Trade and Class Revisited

~ "Trade and Class: Labour Strategies in a World of Strong Capital," I set out a strategic model which yielded as logical inferences a program including "nationalization, tax penalties for inadequate investment, the growth of a state sector and full employment, boycott campaigns and protective trade legislation in addition to a concerted campaign against concessions."! Further, the argument not only stressed the importance of supporting the struggles of workers elsewhere but also rejected analyses which attributed capitalist crisis to the "weakness" of capital. By reasoning from the weakness of particular national capitals to that of world capital, such analyses find solutions (such as increased productivity) which strengthen capital or, at least, particular national capitals. In contrast, I argued the necessity to begin with world capital to understand the weakness of workers and to demonstrate theoretically Marx's insight that when workers compete among themselves, capital gains,2 David McNally has responded by charging that not only does my "protectionist" argument promote "jingoistic populism," advance a program of "national reformism" and reinforce bourgeois nationalism (which threatens to "divide the working class movement") but it also can be associated with sundry proposals which advocated electoral support for the Liberal Party and class alliance politics. As well, he argues that my "dangerously misleading strategic political conclusions" have their roots in my "flawed theoretical argument" and, in particular, in my reliance "upon the empty abstraction of a single world capital ."3