So What Did Marx Have To Say About Outsourcing And Deindustrialization?

[Popular Front of Judea]

I am curious as to what theoretical discussion have Marxists had regarding the subject outsourcing and deindustrialization, the transfer of manufacturing to less developed countries from the historic heartlands of industry in the United States and Europe.

Marxists are often out on the line when employers threaten to outsource jobs. Is there any theoretical justification for this? Is there a compelling Marxist reason to fight neoliberal globalization? The same commodities are simply being manufactured for profit at a different location by a different proletariat, right?

This is a subject that is less than abstract for me. I have brother that works at a unionized small machine shop. Production has returned somewhat after the shop nearly being closed by the recession. The word is that the owner has been travelling to China, possibly to outsource some of the work. Oh and he is 46 years old, a welder with a high school education. What does an honest Marxist have to say to him?

[Brutus]

Since industrialisation is necessary for near-complete automation (i.e. communism), I can only assume that he was against de-industrialisation. I'm not sure about globalisation, so i can't help you there.

[Bardo]

I can't speak for Marx, as I'm not directly aware of anything he had to say on the subject. Personally, however, I see the de-industrialization happening in America and Europe as correlative with the industrialization of the non-industrialized world. The same brutal exploitation that industrialized the now post-industrial world is taking place all over the globe. And in places like China, Taiwan, India etc- I believe capitalists are eventually going to run into the same organized labor force they were met with in Europe and in the US.

Obviously it's going to take some time, but eventually, where is the capitalist class going to outsource to when these giant labor reservoirs start demanding higher and higher wages along with decent work environment standards?

The possibilities I see either involve automation and an equitable distribution of human labor around the globe, or a reversion to slavery and crushing authority.

[ed miliband]

anti-globalisation: the socialism of the imbeciles

http://mouvement-communiste.com/documents/MC/Leaflets/tract0112_Imbecile.pdf

not marx, but relevant.


While the trade unionists of the CGT in France and the AFL-CIO in the US moan about relocation and the international division of labour and defend “French” and “American” production, revolutionaries set out the urgency of the international development of the class struggle. This is the case right now at Danone, which delocalised part of its biscuit making activities from Western Europe to Eastern Europe. The same goes for immigration, used to increase the pressure on the wages of “native” workers. Is it necessary to respond to this by pronouncing in favour of closing the frontiers, adopting the policy of quotas, or by defending the free circulation of the exploited so as to work for their growing unity?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I am curious as to what theoretical discussion have Marxists had regarding the subject outsourcing and deindustrialization, the transfer of manufacturing to less developed countries from the historic heartlands of industry in the United States and Europe.

Marxists are often out on the line when employers threaten to outsource jobs. Is there any theoretical justification for this? Is there a compelling Marxist reason to fight neoliberal globalization? The same commodities are simply being manufactured for profit at a different location by a different proletariat, right?

This is a subject that is less than abstract for me. I have brother that works at a unionized small machine shop. Production has returned somewhat after the shop nearly being closed by the recession. The word is that the owner has been travelling to China, possibly to outsource some of the work. Oh and he is 46 years old, a welder with a high school education. What does an honest Marxist have to say to him?

Well capitalism has changed quite a bit and the capitalist "globe" is much more um global now than in Marx's time, so as far as I know there are only broad strokes in his writing that could apply directly: arguments about how capitalism constantly re-invents itself and constantly seeks new markets and new sources of wealth.

As to the benifit of organizing against companies trying to relocate - well the point should NOT be protectionism and often this is the argument made by liberals in the union movement and leadership: "Damn Japan, Germany, China" whatever. Radicals need to argue for internationalism and definately need to stand up to chauvanist arguments about blaming Chineese workers for economic problems in the US or elsewhere.

But this doesn't mean that we should just ignore these issues - in part because then it will leave liberal explainations - or even outright racist explainations - with a monopoly in terms of providing an explaination and any opposition to these particular moves by the capitalist bosses. Fundamentally, the source of the anger by workers is that the capitalists are upending their lives and so a fight against that process is a fight for workers in that work-site or industry to have more influence and power. Because this process (at least) in the US actually is not just "off-shoring" to other countries but is actually moving industry within the US (you never hear "Don't buy 'Made in Texas' Goods") the nationalist/protectionist arguments fall short on their own basis too. Workers may not be able to easily (or at all) win and hault an industry from relocating in the US South or in some other country, but the fight could still help mobilize people and this also has the possibility of generalizing and creating openings for strategies that could win - like cross-border struggle.

Globalization is just a fact of modern capitalism, but like with all things in capitalism, it's a battle over on whose terms this will happen. Globalization of human movement, or the globalization of capital.