Carryfast:
Contrary to your idea I think we can safely say that China’s ‘trump’ card is that totalitarian Communist rule can do exploitative low wage economics and a subsidised industrial cost base far better than Victorian Capitalism can.
But it’s not low wage economics for the Chinese. They’re not racing to the bottom - they’re racing to the top! Their wages are growing and their standard of living is improving.
The fact that they are undercutting us is basically because Western workers are still engaged in a lot of activities that should already have been automated, but haven’t been because bosses are waging a class war with Western workers which involves pitting them in low-road competition with the underdeveloped world (and the Chinese start from such a low base that our ‘low road’ is still a great deal higher than where they are, so to them their side of the competition is for now a high-road one which is enriching and developing their economy).
Also, if you assert that the Chinese are subsidising their industry, then what means are they using to pay for that subsidy? That is, for there to be a “subsidy” then there must be a superprofit elsewhere in the economy that pays for the subsidy.
If the superprofit arises basically from underpaying the Chinese workforce in established industries, in order to purchase (via undercutting) more heavy industries like steelmaking from the rest of the world, then I can probably see your argument, but there is at least a long-term benefit to this policy for the Chinese working class (in terms of the expansion of Chinese industrial capacity).
This is similar to how Western workers deferred their pay into pensions (although in the Chinese case people are not being guaranteed pensions as individuals, but are being promised a general improvement in living standards, the fruits of which perhaps their children will enjoy more fully than today’s workers will). Their high rates of growth mean that today’s Chinese workers are still enjoying huge immediate improvements in their wages.
Also, the answer to this (if we wish to retain a steel industry) would be to protect Europe’s steel producers with import tariffs - not to leave the EU and try and strike a free (i.e. tariffless) trade deal with China as the Brexiteers propose!
Which is why we’ve got western economies flooded with Chinese imports with western retailers and out sourcing manufacturing operations taking advantage of cheaper Chinese labour and manufacturing costs.
Indeed, and whilst Western workers are losing wages, Western capital owners are seeing excellent profits doing this - not just by actually relocating businesses (and the capital and jobs associated with them) to China, but by using the threat of doing so to force down our wages. It’s standard class war.
With a similar situation taking place within Europe regards total free movement of East European imports of goods,services ( like transport ) and/or labour.All based on the fact that ‘post Communist’ Eastern Europe is still closer to Communism in its living standards expectations than it is to the Fordist Capitalist model.
I broadly agree, although remember that Eastern European societies are democratic and have already been proletarianised under the USSR, they just aren’t as economically developed as us.
Like I’ve said before, we have an interest in developing Eastern Europe - it’s just that I hold it should be paid for by taxation of the rich, not by the immiseration of the working class in Western Europe.
Which leaves those key questions that are ironically spot on the topic.Are you saying that the domestic workforce in the road transport industry for one example would be worse off or better off given a situation in which we ban the free movement of East European labour and/or transport operations from being able to undertake UK/West Euro freight movements.Or for that matter the issue of lifting or maintaining cabotage restrictions regards same.
I think they’d be better off in the short term - because obviously driving jobs are geographically constrained and can’t be outsourced like factory workers can.
Drivers would also be better off if a wage council simply imposed minimum wages and conditions for the sector.
I’ve already gone into more depth previously about why I support the wage council proposal over the restriction of free movement.
It’s precisely because the masses can’t easily perceive the consequences of taking the nationalist road as opposed to the socialist road, whereas the ruling class can perceive the consequences (and so they reject the socialist road and play up the superficial solutions of the nationalist road), that it’s so dangerous to acknowledge the superficial equivalence without warning people that the nationalist road eventually involves them marching for food and jobs, and ends with the working class sending their children to the fronts while bombs come through the ceiling.
Just like the question would UK steel workers be better off or worse off if we put a total ban on Chinese steel imports.Or for that matter the manufacturing industry in general if we imposed trade barriers that enforced trade balance across the board.As for German engineering v British I think our ethnic German roots has always made that a draw,if not superiority in our favour,with us usually being able to do more with less let alone when given an equal budget to work with.
But once we’ve imposed tariffs on every country, what will happen when those other countries cut off our raw materials, or cut off our cheap clothing and computer parts? If we refuse to buy German cars, why will Germany feel obliged to buy our steel instead of China’s?
What we need is a system for allocating jobs and economic resources fairly, not just within Europe but across the world. Not a system of tariffs (except as a form of economic sanction against those engaging in trade war), but a system of agreed practices and prices and an agreed distribution of jobs (and proper wages for those who have jobs, and proper social security for those who do not). This was the post-war vision not just for the Labour government, but for the founders of the EU project.
It has not been derailed by Chinese imports, but by homegrown neoliberalism, which rejects the idea that the state can provide fair jobs or social security. And if workers keep voting for right-wing neoliberal governments and movements, for austerity and Brexit, then they’re going to get what they voted for, which is the opposite to what they really want.
What is clear is that the argument between Nationalist/Protectionist/Fordist/Capitalist economics,as opposed to more of the same failed race to the bottom Global Free Market/Socialist alliance,goes to the heart of the future of the Labour movement and working class struggle.Just as it did in the fight between Shore and Callaghan in which we’ve got the results of what happened when Callaghan won out to go on.
There was nothing nationalist about Fordism - the very term comes from the bloody USA. Like I’ve said before, it’s postwar heyday was following the collapse of nationalism. Nor is there any alliance between socialism and the global free market - they are ideological opposites. That is why there is ructions in the Labour party now, because the Labour MPs are predominantly free marketeers like the Tories, whilst the members are predominantly socialists of some description.
Let alone the example of suicidal Chinese workers jumping off roofs having voted with their lives regarding your bs failed socialist ideology.
We have social security claimants jumping off roofs or similar.
