Learning about the exploitation of the factory workers of China is important not only because, as Johann Hari describes, their brutish toil produces most of our cheap consumer goods in the West. As I argued in my recent interview (Part 2B: Social Limits and the Crisis), we have an even more important connection to these Chinese workers – the hope that their liberation offers the possibility of our own.
Organizing outside the Chinese Communist Party’s official union, workers have initiated a series of crippling strikes that repeatedly shut down factories, among other forms of rebellion. They are openly defying the totalitarian state-capitalist government of China, as well as the Western corporations whose factories they are closing. And they are winning. Wages are being increased by 40, 60, even 100% at some plants.
If the Chinese workers’ movement continues to disrupt the sweatshops pumping out our electronics and car parts, they could throw a wrench into the China->U.S. cheap goods conveyor belt that has carried global capitalist growth for more than a decade. The destruction of this global trade alliance will not only free the Chinese workers from the abominable conditions Hari describes, but potentially free the entire planet from an economic system hell-bent on relentless growth and plunder.
In short, capitalism relies on China’s absurdly cheap labor for its profit margins. This unsanctioned frenzy of Chinese labor organizing is striking a blow in the heart of the system. More power to ’em! We should support these workers however possible. [alex]
And the Most Inspiring Good News Story of the Year is…
by Johann Hari, August 6, 2010
At first, this isn’t going to sound like a good news story, never mind one of the most inspiring stories in the world today. But trust me: it is.
Yan Li spent his life tweaking tiny bolts, on a production line, for the gadgets that make our lives zing and bling. He might have pushed a crucial component of the laptop I am writing this article on, or the mobile phone that will interrupt your reading of it. He was a typical 27-year old worker at the gigantic Foxconn factory in Shenzen, Southern China, which manufactures i-Pads and Playstations and mobile phone batteries.
Li was known to the company by his ID number: F3839667. He stood at a whirring line all day, every day, making the same tiny mechanical motion with his wrist, for 20 pence an hour. According to his family, sometimes his shifts lasted for 24 hours; sometimes they stretched to 35. If he had tried to form a free trade union to change these practices, he would have been imprisoned for twelve years. On the night of May 27th, after yet another marathon-shift, Li dropped dead.
Deaths from overwork are so common in Chinese factories they have a word for it: guolaosi. China Daily estimates 600,000 people are killed this way every year, mostly making goods for us. Li had never experienced any health problems, his family says, until he started this work schedule; Foxconn say he died of asthma and his death had nothing to do with them. The night Li died, yet another Foxconn worker committed suicide – the tenth this year.
For two decades now, you and I have shopped until Chinese workers dropped. Business has bragged about the joys of the China Price. They have been less keen for us to see the Human Price. KYE Systems Corp run a typical factory in Donguan in southern mainland China, and one of their biggest clients is Microsoft – so in 2009 the US National Labour Committee sent Chinese investigators undercover there. On the first day a teenage worker whispered to them: “We are like prisoners here.”
The staff work and live in giant factory-cities that they almost never leave. Each room sleeps ten workers, and each dorm houses 5000. There are no showers; they are given a sponge to clean themselves with. A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm. Workers must report to their stations fifteen minutes ahead of schedule for a military-style drill: “Everybody, attention! Face left! Face right!” Once they begin, they are strictly forbidden from talking, listening to music, or going to the toilet. Anybody who breaks this rule is screamed at and made to clean the toilets as punishment. Then it’s back to the dorm.
It’s the human equivalent to battery farming. One worker said: “My job is to put rubber pads on the base of each computer mouse… This is a mind-numbing job. I am basically repeating the same motion over and over for over twelve hours a day.” At a nearby Meitai factory, which made keyboards for Microsoft, a worker said: “We’re really livestock and shouldn’t be called workers.” They are even banned from making their own food, or having sex. They live off the gruel and slop they are required to buy from the canteen, except on Fridays, when they are given a small chicken leg and foot, “to symbolize their improving life.”
Even as their work has propelled China towards being a super-power, these workers got less and less. Wages as a proportion of GDP fell in China every single year from 1983 to 2005.
They can be treated this way because of a very specific kind of politics that has prevailed in China for two decades now. Very rich people are allowed to form into organizations – corporations – to ruthlessly advance their interests, but the rest of the population is forbidden by the secret police from banding together to create organizations to protect theirs. The political practices of Maoism were neatly transferred from communism to corporations: both regard human beings as dispensable instruments only there to serve economic ends.
