership has admirably tried to
invigorate the labor movement by organizing the unorganized,
particularly low-wage workers. It has opened up opportunities
for many idealistic young people to help in this struggle and
end sweatshops. Such efforts should be supported and
energetically broadened.
But Sweeney's broadside against China is an unprincipled,
anti-communist attack based on a narrow protectionist position
that is harmful to all workers.
Sweeney issued a statement saying that the AFL-CIO will
firmly oppose China's entry into the WTO. As grounds he cited a
litany of unsubstantiated charges about China's denial of
workers' rights, slave labor in the prisons, child labor, the
illegality of organizing trade unions and human rights.
What are the facts?
China is a country comprising one fifth of the human race.
It was ruthlessly colonized for 150 years. It was "opened up"
by imperialism, divided into spheres of influence, and governed
by a feudal landlord class propped up by the imperialists--the
same world powers that run the WTO today.
What rights did the workers and peasants have under the old
regime? Only the right to be hungry, exploited, and die of
famine and poverty. That was workers' rights in the old
China--until the Chinese Communist Party led the masses in a
socialist revolution that liberated the country in 1949.
Since then the U.S. has tried every tactic, including
military encirclement, nuclear threat, and diplomatic, economic
and political isolation to bring China down. For over 20 years
after the revolution, the government representing one fifth of
humanity was not allowed to take its rightful seat in the
United Nations. Now, after 13 years of negotiation, China has
finally pressed its way towards entry into the so-called World
Trade Organization.
Its goal is to escape the enforced discrimination in tariffs
and trade imposed by the rulers of the WTO. It hopes to escape
the tension-producing and humiliating debate each year on Most
Favored Nation status in the U.S Congress, and to stabilize and
expand its trade with the U.S. and other capitalist
countries.
The overriding imperative for China is economic development.
For this it must have access to technology, much of which it
must acquire from the imperialists. This should be a basic
right, not only of China but of all oppressed countries that
have been plundered.
The AFL-CIO leadership says it will not support China's
entry into the WTO because of prison labor. But listen to what
the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions said about
U.S. prison labor in a "Report for the WTO General Council
Review of Trade Policies of the United States," delivered in
Geneva on July 12 and 14, 1999.
The report says that "27,000 of the 1.2 million federal and
state prisoners in the U.S. are engaged in work for pay,
receiving between $0.23 and $1.15 a day. The prisoners work in
several sectors including internationally traded products such
as computer circuit-board assembly, clothing, automotive parts,
food, telemarketing and telephone reservations systems for
hotels and airlines (including Trans World Airlines, which
makes extensive use of prison labor) and data-entry.
"There is evidence that at least three states are exporting
prison-made goods, partly in order to evade laws restricting
trade in prison-made goods between U.S. states. Prisoners who
refuse such work lose their chance for early release, are
deprived of privileges or sent to higher-security institutions
and may be locked in their cells 23 hours a day."
And what of so-called prison slave labor and child labor in
China?
In January 1998 the U.S. State Department submitted its
"1997 Country Report on Economic and Trade Policy," to the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee
on Foreign Affairs. Section 9, entitled "Workers' Rights," says
that China has "reform-through-labor facilities which contain
inmates sentenced through judicial procedure" and also "a
network of `reeducation through labor' camps."
"Chinese justice officials have stated that in
reeducation-through-labor facilities there is a much heavier
emphasis on education than on labor. Most reports conclude that
work conditions in the penal system's light manufacturing
facilities are similar to those in ordinary factories."
China, according to the U.S. State Department, "forbids the
employment of workers under the age of 16 and specifies
administrative review, fines and revocation of business
licenses of those businesses that hire minors." While there is
a problem with child labor in poorer, isolated rural areas,
"China's urban child labor problem is relatively minor. No
specific Chinese industry is identifiable as a significant
violator of child labor regulations."
Child labor in the U.S.
As for child labor in the U.S., the ICFTU report to the WTO
stated that 290,000 children in this country are known to be
employed in factories, mines and particularly in agricultural
work. This number is said to be underestimated because of the
difficulty of monitoring migrant labor.
Regarding the right to organize a trade union in China, a
delegation of the International Union of Food, Agricultural,
Hotel, Restaurant, Tobacco and Allied Workers Union (IUF),
which includes AFL-CIO affiliates, reported on Nov. 24, 1998,
that the All-China Federation of Trade Unions "has a total
membership of 103 million workers in 16 industrial unions."
