A note on the relationship between capitalist
exploitation and unemployment
[A comment by an observor.]
A lot of people among "RCP"=u$a circles have
raised the issue of unemployed Euro-Amerikans as a
way of justifying wage increases for the majority
of Euro-Amerikan workers. This is when even most
instances of the u.$. legal minimum wage may
represent a net transfer of value from exploited
workers, looking past u.$. borders. As with many
things "RCP"=u$a (and labor-aristocracy lines more
generally), this is case of "looking at things
one-sidedly or superficially"(1) and ignoring what
proletarians really have in common other than
getting paychecks.
When asked by a [pro-]MIM [writer] to compare their earnings to
Third World wages in order to start exploring the
range of privileged workers' incomes, one persyn
responded that since they were temporarily
unemployed, they weren't even on the map, in other
words, they were right down there with super-
exploited workers.(2) While MIM's more scrupulous
critics add other things(3) to their
idealistically conceived laundry list of
conditions that make a persyn objectively
interested in the revolution, this particular
[line--ed.] characterizes the non-Marxist
approach of emphasizing things other than
capitalist exploitation in the demarcation of
classes. To non-Marxists, what is important is a
persyn's income relative to the highest-paid
members of society, or the persyn's income
stability. They have no concept of surplus value
or how it is distributed with a world market under
imperialism, or what qualitative differences in
workers' incomes may represent. These ideologists
for the labor aristocracy are just seeing pie and
going for a bigger slice.
It is true that there is a relationship between
unemployment and proletarian economic position.
Unemployment is both a condition and a feature of
an economic system characterized by wage-slavery.
However, unemployment exists under pre-capitalist
modes of production, and corporate executives are
often unemployed. Being unemployed is not
sufficient to be a proletarian.
Unemployment is an aspect of proletarian life. To
an extent, unemployment is a consideration in
demarcating classes and strata. However,
proletarian, petty-bourgeois and even bourgeois
individuals all experience unemployment, so a
distinction must be made between the impact
unemployment has on proletarians and the impact
unemployment has on the vast majority of Euro-
Amerikkkan workers.
MIM has been confining itself to pointing out the
relative infrequency of unemployment among Euro-
Amerikans, and Euro-Amerikans' benefits and social
networks that they can draw on for income support.
MIM must be criticized for being too generous to
its opponents. In fact, MIM doesn't need to point
to the rarity of unemployment among Euro-
Amerikans. Even if the unemployment rate among
Euro-Amerikans was a ridiculous 50% (and there was
a 100% employee turnover in 6 months), and there
were no unemployment benefits of any form, both
productive and unproductive workers earning Ralph
Nader's "living wage" of $10/hr would:
1) still be net exploiters in the value-theory
sense since their earnings, as a consumption
level, exceed the value of their labor, and 2)
have an average daily income, made possible by
saving, that exceeds the value of labor power.(4)
The second point is important because being
unemployed and having an average daily income well
below the prevailing value of labor power would be
indicative(5) of proletarian economic position
even if a persyn was an unproductive worker or
technically a net exploiter in another way. MIM
has never said that being currently employed in
the unproductive sector automatically means being
a non-proletarian. What matters are people's
conditions in the long term. There are places,
such as Baguio, where most available jobs right
now are in the unproductive sector, but when the
average wage in the Philippines is US$0.43/hr(6),
and the unemployment rate is a high 13.7%(7),
these together may be enough to bring the average
daily income for currently unemployed Filipino
unproductive workers below the value of labor
power. Despite their location in a non-exploited
sector, MIM would call such workers proletarians
for at least three reasons: 1) long-term
unemployment is a consequence of the general law
of capitalist accumulation, and proletarians who
are not being immediately exploited because they
don't even have a job, or can't get a job in the
productive sector even if they tried to, should
still be considered proletarians; 2) they would
probably see their average daily incomes increase
under socialism; and 3) because of their below-
subsistence incomes, they are willing to compete
for exploited productive-sector jobs. In fact,
these are among the reasons why MIM holds out the
possibility that many oppressed nationalities
within the u.$. are proletarians due to higher or
unknown labor intensities and higher unemployment
rates.