We’ll never know the names of all the people who paid with their limbs, their lungs, or their lives for the goodies in my home and yours. Here’s just one: think of him as the Unknown Worker, standing for them all. Liu Pan was a 17 year old operating a machine that made cards and cardboard that were sold on to big name Western corporations, including Disney. When he tried to clear its jammed machinery, he got pulled into it. His sister said: “When we got his body, his whole head was crushed. We couldn’t even see his eyes.”
So you might be thinking – was it a cruel joke to bill this as a good news story? Not at all. An epic rebellion has now begun in China against this abuse – and it is beginning to succeed. Across 126,000 Chinese factories, workers have refused to live like this any more. Wildcat unions have sprung up, organized by text message, demanding higher wages, a humane work environment, and the right to organize freely. Millions of young workers across the country are blockading their factories and chanting “there are no human rights here!” and “we want freedom!” The suicides were a rebellion of despair; this is a rebellion of hope.
Last year, the Chinese dictatorship was so panicked by the widespread uprisings that they prepared an extraordinary step forward. They drafted a new labor law that would allow workers to form and elect their own trade unions. It would plant seeds of democracy across China’s workplaces. Western corporations lobbied very hard against it, saying it would create a “negative investment environment” – by which they mean smaller profits. Western governments obediently backed the corporations and opposed freedom and democracy for Chinese workers. So the law was whittled down and democracy stripped out.
It wasn’t enough. This year Chinese workers have risen even harder to demand a fair share of the prosperity they create. Now company after company is making massive concessions: pay rises of over 60 percent are being conceded. Even more crucially, officials in Guandong province, the manufacturing heartland of the country, have announced they are seriously considering allowing workers to elect their own representatives to carry out collective bargaining after all.
Just like last time, Western corporations and governments are lobbying frantically against this – and to keep the millions of Yan Lis stuck at their assembly lines into the 35th hour.
This isn’t a distant struggle: you are at its heart, whether you like it or not. There is an electrical extension cord running from your laptop and mobile and games console to the people like Yan Li and Liu Pan dying to make them. So you have to make a choice. You can passively let the corporations and governments speak for you in trying to beat these people back into semi-servitude – or you can side with the organizations here that support their cry for freedom, like No Sweat in Britain, or the National Labour Committee in the US, by donating to them, or volunteering for their campaigns.
Yes, if this struggle succeeds, it will mean that we will have to pay a little more for some products, in exchange for the freedom and the lives of people like Yan Li and Liu Pan. But previous generations have made that choice. After slavery was abolished in 1833, Britain’s GDP fell by 10 percent – but they knew that cheap goods and fat profits made from flogging people until they broke were not worth having. Do we?
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.
18 comments
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August 26, 2010 at 4:00 am
Marie Marshall
This is indeed one of the most heartening stories I have heard in a long time. But I want to sound a couple of notes of caution.
Firstly, I am reminded of the time during the Mao era when Chinese people were encouraged to indulge in “continuous revolution”. Workers in some cities took this seriously and started to organise their factories in a ground-up democratic-socialist fashion (in short they started behaving like proper communists, with a small “c”). It wasn’t long before Mao sent in the PLA to break it all up.
In those days the workers were only up against personal megalomania. Now they’re up against serious money.
Secondly, I am reminded of the emergence of Solidarność in Poland. In the UK they were feted by the right-wing Conservative Party. British trades unionist and thorn-in-the-side of the establishment Arthur Scargill said in public that Solidarność was not a trades union at all, but a political party.
“Yah! Boo! Hiss! Rubbish! Get off!” was the general reply.
But a few short years later, the ruling party in Poland was… Solidarność!
I hope that the workers’ success in China does not blind them to the fact that they are workers, and does not set them on the road towards the dead end of bourgeois politics!
