Sweatshop rhetoric....

[RadioRaheem84]

"Meanwhile, defenders of sweatshops, such as Paul Krugman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman)[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sweatshop#cite_note-0), Nicholas Kristof (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Kristof)[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sweatshop#cite_note-1)[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sweatshop#cite_note-2), and Johan Norberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Norberg)[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sweatshop#cite_note-3), claim that people choose to work in sweatshops because the sweatshops offer higher wages and better working conditions compared to their previous jobs of manual farm labor, and that sweatshops are an early step in the process of technological and economic development whereby a poor country turns itself into a rich country. Economists are focused on "trade offs" and when it comes to sweatshops, they ask whether the alternative of unemployment or even worse employment is better. Sometimes when anti-sweatshop activists close sweatshops, employees suffer dramatically.[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sweatshop#cite_note-4)"


Sweatshop arguments.

Any anti-sweatshop articles written by Marxists or Anarchists?

It seems like the argument is that these poor countries need these exploitative companies in there to get the ball rolling. If they weren't there, those people would just be poor rural farmers.

[Patagonia]

I kinda see this as the inherent situation of capitalistic social and economic relationship, but, instead of talking of one country or specific region with oppressors and oppressed, we are talking about a global situation of people exploited and those who exploit them.

I mean, this sweatshop rhetoric is the same thing we hear about low level or entry jobs, right? Things like: "yes, this job sucks and you are going to be treated like a piece of shit, but hey, you gotta work your way to the top somehow boy". Think about the third world countries like the boy and places like, say, the nordic countries like the old CEO that gives that piece of advice.

I suck at explaining but there it is.

[RadioRaheem84]

and that sweatshops are an early step in the process of technological and economic development whereby a poor country turns itself into a rich country


This part coming from Krugman struck me the hardest. I cannot believe he and Jeffery Sachs both defend sweatshops. They're touted in the press as good Keynesian economists too. Friend of the people here in the States, but defenders of sweatshops abroad!

They're peddling comparative advantage theory, where if one nation's major asset is it's cheap labor, well then it will use to develop itself and grow richer in the long run.

Something about this logic seems off but I would like to know what the Marxist perspective against this rhetoric is.

[RadioRaheem84]

The Anarchist FAQ has some good arguments against the Sweatshop rhetoric but it was also couched in a lot of idealist language about proponents of sweatshop labor being pro-totalitarian and what not.

[RadioRaheem84]

I found some stuff by a progressive economist named John Miller, but again it's a bit too much liberal fluff. More evidentialist stuff.

Where is the hard hitting Marxist stuff that cuts at the presupposition of the sweatshop argument?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

A Marxist might question (1) the historical circumstances whereby investors come to control the capital required to open a sweatshop, and (2) the social and legal rules which prevent the sweatshop workers from selling their labor for a higher price. For instance, Bangladesh was exploited by the UK for a long time, and in the modern world those Bangladeshi workers have very limited ability to either claim wealth that is not legally their property but those workers have no ability to cross borders.

Why is it ok for capital to cross borders and invest freely and not labor?

[Rafiq]

Perhaps... Dare I say, those countries will never advance to western living standards because part of the reason ours are so high is through Imperialism? We are the ones forcing sweatshops in those countries. They have a shit ton of recources and what not, and they don't need them.

I'm not a third worldist but Imperialism is very real.

[Red Planet]

Sweatshop arguments.

Any anti-sweatshop articles written by Marxists or Anarchists?

It seems like the argument is that these poor countries need these exploitative companies in there to get the ball rolling. If they weren't there, those people would just be poor rural farmers.

