From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sun Nov 07 2004 - 03:49:05 EST
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: production shifts -- a subject for discussion?
From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@hetnet.nl>
Date: Sat, November 6, 2004 7:24 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, Jerry, I can give you a quick note of my recent thoughts on this
topic if you like:
The significance of outsourcing in the US economy is considerable. Earlier
this year, it was estimated by some economists that the number of US jobs
lost by movement of operations overseas since 2001 was 188,000 in the
services sector and 502,000 in manufacturing, totalling 690,000 for three
years. That is obviously a small fraction of the 58.6 million in overall
layoffs that companies undertook between 2001 and 2003, which was largely
offset by new hiring elsewhere in the US economy, but on a net basis,
payroll employment levels declined by 2.3 million during this period, so
outsourcing accounted for some 30% of the net loss of waged jobs in the US
economy over three years.
Obviously, internationally outsourced jobs are a net loss to the domestic
economy, not offset by new hiring. I think the trend will continue; this
is what the law of value would lead you to expect. There is not a lot that
the Bush administration can do about that. Why? Ex-Bank of America
managers and contractors say that in India, work that costs $100 an hour
in the U.S. gets done for $20. In New Delhi, Wipro Spectramind Ltd. employ
2,500 young college-educated people processing claims for a major US
insurance company and providing help-desk support for a big US Internet
service provider at a cost up to 60% lower than in the US. No amount of
tax breaks or incentives can compete with that, because we are dealing
here with a completely different cost structure.
The data shows us some important things: (1) you can be hired and fired
much more easily in the USA than in Japan or Europe ("labour market
flexibility"), producing more rapid job mobility upwards or downwards, and
(2) the trend towards "globalisation of insecurity" which Alvater talks
about; the enterprise is increasingly organised along a hierarchy with a
core staff of management and technical specialists with permanent
contracts, then a layer with annual contracts, and finally a layer of
workers brought in on a casual or parttime basis. This enterprise
structure is replicated in the class structure of society, but the
proportions are different in rich and poor countries. CNN recently
reported that half the people who voted have incomes of $50,000 or more a
year. That situation does not exist in developing countries.
Basically in most industrialised countries, around half of all the workers
are now in jobs which they have had since only a year. The debate in
Germany centres very much on labour-market flexibility; capitalists want
to provide workers with the opportunity to migrate downwards in the wage
scales, to make production costs more competitive. There is little that
employers can do about their fixed costs, which are the biggest part of
the capital outlay; but wages can be reduced of course. Apart from Norway,
Germany has the highest labour costs in the world (but profitability and
productivity is lower than in Norway) and a lot of rules governing hiring
and firing.
The "new international division labor" is already very much an
accomplished fact. Higher-level services, technological innovation,
distribution, and corporate management are concentrated in the developed
countries;
lower-level services and the production of material goods has shifted
increasingly to less developed countries. Marxists and semi-Marxists were
among the first to note this development; see the relevant works by Ernest
Mandel, Christian Palloix and Folker Frobel et al. But just as important
is the division of labor within the developed countries itself, in which
job quality has become increasingly important. Here is the occupational
structure of the employed labor force in the US in 2002, in approximate
figures:
Managers and executives 15,800,000
Supervisors 9,100,000
Teaching staff, all kinds 6,600,000
Machine operating and assembly workers 6,400,000
Food & beverage preparing and service workers 6,100,000
Administrative support clerks n.e.c. 5,800,000
Construction trade workers 5,300,000
Aides, ushers, guides, orderlies, and attendants 4,800,000
Mechanics and repairs workers 4,500,000
Technicians 4,300,000
Cleaners, janitors, private cooks, maids & housekeepers 3,700,000
Retail sales workers 3,400,000
Truck drivers 3,200,000
Secretaries, stenographers, and typists 3,000,000
Scientists 3,000,000
Sales representatives in finance and business services 2,900,000
Cashiers 2,900,000
Accountants, auditors, underwriters, and other financial officers
2,600,000 Engineers, architects, and surveyors 2,600,000