August 26, 2010 at 12:50 pm
alex
hi marie!
thanks for your wise comments. you are certainly right to point out the difficulties these workers will likely face if they continue in their efforts. state repression in China in the past has been brutal, although we in the West rarely hear about it because of the totalitarian state control of the media. however, this seems to be loosening somewhat, i suspect due to the ubiquity of the internet. now if China “sends in the goons”, they’re likely to provoke some outrage. this Economist article (which is of course pro-capitalist) speaks to this somewhat: http://www.economist.com/node/16693333
and the history of Solidarity in Poland is fascinating. have you read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein? how they went from a revolutionary syndicalist organization to essentially a neoliberal ruling political party is very instructive of the pitfall of co-optation that you’re cautioning us about.
i too hope the Chinese workers will somehow learn of these lessons. but at this point these strikes and labor organizing don’t seem to be coordinated by any mass organization, it’s all happening spontaneously, as far as i know. so at the present the Chinese government seems to be trying to co-opt each individual factory group by raising wages.
there is a very real danger (that the Economist article hopes for) that this will result in kind of a “New Deal”, China style. wages will go up, workers will maybe get more independent unions, but at the end of the day the conveyor belt of cheap Chinese goods to the West will not be threatened, though it may shift a bit to India or more rural areas of China where wages are still scraping starvation levels.
the question for me is: how can Chinese workers turn this into a revolutionary situation? how can they challenge the “Communist” state and turn a demand for better working conditions into a generalized demand for better living conditions?
it seems to me this will require more (autonomous) organization.
thanks again!
alex
August 26, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Marie Marshall
Rather than a “generalized demand for better living conditions”, which seems little more than the same thing that Jimmy Hoffa (as portrayed in the biopic) wanted i.e. to drag the teamsters into the middle class, I would like the workers to see that their freedom is in no one’s gift, and that they could replace old communism AND new capitalism with something of their own, something that will not bend to either power, something (as you say) autonomous; right now I like their spontaneity! It is easy for those who are in power to make people quiescent by making their working conditions a little better, and I am afraid that is what we will see in China.
I followed a link above to a pro-capitalist blog. I don’t mind reading right-libertarian or neo-liberal stuff, so long as it is reasonably stated and not rabidly reactionary. The blogger’s line is basically “Hoo-rah for Capitalism, because it is dragging thousands of Chinese out of poverty and giving them choice”. I think he has missed something vital, and it is this: wealth (resources, markets, etc) is finite, and one of the driving forces of capitalism is the competition for that finite wealth. If there was enough to go round the capitalist world, then the thousands – nay, millions – of newly capitalist Chinese would simply emerge from poverty and the whole capitalist system would sit lazily sucking its toes. It doesn’t work like that. The fact that the wealth is finite means that China Inc. can only become rich at the expense of Somewhere-Else Inc. becoming poor. Let’s hope for the (American) blogger’s sake it’s not him.
Or rather, let’s hope it IS him – then he might see things differently.
I think The Economist seems to have missed that too.
PS. I will put “The Shock Doctrine” on my list of books to get.
PPS. I too am glad for the internet. It has provided the opportunity for a kind of “autonomous radicalism” to publicise itself, and to provoke thought in others. There has always been a kind of freedom of information in the West; I say “a kind of” because of course the majority of our information media have been commercial concerns, and the mainstream political parties, which broadly endorse capitalism, set the political priorities. (I have just deleted a whole lot more because I was going way off topic – I’ll close, but I’ll continue to read your blog with interest. I have it as a link on my own blog page.)
August 27, 2010 at 12:11 am
pino
the question for me is: how can Chinese workers turn this into a revolutionary situation? how can they challenge the “Communist” state and turn a demand for better working conditions into a generalized demand for better living conditions?
It seems to me that they have achieved that already without a revolution; yes? The Chinese workers have left the working tools of bone crushing poverty in the rice paddies and moved to a job that pays them enough money to buy things that they never EVER could have had they stayed farming rice.
Their “condition” is better. If it weren’t, they would walk out of the factory and pick up those working tools.
The blogger’s line is basically “Hoo-rah for Capitalism, because it is dragging thousands of Chinese out of poverty and giving them choice”
Hi Marie. I followed a “referral link” and found Alex ;-)
It’s not thousands. It’s MILLIONS. Millions of Chinese workers have been brought from unfathomable poverty to middle class. More so every month.
wealth (resources, markets, etc) is finite
This is not true. Wealth is created. It is not a resource that flows from some well or spring that the greedy protect and keep out the weak and unfortunate.
If there was enough to go round the capitalist world, then the thousands – nay, millions – of newly capitalist Chinese would simply emerge from poverty
It DOES work like that. And millions of Chinese are emerging from poverty.
