Look. I'm not trying to start another pointless struggle session. Far from that, I want each and every one of us to confront this most strange attempt at multilateralism by two of our favourite existing socialisms.

There's no substantial article on the environment. Not a single word on climate or pollution. And nothing on labour issues.

I get that the whole thing is brand new and the member countries will probably amend to add more to the document in later stages.

But now is the point the heads of governments go back to their respective legislative body for ratification. Again, nothing on labour, the environment or the climate.

I want us Chapos to confront the likelihood that existing socialist experiments are faltering, even abandoning, a key promise of socialism to workers: reducing work hours for more leisure time. That, and no idea how trade is going to connect to the climate crisis.

  • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
    1·
    4 years ago

    I would say the minimum we need from a neoliberal trade deal to even consider not outright criticizing it to hell is that it undermine the economic superiority of the U.S.

    It's certainly a low bar to clear. At the same time, it's impossible to overstate the harmfulness of U.S. economic superiority and the potential benefits of rolling that back. We can't say "death to America" and then not at least critically support something that directly harms American interests.

    We criticize Kamala Harris for establishing “a student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities.” But then we support what is basically that useless on a bigger scale.

    We criticize Democrats for offering shit because so many countries have proven programs that are far better. For example, the student loan program you cite that's means tested to death is laughable in comparison to all the countries that have effectively free college. There's no reason to give Democrats any credit for suggesting something that's decades behind most of Europe.

    In contrast, I don't think there's any precedent for this scale of multilateral trade agreement that includes significant labor protections. Certainly nothing in the 30 years since the fall of the Soviet Union. To paraphrase someone else in this thread, I don't think leftists like us (i.e., posters) should be too critical of socialist states on the grounds that they have thus far failed to achieve something that's never (or almost never) been done before. I don't think that appropriately accounts for the enormous challenges of turning theory into reality. The measuring stick should be "are they doing as much as they realistically are able to do, given real-world conditions" not "are they doing as much as is theoretically possible, assuming the best possible conditions."

    But anyways, I don’t wanna make this a struggle session on China or whatever. Left unity and all that, right?

    Always a good consideration.

    • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah, I guess I agree. Those are all fair points.

      I commented elsewhere too to someone who raised a very similar point re: "doing as much as they realistically are able to do". I think that's an unfalsefiable claim. You just have to trust that the govt is doing things the only way they think will work. But, I mean, that doesn't convince anyone who doesn't already trust them.

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I'm not sure "unfalsifiable" is the best term for it. We know there are some worse things they could do, and we know there are some better things we can imagine that are practically impossible. We can give them credit for not doing some of the bad things and we can not blame them for not doing the impossible things. Even inside of those boundaries, we can have rational discussions about what is possible-and-easy vs. what is possible-but-difficult.

        This conversation does involve (fact-based) speculation, but it's the type of speculation you or I would engage in to determine if an individual was making a good-faith effort at doing something.