| Blair's visit to India and China is a harbinger of even more outsourcing to come |
'Free' trade – war against the workers
WORKERS, DEC 2005 ISSUE
The so-called Doha Development Agenda – the circulating international trade agreement talks – are due in Hong Kong before the end of the year. A lot of angst will come gushing forth as to whether poor countries will do as well as they should out of the negotiations; whether the terms of trade will be equitable and whether the new arrangements will be fairer than the old. Inevitably, the answer to all these questions will be a resounding no, for how could it be any other way?
Capitalist trading relations are not about fairness but about getting the best deal. Globalisation is not about making poverty history – a fatuous phrase we ought to consign to history – it is about screwing workers into the ground and maximising profit.
The juxtaposition of the Chinese President's visit with a poignant photo of a Longbridge MG Rover plant said it all, really. Capital will move where it can to get a better return, for as little outlay as possible.
Blair
When Blair flew off to China in September, he took with him an entourage of 40 business representatives plus a gaggle of ministers from his government all keen to look at how they could invest capital in China.
In the next few months over a hundred business delegations are planned to travel from Britain to China, including major visits led by the Lord Mayor of London – the movement of The City eastwards obviously doesn't stop at Canary Wharf.
In a somewhat ill-chosen turn of phrase (at least one hopes so), Lord Powell, Blair's former special adviser, said, "The next couple of months are going to see quite a concentration of British firepower on China, our chance to be on stage and be number one." Blair later went on to tour India, but China was his principal goal.
For British workers, these are not good signs. The visits can only presage further massive shifts of capital out of Britain into cheap labour zones that are now being transformed into high productivity zones as well, precisely because of the investment which is being transferred.
European textile production has moved relentlessly east in search of lower wages and higher profits.
Ironically, such moves have caused great consternation amongst charity workers and aid agencies. Quite happy to see workers here deprived of their jobs, they're now, understandably, pointing out that huge investment in China will deprive many African and Asian countries of capital. What they do not see is that when Blair talks of trade generating wealth, current conditions mean that profits increase but wages are ground down to the minimum and peasant farmers are squeezed off their plots.
However, all is not plain sailing for Blair and his capitalist backers. The Doha round has exacerbated tensions between the main players in the globalisation game.
The USA is wary of China's expansion, especially as the Chinese have started to move into South America in a big way, and its cosy client states in Latin America have started to see alternatives to US domination. Why else would Bush have been forced to go to Argentina to face Chavez and Maradona? What a pain, nipped and tucked by both tiny Cuba and China!
Mandelson, on behalf of the EU, has staunchly tried to peddle his Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) as an alternative type of trade with African countries. However, the terms of EPAs mean, basically, that the EU tells you what it will allow you to produce. So, single cash crops will still distort and destroy the sustainable agriculture that some African countries need, just as the oil needs of the big companies Shell etc will distort the present and future of Nigeria.
Meanwhile, closer to home, the tensions within the EU were exacerbated by Blair's relationship-building with China.
Moving east
From the late 1990s, most of the rest of the European Union has spent billions shifting production to Eastern Europe. In the Italian textile industry, for example, companies like Cotonella, Miroglio and MarioBellosi have shifted production to Albania, Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania so that they now employ many times more workers in these countries than they do in Italy. But recent studies (University of California, Berkeley) have shown that such investment will only have short-term advantages as these wage rates in Eastern Europe prove to be much higher than those in the Far East where British capital is headed. So, Blair's trip while EU President was not appreciated in Brussels.
It is good to see these fallings out but we have to look to our own interests as workers, wherever we are. Trade on the capitalists' terms is not how we would wish to see relations between countries. Movement of capital and labour only weakens us all. We must start to find ways of controlling those funds, which belong to us, for example, our pensions, and limiting their location of investment. Charity must begin at home.
