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Cape Town - Multi- and transnational corporations have understood that famous line from the English poet, John Donne, that “no man is an island entire unto itself”, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap. And so these corporations ignore borders while national companies and trade unions retain a parochial mindset.
At the same time, says Bell, unions are theoretically committed to internationalism and this contradiction was clearly revealed this week when Africa Day dawned. This occasioned what has become an annual outburst of pan-African solidarity.
Cosatu, says Bell, was quick off the mark to associate the island of South Africa with the continent as a whole, but this call was not of the “workers of all countries unite” type. Instead, the federation wanted to “re-prioritise development” to industrialise Africa.
This says Bell, ignores the fact that the present economic crisis is a global phenomenon that would be neither temporary, fleeting nor short. But those who raised this warning in 2008 were largely ignored; the evident slump was seen merely as a “blip” in the onward march of the system.
However, Bell adds, by 2011 there was a growing consensus, across the board, that the world economy was facing perhaps the biggest crisis in history. Yet the remedies most commonly proposed were just more of the same: greater or lesser regulation. And all sides at least partially blame corruption for the crisis.
He maintains that this reveals an ignorance of economic history; that the father of free market economics, Adam Smith, supported England’s 105-year ban on shareholder companies because they encouraged corrupt practices.
Today, says Bell, we are in a worse position because of limited liability that was extended to companies in England in 1856 and subsequently copied everywhere.
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* Terry Bell is a political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa.
