[Marxism] Re: Bhagwati's defense of Mankiw

["Julio Huato" <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Xxxx Xxxxxx wrote:

> The point is "not" that Bhagwati is racist or dishonest. The point is that
> he is a free market ideolog "blind" to the consequences of globalization
> for third world workers.

Okay, that's YOUR point.  MY point is that the view of Bhagwati as an
"ideolog" is a caricature of his arguments.  We don't have to buy his views,
but if we're going to criticize them, we should deal with them fairly.
What's the point of dumping trash on people if we cannot defeat their
arguments?

> No where in Bhagwati you will find references to basic social justice
> concepts: workers, exploitation, labor rights, unions, etc.

Bhagwati has criticized strongly the hypocrisy of the rich countries in
dealing with labor standards (unionization, labor rights, child labor,
minimum wage, etc.) both domestically and abroad.  I don't think Bhagwati
should be given a free pass on "free trade," but I don't want to ignore what
he actually stands for.  Here's a bit of him, to illustrate my point:

"One definite result of pushing for labor (and purely
domestic-pollution-related environmental) standards at the WTO has been the
near unanimity of opinion in the developing countries that the real aim of
the rich countries' trade unions and governments is to deter competition --
that is, intrusionism.  Thus, these demands are widely seen as protectionism
hiding behind a moral mask.  In short, the moral case is devalued by the
context and the means by which it is pursued.  It is therefore seriously
compromised and impaired. [...]

"You see it in the self-protecting and other-directed de facto selectivity
of the trade-sanctionable issues that the rich countries want to put into
the Social Clause at the WTO.  Here, the talk has now shifted to putting
into it the 'core' labor standards that have been agreed to at UN meetings
such as the Social Summit in Copenhagen.  But think about the matter a
little and you see the calculation behind what is actually being proposed.
Not all these core standards are to be taken as matters to be implemented on
fast-track.  For instance, gender discrimination is not on the fast-track
for implementation.  If it was, nearly all trade would cease.  So where do
the rich nations want fast-track rapid-fire action?  You guessed it right:
on child labor.  Why?  Because that is where the poor countries can be
confidently expected to be the defendants, while the rich nations can
equally confidently expect to be the plaintiffs.

"Did I hear anyone say that the many sweatshops in the garment district
downtown from where I teach in New York, or the much-documented
quasi-slavery conditions for migrant labor in American agriculture in
Georgia and Mississippi should also be among the issues highlighted for
fast-track action in the Social Clause?  The silence is deafening."

Footnote: "I might add also that, even on unionization and the rights to
bargain collectively and so forth, U.S. policymakers are supremely unaware
that their own violations are enormous.  These violations of worker's human
rights have been splendidly documented in a recent report brought out by
Human Rights Watch, Unfair Advantage: Worker's Freedom of Association in the
United States under International Human Rights Standards (New York: Human
Rights Watch, 2000).

In another section, Bhagwati wrote:

"[T]he United States itself is massively in violation of these very rights:
a fact that only an informed specialized agency can be expected to
document."

He then quotes approvingly from the Human Rights Watch's report:

"Millions of workers are expressly barred from the law's protection of the
right to organize.  The U.S. legal doctrine allowing employers to
permanently replace workers whose right to strike effectively nullifies the
right.  Mutual support among workers and unions recognized in most of the
world as legitimate expressions of solidarity is harshly proscribed under
U.S. law as illegal secondary boycotts.

"Many workers who try to form and join trade unions to bargain with their
employers are spied on, harassed, pressured, threatened, suspended, fired or
deported or otherwise victimized in reprisal for their exercise of the right
to freedom of association."

J. Bhagwati, Free Trade Today, Princeton University Press, 2002.

Julio

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