The article by Professor Emiliano Brancaccio entitled «Neither with
liberalism nor with protectionism: a "social standard"», published in"Il Manifesto" on April 13, offers interesting food for thought. ----
Brancaccio argues that liberalism and protectionism are two extremes of
capitalist exploitation, inextricably linked to each other. ---- To
demonstrate this statement Brancaccio does not refer to economic
mechanisms, linked to the characteristics of the capital cycle, but
brings as evidence the fluctuating behavior of the US administration
regarding tariffs and, on a smaller scale, the proposals that the
Italian Prime Minister brought to the meeting with the US President.
I have the impression that the mechanism of economic determinism has
been triggered in a certain way, whereby the reasons for the economic
choices of governments must be sought in the omnipotence of Capital,
rather than in the choices of power of governments. Even the examples
given by Brancaccio, rather than demonstrating how government choices
adapt to the needs of capital, demonstrate that in reality capitalism is
more or less favored depending on the needs of governments for power.
Capitalism, in the final analysis, is nothing but a form of domination,
masked by freedom of exchange, which leaves unchanged the separation
between a privileged minority, which holds the levers of political and
economic domination through private ownership of the means of production
and violence concentrated in the hands of the State, and a majority
forced to work to maintain this minority. When capitalism is unable to
legitimize itself, to justify this exploitation, then the government
intervenes and bourgeois freedom and equality fall to the ground,
revealing the character of a relationship of domination of capitalism,
based on the violence of a privileged few against the exploited majority.
Rather than saying that protectionism and liberalism are two sides of
the same capitalist coin, I would prefer it to be said that they are two
aspects of the policy of domination of governments, which with their
violence allow the capitalist mode of production to survive.
A question of words, someone will say. In the end, it is always us, the
exploited classes, the working classes who pay the price for government
policies. It is not just a question of words because, if the role of
governments is to perpetuate relationships of domination, the proposal
that Brancaccio makes in the last part of the article, that is, a
"social standard" that prevents downward competition in wages, rights
and environmental guarantees between the various national economies,
loses its meaning.
This is an old idea of the professor, which first took the form of the
European contractual standard, aimed at the European coordination of
bargaining aimed at countering the tendency towards imbalances in the
balance of payments and wage deflation within the Union; subsequently,
in 2016, he proposed to the European Parliament the adoption of a social
standard on international capital movements. In this article, he
proposes the relaunch of the so-called social standard for the
regulation of international movements of goods and capital.
The core of the standard, Brancaccio argues, consists of a limitation of
trade with those countries that implement policies of downward
competition on wages, working conditions, environmental and health
protection regimes, with respect to a common reference objective and the
position from which they start.
What is happening in the United States, and in particular in the
automotive sector, can help to understand the scope of this proposal.
A proposal similar to the social standard is the battle horse that
Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez,
left-wing Democrats, are using in their campaign across the US to fight
what they call the new oligarchy. The powerful UAW auto union also has a
positive attitude on Trump's tariffs, because they could create new jobs
in the United States.
The UAW hopes - after the United States lost 682,000 jobs due to NAFTA
(North American Free Trade Agreement) - that punitive tariffs will
incentivize domestic production and rebuild the US manufacturing base.
"With these tariffs, thousands of good-paying auto jobs could be brought
back to working-class communities across the United States within
months," said UAW President Shawn Fain. Fain later walked back his
statement, saying it would take years to build a new plant; he did say,
however, that the tariffs could be an "incentive" to add jobs where
companies have eliminated shifts, such as at the Volkswagen plant in
Tennessee, where the union is negotiating an initial contract. Fain also
said that Stellantis could restore the 2,000 jobs it lost when Ram
pickup production was moved to Mexico.
There is a "rule" in bargaining: if the company doesn't give you a
written answer, then don't believe it. The promise of new jobs tied to
the new tariffs is just that: a promise. What is certain is that no new
factories will be built, but prices for goods will rise as manufacturers
pass the costs of the tariffs on to buyers; production will be reduced
due to falling sales and logistical difficulties, which will likely
result in more layoffs. This is the perspective, whether the increase in
duties occurs in the confusing way of Trump or in the more elegant and
politically correct way of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, taken up by
Brancaccio.
If capitalists take advantage of the division of the working class to
move production to where it is weakest or the price of labor is lowest,
the answer is not in government action, in protectionism, in incentives.
If the working class is divided, the problem is to unite it beyond
national barriers. This union is difficult, but the problem is not
solved by increasing the barriers between states and making
international class unity more difficult. The solution of tariffs to the
division of the working class is not a solution.
In reality, capitalism survives only through the constant increase in
exploitation, which is obtained by reducing the price of labor capacity,
even below its value. Duties, inflation, taxes, are all tools that
governments use to reduce the cost of labor capacity and to reduce the
standard of living of the exploited classes. Government action, of any
color, can never be in favor of the working class. Believing that
tariffs based on the social standard solve the problem of delocalization
means being naive or in bad faith, in any case obstructing the path of
the working class towards international unity.
Lona Lenti
https://umanitanova.org/dazi-nostri-social-standard-un-ostacolo-allunita-operaia-internazionale/
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