outsourcing versus mechanization

[murdoch]

Being in the IT field, I know a lot about jobs being outsourced to India. I'm also aware of factory jobs being outsourced to China.

While this is a problem, I found this article interesting.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040322&c=5&s=cavanagh

I read Doug Henwood's stuff a lot. I found it interesting that factory employment in China has gone down between 1995 and 2002. American (and even Mexican) factories are moving there, but they're closing down so many of the old state-owned factories which were more concerned with full employment than "profit", that a situation has arisen that unemployment can go up even in the place where factories are moving to. He points to mechanization killing jobs, with no new ones appearing in their place. Thus, while outsourcing and globalization are what the news is finally focusing on, the aspect of mechanization is being ignored.

According to the economists Bush listens to, this can't happen - if a job disappears, another job appears like magic. Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership is under the sway of the DLC so this thinking permeates a lot (although not all) of them as well. Keynes scoffed at the idea that if a job was lost a new one would instantly appear, and the American labor movement leaders have generally looked to Keynes. The older European labor movement looked more to Marx, who thought ultimately these things couldn't be fixed, and would lead to depressions (actually, Paul Krugman is talking like this recently, and he is a Keynesian liberal).

Anyhow, I have been talking to my co-workers for years about outsourcing and finally the news is beginning to talk about it such as Lou Dobbs. But now I am learning about other things going on, such as the mechanization Henwood talks about where machines replace jobs, and no new jobs pop up. Which has been happening for centuries (the Luddites used to smash up the machines which replaced them, although over the years the political content has been removed, and it has meant irrational fear of technology, not fear of losing one's job).