The only way out of this trap is to replace the nation-state system by developing a democratic structure of coordination for the whole planet. The human species needs to evolve a new form of association that unites the various nationalities in such a way that the autonomy and differences of each group are respected while allowing for democratic decisions to resolve common global problems; for example, in regard to resources, ecology, and common standards for conditions of production to discourage any nation from using a more intense exploitation of its people or ecology to advance its economic position.
The massive destructiveness of present-day military technology and the increasingly critical condition of the world's ecology make it clearer every day that there is a crying need for this extension of democracy to the relations between peoples and to our ecological guardianship over the planet. But the mere fact that something is "right" doesn't tells us what real social forces there are that can actually bring it about.
Although competition between nation-states has its own logic of militarism and domination, nation-states are entrenched because of the state's relationship to the system of class exploitation. As I've pointed out, the bosses of each nation use their exploitation of the workforce of that nation to enhance their competitive position in the world economy. Repression of labor movements can depress wage levels so as to give the local bosses a better competitive position in the world market, for example. The state's police and judicial and military systems are a means to ensure the continuation of the bosses' control over production and as a last line of defense against any worker uprising.
Thus, the state will exist so long as the exploitation of the workforce by a boss structure exists. The two competitive systems, of businesses and nation-states, depend on each other. To get rid of the state, it's necessary to get rid of the system of boss control over production -- and vice versa.
Yet, workers could only achieve genuine control over society on an international scale. If workers were to achieve control over industry in one particular nation, they'd face the hostility of the military forces of other nations, and a probable embargo cutting them off from exchange and coordination with producers in other countries. To succeed, a process of workers' taking control of production and social affairs must quickly encompass at least a large multi-national region with a varied mix of skills and resources. Hence, internationalism is crucial for the process of worker empowerment as well as for the overthrow of the nation-state system that is the basis of imperialism.
However, today's "weak" nation may be tomorrow's bully in its relations with other nations, as the example of Vietnam shows. "Defeating U.S. imperialism" is as far as the Love & Rage editors' vision extends, but they fail to see other imperialist forces waiting in the wings. They do not understand that imperialism is inherent in the nature of the nation-state system, and that this system must be replaced to put an end to imperialism.
They do not even identify any forces that could defeat U.S. imperialism. They say that international solidarity is "built concretely by building a movement here that can stop the war there, that recognizes the right of the Iraqi people to self-determination, free from US aerial bombardment."
Certainly we agree with these goals but nowhere does Love & Rage tell us how we are to motivate working people in this country to stand up against imperialist actions such as the destruction of Iraq. Guilt has little mass appeal. And "Iraqi self-determination" is a concern specific to the people in that country
The point is that international solidarity requires that there be something that people on both sides of national boundaries identify with, feel they have a stake in, a common interest that requires mutual support.
Love & Rage, however, argue that there is no common interest,
that, on the contrary, American workers have a stake in keeping third
world workers down:
"National oppression is real. The international system that keeps the
average Iraqi in a state of desperate poverty is the same system that
floods the U.S. with cheap petroleum-based consumer goods...[T]he U.S.
worker has a[n]...interest in the continued exploitation of the Iraqi
worker that supports his or her position of relative privilege."
This misunderstands the basis of the higher wage-levels of industrialized countries, such as the United States. As I argued earlier, the comparative prosperity of the American working class was based, for the most part, on the greater productivity (in terms of market values) of American workers. The development of industrialization has tended to presuppose certain levels of education and skills in the workforce as well as capital for investment in equipment and technical innovation. The industrialized countries have tended to have a more developed educational system to impart the types of skills that industrialism requires, such as literacy. The widespread education, skills and expertise in the workforce, and the higher levels of investment in technical innovation and tools and facilities, enable the workforce in the industrialized countries to produce more market value per worker.(11)
At the same time, the long tradition of struggles for freedom of worker organization, popular constraints on ruling class power (e.g., voting, referendums,right to strike), and freedom of opinion, have enabled the workforce to ensure that they share the fruits of this increased productivity, although our "share" is limited and tends to fluctuate with the levels of solidarity and militancy in the working class at various times.
At the same time, the lower wage levels in the third world had their origins in the lower availability of the types of education and skills required for industrial development and the scarcity of capital for investment in productivity-enhancing equipment. As I argued above, the strategy of third world elites for competition in the world market has been to take advantage of low wage and other costs to substitute for their lack of capital. Autocratic government structures and repression of labor movements fits in with this strategy as it helps to sustain the lower wage levels.
Now, Love & Rage might argue that the U.S. support for these repressive governments has been a major factor in their survival in the postwar era, and therefore Americans are partly responsible for third world poverty.
Leaving aside the question of what type of movement may improve the situation of the working class in the third world -- "national liberation" movements, social-democratic movements, or the independent worker movements that we support, it is clear that such movements are likely to come into conflict with the U.S. government. So, the Love & Rage editors are right to hold that the U.S. government stands directly against the interests of third world working classes. However, we disagree with their position that American workers gain from this repressive U.S. role in the third world and are in part responsible for it.
The U.S. government is run largely by rich white males in the interests of big business. How are working people in this country supposed to control what the U.S. government does? Half of the U.S. working class doesn't vote in part because they correctly perceive that there is little difference between the two parties of business (Democrats or Republicans). Voting, in any case, gives us little control over what the leaders do.
The point is that the American working class is not a part of the structure of power that actually runs this country.
The working class could exert force extra-legally, through the development of mass movements and struggles, such as strike movements, as they have done at various points in this country's history. But the Love & Rage editors are apparently opposed to that type of strategy for countering U.S. business class power, based on worker solidarity and class action. Moreover, such a strategy presupposes a difficult and lengthy process of development in the working class itself, in its solidarity, cohesion, organization and consciousness. In recent years the American working class has been unable to defend even its own interests; the weakness of the traditions of solidarity in this country have much to do with this.
