This week’s Student Spotlight features an essay from Isabella Partridge, one of our First Year Students! Well done in producing such an excellent essay for IP1017: The Making of the Modern World Economy.
There can be no doubt that throughout history, violence and capitalism run parallel. For centuries, the most powerful nations in Western Europe conquered the world as they saw fit, with little regard for the communities they devastated in the process, and the slave trade is a stain on our history which must, at least in part, be attributed to the expansion of capitalism. Hundreds of years later, we envision our capitalist world as one of ethical consumption, with these atrocities left behind us. But can we truly say that slavery and capitalism have been decoupled? This essay will lay out evidence that unpaid, unfree labour still plays a role in mass consumption in the modern world.
It should be acknowledged that some believe slavery no longer plays a role in capitalist consumption and to an extent this argument holds merit. It’s certainly true that slavery as it was known in the 16th and 17th Centuries has, for the most part, been eradicated. For example, the abolition of American slavery doesn’t merely indicate that violence and capitalism can, and have been, decoupled – it goes one step further; the abolition of slavery was in part rooted, not in moral concerns, but capitalist ones, since “Even the seemingly moralistic American abolitionists whose agitation against slavery drove the United States to civil war in 1860 were buoyed by selfish economic interests.” (Roots, 2004 Pg 38) Here Roots makes reference to Northern Federalists in this era believing that slavery in the South put them at a disadvantage; the South had lower costs, which made them significantly more competitive, and this became a huge incentive for the North to force the issue of abolition with economic purposes in mind. This is to say, capitalism can inspire liberation and protection from violence, and has done so in the past. Furthermore, some may believe that slavery is an inefficient way to produce labour and is not incentivised by capitalists. They would argue that productivity is the key goal of capitalism, and a free worker receiving a wage is likely a more productive one than a worker threatened with violence; “Slave workers had no economic incentives to work hard and consequently sat idle when not watched.” (Nisbett and Cohen 1996, Pg 3)
But this simplified economic theory does not explain the degree of unfree labour that persists in our consumption. Neoclassical economics may argue that workers might become more efficient with a new piece of technology, better training or extensive experience, but it never mentions intimidation tactics, monopsony on labour or companies capitalising on the desperation of a worker in order to avoid treating them like human beings. There is huge controversy surrounding sweatshops, and the consequences of unsafe working conditions in manufacturing nations such as Bangladesh make it clear that these workers are not treated as equal to workers in nations with tighter labour regulations. The collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013, which killed over 1330 people (FIDH 2014), indicates exactly how dangerous the mistreatment of workers can be, and how easy it is for consumers in the West to ignore where their products come from. It cannot be said that these workers have an option to work elsewhere, or to be protected by regulation; we have developed a system wherein companies deign to manufacture in the East for as long as they can underpay and endanger those workers – if their government were to regulate, or the workers were to complain, the company would produce elsewhere. This lack of choice is a monopsony of labour, it disallows workers to have a say. Whilst it may look different, we must acknowledge that this form of labour, which feeds our consumerism, is unfree, exploitative and deeply harmful.
A discussion of violence and capitalism can hardly come without a mention of Amazon, the multinational tech giant that we, as a nation, have welcomed into so many aspects of our lives. During the pandemic, Amazon has become a lifeline – at the height of the UK lockdown the company was making up to $11 000 dollars every second (Neate, 2020). But with this extraordinary power comes a downside; the workers in the warehouses have been bearing the burden of Amazon’s expansion for years. There have been numerous allegations surrounding Amazon’s mistreatment of its workers stretching from the accusation of workers being unable to find time to use the loo to one of their factories in the US having higher rates of severe injury than professions renowned for being dangerous, including waste disposal and policing. Whilst it could be argued that this is negligence, and not violence, I would suggest that no matter how it is phrased, it’s clear that the profit motive embedded in capitalism is encouraging successful companies like Amazon to cut corners, often at the expense of the safety of real workers. Nisbett and Cohen write that a slave is idle if unwatched. Horrifyingly, Amazon has not taken this as a reason to pay their workers well and treat them fairly, it has instead pursued the technology required to watch its workers and subsequently threaten them into higher productivity. In 2018 it was revealed that Amazon had patented two wristbands which, if given to workers in warehouses would alert their supervisor of everything they did, from bathroom breaks to itching their noses – and it would provide “haptic feedback” in order to steer them back to appropriate tasks. (Anselm, 2018) There has been no reports of them being trialled in warehouses as of yet, but the key thing to note is that Amazon is searching for new ways to watch their workers, almost as if they must be incentivised by fear of losing their job in order to work at the demanded productivity levels. The parallels between this and the history of slavery are too obvious to be dismissed. Beyond what they might do, Amazon is already accused of using surveillance to prevent unionisation among their workers, (Graziosi 2020) and enforcing absurdly high productivity requirements.
What we can see, through the example of Amazon, is that slavery and capitalism are not the opposing forces some might think that they are – where there is a profit motive, there is an incentive to cut costs, and when it comes to cutting costs companies like Amazon are finding ways to surpass the humanity of their human labourers. It’s eerily familiar, and as consumers we have an obligation to understand the conditions under which our goods are produced. Through Black Friday, through Christmas, consumerism reigns. We have an obligation to understand what the cost of convenience is, and exactly who is bearing it.
Bibliography
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bowdle, B. F., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor: An “experimental ethnography.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(5), 945–960
Roots, Roger I.,“Capitalism and violence: A test and critique of the alienation proposition.” (2004).
International Federation for Human Rights. ‘One Year After the Rana Plaza Catastrophe: Slow Progress and Insufficient Compensation’ Globalisation and Human Rights Press Release. (2014)
Neate, R. ‘Amazon reaps $11,000-a-second coronavirus lockdown bonanza’ The Guardian. (2020).
Anselm, B. If Workers Slack Off, the Wristband Will Know. (And Amazon Has a Patent for It.) The New York Times. (2018)
Graziosi, G. ‘Amazon uses worker surveillance to boost performance and stop staff joining unions, study says’ The Independent. (2020)