August 26, 2010 at 11:12 pm
alex
hey marie!
thanks for the awesome comments. i agree with you exactly. i just want to clarify that instead of “generalized demand for better living conditions” i should have said “generalized demand for freedom.”
of course for me, life without freedom is misery. and that’s what capitalism has produced.
thanks for linking to my blog! i appreciate it! look forward to continuing the conversation.
alex
August 26, 2010 at 11:17 pm
alex
oh, and here’s my review of “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein: https://endofcapitalism.com/2009/07/21/review-of-the-shock-doctrine-the-rise-of-disaster-capitalism/
August 27, 2010 at 3:01 am
Marie Marshall
Alex I would just like to give you one of my favourite quotations. It’s from Mikhail Bakunin (who famously quarreled with Marx and Engels):
“… freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice… Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality…”
Actually the guy had a lot of good things to say about freedom.
Heaven forbid that I or anyone else should be thought of as trying to tell the Chinese workers what to do. We can hope. People have to find their own way for any revolutionary movement to be valid (I use the word “revolutionary” in its proper sense here). Probably the least democratic institution in the whole world is a corporation, and yet it is corporate capitalism along with bourgeois democracy (the kind where you give away your autonomy once every four or five years by marking an X on a piece of paper) which lays claim to the term “freedom” and parades it incessantly.
Okay, I know I’m preaching to the converted here.
August 27, 2010 at 1:30 am
alex
dear pino,
thanks for commenting. i believe your faith in capitalism is misplaced.
did you read the article you’re commenting on? your statements appear to be directly contradicted by it.
you use the deceptive phrase “millions of people have been lifted out of poverty”. really? they’re being worked literally to Death in those factories. being paid the equivalent of cents per hour. working 14-hour shifts. many of the women are raped, but will be fired if they get pregnant.
here’s a quote from the article that you should read:
“A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm. Workers must report to their stations fifteen minutes ahead of schedule for a military-style drill: “Everybody, attention! Face left! Face right!” Once they begin, they are strictly forbidden from talking, listening to music, or going to the toilet. Anybody who breaks this rule is screamed at and made to clean the toilets as punishment.”
Hmmm.. doesn’t sound like “middle class” to me. sounds more like “unfathomable poverty”.
why did the workers leave their family farms for these abominable factories? simply because they HAD to. most of them were forced off their traditional lands, either through direct expropriation by the “Communist” state, or because their local markets have been flooded by artificially cheap industrial agriculture products. these people have lost everything they ever had. they now have no choice but to work for a wage in order to survive and feed their now-impoverished families.
(this is the same process of displacement/”enclosure” that NAFTA caused in Mexico, which is why there are so many impoverished Mexican ex-farmers risking life and limb to cross into the US – as i described in my review of “The Grapes of Wrath” https://endofcapitalism.com/2010/05/25/reading-the-grapes-of-wrath-in-2010-immigration-capitalism-and-the-historic-moment-in-arizona/)
finally, you say “Wealth is created.” you’re right, in a way. in capitalism, most wealth is in fact “created” through violence and exploitation.
example: virtually all new cell phones, laptops, iPods and so forth use components made of the mineral coltan. coltan is almost entirely mined from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a civil war (sometimes known as the “African World War”) has been raging for the past 15 years or so. at least 6 million people have died. hundreds of thousands of women have been raped and/or mutilated.
the coltan trade directly fuels the conflict, as warring factions export the mineral (along with others) to the global market, where they eventually find their way to Sony, et al. the profits made go back into AK-47s and other weaponry, to fight for more territory that can be destroyed by mining.
imagine how many villages have been displaced by this conflict. many of the dispossessed have nowhere to go – many join one of the various guerrilla bands or state armies. many children are forced into slavery, digging coltan out of the Earth with their hands or primitive tools.
it’s hell on earth. here’s an article you can check out if you dare to learn more. there are many, many more available online. (https://endofcapitalism.com/2009/12/27/conflict-minerals-and-civil-war-in-the-congo/)
this horror is unfortunately not an exception. Marie is right. for someone to be made rich, someone else – maybe on the other side of the world – needs to be made poor. in the process, the planet is usually ravaged as well.
capitalism doesn’t work like they teach you in school. the “invisible hand” is actually an iron fist.
alex
August 27, 2010 at 9:05 am
pino
they’re being worked literally to Death in those factories. being paid the equivalent of cents per hour. working 14-hour shifts. many of the women are raped, but will be fired if they get pregnant.
