Global Empire
The Sorrows of Globalization: Capitalism and
Slavery
By David
Baake
From AxisofLogic.com
A major
investigation by the International Labor Organization has found that 12.3
million people live in a condition of 'modern slavery' worldwide, on all
continents and in nearly every country. Three out of four forced laborers
usually enslaved by private agents, with 11% forced into prostitution or
another form of commercial sexual activity and 64% working as bonded
laborers in traditional sectors of the economy, including the industrial
and agricultural sectors. Twenty percent of the cases studied in the
examination involved direct exploitation by a state or military, including
forced prison labor. Slavery is an extremely lucrative industry,
generating 31.6 billion dollars in profit every year, comparable to El
Salvador's Gross Domestic Product and an approximately $13,000 per forced
laborer annually.
The distinction
between traditional slavery and wage slavery proves to be difficult to
articulate. The ILO officially defines slavery as "all work or service
which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for
which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily." According to
this definition, sweat-shop labor should qualify as a form of slavery, as
it constitutes the extraction of labor under the threat of a penalty,
starvation; which no person endures by his or her own choice. It seems
clear that a person working for Wal-Mart in a Chinese sweatshop making
between 13 and 23 cents an hour and forced to work 60 to 70 hours a week
or be fired and face starvation should be classified as a slave; however,
the ILO does not consider sweatshop labor to be a form of slavery, on the
precarious grounds that forced labor encompasses only coercion that is a
"severe violation of human rights and restriction of human freedom,"
violations which apparently do not occur in "situations of pure economic
necessity" that would force one to work in a sweatshop.
Whether or not direct
capitalist exploitation meets the definition of slavery, however, the ILO
report shows clearly that forced labor exists primarily because of
conditions imposed by a system of capitalist globalization. The report
explains that "many victims enter forced labor situations initially of
their own accord," undoubtedly consenting to horrific conditions out of
sheer desperation for any sort of income, which cannot be earned in other
sectors of the economy due to the crippling of any attempt at economic
development in third world countries by multinational corporations and
their financial institutions. Because social welfare apparatuses have been
dismantled as a prerequisite for economic loans from the World Bank, for
instance, people in abject poverty have no choice but to enter into forced
labor situations to pay for life necessities such as health care and
education or simply to receive food.
Neoliberal policies
which allow first world corporations to flood third world economies with
cheap, subsidized products such as foodstuffs that drive local producers
out of production are another reason for the desperate poverty in the
third world. Because of the 'race to the bottom' brought about by the
transition to neoliberalism in the world economy which allows corporations
to move effortlessly from one country to another in search of lower and
lower wages, forcing third world countries to lift laws offering any
protection to labor or the environment in an attempt to entice employers,
wages in many countries do not meet subsistence levels for the laborer.
This extreme poverty
also leads destitute parents who are unable to feed their own children to
sell them to rich masters force them to work as servants and often
sexually exploit them. The sale of children is most prevalent in Haiti,
where 200,000 children work as restavecs, or domestic laborers.
Destitution is often even greater in countries such as Haiti that have, in
addition to being plundered by corporations, have also been ravaged by
American military operations.
Internal wars also
wreck devastation, and there are many cases of people who become
mercenaries in such wars in order to earn subsistence that they could not
otherwise obtain, particularly in African countries such as the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast,
and later find they are unable to leave the army for fear of retribution.
These internal conflicts led to a vicious cycle in which thousands of
young men are forced to become mercenaries because of poverty. These
mercenaries perpetuate the war, which inflicts even more destruction upon
the community and increases poverty.
Even in the
increasingly rare cases in which forced laborers are forced into their
position not by economic necessity but social custom, capitalist
globalization is at least in part responsible for its perpetuation. This
slavery is often allowed to exist because of lax labor laws that are
instituted because of the need to compete in the 'race to the bottom'
which prevent governments from taking action to end the slavery.
It is clear that the
struggle against capitalist globalization and the struggle to eradicate
slavery are one in the same. To combat slavery, stronger laws to protect
laborers must be implemented both by national governments, international
financial institutions, and international diplomatic institutions. As long
as there is abject poverty in the world and as long as capitalism
continues to promote it, there will be people who have to live with the
miserable reality of slavery.
May 17, 2005
Reposted by
Bulatlat
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