Healthy Work: What to Produce and How to Coordinate — A Vision from the Third World

See Wolf E. (1982). Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley: University of California, for a discussion of the effects of international expansion into the third world. Barkin D. “Global proletarianization.” in Sanderson S. (ed.) (1985). The Americas in the International Division of Labor, New York: Holmes & Meier, offers a fuller discussion of this concept.

For a critique of these mechanisms that are rewriting the rules of international trade for the benefit of the wealthy corporations and nations, see Barnett R. and Cavanaugh J. . (1994). Global Dreams: Imperial corporations and the new world order. New York: Simon and Schuster.

More than 75 percent of international commodity trade in manufactured products constitutes exchanges among the branches of individual transnational corporations. G Heilleiner.

The popular book, by Lappé Moore F. and Collins J. . (1977). Food First: Beyond the myth of scarcity. New York: Houghton Mifflin, offers an accessible explanation of this process. Barkin D. Batt R. and DeWalt B. . (1990). Food Crops vs. Feed Crops: The global substitution of grains in production, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, has an analysis of this process in 24 countries over the 25-year period, 1961–1986.

The Development Group for Alternative Policies has sponsored a series of studies in Third World countries which documents these impacts. They are widely available in electronic form on PeaceNet in a conference “econ.saps” accessible through the InterNet. Also, see the essays in Danaher K. 1994. 50 Years Is Enough: The case against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. San Francisco: Global Exchange.

Hufbauer G. , of the Institute of International Economics, one of the principal advocates of NAFTA, argued that it would generate more than 100,000 new jobs in the U.S. Recently, he recanted, commenting that he learned “to stay away from job forecasting.” (Wall Street Journal, April 17, 1995, p. 1).

For a critical discussion of the errors associated with the use of “efficiency” and “comparative advantage” in making policy, see chapter 8 of Barkin, Batt and Walt De , op. cit. One example of the exercise of corporate power is the demand by the Raytheon corporation (the region's largest employer) for concessions from the government of Massachusetts to make it more profitable to stay in the Boston area; these include a reduction in taxes and a subsidy for utility rates that are higher than in other parts of the United States.

cf. Lemus B. (1994). “Industrial Growth and Water Pollution on the Mexico-U.S. Border.” New Solutions, Vol. 5: 1 (Fall). pp. 48–54, and the references cited therein.

One area for production in which we have concentrated in rural areas is the development of sustainable resource development programs that provide recreation, tourist, and other services for working class groups within the country, or internationally. An introduction to my thinking on this is “Wealth, Poverty and Sustainable Development,” Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper, Cambridge, Mass., April 1995.

This approach may be viewed as an application of the 18th Century precept, known as Say's law, which states that “Supply creates its own demand.” Although, on a superficial level it might be identified with the supply-side economists of the 20th Century, it is substantially different in that we limit its application to the confines of marginal groups, systematically excluded from the globalization processes discussed in the text. I do not think that such an approach would work for the economy as a whole because of the constraints imposed by international capital movements.

See Barkin D. and Taylor J.E. , (1993). “Agriculture to the Rescue,” in Neighbors in Crisis, California: Borgo Press, for a lengthy discussion of one such proposal, labeled the “War Economy” and its likely effects on the Mexican economy and society. For a summary of this argument, see Chapter 7, of Barkin D. (1990), Distorted Development: Mexico in the world economy, Boulder: Westview Press.

Such a project is underway in a poor area in central Mexico where sustainable agriculture and ecotourism could offer the means to help finance a broad range of activities to reverse the decline of an indigenous area.

Braverman (1974) Discussed this problem at length in his pathbreaking book, Labor and Monopoly Capital, New York: Monthly Review.

cf. Brecher J. and Costello T. (eds.), Building Bridges: The emerging grassroots coalition of labor and community. NY: Monthly Review Press, 1990. For the Mexican case, two recent analyses of coalition building are interesting: Harvey N. 1994. “Rebellion in Chiapas: Rural Reforms, Campesino Radicalism, and the Limits to Salinismo.” in Transformation of Rural Mexico, Number 5 (La Jolla, CA: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD), pp. 1–43 and 14. For more information on the struggle in southern Mexico, see Shadows of Tender Fury: The letters and communiques of Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. 1995. (New York: Monthly Review).

For more information on the struggle in southern Mexico, see Ross J. (ed), (1995). Shadows of Tender Fury. New York: Monthly Review.

cf. Arquilla J. and Ronfeldt D. . 1993. “Cyberwar is Coming.” Comparative Strategy. Vol. 12: 2, pp. 141–165. Thanks to Joel Simon and Pacific News Service, who make significant materials available on PeaceNet, for highlighting the importance of this analysis.