The CIA and the State Department, working with the
international department of the AFL-CIO, set up
imperialist-oriented unions in Poland. This is the only kind of
union the U.S. government is really interested in.
"Solidarity," which was financed by the U.S. and the
Catholic Church, was instrumental in overthrowing socialism in
Poland. Now the Polish working class is in worse condition than
during the 1930s. Solidarity, having been abandoned by its
bourgeois leaders, is now demonstrating against the new
capitalist government that it was fooled into supporting.
China will not allow this type of "free union" organized by
the imperialists.
With 103 million workers in unions, the organized proportion
of the working class in China far exceeds the 13 percent in the
U.S. In fact, the report to the WTO reviewing U.S. trade
policies points out that the right to organize in the U.S. is
far below the acceptable standards of the International Labor
Organization. Some 7 million of the 14 million state and local
government workers in the U.S. do not even have the right to
collective bargaining, let alone the right to strike. Employers
in the U.S. determined to break a union have the law on their
side.
So if the AFL-CIO wants to bar any country from the WTO, it
should start with the U.S.
In this rich country there are gross violations of workers'
rights: prison labor, child labor, discrimination against women
workers, restriction of the right of collective bargaining and
the right to strike, use of migrant labor as indentured
servitude and strike breaking.
The very idea of opposing China's entry on the grounds of
workers rights' is preposterous, coming from a labor leadership
in the heartland of U.S. imperialism.
Dangers of market economy
Of course, all partisans of the Chinese Revolution are
deeply worried about the forced opening up of China to U.S.
banks, insurance companies and telecommunications monopolies.
These concessions, coming on top of the already growing
unemployment and dislocation caused by the market economy, are
bound to give a great stimulus to growing capitalist elements
within China and erode the morale of the workers.
China wants development. Imperialism wants to return China
to its former colonial status. The trade negotiations must be
viewed as another phase in the struggle between imperialism and
the PRC.
Hopefully, if the imperialists and their capitalist
partisans in China get out of hand, they will meet the kind of
anti-imperialist sentiment demonstrated in China after the
bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The outraged
demonstrations were undoubtedly promoted by sections of the
party leadership.
The Chinese Communist Party still has state power in China.
Despite all the dangerous concessions, this still stands as a
barrier to counter-revolution. But, in the long run, this
barrier is only as strong as the support of the working class
and the peasants. Therein lies the danger of the market
reforms.
Dracula to guard the blood bank?
Finally, it is the ultimate in deception to call upon the
imperialists in the WTO to enforce "labor rights." That is like
asking a vampire to guard the blood bank. The multinationals
that run the WTO roam the globe looking precisely for cheap
labor in any form they can get it.
If the AFL-CIO leaders want to bring workers' rights to the
WTO, they should start by demanding that the world labor
movement be brought into the deliberations as full
participants, not as outside supplicants begging to be heard by
one or another of the imperialist governments.
This is far more consistent with working-class interests
than demanding that the WTO impose labor standards on the
world. First of all, as a matter of the right of
self-determination, the imperialists have no business imposing
any standards--labor, tariff, monetary or any other kind--on
oppressed countries.
Secondly, if the imperialists sign on to some labor
standard, it will not be to raise the condition of workers in
the Third World but to facilitate trade discrimination against
the poor countries.
Third, the reason wages are low in Asia, Africa, Latin
America and the Middle East is because the imperialist powers
have forced underdevelopment on the peoples of these areas by
denying them technology and using them to extract
super-profits. It is in the ultimate interests of workers in
the U.S., Europe and Japan to fight to forge solidarity in the
struggle to do away with imperialism.
This is how to help raise the wages and living standards of
all workers of the world and abolish this abominable
competition that divides the working class, setting each
against another to the benefit of the bosses.
The way to do this is not to fight a losing battle against
"globalization" by campaigning to reform the WTO, but to fight
to abolish the profit system upon which the WTO and all trade
is based in the capitalist world.
It is time to fight for a new world system of trade, based
upon the abolition of private property in the means of
production, so economic life can be organized to satisfy human
need.
It is time to free the world from tariffs, quotas,
embargoes, sanctions and all the devices of capitalist
commerce, and establish trade to serve those who create the
wealth and make everything happen. This is all part of the
fight to replace capitalism with socialism.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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