There are too many articles dealing with the nature of capitalist exploitation written by Marxists to single out just one argument against sweatshops. Read through the following fundamental works in order to get a grasp of what a sweatshop is in relation to the capitalist mode of production:

http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/subject.htm#labor

Sweatshops are basically environments wherein a high degree of exploitation occurs (i.e., s/v is high), and wages are basically at subsistence levels. Sweatshops describe the factories of the industrial period during the 19th century in the West. As far as China's poor, rural farmers are concerned, I would first content that these are gradually being displaced by industry and therefore becoming migrant labor, or reserve labor, and if, as they claim, wages truly are "higher" in a Chinese sweatshop than on a rural farm (something I find dubious), this could be explained away, perhaps, by the slightly higher "value" of industrial labor as a result of training costs or the degree of intensity of labor involved.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no tendency in capital to increase wages, hence the Iron Law of Wages. ALL long-term wage increases in the West were the result of direct working class action, ALL obtained through bitter struggle. With no minimum wage in place, wages in the West would basically be in free fall in a "race to the bottom." Imperialism has also contributed to a growing wage rate (before the 1970s, at least) in the West, and "developing countries" to not have recourse to imperialist accumulation.

All of the technical arguments against sweatshops are merely supplementary, though, as the true opposition SHOULD come from moral grounds: these are highly abusive and inhuman workplaces, and any (negligible) improvements they may bring about over previous conditions do not justify their existence and do not justify exploitation, let alone capitalism as a whole.

[promethean]

Sweatshop arguments.

Any anti-sweatshop articles written by Marxists or Anarchists?

It seems like the argument is that these poor countries need these exploitative companies in there to get the ball rolling. If they weren't there, those people would just be poor rural farmers.
Why would Marxists want to argue either for or against this particular form of capitalism? Much of the liberal arguments against sweatshops seems to consist of saying that there can be better ways of running capitalism than building sweatshops. Unless one wants to start advising the bourgeoisie on how to run their economy, I don't think there is any use using these moral arguments. In any case, the bourgeoisie do not generally look for advice from Marxists and they will either close or open sweatshops based on the economic situation. As others have pointed out, capitalism produces these horrors on a regular basis. These forms of extreme exploitation are essential for capitalism to get its process of accumulation going. Given the circumstances, the best those sweatshop workers can do is to fight for their economic self interest.


Furthermore, there is absolutely no tendency in capital to increase wages, hence the Iron Law of Wages. Just want to mention that this is actually based on Malthusianism, something Marx argued extensively against. Its basis is that wages have to keep decreasing because of human overpopulation. This ignores the class nature of bourgeois society and the fact that it is the nature of the crises faced by capitalism that contributes to differences in wage levels.

[Geiseric]

Well with the enormous wealth created in the sweatshops, there is virtually no purchasing power as a result of low wages, so although the product has a "cheaper" exchange value as a result of variable capital being manipulated in order to make it easier to buy, there's no guarantee that the people that sweatshop laborer replaced in production who demand higher pay elsewhere will be able to buy what was made in that sweatshop, leading to overproduction and the inevitable falling rate of profit

[Red Planet]

Just want to mention that this is actually based on Malthusianism, something Marx argued extensively against. Its basis is that wages have to keep decreasing because of human overpopulation. This ignores the class nature of bourgeois society and the fact that it is the nature of the crises faced by capitalism that contributes to differences in wage levels.

That depends on your take on the situation. I concede that "iron law" is better applied to Malthus and Ricardo, but my argument was that on the part of capital, wages either depress over time as a result of productivity increases during the capitalists' pursuit of relative surplus value or forcefully due to "investment strikes," in which capitalists refuse to invest in production on account of "menacing" losses in surplus value, which increasing labor costs can trigger. Marx, of course, argued extensively that there were forces which sought to countervail falling wages, such as the historical-moral standard workers have come to expect (hence, for example, minimum wage laws). Capitalist crises only impact wages insofar as they weaken the bargaining power of the working class.

In any case, I shouldn't have used the term "iron law" to describe wage deterioration in the Marxist sense.

[Red Planet]

Why would Marxists want to argue either for or against this particular form of capitalism?

I don't follow your logic. Why shouldn't Marxists condemn the many negative aspects of capitalism? The point is not to "advise" the bourgeoisie on how to run their economic system, but to improve the conditions of the working class. This, too, is part of class struggle. Decrying the abuses which are systematically enforced through capitalism is necessary for proffering socialism (and communism) as a superior alternative.

