From the Imperialism study group – Notes on super-exploitation

One of the issues being looked at by the Imperialism study group is super-exploitation in/of the Third World.  Below are notes to the discussion.  Walter asks that readers here keep in mind this is not an attempt at a full analysis of super-exploitation; it is some notes contributed to the study group discussion.  He (and the rest of us) are keen to get feedback on any material from the study/discussion group, so we look forward to people contributing to the comments section below.  We will regularly be sticking up notes by study group participants and reports on the study group.

by Walter Daum, July 28

The term “super-exploitation” has often been attributed to Lenin, but I have not been able to find it in his writings. The closest is this: “sections of the working class in the oppressor nations receive crumbs from the super-profits the bourgeoisie of these nations obtains by extra exploitation of the workers of the oppressed nations.” ( “A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism,” 1916.)

In this context, “extra exploitation” does not simply mean exploitation of additional workers but rather deeper exploitation of oppressed workers; hence the super-profits extracted. Lenin did often use the term “super-profits,” but as we discussed this past weekend, that did not necessarily mean profits extracted from capitalistically employed wage-workers. In the above passage, however, that does seem to be what he is referring to.

The specific term “super-exploitation” is of more recent origin, having been introduced by Latin American Marxist economists in the 1960’s. I think the originator was Ruy Mauro Marini.

Defining the Term

There have been basically two definitions of super-exploitation. One might be called absolute super-exploitation: paying workers less than necessary to reproduce their labor power. For example, Andre Gunder Frank defined the term as “the appropriation by capital of so many of the fruits of the workers’ labor that the workers cannot maintain themselves or reproduce their labor power.”

The second definition is based on relative rates of exploitation. Workers are super-exploited if their rate of exploitation is significantly higher than normal because they are poorly paid. A key question in this regard is what standard we should take as normal – the value of labor power in the imperialist countries, its value in the oppressed world, or some sort of average? Some bourgeois economists hold that in the 21st century, the value of labor power is in effect the “China price.” After all, they argue, workers in the richer countries have to realize that, given the mobility of capital – “the world is flat” – their labor is in competition with China’s, so they have to get used to creeping, and in some cases drastic, wage reductions. The austerity assault in Greece in recent years is an example that the imperialist powers hope will serve as a precedent for many more countries. While each country will have its own “historical and moral” level of wages, the international average is lowered by the existence of super-exploitation on a large scale: wages in the rich countries are gradually forced downward by competition from firms employing cheaper labor.

John Smith and Andy Higginbottom have pointed out that Marx in Capital put aside discussing the depression of wages below the value of labor power, pending a fuller discussion of competition – aside from an passing reference to “capitals invested in colonies.” (Today, of course, capital investment in the oppressed countries is crucially important.) Interestingly, there is a little-known passage in Marx that suggests that wages in the dominant capitalist countries could be brought down to the “China price.” He cites a document by an English manufacturer who complains that French workers are paid one-third less than English and yet survive, so why not bring English wages down to the French level? Marx comments:

“In our day these aspirations have been left far behind, thanks to the cosmopolitan competition into which the development of capitalist production has thrown all the workers of the globe. It is no longer a case of simply reducing English wages to the level of those of continental Europe, but to reduce, in a future more or less close at hand, the European level to the Chinese level. This is the perspective that Mr. Stapleton, a member of the English parliament, has just revealed to his electors in a speech on the future cost of labor: ‘If China should become a great manufacturing country, I do not see how the manufacturing population of Europe could sustain the contest without descending to the level of their competitors’.”

This is translated from the French edition of Capital. There is a more condensed formulation in the English edition: Vol. 1, Chapter 24, Part IV, footnote 40, in which Marx adds: “The wished-for goal of English capital is no longer Continental wages but Chinese.”

This paragraph on “cosmopolitan competition” shows that Marx considered the reduction of wages below the value of labor power to be more significant than other passages from Capital suggest. Still, although China has indeed become “a great manufacturing country,” it has not happened that “European” wages have been brought down all the way to the Chinese level, and certainly not in “a future more or less close at hand” to Marx’s day.

So much for the capitalist standpoint. From the working-class standpoint, the “historical and moral” value of labor power in a globalized economy should be taken as the prevailing average of what workers in the most advanced regions have won over the years. The “China price” of labor does not suffice to reproduce the working class – not even in China, where hundreds of millions of migrant workers lack rights to adequate housing, medical care and education for their children. Whether or not the capitalist system today can afford it, the fact that capitalism provided it for many workers in the recent past says that technology has developed to the point where such a level is conceivable for all.

I think the definition of super-exploitation should focus on the relative interpretation, with a side glance at the absolute version. Thus: workers are super-exploited if  they are subjected to a substantially higher rate of exploitation than is prevalent in the economically-advanced countries; this often leads to their being paid below the average level required to reproduce labor power. (It is necessary to exclude cases where workers are poorly paid but are employed very inefficiently and so are not highly exploited. They would be super-oppressed but technically not super-exploited.)