Freight & stock handlers, baggers & packers, machine feeders 2,400,000
Labourers & helpers 2,400,000
Registered nurses 2,300,000
Financial records processing clerks 2,200,000
Management analysts, specialists & consultants in human resources, PR and
labour relations 2,100,000
Materials recording, scheduling, and distributing clerks 1,900,000
Sales representatives in mining, manufacturing, and wholesale 1,500,000
Childcare workers and childcare assistants 1,400,000
Lawyers, judges and legal assistants 1,300,000
Barbers, hairdressers, cosmeticians, pharmacists, dietitians 1,300,000
Therapists, counselors, social workers and welfare service aides 1,200,000
Artists, entertainers & designers 1,200,000
Police, detective, and law enforcement officers 1,200,000
Military personnel 1,100,000
Medical doctors, dentists, vetinarians, optometrists, and podiatrists
1,100,000
Receptionists 1,000,000
Security guards 1,000,000
Working children under 16 1,000,000
Prostitutes 1,000,000
Farmers 968,000
Non-financial records processing clerks, 995,000
Inspectors (construction, production and compliance) 955,000
Groundskeepers and gardeners (non-farm) 940,000
Earthmoving equipment, crane, industrial truck, forklift, lorry and
tractor operators 898,000
Metal workers 826,000
Farm workers 726,000
Computer programmers 605,000
Bus drivers 605,000
Bank tellers 477,000
Postal delivery workers, messengers & couriers 468,000
Editors, writers, reporters and proofreaders 417,000
Religious clergy, and employees of religious institutions 393,000
Personal services n.e.c. 348,000
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs 340,000
Street and door-to-door sales workers 334,000
Corrective institution & prison officers 328,000
Doctor's and dental assistants 318,000
Firefighting and fire prevention workers 262,000
Electrical and electronic equipment assemblers 237,000
Librarians, archivists, and curators 231,000
Butchers and meat cutters 229,000
Dressmakers, tailors and shoe repairers 189,000
Professional photographers 178,000
Animal caretakers (non-farm) 170,000
Interviewers 169,000
Airplane pilots, airplane staff, air traffic controllers 152,000
Bakers and baking workers 148,000
Recreational services workers 129,000
Telephone operators 119,000
Oil & mining extraction workers 115,000
Railway workers 111,000
Cabinet makers, furniture & wood finishers, and other woodworkers 104,000
Newspaper vendors 103,000
Ship captains, sailors, mates & deckhands, fishermen 98,000
Professional athletes 95,000
Social welfare eligibility clerks 86,000
Sales demonstrators, promoters, and models 77,000
Water and sewage treatment plant operators 77,000
Forestry & logging workers 77,000
Optical goods workers 72,000
Other precision production workers n.e.c 72,000
Pest control workers 63,000
Food batchmakers 54,000
Other plant & system operators 45,000
Electric power plant operators 35,000
Bookbinding workers 35,000
Nursery workers 33,000
Hand molders & shapers 21,000
Patternmakers, layout workers, & cutters 12,000
Bridge, lock, & lighthouse tenders 3,000
Hunters & trappers 2,000
If you look at the total annual disposable income of the American
population (surveyed) in 2002, you find that $6.8 trillion is income from
labor, $2.1 trillion is income from property, and $1.2 trillion is income
from benefits. Obviously the proportions are very different in India.
In order for the argument that "American jobs are taken away by
foreigners" etc. to be really credible, it must first be proved that (1)
the same jobs producing the same output, which were previously performed
by Americans, are now being done by foreign workers offshore, in the same
proportion; (2) that Americans actually wanted to do those jobs, or were
prepared to do them; (3) that it would be practically feasible to do those
jobs in the USA, under the given conditions.
Undoubtedly this is the case for a portion of jobs lost to the USA. But
for many other jobs this is simply not true, because:
(1) If an employer closes down a plant in the USA, and opens up a new
plant overseas with a different production technique or a different
output, then you cannot say "American jobs are taken away by foreigners",
moreover it ignores "who" is actually taking those jobs away, namely
American employers and American investors. After all, it is American
investors and employers who decide to hire workers in the USA or overseas;
it is not as though "greedy workers" offshore are "grabbing or stealing"
employment opportunities from American workers. They are in no position to
do so, they can only respond to employment opportunities which are
actually being offered where they are. At best you can say that American
employers are creating insufficient jobs at home, or that it is too
difficult to set up
self-employed business (the Bush administration aims to change tax law to
make things easier for small businesses which create a lot of the extra
jobs; in reality, proprietors and partnerships dodge a lot of tax anyway).