Many people understand this intuitively. There is
a big difference between unemployment for
Zimbabweans, and unemployment for u.$. employees
who can go 8 weeks without working, and not starve
or become homeless.(8) Unemployment is often a
life-and-death issue for Third World workers and
pressurizes them into the super-exploited sector.
The same simply cannot be said of oppressor-
nationality workers who stay in their locations so
they can return to their unproductive and non-
exploited productive-sector jobs in a matter of
weeks. If the 5% of whites(9) who are currently
unemployed were permanently unemployed, MIM's
critics might have a small point. In reality,
unemployment for oppressor nationalities does not
have the same meaning as unemployment for Third
World workers. Unemployment, or income stability
in the abstract, must not be used to justify wage
increases for the majority of Euro-Amerikan
workers at the inherent expense of actually
exploited workers.(10) Unemployment does not by
itself constitute an objective basis for a persyn
to be interested in the revolution, and it is
opportunist for "RCP"=u$a to even imply that it
does in articles that do say not one word about
the petty bourgeoisie's large appropriation of
surplus value.
Notes
1. "On contradiction."
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/mao/sw1
/mswv1_17.html
2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/wyl/crypto/monkeygrape.html
3. "There are rising childcare and
health insurance costs, household debt and
heightened fears about job security. With the
downturn in the stock market, many are seeing
their pensions evaporate."
(http://rwor.org/a/v23/1130-39/1131/programme_middle_class.htm).
4. Very
briefly, the value of labor power is the wage
necessary to satisfy capitalists' demand for
labor. The fact that it may cost $1,500/mo to rent
an apartment in San Francisco for a single persyn
does not make this amount necessary for the
reproduction of labor power. For one, housing
costs and housing quality in an area are related
to its inhabitants' incomes. It is ridiculous for
MIM's critics to suggest that Euro-Amerikans would
die if they all had the legal minimum wage, which
is still about ten times higher than the average
Third World wage even after adjusting for cost-of-
living differences.
5. Ultimately, this depends on
the average income that is possible under
socialism. In 1949, even the bourgeoisies in China
had consumption levels such that they lived for
less than today's average lifespan. The point is
that even if Third World workers' wages were
quadrupled under the dictatorship of the
proletariat, the resulting wages might still be
less than the value of labor power, so labor-power
isn't precisely what separates unemployed
proletarians from the unemployed petty
bourgeoisie. Almost certainly, a single persyn
without children cannot expect to keep even their
u.$. legal minimum wages, especially when
consumers' cooperatives will be established at the
seizure of power.
6. "Economic Factors for
Consideration that May Weigh Against Minimum Wage
Increases." http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/AS/sec7.htm
7. "Jobless rate climbs to 13.7%"
http://www.malaya.com.ph/jun16/busi1.htm
8. "Finding a new job after displacement."
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2001/july/wk3/art03.htm
9. "Study shows black unemployment rate doubles
rate of whites."
http://newshound.de.siu.edu/online/stories/storyRe
ader$5316
10. _Imperialism and its class structure
in 1997_.http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/imp97/
mim3@mim.org replies: To expand on the above, I'll
just point to an interesting critique of our usage
of the word "lumpen."(1) We at MIM continue to
believe there is a white lumpen in the "modernist"
sense, not the anarchist or post-modernist sense.
Mao from the very beginning used the term lumpen
to refer to the unemployed: "Apart from all these,
there is the fairly large lumpen-proletariat, made
up of peasants who have lost their land and
handicraftsmen who cannot get work."(2)
So if anyone is talking about unemployed people
who are really desperate, they would be talking
about "lumpen-proletariat." In fact, most
unemployment in the united $tates especially among
whites is not even of this lumpen character. Now
the fact that there is economic instability is
characteristic of all classes under capitalism.
Recently, a Korean capitalist going bankrupt in
the dumpling business jumped out the window to his
death in a replay of classic Depression-style
imagery.
Unemployment and the unproductive sector are
completely different matters in the oppressed
nations. That's why I would like to stress what is
said above that it is a matter of what is going on
in the rest of the economy. Unemployed and
unproductive sector workers do not live in a
vacuum. They are willing to take up productive
sector work and the sectors influence each other
both economically and politically.
