“Superexploitation”

[robbo203]

There are people around like Zak Cope, author of Divided World Divided Class: Global Political Economy and the Stratification of Labour Under Capitalism (Kersplebedeb Press: 2012) who is  (I think) a Maoist and has indeed gone beyond even  Lenin’s idea of the so called Labour aristocracy  in declaring that the workers of the developed world are essentially no longer exploited but participate with the capitalists  of the developed world in the super exploitation of the Global South.  He produces a bunch of statistics to back up his claim relating to prices , wages and profits to back up his thesis that the cost of producing and reproducing the labour power of a worker in the developed world has in effect fallen below the  wages he or she receives.   Hence this worker is no longer exploited and has a vested interest in the maintenance of capitalism

 

Its been a while since I checked out the book so I am a bit hazy on the details (so the above interpretation might not be exactly correct) but, as I recall, it is a work that is held in quite high esteem by the “anti-imperialist” movement.  It would certainly need to be referenced in any proposed pamphlet/article as would Charlie Post I referred to earlier on this thread who has done some sterling work in refuting the labour aristocracy thesis

 

The idea that workers are no longer exploited in the developed countries is bunkum on both theoretical and empirical grounds.   As far as the latter is concerned I have come across some interesting  figures  – for example comparing the hourly wages of US manufacturing workers with their value added contribution to output per hour.   It seems that the latter is about 3 times the magnitude of the former, demonstrating quite emphatically that  two thirds of their labour is effectively unpaid labour.   Meaning they are exploited.  Indeed the gap between wages and productivity in the developed world has been steadily widening since the 1970s and the onset of neoliberal capitalism and in the opposite direction to which people like Cope would have use believe.

 

The argument comes across as a bit more nuanced if we take into account Marx’s distinction between productive and unproductive labour (only the latter actually produce commodities for sale on the market).   We know there has been quite a significant shift in manufacturing to developing countries  centred  on export processing zones  (EPZs).   Many large corporations like Nike for example no longer produce the things they sell – in this case shoes.   Rather they market them through  a process of branding.  Production is increasingly outsourced and contracted out to contractors based in the developing world in places like Vietnam and Cambodia.  China used to the place to go for cheap labour but it has been eclipsed by some other countries in the race to the bottom (another reason why China is increasingly turning to robotics – the dirt cheap labour force has been drying for demographic and other reasons) .

[ALB]

The group in this country which defends the theory of super-exploitation the most vehemently is the “Revolutionary Communist Group” and their paper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!. Here’s an extract from what they say they stand for:

“As an imperialist country, Britain depends on the super-exploitation of the labour and resources of oppressed nations (…) Britain derives monopoly profits from the super-exploitation of oppressed nations and these have made it possible to split the working class by creating a privileged section of workers within this country. These workers, a labour aristocracy, constitute the social basis of opportunism. The upper stratum of the working class now dominates the British labour movement and ties it to imperialism – the economic foundation of its status and privileges. The labour aristocracy expresses itself politically through the Labour Party and it controls the trade union movement.”

Classic Leninism of course. They don’t go as far as the writer Robbo has just mentioned as they are only saying that some workers in Britain benefit from “the super-exploitation of oppressed nations”, but they don’t say which workers these are. But they need to as the also say that they support “the struggles of the whole (!) working class to defend jobs, wages and living conditions.”  But this means that they support the struggle of some workers to obtain a bigger share of the profits of super-exploitation. But, again, who are they? The railway workers, the post office workers, who? Maybe university lecturers and junior doctors? We need to know.

[robbo203]

Some more statistics provided by James Heartfield:

 

“To take the US working class as an example, they produce goods to the value of $18 trillion each year, and take home wages of around 44 per cent of that. They are exploited. They are not exploiting anyone else. Until that point that there is a transfer of income in their favour in excess of 54 per cent of $18 trillion that will remain the case. Return on US Foreign investments abroad is around $50 billion (http://www.nber.org/papers/w13313.pdf). That is a lot, but it is not enough to subsidise US workers, whose pay comes out of their own output.” (https://rdln.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/imperialism-study-group-some-discussion-on-the-labour-aristocracy/)

[ALB]

That was him in 2016. Here he is in 2019:

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/brexit-party-heartfield

Maybe he now believes that the workers of Britain are “super-exploited” by the capitalists of Europe. He was going to stand for the Brexit Party against Corbyn in Islington North in the coming general election but withdrew or was withdrawn. Maybe because they discovered his previous  and perhaps continuing support for the Irish Republicanism  which, actually, wouldn’t go down too badly in that part of London where they still sing “A Nation Once Again” in some pubs.

[Author]

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