June 25, 2002
Kamloops Daily News



“A capitalist would sell rope to his own hangman,”
attributed to Vladimir Ilich Lenin. 

In the eyes of some political observers, it was a contest
between two giants but the right side won.  The United
States, champion of the free world, carried the banner for
the capitalists.  On the other side were the Russian
communists,  called “the evil empire” by president Reagan in
1983. 

The triumph of capitalism, say these observers, was evident
in the collapse of  communist USSR and the fall of the
Berlin Wall in the 1990.   The lesson is that all things
socialist are a lost cause and the marketplace will save us
all.

This scenario conveniently ignores the largest country in
the world, which is run by communists.  With 1.3 billion
people, China is hard to ignore.  Not only is China big, it
is about to become the world’s economic powerhouse.   If you
have any doubt about this, just read the country of origin
on the label of almost everything you buy.

Capitalist adherents will argue that China is using the free
market, so it’s not a pure communist country.  While that’s
true it doesn’t make China any less communist.   And the
purity argument works both ways.

The United States achieved its goals as a superpower, in
part, through socialist means.  For example, the U.S.
established a state run school system that allowed the
brightest, not just the wealthiest, to succeed.  “Our
republic cannot long remain ignorant and free, hence the
necessity of universal popular education,” said Horace Mann,
U.S. educator (1837).  For its time, it was a revolutionary
and a socialist idea.

The logic of capitalism demands that goods be manufactured
at the lowest prices, even it means exporting jobs out of
the country. Not only are capitalists willing to sacrifice
the working poor on the altar of profit.  They will also
sell the rope that will hang them.

Globalization has not only betrayed the working class, it
has meant the loss of industrial sovereignty.   The U.S. has
lost the capacity to produce the goods that fuel it’s
economy.  Not only have jobs moved out of the country, they
have moved out of the company.    

One such betrayal is the world’s largest PC maker, Dell
computers.   The word “make” has to be carefully qualified
because they don’t actually make computers.  Despite the
tiny American flag that graces its web site, Dell is nothing
but a delivery channel for Chinese and Taiwanese parts.

Asian factories make the integrated circuits, mother boards,
video and audio cards, memory chips, hard drives, CD-Rom
drives, monitors, power supplies, and keyboards.  Dell puts
all these parts in cases and proudly puts their name on the
box.

Even Mexico’s industrial slum Maquiladoras are hurting
through the loss of jobs to China.  “Taiwan, Japan, Korea,
Mexico, all fret about losing core industrial activity to
China, and now Beijing pats its lap and winks at the global
semiconductor industry,” says Barry Lynn, former executive
editor for Global Business magazine.

 In China, the western world has found the final solution to
the high cost of goods and labour.   Until something goes
wrong, that is.  Capitalists have such tunnel vision that
they can’t see that they are selling out the foundation of
their own success. 

At the end of the day,  it doesn’t matter whose name  is on
the label of the product.   What matters is where the plants
are located that produce the technology and goods, not the
label.  China is  the dog that will wag the tail.

What if China decided to cut off the world’s supply of
computer parts to force some political goal, such as the
annexation of Taiwan?   Do you think they would care what
the foreign virtual companies would think?

Having put all their capitalist eggs in one basket, world
markets would be thrown in panic worse than post-September
11.   Capitalists might argue that China would not do that
since they would be hurting themselves by not selling on
world markets.

But  this argument assumes that China is a country like most
where governments have essentially been bought out by
corporations.  China is not such a government.   It is run
by communists who think that “national interest” is
something more than a political slogan  contrived by a
public relations company.

The score might be; capitalists 1, communists 0,  but the
game isn’t over yet. 

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