And the other side of the story?
In China, the tide is changing. Employers are offering higher wages AND perks.
made of the mineral coltan.
No one is advocating this kind of “Anarchy of corporations”. If the lands containing coltan had MORE economic freedom the wars would not be occurring. If someone owned that land, and could sell the right to mine that mineral, the wars would stop. But it sounds like those nations have a “Property Rights” issue, not a coltan issue.
For example, if coltan could be mined in the USA, we would not face civil wars, we would face wealthy people who own the land the coltan is on.
Marie is right. for someone to be made rich, someone else – maybe on the other side of the world – needs to be made poor.
This is simply not true. However, given that you feel it is, I completely understand where your argument is coming from. It’s a sound argument, just built on a false premise.
August 27, 2010 at 1:36 pm
alex
thanks for responding pino,
i’m glad to carry on a civil debate. thanks for responding to my ideas and not just attacking mindlessly. internet arguments usually drain me because they devolve into macho posturing, but you seem to be genuinely interested in the truth, so that impresses me.
just a couple responses. you point out that Chinese wages are going up. but why? because capitalists are benevolent and want to help people? no, wages are going up because workers on going on strike and demanding higher wages, an end to sweatshop conditions, an end to abuse. labor organizing is the reason we have the 8-hour day in the United States. unions also brought us an end to child labor, workplace safety laws, overtime, and Social Security.
if it were up to the Rockefellers, et al, they would have just kept on exploiting the crap out of us. by imposing limits on capitalism, progress was made.
on the coltan point, what you have to understand is that companies like Sony, IBM, etc. are after the cheapest possible minerals, to drive down their production costs. they directly benefit from the civil war in the Congo because the minerals are being dug out of the Earth by slaves or virtual-slaves. if you don’t have to pay for labor, you get really cheap products.
there’s also a huge arms industry fuelling the conflict as well. the US is by far the number one arms dealer in the world. again, those corporations are directly benefiting from the war.
you suggest: “If someone owned that land, and could sell the right to mine that mineral, the wars would stop.”
i retort: this is precisely what the global market does NOT want. it wants cheap coltan. it doesn’t want Congolese to have self-determination and peace. peace isn’t profitable.
alex
August 27, 2010 at 9:02 pm
pino
thanks for responding to my ideas and not just attacking mindlessly. internet arguments usually drain me because they devolve into macho posturing, but you seem to be genuinely interested in the truth
No problem.
Chinese wages are going up. but why? because capitalists are benevolent and want to help people?
Certainly not! I agree with you.
wages are going up because workers on going on strike and demanding higher wages, an end to sweatshop conditions, an end to abuse.
Except for the part about organized labor, I agree with you again. It is because workers, voluntarily entering the workforce, become unwilling to labor under certain conditions at certain wages.
This is the natural state of labor.
by imposing limits on capitalism, progress was made.
Eh…I think it has more to do with extending Liberties and Rights. That is, if you don’t wanna work at certain wages and under certain conditions, you can not be coerced. However, if you do wanna work, you can.
Hand in hand with this goes the concept that employers can not fraud the worker. That is to with hold wages, extend hours etc under coercion. THAT is illegal and should be enforced. Which really, is a state of Right of Contract.
If I agree to work for you under certain contract, you are obligated to hold up your end of the bargain. It is in this aspect that many corporations act in bad faith.
this is precisely what the global market does NOT want.
Simply because the global market enjoys cheap coltan is not sufficient reason to deny those people the basic Liberties. The crime is not coltran, it’s that there is not sufficient enforcement.
August 27, 2010 at 2:51 am
Marie Marshall
@pino. If things were as you say then there would be no competition. If there were no competition then there would be no capitalism. Near where I live textile factories have closed down; the corporations still exist, they have merely opened factories in China. No, I’m afraid you’re wrong – resources, wealth, etc are finite.
August 27, 2010 at 9:11 am
pino
If things were as you say then there would be no competition.
I’m not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. It is the very idea of competition that is key to capitalism. When faced with choices, rational people will work to maximize their own basic self interest. I.E. All things being equal, I will buy gas at $2.60 rather than $2.70. Competition is the thing that drives those gas stations to offer groceries, install additional pumps to reduce wait, allow cash, credit or checks for ease of payment etc.
textile factories have closed down
Here too. Alex mentioned an iPhone. It’s built in China. However, the overwhelming majority of the “price” of an iPhone comes back to Americans in the form of engineering jobs, marketing jobs, executive jobs and profit for Apple shareholders.
