Tag Archives: labor

Labour Ethics

In this article, Brooke Crothers tries to argue that one should not have an ethical dilemma in purchasing products made by Apple. He is mostly speaking about the increasingly public investigations into the third party assembly factories which Apple (and other tech-sector companies) use for their products. In a somewhat joking acquiescence, Crothers even mentions that these factories often treat their assembly line workers as chattel — that is, as privately owned property. Let that sink in: he sees no issue in a company treating its workers as slaves as long as they continue to be industrial juggernauts (perhaps ‘too big to fail’?). The point many are making against Apple is not limited to Apple as Crothers suggests in his ‘don’t stop there’ attitude. What he is not expecting, though, is for people to agree with the sentiment of ‘don’t stop there’ and actually accept the ethical implications of their consumption. Instead of pushing companies like Apple to use factories which treat their workers as human beings — whether that is in the US or elsewhere — Crothers thinks such is ‘a pipe dream’.

Why? Why can’t Apple and others pay their workers fair wages, accept a ‘healthy’ work-life balance, etc? Crothers suggests its because these companies would not find enough employees who ‘live in dormitories and make a 24/7 on-call commitment to Foxconn for low wages’. No shit, Sherlock. That’s because such commitments are mostly illegal in industrialised countries for a reason. If the issue holding Apple back from having factories which comply with US labour laws (we’ll leave Europe’s labour laws out of this for now) is that they wouldn’t own slaves who can work the assembly line 15+ hours a day, 7 days a week (over 100 hours a week!), then perhaps they shouldn’t be in business. That’s not a employer-employee relationship; that’s an owner-slave relationship. It’s this lack of respect towards humans that, at best, borders on the sociopathic (at worst, it crosses well over that line).

Crothers’s final excuse is that there are US-based plants which are less ‘worker intensive’ that utilise high tech equipment rather than millions of workers who live in on-site dormitories and are at the beck and call of an owner 24/7. Why can’t, for example, Apple use such assembly line equipment (like other US-based factories)? Why can’t they employ multiple shifts of people who work 40 hours a week at a livable wage? Oh, that’s right: profit and consumption. Perhaps Apple thinks they would not sell as much if the price of their products rose to afford ‘ethical labour practises’ while keeping the same profit margins. But then, perhaps that’s because the primary markets of consumption are filled with the very people who are out of work and are told they could not afford the real cost of they themselves being employed. That is, Crothers’s article implies that industrial jobs are incompatible with current US labour laws because people might actually be paid for their work. And that is something which frightens companies like Apple because it means that they wouldn’t be simple, mindless consumers willing to sell their kidneys for a new toy.

What I’d like to see is someone take up Crothers’s rhetorical question and begin to list companies which utilise labour practises akin to slavery and the products (and parts) which are made in these conditions. Sure, Apple would be on that list. As would Motorola, Amazon, Intel, Wal-Mart, etc. However, perhaps that kind of list will make people think twice about what they buy. Perhaps, it’ll lead to a revolt against treating humans as property and resources to be used then discarded.

Wealth creation

Adrian Rogers, a previously major figure in the Southern Baptist Convention, once said that ‘you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it’ as a way of critiquing socialism. However, such a statement is misguided for two reasons, one which concerns to process of wealth creation within capitalism, and another which concerns the utility of a monetary system within socialism. I’ll start with the second one first (since it is a more direct response to the statement).

The nature of socialism can be defined as the very absence of wealth rather than simply the redistribution of wealth. Since everyone is equal across the board, there is no wealth to be distributed or divided. In fact, the more idealised version of socialism rejects the usage of a monetary system. Everyone is entitled to a basic level of living: health care, education, a job, food, housing, etc. Within a developed practise of socialism, the necessity and commonality of these things would see the usage of money as a central mediating factor (i.e. income from a job and payment of services and goods) disappears. There is no need for money in these basic transactions. Instead, money is reduced to a less meaningful mediator (perhaps used for transactions with parties external to the socialist system and/or for purchasing unnecessary products). To speak of ‘wealth’ within socialism requires an inequality or the capitalist belief that wealth can be possessed. This is exactly how many reactions to the Occupy Wall Street movement fail to recognise their arguments: the respondent often speaks of giving money away to people instead of providing an avenue for the people to become gainfully employed. At its heart, then, Western capitalism misconstrues an integral part of socialism by viewing it as a variation of capitalism rather than as an alternative system. It cannot fathom the possibility of a way of life without a monetary intermediary despite the existence of such communities before the rise of capitalism (e.g. prior to the enclosure of the commons in the sixteenth century).

