The Free Trade Area of the Americas conference in Quebec marks a new and qualitatively different arena of class struggle in a globalizing capitalist world economy.

As with class struggle in the 1930's and 1840's, it is complicated...but it is much more complicated than the era in which class struggle was centered on efforts of workers within a given nation-state to win concessions from owners in that same nation-state.

But, when we get down to the bottom line of class struggle in a globalizing political economy, the issues are the same

1. Who will share the profits from production and marketing going...to stock holders and management in wealthy capitalist countries or to workers and the larger community around the world from which life and labor emerges and is sustained.

2. Who will bear the hidden costs of production and distribution stock owners, management and residents of wealthy countries or workers, environment and residents in the 80 or so poor countries around the world.

3. Are the short term and long term effects of globalization helpful to the human condition or are they harmful to the human project.

It is answers to the third question around which controversy rages in Quebec today.

I would like to help sort out answers to the third question...answers to the first two questions await the flow of history. Right now, the political and military tools with which to answer those two questions are in the hands of the United States Government and its free market allies in the Northern hemisphere. There are some low-tech tools which may emerge to change the outcome of class struggle in the 21st century but only if we have adequate theory and broad agreement among those who otherwise will carry most of the burdens of globalization.

A. Workers. The Bush Administration and the various interest groups pushing FTAA argue that free trade will benefit workers in the 3rd world. That is true enough as far as it goes.

Workers in poor countries too often labor under abysmal conditions; low wages, filthy conditions, little job security, few benefits other than wages themselves and certainty that they will be discarded when they are hurt or grow old. Unemployment is endemic in the Southern hemisphere in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

It is small wonder that both workers and government officials look forward to the advent of industrialization by transnational corporations since, objectively, working conditions are much better than now they find.

But advocates of free trade and worker benefits do not point out that lower wages in the 3rd world drive down wages of workers in the Northern Hemisphere...and weaken unions. Give-backs and speed-ups and wage concessions will increase for workers in the North.

There is no natural reason why progressives in the North Hemisphere should oppose improvement of working conditions in the South; why we should look at and only at the welfare of workers in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. On the face of it, progressive scholars and activists should support FTAA on grounds that it tends to equalize well being of workers around the world....and in the short term, it is most probably the case.

B. Pollution. The Bush Administration is quiet on the question of pollution from production and distribution relocating and expanding to the 3rd world...the President of the National Association of Manufacturers note, rightly enough, that workers work in filthy conditions and that transnational corporations will do better than local industries which mark much of the production in the 3rd world.

But, in addition to lower wages, freedom from pollutions laws and civil suits in developed countries give impetus to those corporations which contribute so much to the election of presidents and legislators in the wealthy capitalist countries. Pharmaceutical companies want to dump pollutants in the rivers; Oil companies want to dismiss costs of oil spills in oceans, meadows and streams of the countries in which they produce and distribute. Mining companies want to extract coal, gold, copper, iron and some 80 other essential minerals from open mines without concern for the damage done. If they can't do it in the Northern Hemisphere, transnational corporations can and will do it in 3rd world countries.

3. Free trade. The concept of free trade is seldom clarified by the Media which follows the debates nor do we hear, clearly, the voice of those who oppose free trade at Quebec. In this context, free trade means that countries will surrender the protection they now give to local industries and the taxes they levy on imports. By and large, advantage to the 3000/5000 transnational corporations which now control production and distribution in a global economy.

But free trade also means freedom from many of the costs of moving goods to wealthy countries and moving profits from the poorest countries in the world. Who then will pay the costs of education of workers; health costs for those injured at work or by pollutions or the costs of building roads, ports, power, communications and sewage so necessary to transnationals.

Nor do we consider whether free trade will include the freedom to move drugs around the world; to provide sexual services of young girls and boys in the 3rd world to officers of transnational corporations and the military from Japan, Netherlands, Canada and the USA.

4. Democracy. Mr. Bush and his spokespersons insists that free trade works to promote democracy around the world. There is a case. Industrial and commercial development changes the ancient systems of privilege in the tribal, feudal and patriarchal societies around the world. When women are paid workers in Indonesia, patriarchy is weakened. When workers can earn wages from transnational corporations, feudal relations are forever destroyed. When officers of transnational companies pick and choose governments, the status-honor and social power of tribal elders are forever ended.

But if these ancient inequalities tend to disappear in developing societies, class inequality tends to replace them. And it is a new, unmanageable inequality; inequality between nation-states is much harder to manage than is inequality within a nation-state between workers and owners...it takes military and economic weapons to change these new and enlarging inequalities which mark the present phase of class struggle in a globalized economy.

But it is the great class inequality between global corporations on the one side and nation-states on the other side which is now emerging to mark an uneven class struggle in the 21st century....a few of the protesters at Quebec voice this concern as do, of course, conservatives in the USA and other countries who do not like giving up power to a transnational body which rules on questions of trade, protection and taxation....a body set up and oriented to the interests of free trade of transnational corporations.

5. What is to be done. In this new era of capitalist dynamics and ever more complex class structures and class struggle, it is very, very difficult to know what to do. Traditional policies pushed by progressives which center on the welfare of workers, customers, citizens; of the poor, of children, of the aged in a given nation-state...these policies ignore the greater damage done to workers, customers, women, children and the aged in a globalized economy. There is no natural reason why children in America should take precedence over children in Asia, Africa or Latin America.

Progressives need a broader vision, a more encompassing politics and a globalized strategy for fighting for peace, justice and equitable social relations.

Progressives should continue to work for environmental quality; especially in developing countries.

Progressives should continue to work for free education up to and including university; especially in countries where literacy rates are the lowest; where drop-out rates are the highest.

Progressives in North American must continue to work for programs of social justice for women, children and ethnic minorities especially where oppression is greatest around the world.

Progressive must argue for good health care; not just for those who can afford medicine in a free trade economy but for all people in all economies.

Pollution in Puerto Rico or in Brazil does not increase the overall health of the world even if it means less pollution in Detroit, Montreal or Houston.

To enlarge the quest for human dignity and democratic institutions, transnational movements and transnational institutions are required to modify, mediate and manage the great advantages of transnational companies empowered by FTAA, the Bush Administration and government officials around the world...local labor unions will not suffice to the struggle. Community church services are only a beginning. Voluntary groups which focus upon and only upon repairing the harmful effects of class inequality, pollution and gender oppressive are doomed to failure if we do not focus upon the sources of poverty, ignorance and ill health.

There is much compassion among the men and women of the Northern Hemisphere and great capacity to help build a globalized justice system among those who subscribe to world religions; there will be agencies and organizations unimaginable at present within which to register the great impetus for social justice anchored in the emerging morality of each new generation.

Progressives must provide the intellectual tools and the moral courage to enlarge and to channel that impetus for social justice. The protestors at Quebec today provide both the understanding and the courage for us all.