In the end, labor is a resource like land or oil. You buy it where it can be purchased for the most value.
I’m afraid you’re wrong – resources, wealth, etc are finite.
Resources, yes; oil, coal, and such. Not wealth.
If you don’t believe me, check the global GDP over time. We have increased wealth for centuries.
August 28, 2010 at 5:06 am
Marie Marshall
@pino It’s really very simple. If it were not finite there would be no need for competition. We would simply pick our breakfast from the tree, as though on some idyllic island.
GDP equates “wealth” with “money”. These are not necessarily the same thing. I get a lot more £s in my salary now than I ever did; they buy less.
August 28, 2010 at 1:56 pm
alex
pino,
thanks for responding again. it sounds like our views are not as incompatible as i had believed.
we seem to agree that workers going on strike and demanding higher wages is what causes social progress, even though capitalists will fight tooth and nail against such wage increases. it works the same in China as in the US. as you point out, it’s a question of “Liberties and Rights”. so then we seem to agree that workers have rights, and if their rights are not respected, they are justified in organizing and going on strike to demand their rights restored, yes?
you also say, “Simply because the global market enjoys cheap coltan is not sufficient reason to deny those people the basic Liberties.”
we appear to have complete agreement in this regard. there are certain “inalienable liberties”, which i would call human rights. and if the market tries to violate these liberties, it is wrong and limits must be imposed so that people can free themselves of outside tyranny. i’m reminded of how the US colonists broke from England so that they could impose tariffs on British imports, thus allowing for the development of US manufacturing.
there are millions of such examples throughout history, of people putting limits on capitalism in order to make social progress.
my point is to dig deeper. we need to grasp the nature of this system which prioritizes profit ABOVE ALL, including human life and the well-being of the planet. my read on history is that capitalism regularly and systematically denies people their “basic liberties and rights” all over the world, for the simple reason that it benefits from exploiting them. a worker who has no other options will sell their labor for a much lower wage than someone whose community and livelihood are still intact.
alex
August 28, 2010 at 9:12 pm
pino
we seem to agree that workers going on strike and demanding higher wages is what causes social progress
We agree that workers demanding higher wages is what causes economic progress. I’m not entirely sure of what you mean by social progress. Further, I am sure we have different views of “strike”.
I certainly feel that workers have the right to organize amongst themselves and work together to bring about positive change. However, I object to Unions being given the legal rights they currently enjoy today.
i’m reminded of how the US colonists broke from England so that they could impose tariffs on British imports, thus allowing for the development of US manufacturing.
I think they broke with England because of taxation. Imposing tariffs only hurts the people imposing them. For example, when we impose tariffs on Chinese tires, we are only punishing the normal everyday dood that would like to buy inexpensive tires. We force him to pay a price higher than he might otherwise be able. THAT is not good.
we need to grasp the nature of this system which prioritizes profit ABOVE ALL
Correct. We need to move towards a system that prioritizes Liberty ABOVE all. Profits will flow, and in such a system, are not evil.
Don’t forget, that by enacting Capitalism or Socialism doesn’t change the basic nature of man; that of looking after self interests. Capitalism is simply the only system that gives me, the little guy, a fightin’ chance.
August 31, 2010 at 6:46 pm
alex
hey pino,
glad to continue to discuss.
first, i’m glad we agree that liberty/freedom is the ultimate good, not profit. it’s a common sense notion, yet we live in a country where the inverse is usually true. profit is prioritized above liberty. Big Business runs the economy and the government, and the “little guy” like you or me (by the way most of the “little guys” are women), gets the short end of the stick. the BP oil disaster is a prime example – BP’s profits and public relations image are protected, and what “we, the people” get is a destroyed Gulf of Mexico and a huge cleanup bill.
you asked what i meant by “social progress”. it is precisely the development of a society which is more libertarian, where freedom, justice and sustainability are realized. as beautifully documented in the late Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States”, this progress has typically only occurred when enough “little guys” get together to confront the domineering power of Big Business.
let me therefore clarify my previous historical example of tariffs in the early US experience. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the primary authors of the Federalist Papers which advocated for the ratification of the Constitution, were also huge proponents of imposing high tariffs on foreign, principally British imports. the reason: US manufacturing could not possibly compete with the flood of cheap British goods.
therefore when the Constitution was enacted in 1789, the second act passed by Congress was the Hamilton’s Tariff Act of 1789. this was followed by the Tariff Acts of 1790, 1792, and largely incremented by the Tariff of 1816, as described below.
