Patching up a rotting hull will not keep world afloat
June 19, 2009
 By Terry Bell
It contains a series of goals agreed by the participants at the annual ILO conference in Geneva. Dennis George, the Federation of Unions of SA general secretary who attended the session, agrees that "transformation will be necessary to implement the pact".
The reason for this is that the pact outlines a series of goals without stating, in other than very vague terms, how these might be achieved. In the first place - and in line with local unions and federations - the ILO pact seeks "a decent work response to the crisis".
At the same time, the UN agency acknowledges the world "faces the prospect of a prolonged increase in unemployment, deepening poverty and inequality".
This is followed by a remarkably trite comment: "The world must do better." And the international labour body is of the opinion that "the world should look different after the crisis".
The labour movement tends to agree that if the world is to survive this crisis, it will indeed look different. But there are many who point out that such a difference could be better - or much worse.
For it does seem perfectly feasible that the world could survive as islands of heavily protected extreme wealth in a global sea of poverty and desperation.
Technological advances make it possible that a world can develop in which machines, served by a relatively small technocratic elite, can exploit available resources and provide all the necessities and luxuries required by the economic elite.
This nightmare scenario has featured in several examples of speculative fiction.
Today, it is well within the bounds of possibility. What stands in the way of this descent into perhaps global barbarism are the organised ranks of labour and communities. But so far, they have not spawned any large-scale, coherent alternative to the present system; they do not act so much as react, and deal - often imaginatively - with symptoms while usually ignoring the cause of the problem.
Much the same applies to most political parties. They seem to put forward ideas to patch up the rotting hulls of the centuries-old ships of commerce, trade and industry using materials that have already failed.
However, no sensible person would dispute the goals of equity, environmentally and socially sustainable enterprises, of quality public services and protection for the vulnerable that the ILO pact espouses.
Internationally, governments, communities, businesses and the labour movement are now united - at least verbally - in their commitment to a such a world.
However, talk is cheap and, had the pact - and similar proposals on a national level - put forward any detail, the devil would have been in it.
Mainly because the fundamental question remains unanswered: without an "invisible hand" to regulate the anarchy of supply and demand, can the present system provide an answer?
Labour says no. Business gives an emphatic yes and governments vacillate.
When the parties get together, the result is what could cynically be regarded as platitudes, when what is needed are coherent policies and decisive action.
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