Re: Europe's cheap US labor

[Jurriaan Bendien <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> No.  The point is to change that reality and that can
> only be done by consciously organizing as a class
> across the borders and fences put up by our national
> ruling classes.

Well, my argument would be

1) if you're serious about that, "anti-globalisation" doesn't make much
sense at all
2) people who reject borders and fences end up setting them up somewhere
else anyhow
3) the objective tendency towards ghettoisation around the world will affect
all social classes

I had a look at your policy study on globalisation, maybe sexy, but it
doesn't make much sense to compare 1960-80 with 1980-2000, except that the
neo-liberal/new right/monetarist trend became influential from 1981 or
thereabouts (Ronald Reagan was elected on 4 November 1980 I think). It is
generally acknowledged that the postwar boom ended in 1973, from which time
average real GDP growth rates were halved or more, and growth of productive
investment stagnated, giving way to a round of rationalisation and
restructuring of companies. The study you cite suggests a nostalgia whereby
everything was so much better prior to 1980, but that wasn't really the
case. Just look for example at the economy of India since the second world
war.

Actually the global immiseration is objectively worse than the report
suggests, but, in general, what policy analysts and consultants do, is they
tend to present a problem as being sufficiently bad so that something must
be done, but not so bad that it makes their policy initiative seem
unimportant or just insignificant, plus, it must be written in such a way
that people who have the resources are actually willing to fund doing
something about it. But that isn't necessarily the same as conscientious,
systematic, critical scientific inquiry into what is actually really
happening in society in aggregate, aimed at revealing the real truth.
Because of this fact, governments often end up going to external
consultancies, but these consultancies tend to provide a policy picture
which is profitable and "tells you what you want to hear". If in addition
you shut down university social science and humanities departments, cap
their autonomy and make them operate at a profit, it's much more difficult
to obtain objective, pertinent and critical assessments of social reality.

J.