(2) many new so-called "outsourced" foreign jobs, performed by workers
offshore for American employers, do not represent the substitution of an
American job by a foreign job at all, but rather the creation of a new and
different job by an American employer offshore, reflecting an investment
decision that overall production costs are cheaper offshore. In other
words, in considering whether to hire new employees in the USA or
offshore, the employer decides for economic reasons to hire offshore. The
managerial, financial and marketing functions might be sited in the USA,
whereas the actual product is made overseas.
(3) Production outsourced by American employers to foreign countries very
often involves getting less foreign workers to produce a larger output
than was made previously within the USA, and so, it is not as though
enormous amounts of new jobs are being created in foreign countries as a
result of outsourcing anyway. If an American employer previously used
2,000 American workers to produce an output worth $400 million and then
uses 1,500 foreign workers to produce an output worth $500 million, it
does not make much sense to talk about "foreign workers stealing American
jobs".
The idea of "foreign workers stealing American jobs" is suspect because:
1 - while blaming the working class as per usual, it fails to explain
exactly how foreign workers could possibly "steal" American employment in
the first place,
2 - it conveniently ignores that the decision to reduce employment levels in
the USA, is made by American employers and investors, and not by American
workers, who are just looking for a job where they are, because they have
no other way to survive, and cannot easily move somewhere else.
3 - the same American people who argue "foreign workers stealing American
jobs", are quite happy to consume competitively priced products imported
from overseas, and in many cases could neither do otherwise, nor stay
within their budget, without purchasing foreign-made products.
Thus, in reality, the argument that "American jobs are taken away by
foreigners" is more a jingoism, the logical endpoint of which is
that American workers, uniformed and in civvies, are send abroad to fight
wars, or to grab oil resources to fuel American cars, even although they
could quite easily negotiate to get oil from other sources if required.
As regards (3) Taking 2002 data, the total $ value of goods imported into
the USA for use (i.e. not re-exported) was about $1.1 trillion.
But only about 40% of that total dollar value of imported goods used in
the USA consisted of ordinary consumer goods used by households, and of
the value of all consumer goods and services imported, at least 10-15%
consisted purely of luxury consumption goods, i.e. things like jewellery,
trinkets, antiques, numismatic coins, works of art, gold, luxury cars,
luxury
clothing, luxury furnishings, pleasurecraft, luxury cars, personal
aircraft and
so on. Then you must conclude that out of the total dollar value of all goods
imported into the USA, only a third refers to ordinary consumer durable
and perishable goods, representing about 10% of the value of all consumer
goods bought by Americans each year. Out of the total dollar value of all
goods and
services imported into the USA, only a quarter consists of ordinary
consumer durables and perishables.
If you are are prepared to do some research into real American
working-class consumer expenditure beyond theories, then you would
conclude, that foreign goods and services they buy, comprise only a very
small portion of their wages, and the only "big ticket" foreign durables
in their budget, are foreign-made cars and foreign-made personal
computers. (If you actually look at average American personal consumer
expenditure, only 12% is actually expenditure on durable goods anyway). In
2002, American workers produced new cars and trucks worth $377.5 billion,
$80 billion of these American-made vehicles are exported, and new cars and
trucks worth $133 billion are imported.
So the stock of new cars and trucks appearing on the US domestic market is
nowadays worth about $390 billion or so. On the other side of the story,
only
about a fifth of the total annual payroll in the USA is paid out to
American working-class people who produce new tangible material goods.
Just under a third of those goods are not consumed in the USA, but
exported, yet those exported goods represent two-thirds of the total value
of all exports as conventionally defined.
The debate about free trade versus protectionism is not really about no
institutionalised rules for trade versus institutionalised rules for trade
(the absence or presence of legal rules) but really about how the market
should be regulated and about how regulated it should be.
Hence, the debate about free trade versus protectionism is itself a
reified expression of market freedom such as it appears in the minds of
businessmen, who seek to improve their relative bargaining position for
the purpose of reducing costs, increasing sales and increasing profits.
