With several years of secret negotiations between different
corporations and governments from around the world, the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership has been signed. TTIP represents one of the most
insidious and draconian attacks of capital on labour. As it begins to take
effect in the signatory countries, it will have the compounded effect of other
past treaties such as NAFTA. Its deleterious effect will inexorably present
itself in the form of an even larger inequality
and gap between the rich and the poor in society.
One of the biggest attacks on the working-class by previous
and current neo-liberal governments comes in the form of globalization. Before
mid-1970’s the working-class wages and benefits was protected by high tariffs,
labour laws, and unions and working-class associations. This was procured
through decades of both national and international class struggle. However,
globalization through treaties such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) which was signed by the US, Canada and Mexico, companies (for
example car companies in the US and Canada) were able to bypass domestic labour
laws and take production to places (in Mexico in the case of NAFTA) with
non-unionized labour and consequently cheaper work force. Other trade treaties
has been taking place in Europe and Asia with similar effects: export of better
paying unionized jobs to the South.
Despite NAFTA’s ruinous effects on the working-class (loss
of 700 thousand unionized job in the US and spread of poverty for Mexicans), it
was packaged as “positive” for the working-class. By attacking unions and
working-class associations, capital was successful in lowering its costs via
the increasing the exploitation (primary exploitation) during production (lower
wages, longer working day and use of more productive machines). Further, by weakening the position of the
working-class by weakening and bankrupting unions, the neo-liberal state was
also able to increase its secondary exploitation. The secondary exploitation
comes in the form of shifting the total cost of the social reproduction of alienated
labour (such as the cost of housing, education and healthcare) on to the
working-class itself. This was accomplished through neo-liberal laws that continuously
reduced the taxes on big business and the rich (which were used to pay for
social provisions of the working-class).
Today TTIP is a modern example and an extension of the
continued class-war waged against the working-class. A few of the many
proposals in TTIP include:
- · Corporations being allowed to sell hormone treated meat in Europe
- · Corporations being allowed to clone cattle, chlorinate chicken, and genetically engineer different foods in Europ
- · Use of fracking in Europe to extract gas from the earth (contaminating the water supply and soil)
- · Allowing for companies to sue the state (held in arbitration courts and not public courts) for loss of profits (in the case of increasing wages or environmental laws that limits profits)
The winners of TTIP are the corporations and banks. TTIP is a
modern neo-liberal instrument for capital to further reduce its social cost of
production and shift this cost on to the producers of social wealth: the
working-class itself. TTIP will allow corporations to accumulate gargantuan
profits by circumventing labour and environmental laws that protects working-class
wages, benefits and collective bargaining. The working-class, bereft of all its
achievements, through decades of class-struggle, will be face to face with the bourgeois
in its raw draconian form. This is the bourgeois that can no longer hide behind
the shroud of the “democratic” state. The inexorable outcome will be a large
shift in the surplus wealth in society. Further, a favourable outcome for the
working-class will be predicated on a new kind of revolutionary workers’ party
that can respond to this new face of class-struggle in its praxis.
Chia Barsen
www.chiabarsen.com
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