Since the ascendancy of capitalism and its monetary intermediary, its greatest proponents have a romanticised notion of the creation of wealth. In fact, one could argue that wealth did not exist prior to capitalism because wealth requires an inequality in the cost of production and the product’s selling price*. Prior to industrialisation (and modern capitalism), the person selling the product was often its producer. The sale ‘price’ was equivalent to the cost of production, which means that a person was ‘breaking even’ rather than gaining extra wealth. However, after the advent of industrialisation — which began a process of alienating the workers who produced products and the product itself — the capitalist owner could sell a product for more than what he paid to have the workers produce the product. This can be done either by charging the buyer more than the cost of the product, by paying less to have the product produced, or both. The first is often considered an integral part of the process of supply and demand. However, it does not last often because the second option viciously undercuts that process. As a result, the second is often the primary way of gaining wealth.

The way in which production costs are minimised can be by technological advancements, but competition always catches up. Instead, costs are reduced more permanently by simply paying less. In particular, the workers are paid less than ‘actual market value’ for their labour. In other words, the creation of wealth comes first and foremost by the exploitation of labour. The process of industrialisation increases this effect because a worker is no longer producing a shoe but rather a small part of a shoe. The worker is alienated (again) from her product. (Don’t believe me? Notice the brief mention in this article about Mike Daisey showing a Foxconn worker who helped build the iPad the finished product for the first time.) The result is that the worker no longer knows how to build a complete product and is unable to compete (ignoring intellectual property and copyright laws) with the owner. The only options a worker has is (1) to continue working and be underpaid, (2) quit and find another job which will do the same thing ultimately, or (3) protest.

When individual workers protest, the owner has the ability to terminate the employment and hire a replacement (which is easy to find when there is an army of unemployed workers desperate for any income and willing to sell themselves for even less). This is where unions enter in: by forming unions, workers have greater strength. When a unionised workforce strikes, the owner is unable to get more products to sell because the entire industrialised process is halted. The owner, like the workers, does not know how to produce the product; the owner may have the knowledge and schematics but is often unable to operate the machinery and tools needed to assemble the product. As a result, the owner is faced with two major options: (1) remove the entire union workforce and re-hire and re-train a new workforce (something that would cost a lot of money for training as well as a loss of income while the factory re-build) or (2) deal with the union and appease the workers. In a country or state which protects workers, the first option is often illegal (at least for a period of time which allows negotiation). By forcing owners to attempt to resolve labour disputes, these states and countries provide a basic employment security which allows workers to bargain effectively for their labour. In other words, the power of collective bargaining is a way for workers to demand a more equal distribution of profits to those who actually produce the products. However, many countries and states are moving away from these protections and are implementing at-will employment laws and (as Indiana is preparing to do) ‘right-to-work’ laws. The result is the resurgence of the exploitation of workers for the accumulation of profits which is often coded in terms of creatio ex nihilo whereby the capitalist owner (magically) adds value to a product which allows it to be sold for more than its worth. The reality, however, is less than magical because the wealth does not come from nothing despite the imagination that the whole of the product is worth more than the sum of its parts.

* NB: I am using ‘price’ loosely here for a product may have been exchanged for something other than currency (e.g. other products).

The ‘Third Way’ of the Middle Class

For some time, I had been contemplating Adam Kotsko’s attitude towards ‘third way’ solutions (e.g. here). For the longest time, I have been a proponent of a ‘third way’ that would synthesise successfully the disparities between ‘left’ and ‘right’ into a more agreeable middle path between the two. However, I think that when this dialogue is turned towards the idea of a ‘middle class’, the failure of most ‘third way’ options (hey, I’m still woefully idealistic that one may succeed!) becomes apparent.

The emergence of the ‘middle class’ is a kind of ‘third way’ between the working and owning classes best described in Marxist accounts of capitalism. As a ‘third way’, the middle class was seen as the grey area between the two in which families could exist relatively peacefully while allowing differing political opinions. It didn’t matter if one was a Democrat or a Republican because the middle class was connected by something other than labour or capital.

Further ideological development of the middle class began to overlook and later erode class distinctions so that everyone could be ‘middle class’. As a socio-economic class, the ‘middle’ became uninterested in politics, economics, class struggles, etc. Political platforms turned away from politics and moved into the realm of social mores and appearances. Candidates were elected not on the basis of their political acumen or their ability to fight for the people they represented but on the basis of a few ‘key issues’ which dealt less and less with the politics of the world and more with the representation of certain ideological disposition. Political opinions could be reduced to simple binaries around social issues which threatened the nuclear ‘family’ of the ‘middle class’: abortion, death penalty, etc. Arguments were personalised in such a way that the old political discussions of, for example, taxes were transformed into how the ‘left’ Democrats wanted to increase taxes on the ‘middle class’ and the Republicans wanted to cut Medicare, Social Security, etc.

