The discussion on superexploitation seems to have petered out, in
view of the far more pressing struggle in East Timor. Sorry for
the belatedness -- I had to dig up some data.
I think Jim Heartfield (Sun, 5 Sep 1999 18:16:31 +0100) posed the
problem best:
>So, put simply, exploitation is a theoretical category, not a
moral one. The rate of exploitation is the ratio between the
consumption fund of the worker and the surplus value produced
over and above that sum.>
Actually, the rate of exploitation for Marx was the other way
around, so that it increases when profits increase or wages
decrease.
>Thus it follows that where the total product is greater, and the
worker has not managed to secure a correspondingly greater
proportion of the product, the rate of surplus value is greater.>
Right. But I'm not convinced of Jim's answer, suggesting that
first-world workers are more exploited:
>And that roughly describes the difference between the third and
first worlds. The productivity of labour is higher, so the
profits are greater.>
To determine which (average) worker, first-world or third-world,
faces a greater rate of exploitation, we have to look not just
for greater profits but for a greater ratio of profits to real
wages. Thus we need very specific empirical evidence.
The table below was in the U.S. magazine Business Week magazine
of last May 3. It compares wages and productivity in apparel
manufacturing among selected countries.
Country Productivity Hourly Wage Index
Index Compensation (as % of U.S.)
U.S. 100 $8.00 100
Dominican Rep. 70 1.15 14.4
Malaysia 65 1.15 14.4
Mexico 70 .85 10.6
Guatemala 70 .65 8.1
Thailand 65 .65 8.1
Indonesia 50 .15 1.9
(I added the last column to show relative wages, for comparison
to relative productivity.)
Evidently the U.S. superiority in productivity is overmatched by
its lead in wages. Now for a little further calculation.
Business Week does not present the figures that these numbers are
based on. We don't know from this, for example, what the rate of
exploitation in the U.S. is. But we can work comparatively.
If the U.S. rate of exploitation (that is, surplus value divided
by variable capital, s/v), is assumed to be a number r, then the
Dominican rate of exploitation will be .7s/.144v = 4.86r.
That is, Dominican workers are superexploited by a factor of
almost 5. Similar calculations show that the rate of exploitation
in the other countries listed is:
Malaysia: 4.5r
Mexico: 6.6r
Guatemala: 8.6r
Thailand: 8.0r
Indonesia: 26.3r
It's not even close. The rate of exploitation (in these
countries, in this industry) ranges from 4.5 to 26 times that in
the U.S. The third-world workers are superexploited in a
measurable sense.
Walter Daum
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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