Perhaps at one time and in some countries, the
capitalists only hire maids, butlers and
secretaries from very select circumstances as they
did in the 1800s in England, but today the
unproductive sector and productive sector workers
and petty-bourgeoisie are in general competition.
If 95% are employed and living in the top 10% of
the world economically-speaking, the truth is that
the remaining 5% is temporary turnover or lumpen
and we are going to have a tough time breaking off
a portion, because the 95% speaks and lives with
the 5% much more than the comrades in the People's
Wars speak with that 5%. Ironically, despite their
pretense of concern, the RCP=U$A dampens the line
necessary to break off a portion of the lumpen,
and characteristically, the lumpen reasons that
instead of taking the petty-bourgeois line of the
RCP=U$A with proletarian window-dressing,
it will go whole hog for exploiter status.
That is to say that for a proletariat to form, not
only must there be a working class with nothing to
lose but its chains, but also it must have class
consciousness. That is difficult to have when you
have a temporary unemployed status that one flows
in and out of and one lives with other middle-
class people. Among the truly desperate lumpen
element that MIM does work with, even a hint of
middle-class fright for economic instability will
lead the lumpen toward the exploiters.
So there is the question of exploitation, which is
a question of labor appropriation. Then there is a
question of class consciousness among the minority
that we call lumpen and that is a political
question that is pretty predictable based on the
overall class structure of the society, not just
the individual's narrow circumstances.
The RCP=U$A proceeds by analyzing patches of
people at a time precisely in order to deny the
overall class truth of the exploiter character of
the united $tates. That is something that Liberal
identity-politics people do--encourage people to
think about their narrow and temporary
circumstances. It is not a firm basis upon which
to speak of a class or class struggle in a forward
direction. We have to draw grand generalizations,
in this case, a line between exploiters and
exploited. We are not going to say there are 100
classes in the united $tates, one for each 1% of
society the RCP=U$A wants to claim for its line.
That is the road to Liberalism. That's why we say
there is a white lumpen, but even in that
exceptional category the overall stress is that
the lumpen is being tugged hard by the middle-
class on the one side and MIM and the
international proletariat on the other. We have to
stress that even the white lumpen is not in its
own world, but connected to a battle between two
camps--exploiters and exploited.
In terms of whether MIM has addressed this before
beyond saying that the percentages involved are too
small, I know that MIM has at least pointed to
Huey Newton on this question. When Newton wrote off
the white "working class" and even the Black workers,
he spoke about how Blacks tended to break into those
who obtained enough employment to approximate middle-class
life and those who ended up in the lumpen. On this point
of the lumpen, MIM is not saying anything new.
The definition was used by Marx and Mao, and the question
of parasitism swamping the economy and producing parasites
and lumpen alone is already in Huey Newton's writings.
As we speak, there is an evil eddy in a larger
counter-revolutionary toilet-bowl that seeks to
cover the counter-revolutionary line that people
advocating laying down arms can be part of a
Maoist party in the semi-colonies or outright
colonies (Iraq). The way these pseudo-Maoists seek
to make up for this or cover this is with a line
that sees the imperialist country labor
aristocracy about to stand up for armed struggle
with proper prodding by the Maoist party not
waiting as Mao counselled for the bourgeoisie to become
"helpless." They hope to be seen as making
"left" lurches on the imperialist countries while
conciliating with counterrevolution in the Third
World. These same pseudo-Maoists are always on-
board with the standard objectively white
nationalist line that the Black Panthers were not
Maoists; even though the Black Panther
Party carried out armed struggle, hailed Mao
and opposed Soviet revisionism (for a few years).
The pseudo-Maoists of today call for another Paris 1968
(not having noticed it turned into a pigfest and
not a 1905) or glorify the equivalent of the
Weather Underground in Europe, specifically naming
organizations in non-fascist Europe that never
claimed to separate from Soviet revisionism.
Notes:
1. http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/lumpenproletariat
2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/classics/mao/sw1/mswv1_1.html