This can be seen in the current news dialogues concerning the temporary payroll tax cuts which are due to expire this year. The discussion has shifted towards tax cuts and tax increases on ‘middle class’ families. Its origin as a temporary measure has been lost and re-created into a war being waged against the family. The same can be said about the debate surrounding the Democrats’ proposed surtax on families with income over one million dollars — even they are now ‘middle class’!

What happened between the relatively strong left/labour movements in the US after the Great Depression and now? I suggest that it was an ideological battle in which members of the working class who were benefiting from the labour movement began to see themselves as the ‘third way’ of the ‘middle class’. While they acknowledged their ‘roots’ in the working class, their children saw that less and less. Instead, the ‘middle class’ children saw the ‘middle class’ as something hard-won from the working class and, consequently, needed protection from the working class as well. They moved to newer neighbourhoods and developed a culture which saw the working class as a lower class which was unable (due to laziness, poor decisions, etc) to rise up into the ‘middle’. In other words, the ‘middle class’ began to treat the remainder of the working class in the same manner that the owning class has always done. Now, the working class was fighting against itself. The ‘middle class’ was marketed by savvy politicians into thinking that their taxes were being spent unwisely and that the ‘lower class’ was abusing the social welfare for which the ‘middle class’ paid through taxes. The result was the ‘middle class’ seeing itself as self-secure, independent, and hard working in contrast to the lazy ‘lower class’ which stole their money. The ‘middle class’ began to agree with the owning class that they should keep their tax money and the ‘lower class’ just needs to work harder. They forgot that they themselves were working class and were able to ‘become “middle class”‘ solely because of the measures put into place just a generation before.

And this is where the failure has occurred. Everyone wanted to be considered ‘middle class’  and the solidarity has been so strong that tax increases on less than 1% of the population is encoded as a tax increase on everyone. The ‘middle class’ has become (if it ever wasn’t) an illusion. There is no middle class. Yet, its creation and existence has destroyed the self-image of the working class as a sort of Stockholm syndrome in which they now empathise and support the owning class even while the safety nets and security measures which keep the working class alive and sane are being dismantled. The only class solidarity which has persisted is that of the owning class who had seen the creation of the ‘middle class’ for what it is: a fake ‘third way’ which can abuse the working class into hating themselves.

The Wrong University

Recently, the syndicated columnist David Brooks wrote an article on inequality. In it, he argued that the focus on income distribution inequality (‘Blue Inequality’) is a lesser source of social inequality when compared to the income opportunity inequality (‘Red Inequality’). His argument suggests that society should be focused on improving education opportunity (which he implies is connected to social mobility) rather than the income inequality actively created by the wealthy executives who evade taxes as much as possible and seek greater corporate efficiency by actively reducing the workforce.

‘Red Inequality’ is an important concern. However, there are two problems with Brooks’s argument. First, the solution is not more education. Secondly, the overlap between ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ inequality is huge (if not total); and where the two inequalities differ, the social resolution of ‘Red Inequality’ implicates a resolution to ‘Blue Inequality’. I’ll tackle each point here.

Monetising Education

The first problem with Brooks’s article is that he sees university education as providing the means by which one gets a ‘decent’ occupation and the opportunity for one to become socially mobile (positively). University education, for Brooks apparently, is the prime location for gaining ‘transferable skills’ (and perhaps interpersonal connections for gainful employment). Brooks does a great disservice to education by reducing it to a means towards income opportunity. By cheapening the education process, Brooks reinforces the ‘Red Inequality’ which he has already downplayed. Here, Brooks presents himself as a faithful adherent to the American civil-capital religion in promoting the neoliberal belief that the university is merely a tool for better income. Further, Brooks fails to note that greater income opportunity does not imply greater income. Plus, there’s that pesky requirement of paying off student loans — something which now accounts for more US household debt than credit cards — and there’s still questions whether the higher income outweighs the cost (e.g. this though I don’t agree with the ‘solution’ at the end — one which complements Brooks’s). In short, if one goes to university with the expectation of a better paying job, a higher quality of lifestyle, or even just a job, one will be sorely disappointed despite appearances of success. University education may provide ‘transferable skills’ but they are to be seen as the byproduct of an enriching education rather than its primary focus.

