0100,0100,0100In reponse to my assertion that workers' struggles were becoming inherently more transnational, Nicola wrote [OPE-L 2450]: Times New RomanWhy is it plain to you? It isn't plain to me, and I worked in factories for 15 years. In fact, I fail to see what mechanisms could possibly drive the process you describe; ie 'globalisation' will create international solidarity. If that's what you are saying, I can't agree. The reverse effect seems more 'reasonable' - from a workers point of view. Say, for example, that I am a textile worker in Melbourne, Australia..... ArialBut I made no assertion about the consciousness of workers, nor about the policies of solidarity or otherwise that they would advance. All I was saying was "plain to me" was that (quote) 7F00,0000,0000Times New Romanworkers' struggles and the wider processes of class >formation and politics are also likely to become more transnationalArial My point was simply (to take up Nicola's example) that the Melbourne textile worker's struggles would have increasingly to take account of the transnational nature of the textile industry. The consequences which Nicola addresses are the 'how' with which I concluded. So let's try out an alternative to her scenario. Of course, textile workers in Melbourne can devote themselves to campaigning for the maintenance of tariffs, or for the substitution of "fair labour standards" rules as a substitute for them. But a realistic appraisal of the last couple of decades of Australia's political economy might, conceivably, and maybe only after many defeats, persuade them that they were on a hiding to nothing, and that they needed to build links to Indonesian and other Asian textile unions. Indeed, I can't think of a single "nation" where an attempt by labour to forge a progressive-nationalist resistance to international capitalist restructuring - the modern version of free trade - has been successful. Just as their foremothers and -fathers had to build a national union in order to overcome the consequences for workers of competition among Australian textile capitalists (who of course appealed to the local loyalty (not so different from patriotism?) of "their" workers), so the present-day textile worker might come to see that workers united across national borders just might have a better long-term prospect of protecting their livelihoods. Maybe some North American comrades with knowledge of UNITE's work in |Mexico might care to comment? Or, for that matter, some insights into why Canadian unionists have often been affiliated to US-based "international" unions? A further point concerns the 'mobility', or rather immobility, of labour. Simply comparing the mobility of 'capital' with that of 'labour' seems to me to risk giving credence to an orthodox neoclassical understanding of factor markets. As we surely know, actual movements of labour *within* most nation-states is pretty restricted for most workers, and regional wage differences persist, except where organized labour succeeds in imposing national collective bargaining centred on a single tariff. More typically, substantial differences in wages "for the same job" persist not merely intranationally but among firms in the same locality, that is, even when there is no barrier of 'immobility'. Equally, the 'mobility' of capital is highly 'imperfect'. Across borders, it depends on the policies and practices of host states, the availability of local agents of different kinds providing the elements of productive capital both fixed and variable (including very often local trades unions). It depends too, very commonly, on the possession of what the international business economists call ownership-specific advantages, that is, monopoly rents, the existence of which inherently restricts the 'mobility' of other capitals. It seems to me that, given such considerations, the recent intensification of cross-border transactions make it necessary to abandon (at least, *try* abandoning) the long-held view that national borders separate relatively homogeneous national markets from each other, and reproduce world markets whose heterogeneity is along national lines. Furthermore, even if the physical geographical mobility of workers across borders remains typically restricted, the increased potential for cross-border direct investments has the same consequences of creating downward pressure on wages and conditions. Let the debate continue! Hugo Hugo Radice Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy, Institute for Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. tel: 44-113-233-4507 fax: 44-113-233-4400