The real issue at stake here has little to do with freedom per se, but
with competition and the ability to compete. However, economic theory
depicts the market as something in which everybody is equal, because
everybody has the same access to the market. In reality, this is not the
case, because bargaining position is established basically through buying
power (money in pocket) and asset ownership. If you own money or assets,
then that gives access to markets and increases the ability to compete, if
you don't have those things, you may not be able to have access to markets
or be unable to compete at all. In addition, the changing class structure
makes markets increasingly segmented; entry into those markets is no
longer possible for just anyone.
In discussing the relationship between capital and wage-earners, Marx
notes for example that this means an unequal bargaining position for
owners of work capacity and owners of capital. In negotiating about trade
in human work, for example, the owner of capital can normally wait,
whereas the individual owner of work capacity cannot wait, he must sell
his work capacity. This gives rise to trade unions, a form of
protectionism of sorts, in which workers cancel out competition between
them and combine their collective strength, to improve their bargaining
position in the competitive process and thus increase the selling price
through collective negotiations, which the employer of workers cannot
ignore. The extent to which they can succeed in this depends on the legal
framework and the level of
unemployment. If unemployment is high, then bargaining position is
reduced, if unemployment is low, bargaining position is strengthened.
But for owners of capital and employers of workers, the concern is with
(1) the right to buy things, at a certain price, and sell things, at a
certain prices, and (2) the restriction of competition of a kind that
would increase costs, reduce sales and reduce profits, ultimately driving
them out of business. Consequently, the market always involves power
relationships between
competitors, and ceteris paribus, those who are in a strong bargaining
position will favour free trade, whereas those in a weak bargaining
position favour protectionism as a general rule. But in addition,
individual owners of capital aim to promote free trade only where it is
conducive to cutting their own costs, increasing their own sales and their
own profits. Since competition is a dynamic, changeable process, that
means that whereas today they might be in favour of free trade, tomorrow
they might be in favour of protectionism. It all just depends on the
specific conditions conducive to reducing costs as much as possible,
increasing sales as much as possible, and increasing net profits as much
as possible.
However, the ability to realise surplus-values from labour is
dependent on the defence of the right to own private capital
assets, and prevent access to them by people who do not own them. If
workers were not shut out from access to means of production in specific
ways, then they would not be compelled to sell their ability to work and
work for a boss, they could just help themselves to resources. This being
the case, the owners of private capital have a common interest, a
universal class interest in safeguarding the ownership and entitlement to
private assets against theft, robbery and competing claims about ownership
entitlements. It is this which provides the basis for the free trade
versus protectionism debate, because the question then is by what strategy
private enterprise might best be promoted, what strategy best promotes the
accumulation of private capital, and that just depends of relative
bargaining position.
If therefore the working class adopts either a "free trade" or
"protectionist" stance as a general preference, then the working class
adapts itself to the economistic bourgeois ideology that all have equal
access and rights in the market, and all are equal in their bargaining
position when it is a question of competition in trade. But as I just
noted, that is not the case.
What is the case, is that competitive processes are structured according
to the real interests of different social classes and fractions of social
classes in society. If the objective is to advance the position of the
working class in society, this requires a class consciousness, and this
class consciousness requires the assertion of the needs, interests and
desires of the working class. But this already presupposes that the
working class has interests in common. This is certainly true, but class
struggles operate through a triple competitive process, namely workers
compete with other workers for incomes, positions, opportunities and
promotions, workers compete with employers for wages and conditions, and
employers compete with other employers for sales, profits and business
oportunities.
Therefore to improve the bargaining position of the working class,
socialists have to try to achieve several things at the same
time: (1) to reduce or cancel out competition between workers, (2) to
strengthen bargaining position in the competition between workers and
employers, and (3) to increase the divisions and competition among
employers.
From this point of view, the question of whether free trade or
protectionism is generally speaking preferable is completely irrelevant,
because the issue is quite different, the issue is own of improving the
bargaining position, cohesion and collective strength of the working
classes. Getting trapped into that dispute is to be swayed by market
reifications. The issue is not an economic one, but a political one,
because it
is about power, about bargaining position, and the aim here is to use
whatever ethically warranted means are useful to improve that bargaining
position.