From wikipedia:
“The Tariff of 1816 was put in place after the War of 1812. Britain had developed a large stockpile of iron and textile goods. Because this stockpile was so large, the price of British goods soon plummeted in comparison to that of American goods. Consequently, many Americans bought British goods rather than American goods, hurting American manufacturers. James Madison and Henry Clay devised a plan to help American producers, called the American System. It included a protective tariff more commonly known as the Tariff of 1816, which increased the price of British goods so that American goods could compete with them.”
in other words, the only reason the United States was able to industrialize, and thereby become the world power that it now is, was by restricting the “free flow of goods.” by imposing limits on capitalism.
this is not an exception, but the norm. industry routinely lobbies the government to put up barriers to competition. and depending on how powerful the industry is, it succeeds.
let me clarify that obviously this is not always a good thing. you have for example the double-standards of NAFTA, where the US is allowed to massively subsidize domestic agricultural production to the tune of billions of dollars annually, but Mexico was explicitly forbidden from subsidizing their farmers. the result? a flood of cheap US corn into Mexico, the displacement of millions of poor Mexican farmers, and thereafter the unending human flood of Mexican immigrants desperately scrambling across the border in search of any income with which to feed their families.
it’s an economic and social disaster, carefully engineered by US corporations and the government, which, once again, are concerned with PROFIT and not liberty/freedom.
these are all reasons why i strongly question your suggestion that “the basic nature of man” is “self interests”. instead, i would say that everything that occurs in society is the result of COMPETING interests. US manufacturing vs. British manufacturing, North vs. South, and most fundamentally, Big Business vs. “the little guy.”
alex
September 10, 2010 at 1:47 am
Luis Cayetano
Hi Pino, I have to say that some of the things you said simply made me chuckle. For example:
“Capitalism is simply the only system that gives me, the little guy, a fightin’ chance.”
This is so utterly absurd it almost beggars belief. As Alex has mentioned, social progress has been achieved when the little guys went utterly AGAINST the capitalists, who fought tooth and nail to beat back the tide of humanity. What gave the ordinary folk a fighting chance was their willingness and resolve to go against capitalist provisions. They would do much better to destroy this rotten system once and for all, and do away with those institutions and power structures that provide an imperative to retard progress in the first place. However, this is no sure thing, partly because there will always be apologists like you who will endeavor to convince them that capitalism is the best deal they are ever going to get.
“For example, when we impose tariffs on Chinese tires, we are only punishing the normal everyday dood that would like to buy inexpensive tires. We force him to pay a price higher than he might otherwise be able. THAT is not good.”
It’s always interesting to see how market fundamentalists (I’m sorry, but you are one) use the word “punishment”. This lays bare their conception of what liberty should be centrally concerned with: the right to accumulate goods and capital, unfettered by ethical restrictions. Anything that goes against this is “punishment”, and therefore “bad”. By the way, you’re also using a simplistic dichotomy of “good” and “bad”, as though only one yardstick applies to judging whether tariffs qualify as “good” or not (your yardstick is whether the regular dude is granted enough choice in buying cheaper tires; importantly, this yardstick also aligns itself beautifully – and ever so accidentally – to what is in the best interests of corporate profits). Finally, tariffs and other protectionist measures are precisely the mechanisms that were used by EVERY major industrial power to build themselves up. Free markets, which will now only ever exist in such hell holes like Haiti, were quickly abandoned in the West when it became clear that they would reduce society back to a “state of wilderness”, as one commentator proclaimed. Countries that conform to IMF dictat see their economies flushed down the toilet and their societies devastated (some creditors in the West benefit, so I suppose that, somehow, the “little guy” wins – except if you’re a Haitian farmer or a woman working in a factory in Bangkok), while those that ignore them tend to do a whole lot better.
I’m sorry to say this, but the doctrines you uphold are little better than creationism. Your asinine and unscientific proclamations about “human nature” impress me even less.