Re: On Bello

[Stephen E Philion <philion@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Steve Diamond wrote:

> To restate my previous response to the Bello essay, I suggested a simple
> thought experiment:  what would the world look like if what Bello asks for
> were to come true?
>
> If we were to "shrink" the WTO or end the push for enforceable international
> labor rights we would be encouraging the idea that the developing world
> should build its own capitalism to compete with that of the developed world.
>
> We do not have to put more than half the globe through the same misery that
> Europe and the Americas went through to establish modern industrial
> capitalism. But Bello implies that the third world must repeat those
> horrors - an argument one hears from the apologists for global capital (as
> in the suggestion that "we" endured child labor for many decades, so why not
> in Pakistan?).

Implies shmimplies. Bello nowhere states or implies what you attribute to
him.  As an active leader in the globalization protests Bello has made
clear statements in the opposite direction of those you attribute him. He
lambastes the WTO, ADB, etc. for shoving one strategy of development down
the throats of poor countries.

>
> Unless, of course, he thinks there is something magical about a "small is
> beautiful" worldview that would allow the Indias, the Egypts, the Sudans,
> the Guatemalas of the world to build modern economies on their own without
> the kind of tragedies inflicted upon the millions of European, African,
> Asian and American workers who built the United States and western Europe?
>

Funny, youmust not have read his criticisms of Naomi Klein, which seem to
point in the other direction as well. That is, there he shows a very
thorough  grasp of the problem of capitalism and globalization at the
level of international political economy.


> In my view, the only way to avoid that tragic history is to restructure the
> global economy from below, not break away from it.  The push for enforceable
> labor rights is a step in that direction.
>
In your view? There are good critiques of Bellow out there, I think of
Martin Hart Landsberg and Paul Burkett's book on Development in East Asia
and Class Struggle, for one. They however at least take seriously the task
of carefully reading Bello's work and offering thoughtful criticisms as
opposed to the easy way out of taking quotes ourt of context and then
going for the jugular...