Social Equality

Brooks goes to great length to separate ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ inequalities. However, he does this in order to exclude the critique of capitalism. As a result, Brooks reveals himself as a ‘liberal’ who believes the free market is the centre of the universe. One should attend university in order to ‘work hard’ at a low-paying job while the executives and owners make more and more money. In fact, one should be thankful for the ‘job creators’ allowing them to work at all — after all, they could have just as easily moved production to China where they pay children far less to work far more hours and they’re more grateful than the snobbery of the general American! The social equality which Brooks argues is more important is the equality of opportunity even if the actualisation of such opportunity never occurs. It is a virtual equality in which the divide of ‘Red Inequality’ widens and those fortunate to be born into a family on the wealthy side are truly a different class of humanity. Those unlucky to be born into the majority side should ‘work hard’ for the opportunity to cross the gap. What Brooks ignores in his argument for ‘educational opportunity’ is that social mobility — especially for the lower half is, at best, unlikely (and that study was before any recession).

Fighting against only one colour of inequality is impossible. Focussing on ‘Blue Inequality’ is ineffective in the long term if there is no change in ‘Red Inequality’. Having a larger base of well-educated working class would actually do more harm than good. This is because capitalism thrives on the competition of labour and the dissolution of working class solidarity. In other words, the wealthy make more money when there is a surplus of labour in the form of qualified yet unemployed who are put in the position of working for less or not being able to survive. As Brooks’s own NY Times wrote just a few weeks ago, ‘employers may feel less compelled to offer expansive benefits to people desperate for work’. To push for ‘educational opportunity’ means to reinforce that practise.

However, to face ‘Red Inequality’ requires the creation of more ‘educational opportunity’. Why? Because it pushes for better quality jobs and slows the migration of wealth towards the upper echelon of society. By slowing the accumulation of wealth at the top (where it would stay), it allows for that to be reinvested into society by creating the demand for more jobs and more innovation. Rather than a surplus of well-educated working class which allows the exploitation of labour, the result would be a demand for more well-educated working class. That would mean more ‘educational opportunity’ as well as incentives to becoming educated (e.g. greater grants and scholarships). In short, ‘Blue Inequality’ is ‘Red Inequality’.

Liberal Body Politics

The wonders of the American liberal attitude which is shared by people of all political persuasions reveals an interesting relationship between capitalism and American ethics. Recently, some forms of ‘sugar daddy’ liaison services have been criticised as dressed up prostitution. In many cases (at least according to the accounts in the news media), these amount to a young man or woman (generally college age) who are paid well to have some kind of relationship with an older, wealthier individual. Sometimes these relationships are sexual, sometimes they are not. In other words, the younger person is paid to develop that relationship. If the website was not involved and the young person still received the money, these relationships would be considered ‘normal’ romantic or companionship relations. However, because there is a service which connects the two, the general media reaction has been to identify these as prostitution. In other words: Hugh Hefner’s Playboy girls (and wives!) are acceptable relationships; the exact same relationship when an agency pairs up a couple, though, is prostitution.

The more interesting point, however, needs to be teased out. As one letter to the editor in my local paper suggested, these young adults should not be doing these in order to afford a particular college education (source). While the author there seems to confuse being academically capable to attend the university (considering the young adults were accepted, this seems to be true — perhaps even more true than for those applicants who already come from wealth!) and being financially capable to attend the university. Here is where the author fails to see capitalism for what it is: he suggests that these young adults should attend a university they can afford. However, these young adults can and do afford the costlier name-brand university precisely by selling themselves to the wealthier ‘sugar daddy’ clientele. There, it must be prostitution because the media has said so. However, if it wasn’t established by a service (e.g. Anna Nicole Smith), it’s fine. If the young adults were to sell themselves by working three full-time jobs (like some of ‘the 53%’), it is also not prostitution.

According to a purely capitalism mindset, these young adults who are having voluntary relations with wealthy people who happen to give them money (none of the young adults are contractually obligated to continue a relationship according to these services) are innovative workers maximising their talents to produce efficient wages. This is where the common liberal critique of these services expose the American mindset as capitalist. Rather than seeing these services as niche dating markets (apparently, it is free to sign up and contact members) which, like ‘regular’ dating services, end up in the exchange of gifts (i.e. money) and romance (i.e. sex), the American reaction has been to see these as the exchange of romance for gifts nullifying both the possibility of a ‘real’ relationship which something like Match.com gives as well as nullifying the ‘honest profit’ that the young adult earned. In short, the American liberal capitalist wants the wealthy to keep their money and the young adult to work multiple full-time jobs at low wages in order to earn her university education and prove that she ‘works hard’ by prostituting herself to the capitalist market rather than to a wealthy benefactor who seeks companionship.