Vol. 79/No. 38      October 26, 2015

As debate unfolds on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with both supporters and opponents of the trade agreement arguing in a nationalist “American interests” framework, it’s useful to look at how the communist movement has addressed the questions of other economic and military pacts by imperialist governments. The excerpt below from Capitalism’s World Disorder by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, takes up a working-class approach to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Copyright © 1999 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY JACK BARNES  
How do class-struggle-minded workers answer the trade union bureaucrats’ demagogic cry that NAFTA will result in losing “American jobs” to Mexico? There is only one answer: There is no such thing as an “American job” or a “Mexican job,” only workers jobs. Workers in the United States have to get together with workers in Mexico and with workers in other countries and organize ourselves to defend our interests as a class, as part of the vast toiling majority of humanity. We must not support policies that strengthen our common class enemy. If workers give any other answer, the bureaucrats and the liberals and the reactionaries will win the argument. If workers give any national answer, our exploiters will only strengthen their power over all those who work for a living.

Class-conscious workers oppose NAFTA, as we oppose all economic and military pacts entered into by the imperialist government at home with other capitalist regimes. But we do so from an internationalist standpoint, rejecting any notion of common interests with the employing class in bolstering their competitiveness against their rivals or helping them reinforce the pariah status and superexploitation of immigrant workers. The only “we” we recognize is that of working people and our allies in the United States, Canada and Mexico — and the rest of the Americas and the world. Not “we” Americans,” “we” English speakers, “we” the white race, or anything else that chains us to the class that grows wealthy off the exploitation of our labor and that of our toiling brothers and sisters the world over.
 
 
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