Through a long history of internal ethnic and racial divisions and defeats to worker solidarity, the American working class developed a narrowly sectoral and legalistic unionism, on the one hand, and a tendency of working people to limit themselves to individualistic paths of advancement, on the other hand. To overcome this dead-end situation of working class powerlessness will require the development of a new culture of solidarity and grassroots democracy.
As the movement of more and more jobs to other countries attests, the American business class has no particular loyalty to workers in this country; they won't pay higher wages to American workers if it is feasible to get the same production from workers in other countries at lower wages.
In recent decades the development of improved education levels in the third world and enhanced transportation and telecommunications techniques -- such as jumbo cargo jets and containerization -- have facilitated the "internationalization of production," as firms readily locate operations all over the globe. As productivity increases in third world countries, repression becomes a more important factor in maintaining low wage and social benefit levels.
Taking advantage of low wage-levels and non-existent health or environmental protections in the third world not only reduces immediate cost levels to Western and Japanese firms but also puts downward pressure on wages in the home country; it discourages Americans from unionizing or pressing demands against the employing class.
When General Motors moves engine plants to Mexico, and Atari moves electronics production to Malaysia to thwart unionization, does this benefit American workers? As industrial or clerical jobs are moved to Hong Kong or Indonesia or Barbados, unemployed workers often find themselves with few alternatives to minimum wage jobs at McDonalds. The increasing impoverishment of American workers is a direct consequence of the authoritarianism and exploitation rampant in the third world. Obviously this situation is not in the interests of American workers.
In this era of the global production line, where the employers move readily from one country to another, it has become increasingly clear that solidarity with working people throughout the world is essential to defend the interests of the American working class.
Rejecting working class morality and interests as the basis of international solidarity, the Love & Rage editors leave us with no common interest or common motivation that can be used to unite American workers with working people in third world countries. They are left with nothing but hopeless appeals to white American guilt. A politics of guilt can only lead to useless nihilism, grounded in despair -- the dead-end path followed by the Weather Underground in the late '60s.
The situation of nations is analogous to that of women or African Americans in this country. Precisely because the situations and concerns of racial minorities and women are not the same as whites or men, we recognize the legitimacy of their autonomy, of having their own movements. However, the structures of inequality and of exploitation in society cannot be overcome by piecemeal struggles of this or that particular sector or group. To make the changes necessary to liberate various specific sectors, such as women or the people of a particular nationality, the solidarity of the class as a whole is required.
Moreover, solidarity cannot be built on the assumption of retaining inequalities and privileges that are created by the bosses' system. If we are going to ask black and white workers to join together in a common struggle, for example, we cannot do that on the assumption that the struggle will be used to sustain any special privileges of whites. The way to reconcile this need for class solidarity with the concerns of groups that have been discriminated against or treated worse is to incorporate their concerns into the movement of the class as a whole while also respecting the autonomy of the various subgroups.
Thus, our position is not "class reductionist" because we do not say that the concerns of women or of African Americans, for example, can be "reduced" to the concerns common to the working class as a whole.
Similarly, if the people of a particular country have felt the boot of foreign occupation, had their language suppressed, or been forcibly removed from their homeland, these will form legitimate concerns of theirs that are not identical with the concerns of working people elsewhere. As such, it is essential that we recognize the autonomy of the working people of that nation in the same way that we recognize the autonomy of all groups with specific interests and concerns.
A purely nationalist movement, however, cannot really address the oppression and exploitation of the working class people of such a nation. Since a nationalist movement can't help in developing a movement to get beyond nation-states, it can't be a step towards ending imperialism. For this, worker solidarity must be organized across national boundaries on the basis of the common class interest in fighting multinational capital, furthering the empowerment of working people, and bringing an end to all forms of imperialism and militarism through international democracy.
The desire of people to be free of imperialism and domination by foreign powers can only be realized by destroying the system of nation-states and the system of exploitation that states are based on. This absolutely requires solidarity of working people on a vast international scale. Here again, the reason that class solidarity is primary is because it is the only social power that is adequate to the task; but this does not mean that only common class concerns are legitimate or that we should ignore the concerns and autonomy of specific national groupings in the world.
We need to make it clear that this has nothing in common with the fake "autonomy" that leftist governments in practice have offered to national groups. Instead of the Soviet model of a centralized multi-national state, we need to emphasize the libertarian concept of decentralized democratic social coordination in a post-capitalist society.
It is an explicit part of our vision that people who comprise particular communities or regions with their own distinctive commonalities, such as a common language and history, will "self-manage" their own affairs. We should understand that this would be a strong autonomy that covered all those issues that pertain only to effects on their own community and not other communities or regions.
But there is no way that this autonomy can be realized except as part of an international worker struggle against the bosses of every country and the nation-states that are their last line of defense against real popular power. Our task is not to spin out apologetics for sundry third world "leftist" bosses, but to support the workers of other countries and to undermine the power of our own boss class on the world stage.
-- Tom Wetzel
12. According to the "Labor Theory of Value," to the extent that the availability of diverse vendors for the same product approximates "perfect competition," the prices of merchandise will tend to be a function of the total human effort (labor-time) involved in their production. In other words, human labor costs act as a floor for price determination.
But human ability to perform work for employers is also merchandise -- bought by employers and sold by the worker. Hence, its price (wage) will also tend to be determined by the total human effort in developing and sustaining the capabilities of the worker. This includes the costs in rearing children, all of the training and education, and the current levels of consumption. The level of consumption tends to be very directly affected, as I've argued, by the freedom of workers to organize and oppose the bosses.