"It's just like what happened in Taiwan," says Ben Fan, a factory owner who moved "his"factory to China from Taiwan because the price of hiring the life activity of a human being was cheaper and more profitable. The problem is that Chinese wages are beginning to climb a bit and that cuts in to Fan's profits. No worries, Fan is going to increase production at his factory in Vietnam where the cost of using a human being is much cheaper, a third cheaper in fact; only $100 a month. Life is good for Fan.
It's good, but a bit frustrating for the poor guy having 13,000 workers that he lives off. Fan who has his workers make lighting fixtures for Wal Mart, Target and Home Depot can't understand these ungrateful slobs, "Chinese don't want to work in factories anymore," Fan tells Business Week, and the giant retailers are not much help, "Wal Mart won't raise what they pay us" says another factory owner, a maker of teddy bears. Naturally Mr. Fan doesn't like working in factories either which is why he has others do it.
Another general manager at a footwear factory is equally displeased with those lazy Chinese youth, "The younger generation is trying to get work that is much easier----waiting tables or working in supermarkets." he whines.
How many times have we heard this about US workers? We have seen the destruction of auto and other manufacturing jobs as "our" factory owners move to Vietnam and China also. The workers are always blamed. "They priced themselves out of a job" is the official propaganda as they shift production to exploit our brothers and sisters across the globe.
As you read this we can see how destructive their nationalist propaganda is, how it is a divisive tactic used to weaken the working class in our struggle for control over our lives and work. What does the Chinese worker have in common with the likes of Fan? He is a social parasite that lives off of their Labor, their misery; and he is in league with Wal Mart's Walton family and others who do no productive Labor. Fan has more in common with the heads of GM and Ford. Nationality is no barrier to them when it comes to profits; it only becomes an issue when the competition between them for control of markets increases in intensity and each factory owner seeks the allegiance of their workers in their efforts to drive their competitors from the scene; we are all "united" then. We are all "Americans" or "Chinese" then.
You can see why they use racial, national and other divisions to separate workers from each other, to prevent our natural class unity from emerging triumphant; they are few in numbers and have to always ensure that we are kept apart. What difference is there between Fan's Chinese, and Vietnamese workers from the workers in Detroit who have been demonized and cast aside by the auto bosses. There is no such thing as "national unity". There are American capitalists and there are American workers. The class divide is the issue; the capitalists class is very clear about this, so should we be.
In the first quarter of this year, according to the economist Nouriel Roubini, Goldman Sachs, the thugs that brought us the foreclosures and job losses we are experiencing, "Did not have a single day in which it lost money on trading." How amazingly obvious is Marx's statement that workers have no country, that all workers should unite, "We have nothing to lose but our chains", he said. Some of us may have more sneakers, made by our Vietnamese brothers and sisters who can't afford to buy them. We may own a car, have a few more toys, but we are not free, we can buy these toys and the more important necessities of life only by borrowing the money to buy them from the capitalist; at a cost of course, they call it interest. Only through debt, borrowing back the money they stole from us can we get what we need. In the US people use credit cards to pay for medical care and food. The main problem is we do not own and control the productive process by which we produce the necessities of life. Would we allocate human Labor power and capital to the production of teddy bears to the same extent? Of course not. Yes we'd produce teddy bears for our children; for them to use for pleasure and comfort, in other words, to use. But the capitalists produces not for use, but for exchange value, for profit.
No matter what they produce, production for them is based only on profit, as Marx explained: “a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.”
Meanwhile Fan, like all capitalists, all purchasers of human beings no matter what nationality they call themselves, view workers in the same way; Chinese workers "want easy jobs and higher pay." he says.
I think that's a good start..
No comments:
Post a Comment