Dear Critical Geographers,

This is a response I wrote after reading about the dockworkers strike on the west coast and in south africa in the article forwarded by Deb Cowen.

Happy May Day,

Dean

Mayday! Mayday!

by Dean Bavington

Today the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has thrown a wrench into the American war machine. The ILWU controls all ports of entry along the U.S. Pacific coast and workers are refusing to load or transport marine cargo to protest the horror that is the Iraq war. Last week longshore workers in South Africa refused to unload a Chinese container ship loaded with weapons bound for Zimbabwe. These political acts of solidarity inspire hope and reveal that the present is pregnant with possibilities given the obligatory passage points that exist in the global economy.

Unlike capital which can flow at the speed of light anywhere on the planet, material human and natural resources become bottlenecked due to the labor and energy required to move them to markets to be consumed. The virtual circuit of capital is still limited by material and experiential realities. Biophysical and sociocultural constraints dictate the maximum speed of capital accumulation. At obligatory passage points like the dockyard in marine transport systems, those whose labor is needed to "keep the capital goods moving" can control profits, capital aggregation, and reinvestment rates. Capitalists realize this, and by constantly innovating and updating managerial technologies continuously design new ways to keep the resources flowing through the necessary capital accumulation networks.

One of the best examples to illustrate how capital accumulation has altered nature (and how unsustainable it has become) is to focus on the material and energy flows associated with industrial agri- and aqua- culture. The world's industrial food system (and the price of food) is driven by the dynamics of three main commodities: petroleum and biofuels, soy, and anchovies. Meals and oils made from a handful of plants and pelagic fish species (Brazilian farmed soy and Peruvian anchovies respectfully) comprise the crucial material components of the world's industrial food system. The commodity price of soy meal and oil is heavily dependent on the success of a handful of corporate Brazilian and American soy producers and global demand for biofuels. The world's supply of fish meal and oil is heavily dependent on the fortunes of the Peruvian anchovy fishery. The commodity price of fish meal and oil fluctuates with El Nino/El Nina events since the cyclical currents in the Pacific influence the spawning success of anchovies that make up over 70% of the world's fish meal and oil market.

The complex interconnections and price fluctuations among these three exchangeable industrial oil commodities (fuel, soy, and fish) dictate the dynamics of industrially produced chickens, pigs, cattle, and fish that are processed into industrial foods primarily for the world's one billion overdeveloped, clinically obese people. The 800 million underdeveloped malnourished people in the world are left to compete with the expanding gas tanks of hundreds of millions of cars and the ravenous mouths of billions of industrially farmed chickens, pigs, cattle and fish for the calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat necessary for bare-life survival.

Most natural and human resource management involves assessing, developing and learning how to predictably engineer flows of fuel, soy and fish oils and attempts to deal with the consequences of their production and consumption. If those deemed "resources" resist integration into global commodity chains and cycles (even for just one hour or day) the extremely profitable but ultimately precarious accumulation process ceases. Herein lies great hope and danger.

Happy May Day!

*Dean Bavington's work is presently centered on critiquing managerialism--the processes through which life is transformed into human and natural resources in the service of capital accumulation and reinvestment. He can be reached at [log in to unmask] and www.deanbavington.com

On May 1, 2008, at 11:32 AM, Deborah Cowen wrote:

Longshore union strikes against war
By PETER COLE
GUEST COLUMNIST

On Thursday, May Day, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union will declare an eight-hour strike to protest the war in Iraq. Since the ILWU controls every port along the U.S. Pacific Coast, including Seattle and Tacoma, this strike demonstrates the collective power of workers willing to use it.

The ILWU is demanding "an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East." Although the majority of Americans repeatedly have expressed their desire to end the war, President Bush has not obliged us, so it drags on. Because our leaders refuse to listen, ILWU members are taking the next logical step for workers: Strike.

For those unfamiliar, the ILWU is perhaps the most militant and politicized worker organization in the nation. It operates in one of the most important sectors of the world economy -- marine transport -- and, thus, is in a strategic location to put peace above profits.

Forged in the fires of 1930s worker struggles to gain basic rights, the ILWU was born in 1934 when longshoremen (there were no women in the industry then, though there are now) performed the incredibly hard, dangerous and important work of loading and unloading ships. To improve their wages and wrest some control over their lives, men all along the coast struck -- and in a few instances died -- to gain union recognition.

The ILWU is highly democratic. A caucus of more than 100 longshore workers representing every union local establishes policies for the Longshore Division. It was this caucus that voted to declare the May Day strike.

Dockworkers, including those in the ILWU, have a proud tradition of political action. For example, in the 1980s the ILWU respected the strike of British dockworkers by refusing to unload a ship worked by scab labor. Just last week, union longshoremen in South Africa refused to unload a Chinese vessel carrying military supplies destined for autocratic Zimbabwe -- a tremendous example of solidarity.

That the ILWU chose International Workers' Day to declare this strike suggests its political commitment and internationalism. Around the world, workers honor labor by taking a holiday. What few Americans know is that the tradition of a May Day strike originated not in the Soviet Union in the 1950s but the United States of the 1880s.

These days, such examples of worker power are increasingly rare in the U.S. The tragedy is that, historically, labor activism gave us the 40-hour workweek (and the weekend) and helped humanize the exploitative excesses of unregulated capitalism. As income inequality continues to grow in the United States, it is wise to remember how, in the past, strong unions created a larger middle class as well as a more democratic and egalitarian nation.

The ILWU strike also reminds us that unions still have an important role in public discussions beyond the workplace. As a democratic institution, the ILWU is precisely the sort of "civic society" that the Bush administration has been trying to create in Iraq. On May 1, dockworkers will speak loud and clear -- end the endless war in Iraq. Other American workers who want to support our troops by bringing them home can make their voices heard by joining with the brave men and women of the ILWU and taking the day off.