Consequently, it is quite permissible for the working classes to argue for
regulation here, and deregulation there, from the point of view of
advancing their collective interests. At the most simple level, these are
the interests of a group of workers, at a more complex level, a national
working classes, and at the highest level, the international working
class. That is what it means to take a class approach: in other words, we
penetrate through market fetishism to understand the bargaining position
of different social classes and what their interests are, we take sides
with one or more classes, and seek to advance their interests vis-a-vis
other social classes. It means for a start the recognition that we are not
"all in the same boat", that the population is situated differently
according to their class positions. In forming a class awareness, one
seeks to shape up a set of values which responds politically to the real
competitive process and the real position of the working class. It is in
the interest of the workers to seek regulation here, and it is in the
interest of the workers to seek deregulation there, and we know that,
because we can verify what strengthens or weakens their bargaining
position.
Libertarians will argue for increasing individual strength, but
socialists argue for increasing collective strength, and the collective
strength of not just anybody but of the revolutionary and progressive
strata of social classes. That is the real framework. Because of the
complexity of competitions and the dynamics of the competitive process,
generalities obviously will not suffice, except for Neanderthal Marxists
who already know
what is in the interests of social classes, before they have
experientially verified that. Marxist ideology is actually quite harmful
here, in that sense because it specifies what interests are in general
terms in advance of actually experientially verifying this. They impute a
theoretical interest which people would have if they acted in accordance
with a theorised class interest. But this is a strategy which never leads
to success, the question is one of diagnosing real interests, not
abstract, theoretical ones.
Given the proliferation of competing interests, it is not possible to do
justice to all interests at any time, rather, we must focus on those
themes in political discussion which reflect the priorities of social
classes, and thus, we must prioritise specific themes, which satisfy the
criteria and they unite class friends, strengthen class position and
divide class enemies. Nevertheless, the evolution of class conflicts have
a "logic", because the dynamics of capital accumulation in the production
and exchange of specific use-values sets limits to what can happen and how
power relations can evolve. The first step towards prioritisation of
useful themes is therefore an analysis of the real, objective position of
social classes in economic and social life created by the specific way in
which the capitalistic mode of production operates. That position sets
limits to what can happen, and it suggests the parameters within which
class conflict can evolve, and what the fights are ultimately really
about, whatever the level of awareness or insight people may have about
that.
If there is a general guiding principle, it is that freedom for capital
and the accumulation of capital is conditional on the unfreedom of the
working classes, and consequently anything that expands the freedom of the
working classes promotes the bargaining position of those classes in the
bella omni contra omnes of bourgeois society. If protectionism expands
that freedom, it is necessary to support protectionism. If free trade
expands that freedom, then it is necessary to argue for free trade, and
this must be evaluated in the framework of the triple competition I
described previously. If protectionism promotes cooperation among workers,
then socialists are in favour of protectionism. If free trade promotes
cooperation between workers, then socialists are in favour of free trade.
This position just means breaking with market fetishism, and turning an
economistic controversy into a political one, for the purpose of asserting
political interests.
If some capitalists argue for free trade and other businessmen argue for
protectionism, why should a class conscious worker care about that ? All
they are talking about is what benefits their own business. It is just
that, at the most general level, the phenomena of ideology seek to present
a sectional interest as a general interest, and therefore, businessmen
will argue that free trade is in the interests of workers because it
creates jobs and opportunities, or they will argue that protectionism
preserves jobs and opportunities. But that is just a generality, what
matters is what the specific policies are, and they should be evaluated
from the point of view of class interests, and only if that is done, can a
position be articulated in the competitive process which truly reflects
how a social class, like the working class, can advance its position.
The usual objection to the interpretation I have provided concerns
reformism, which ultraleftists get terribly concerned about. It is argued
that protectionism is a reformist strategy and so on, therefore socialist
should always be against it on principle. This is Neanderthal Marxism. In
view of what I have said, it is also meaningless, because it ignores what
a market is, and how the competitive process actually occurs. The real
question
has nothing to do with protectionism or free trade as such, but with who
to ally or unite with, and who to oppose, for the specific purpose of
advancing class consciousness and class interests and with a definite
project for reconstructing society along socialist lines..
However defined, reformism always means a change in the regulation of the
market and a correction of income distribution and ownership of wealth and
income, with the aim of mitigating bad effects of market forces on human
beings. The objection is not that this is necessarily or intrinsically a
bad thing, but rather that in the attempt to do this class interests may
be confused and disregarded, with the effect that the interventions made
may help social classes and groups quite different from the ones they
claim to help. The stated purpose of interventions in the market may, in
other words, be quite different from their real purpose or real effect.
