RE: Re: Bill Tabb is gone: A new direction??

["Lisa & Ian Murray" <seamus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 I'm saying that we who disagree with respectable policy wonks, NGOs,
 & the AFL-CIO, as of now, do not appear to have enough power to
 benefit from hypothetical receptivity to left-wing ideas in the event
 of recession.  In other words, the fix-it camp (wonks, NGOs, & the
 AFL-CIO) seems stronger than the nix-it camp (much of PEN-l,
 anarchists, etc.), to say nothing of the anti-capitalist camp (a
 subset of the nix-it camp).  What is to be done?

 Can -- or rather should -- we form a left-wing "coalition" by
 focusing on "trade"?  Was "Fair Trade" really a term of
 "convenience"?  From our point of view, wasn't it more like a term of
 inconvenience, imposed by the wonks, NGOs, & the AFL-CIO?

 Yoshie
**********

Well, we have to engage them and both sides need to park the know it all
attitudes in the garage.

1)I'm not sure how to get the AFL-CIO on board with respect to dumping
BWI's; It's my hope others are in a position to act on the need for dialogue
on that issue.

2)Coming from the green side of the possible blue/green side of things, the
AFL-CIO needs to be flooded with ecology texts. This is not a schoolboy
prank; things ain't looking too good for ecosystem health. Labor should look
at industrial ecology and steer their pension funds towards greater
investment in environmental technology. Substantial equity stakes in those
firms would make union drives easy and they could experiment with different
forms of enterprise governance. They should also pressure Congress for
greater Federal investment in R&D especially on the green front. This means
taking control of the Federal science budget away from the bomb tribe.
There's a 1998 paper from the Quarterly Journal of Economics that states
unequivocally that R&D investment needs to be quadrupled [QJE CX III # 4 p.
1119-1135]. As the paper, co-authored by a guy at the Fed named John
Williams, doesn't even go into disaggregating the sectors that receive such
funding already, my guess is that we need a sustained 20-25 fold increase in
green tech R&D; market failure experts take note; public goods/public
ownership??

3)The fix-it NGO's need to think twice about their trustafarian status
bigtime. How to go about this will be difficult to say the least. It's
tempting to revisit the Marcusian hope of student "movements" [didn't HM get
his fascination with this possibility from looking at how Ho Chi Minh
organized his fellow students when he was young?]. To a large  extent
students are doin' great stuff on many fronts. Their faculty advisers need
to nudge them to talk more with each other to get greater coherence to their
concerns; otherwise another generation will "fall" into reproducing interest
group politics.

4)"Fair Trade" came out of many meetings. While local labor leaders did
voice their concerns, they were very accommodating and conciliatory. It was
the Church groups who won the day and while there was some haggling it was
all very healthy even if it was exhausting. Given the speed at which we had
to move, the slogan wasn't really a hindrance for radicals to organize their
affinity groups.

5)Study Banks. If we don't green finance we're f***ed.

  <http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80901e/80901E08.htm>

  <http://www.csu.edu.au/ci/vol06/keen/keen.html>


Ian