Vineland revisited

[Teufelsdröcke]

Jane Sweet wrote:
> 
> Teufelsdröcke wrote:
> >
> > Such treaties as NAFTA, GATT, FTAA protect the free movement of goods
> > and capital but continue to prevent the free movement of people.
> 
> I don't think so. People are moving from Mexico and Latin
> America to the USA in very large numbers and not much is
> preventing this emigration.  Canadians are retiring to the
> USA, although their Health Plan requires that citizens spend
> a half the year and a day in Canada, which is exactly what
> many retired Canadians do. Asians are also emigrating to the
> USA in very large number, from China, from Korea, from
> India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and from Africa and from war
> torn states in Europe too.

People can indeed move from one country to another, as allowed by the
country of desired residence, or by the terms, for example, of their
health insurance. And such "legal" immigrants are not automatically
considered citizens of their new country. "Illegal" immigration is
tolerated to provide a pool of unprotected workers. In other words, I
can move any time I want from Minnesota to Missouri, get a new driver's
license, register to vote locally, but I can't move to Mexico without a
proven outside income and a healthy bank balance.

> > In this
> > way they are inherently fascist, codifying the continuing availability
> > of essentially prison labor in countries already ravaged by capitalist
> > predation.
> 
> Is it capitalist predation that has ravaged these nations
> and their peoples?
> Can the USA continue to be blamed, can the World Capitalists
> take all the responsibility for poverty and slave and prison
> labor? I don't think so. There is good and evil isn't there?
> Isn't Africa hungry for US technology and food? Isn't it
> those Capitalists that have discovered all those wonder drugs
> now in use in Africa?

You are right that the world is very complicated, and that there is
plenty of evil about without capitalism's adding theirs. But that likewise
does not mean that global capitalism is not to blame for its predations.
The relationship remains that poor countries provide cheap labor and
resources and get very little in return.
 
> > The very opposite of their claim of bringing "western"
> > economic vitality and progress to "developing" nations, it is in fact a
> > new kind of colonialism.
> 
> If it's new, or a new kind, perhaps colonialism is not the
> best term to describe it?
> Perhaps saying that it is a new kind of colonialism
> indicates that the horrors of colonialism are diminished as
> much as the horrors of the current state of affairs is
> inflated by the use of the term colonialism?

Not all colonialism in the past was at the level of the Belgians in the
Congo or the Germans in Southwest Africa, yet we use the same term for
good and bad. Modern globalism is colonial, because much of the trade
relationship between rich and poor is determined by debt of the latter
to the former, and the poor country rarely controls the industries the
rich country has brought to them. Trade is almost completely on the
terms of the rich, which is not a democratic arrangement.

> > Indeed, the anti-globalization movement provides some reason for hope,
> > because unlike the economic desperation behind the 1930's and the war
> > conscription behind the 1960's it is driven by a long-term and
> > principled vision of a democratic world.
> 
> Well, some of the drivers don't give a damn for democracy,
> but most, be they red, pink, anarchists, so on, don't like
> capitalism one little bit, but I doubt there is much hope of
> defeating that market principle.

True enough, alas, that some don't give a damn for democracy. The great
majority, however, of the 30,000 protesters in Québec and the thousands
demonstrating at border crossings and the week before in Brasil and
Montréal do, I think, believe in democracy. And as long as capitalists
claim that "free market" is the same as human liberty, then yes indeed
most of them don't like that capitalism. Shouldn't people enjoy the same
rights of economic and social self-determination as corporations do?
Shouldn't their liberty and welfare in fact come first?

--
Diogenes T.