This definition does not rule out the possibility that some workers in advanced countries can be subject to a higher-than-average rate of exploitation. But for the foreseeable future it will be hard in an imperialist country to match the levels of exploitation in countries like China and Bangladesh. There are, however, left theorists who argue that the workers in the most advanced industries in the imperialist countries are the ones who face the highest level of exploitation in the Marxist sense. John Smith criticizes some of these; it is a popular perception among certain strands of “orthodox” Marxist theory today. Possibly the first to present this erroneous case was Henryk Grossman, who relied on a misreading of an example presented by Marx.

The Prevalence of Super-exploitation

John Smith has dramatically shown the eye-opening shift in global production. In 1950 there were about twice as many industrial workers in the “more developed” regions as in the “less developed.” By 1975, equality was reached. In 2000, there were almost three times as many in the Global South, and by 2010 the ratio was approaching 4 to 1. The numbers in the South are way ahead and rising, and the gap is growing. That is the result of “globalization,” the “neo-liberal” offensive that world imperialism has taken since about 1980 to try to recover from stagnant profit rates. The so-called periphery is no longer peripheral.

Super-exploitation by imperialist capitalists has two faces: the importation of immigrants (many of whom are undocumented or otherwise restricted) into the imperialist countries, and the export of productive capital (or just production) to countries with low wage levels. Both methods allow capitalists to acquire cheap labor from the super-exploited, and therefore to drive down the wages of the normally exploited workers as well. Towards these ends, even though the flow of workers from South to North is enormous, immigration restrictions by imperialist countries serve both to keep undocumented immigrant workers in the imperialist countries passive, and to force workers in the oppressed countries to stay at home as low-wage workers or members of the unemployed reserve army. Although the degree of exploitation is lower for those who manage to immigrate to the imperialist centers, both groups of Southern workers are super-exploited.

Even though the vast increase in the number of super-exploited workers allows workers in the oppressed countries to improve their wages through struggle, few will escape super-exploitation altogether. And the more some rise, the more other laborers in other regions will join the ranks of the super-exploited, as capital shifts to where wages are even lower. Super-exploitation will not be eliminated as long as capitalism survives; indeed, capitalism will seek to drive normally-exploited workers into the ranks of the super-exploited rather than developing in such a way that the super-exploited escape that category.

In the present phase of imperialism, since the great majority of industrial workers are in the oppressed countries, super-exploitation has become the predominant way of increasing the rate of exploitation. Michael Roberts, who is mostly an excellent blogger on economic issues, has disputed this and other issues concerning super-exploitation as argued by John Smith. This debate has been going on for several months. Here is an excerpt from the most recent round, Roberts’ July 19 blog entry, “Getting off the fence on modern imperialism.”

“Super exploitation is not part of the theory of value because, as Marx says, it is temporary and changes and is different in each country etc.  In the process of production, capitalists might force a lower wage. If the value of labour power has remained the same, i.e. if the necessities of life and their production price remain the same, the lower wage can purchase less wage goods and the price of labour power (wages) falls below its value, the production price of those socially determined necessities. That is super exploitation.

“But if this low wage is maintained, workers must eventually accept a lower value of labour power in the goods and services they can buy with it.  In that sense, super exploitation becomes simply a higher level of (“normal”) exploitation because the value of labour power has been lowered in the class struggle.  Yes, more exploitation, but not super-exploitation as a new category of capital.”

Roberts adheres to the absolute definition of super-exploitation, and argues that if capitalists can bring all wages down to where what was a level of super-exploitation becomes the new normal, then the result cannot be called super-exploitation. Maybe, in a narrow technical sense. But in reality super-exploitation would have been not eliminated but generalized.

There are many (and long) comments to Roberts’ July 19 blog post. I have only skimmed them, but it looks like there are some insightful ones, including contributions by Smith and Higginbottom. Check out especially the posts by Roberts and Smith to see what’s under debate. Also, there are additional arguments concerning super-exploitation in my reply to Roberts’ review of Smith’s book in the Weekly Worker of the CPGB. The review is in the March 31 issue, where Roberts also reviewed Tony Norfield’s book; my letter is in the April 7issue under the subhead “Super.”

One last note. Even though super-exploitation is so prevalent in the present phase of imperialism, capitalism today certainly does not do without traditional forms of  relatively and absolutely increasing the rate of exploitation. Workers in Chinese factories notoriously work 70-hour weeks, an expression of absolute surplus-value; at the same time, firms like Foxconn in China are introducing robots to reduce labor costs, thereby advancing relative surplus-value. Still, the fact that the great majority of industrial workers today are now in the oppressed countries does indicate that super-exploitation of wage-labor there is the characteristic mode in the imperialist epoch – at least in the phase of globalization that flourished after the opening up of China’s labor force to imperialism. The predominance of super-exploitation points up that capitalism is no longer in its historically progressive stage.