Should Marxists simply sit idly by on economic matters so long as they pertain to capitalism and not to our imagined post-capitalist society? Ridiculous.

[Ocean Seal]

Dare I say it? Perhaps if sweatshops are an improvement then we are doing something wrong to start with... I suppose the key element is: Mr. Krugman, would you like to work in a sweatshop? No. I thought so. If the capitalists offer us the choice between hard labor on the farm and hard labor in a sweatshop, let us offer the capitalist a solution. Communist revolution.

[ComradeOm]

Oldest trick in the book: the false binary

The argument against sweatshops – a brutally exploitative existence – is so obvious as to barely need explaining. You've have to lack anything resembling human empathy to approve of them. Even capitalists hesitate before publically defending the sweatshop per se. Hence the need for a false binary. Yes, the argument goes, the conditions in sweatshops are appalling but it's even worse in the fields. To which the answer should be: so what?

Or rather, why are we only considering two options – sweatshop or subsistence farming? By framing the argument like this they fence off a whole range of alternatives while focusing on an irrelevant, but probably correct, fact. In this particular case, there are a whole range of alternatives to this sweatshop/field argument: these include the abolition of wage labour (Marxism) to the improvement of working conditions and workers' rights (social democracy). It's not as if the latter hasn't bee tried before. Hint: the West

Don't feel constrained to stay within their disingenuous framework

[La Comédie Noire]

You take a bunch of peasants who do seasonal work and then you push them off the land and cram them together into a small, poorly ventilated room and make them construct widgets for as much as 16 to 18 hours a day, leaving no time for leisure or recreation. It's a hard existence and could only be seen as progress by a mad man. Of course then they'll trot out the argument that the means will lead to better ends, but I thought capitalism was supposed to be above such ideological baseness?

It's especially instructive to note the case of North America where there was an extreme labor shortage due to an abundance of land. They had to force people to work for a stipulated amount of time as the price of passage and even then they had to supplement it with chattel slavery. It's so hard for us to understand because most of us were born into wage slavery, but it really sucks!

They'll usually justify this by telling you to look at how good things are now, but most of those good things were won through struggle. Something we constantly forget.

[danyboy27]

Farming wasnt such a problem for these people before capital market roll in their town and destroy the initial economic setting to replace it with something foreign and unpractical.


Most third world countries where at first pillaged by colonialism. When those big guys moved it and imposed taxes, forced them to grow cash crops.
With international commerce rolling in the 60s, many of these cash crop farmers found themselves in a dire situation and had no choice but to abandon the land they lived in for 5 generations to live in a slum and work 60 hours a week.

[the last donut of the night]

basically their argument is the same to slaveowners back in the day:

"well it's better being a slave than being lost in the wild african jungle"

i hate these liberal douchebags

[ComradeOm]

Farming wasnt such a problem for these people before capital market roll in their town and destroy the initial economic setting to replace it with something foreign and unpracticalSubsistence farming is not fun in any country at any time. The same goes for the original 'sweatshops' in 19th C Europe: wage labour, even if brutally exploitative, is generally preferable to peasant farming

[Chambered Word]

Yeah, because these sweatshop workers sat around with their thumbs up their arses until they starved and died before Nike came along and gave them the great gift of employment.

[danyboy27]

Subsistence farming is not fun in any country at any time. The same goes for the original 'sweatshops' in 19th C Europe: wage labour, even if brutally exploitative, is generally preferable to peasant farming

Sure its not paradise, but if you look in the case of Africa, those who where farming didnt uniquely live off what they grew. they had a verry complex cooperative network where hunter and villager worked with eachother to make sure everybody had something to eat and have a roof over their head.

the psychological and societal impact the colonial power had was downright disastrous and no increase in living standard could make it for the genocidal exploitation process they had to go trought.

[The Idler]

I once saw a fellow from Workers Liberty in a campaign organisation called No Sweat (http://www.nosweat.org.uk/).