After Seattle: Strategic Thinking About Movement Building

Monthly Review, July, 2000 by Martin Hart-Landsberg

To date, no independent movement of Chinese workers has called for international support for a campaign to keep China out of the WTO. In fact, even organizations operating in Hong Kong that seek to promote independent labor organizing in China have refrained from supporting such a campaign. [4] Moreover, many militant and independent labor movements, including those in South Korea and Brazil, as well as many third world NGOs, have gone on record opposing the extension of WTO powers to include oversight of labor and environmental conditions. Thus, pursuing a campaign that makes such demands a critical element of its strategy is bound to endanger the international solidarity that was built during the Seattle actions. This accomplishment should not be lightly cast aside.

The anti-China campaign makes sense only if the primary goal is reform of the WTO through adoption of labor and environmental side-agreements. But, such a goal not only undermines international solidarity, it also sets back the political development of a socialist-oriented movement in the United States. There is a growing radicalization taking place within the U.S. working class and our efforts should be directed towards deepening the process, not blunting it. A movement that calls for reform rather than rejection of the WTO, and encourages workers to celebrate neoliberalism and pressure other countries to restructure their political economies along similar lines (so as to solve "our" problems) clearly leads in the wrong direction.

We should oppose making China the focal point of our political work. Our response to those who want to know our opinion on this issue should be that the Chinese people would be better off if their country remained outside the WTO, as would the working people of all countries, including those in the United States. That is why we oppose the WTO and seek to dismantle it. Fundamentally, the China-WTO issue represents a struggle among elites in both the United States and China. Our attention and organizational efforts should be focused on developing campaigns that speak directly to workers' concerns in the United States and other countries, and that promote rather than weaken international worker solidarity.

An Alternative Campaign:

Ratification of ILO Labor Conventions

There are other more productive ways to respond to the deterioration in U.S. working and living conditions, which keep the focus on U.S. capitalism. One way is to take advantage of the U.S government's rhetoric. The president and most members of Congress, for example, claim to support strong labor rights. Yet their "actions" tend to be limited to criticisms of labor conditions in other countries. We should challenge the president to endorse, and the Congress to ratify, the seven fundamental labor Conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

The ILO has adopted more than 180 international labor Conventions. These Conventions, in the words of the ILO, "are international treaties, subject to ratification by ILO member States." The ILO Governing Body has decided "that seven Conventions should be considered fundamental to the rights of human beings at work" and should be "implemented and ratified by all member States of the organization. These are called Fundamental ILO Conventions." [5]