Free trade is just as much a reformist strategy and protectionism is,
precisely because free trade also seeks to reform the market. The real
point concerns whose bargaining position these strategies reflect, who
they benefit. In addition, the very idea of intervening in the market in
order to change its modus operandi, tacitly accepts the idea that only
those human needs, desires and interests have reality which are validated
through buying and selling things, or that it is emancipatory if needs,
interests and desires which previously existed outside the market are
marketised through provision of buying power and outlets. Here again a
form of reification is
concerned, because who says that a need, desire or interest must
necessarily be satisfied via the market, and who says it cannot be
satisfied in ways other than via the market ?
Imperialism is an effect of market expansion, as Rosa Luxemburg noted
(even though not all her arguments are correct), and market expansion
normally requires a free trade approach to remove obstacles to the market.
Hence, an aggressive imperialist approach usually involves a free trade
stance, which reflects the interests of the most powerful strata of the
business class and their interests. But this does not mean at all, that
the very same business people isn't interested in protectionism, because
they are.
It is just that from their point of view, there should be free trade here,
and protectionism there, in a way which is consistent with their
interests.
Take, for example, the issue of immigration. The bourgeoisie argues for
"labour market flexibility" and labour mobility, yet at the same time
wishes to prevent immigrant hordes from taking over the country. This is a
point of view that is not consistent. The job of socialists is then to
point of why this is not consistent, and does this in a way which
strengthens the position of the working classes. This critique involves
saying, if you are in favour of free trade here, why can you be against it
there ? If you are in favour of protectionism here, why are you against it
there ?
And that leads me to the issue of hypocrisy, namely, free trade and
protectionism are merely ideology - ideology which presents a sectional
interest as a general interest. If what I argued above is true, then the
dispute concerns only different ways of regulating the market, in
accordance with specific interests, such that some groups or classes
benefit, and some groups and classes don't. Consequently, it is a
hypocritical debate, and that hypocrisy is revealed as soon as we ask the
question "who benefits" and investigate who benefits. Then it runs out
that the propagation of certain market values as universally beneficial in
reality just benefit sectional interests and specific social classes.
Neanderthal Marxists don't
investigate anything, so then all they have is ideology, and that ideology
must ultimately be hypocritical insofar as what it claimed to be a
collective interest is just an individual interest of the Neanderthal
Marxist.
Socialists defend the idea that markets are merely one instrument for the
allocation of society's resources, but there are also other forms of
allocating resources, that is to say, entitlements to access and ownership
of resources don't have to be regulated by the market (or for that matter
by the state) at all, and this is shown by the very fact that markets
themselves are regulated by legal rules and enforcement procedures.
Moreover, markets cannot even operate without a lot of non-market
labour: housework and voluntary labor.
For a statistical study of unpaid work and time-use in Japan,
see http://www5.cao.go.jp/98/g/19981105g-unpaid-e.html
http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/shakai/1.htm
See also for Germany and other countries:
http://www.newint.org/issue181/facts.htm
See for the United States: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm
For Britain: http://www.cev.be/Documents%5CFacts&Figures_UK.pdfhttp://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=3720
If markets operate efficiently from the standpoint of the working classes, if
they benefit those classes, then socialists should be in favour of them.
If they
are not beneficial, then socialists should oppose them. This creates a
specific
attitude to trading processes and how one works with them, and is the
basis for culture wars. But in working with them, one should not impute to
significance to them which they do not really have. What counts is human
beings, human needs, interests and desires. It is only the reformist who
get trapped in commercial arguments and adopt the language of the market
to describe human processes in a way which reifies them.
It sad to note just how many Marxists have no articulate ideas
about all this, and thus reconcile themselves with a debate framed in the
ideological terms of the people they oppose. On that basis, no class
consciousness can ever be articulated politically, and in that case,
however "revolutionary" you may say you are, you are still reformist. You
subscribe to economism, rather than turning the economistic competitions
between different fractions of the business class into a political issue
addressed from
the point of view of the needs, interests and desires of the working classes.
"Free trade ? For the benefit of the working class ! Protectionism ? For
the benefit of the working class ! The bourgeois is bourgeois, for the
benefit of the working class" - Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, The
Communist Manifesto, section "bourgeois socialism".
Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Nov 08 2004 - 00:00:01 EST