The harmfulness of the drive for profits

this page is at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Anarch/HamOPro.htm

      If we ask, What is the source, in the first instance, of material well-being, and secondly, of material wealth?, the answer is straightforward and unambiguous. Material necessities and luxuries come from 1) the natural universe (e.g. sunlight powers photosynthesis, from which essentially all animal foods derive) and 2) human physical effort (e.g. the labor to build a shelter).

      The Earth of course is the reservoir of materials, the actual chemicals of which minerals, rocks, oceans, lakes, and all living organisms are made up. Nothing, literally nothing can happen in the universe, no change can occur, without the simultaneous transformation of energy. This is why energy plays an absolutely essential part in all our lives.

      The industrial revolution rested upon the discovery that it was possible to transform chemical energy into mechanical energy, and thereby give up total reliance on animal (including human) metabolic energy. No other discovery had an impact on human history comparable to the invention of the heat engine. All the talk about our having moved into the 'post-industrial era' is, to put it bluntly, so much bullshit. Human society, or more accurately, what we call 'developed' human societies, rest rock-solid upon industrial foundations. And all human societies require, absolutely cannot exist without, human physical labor. These are facts as indisputable as the laws of science, those great generalizations from experience about which no scientist has a shadow of doubt.

      Just as it is impossible to build a perpetual motion machine of the first kind--one which can continuously do work without requiring a comparable supply of energy, i.e. one which violates the law of conservation of energy--so is it impossible for a human society to exist without human physical labor. And it is equally impossible for a developed human society to exist without an industrial base. These are fundamental facts which ought to be kept in mind, especially because it is in the interest of dominant élites and the propagandists who serve their interests to try to obscure and hide them from us.

      Within a society it is of course not necessary, or even possible, for everyone to perform equivalent amounts of physical labor. Infants and young children, elderly and infirm people, and others who are physically weak or incapable, are traditionally supported by the physical labors of the able-bodied young and adult members of the group. Every viable tribal culture of which I know functions in this way. And it is an obvious characteristic of traditional family structures that those who can, help those who cannot. Even in the most dire of circumstances this tradition of what the great anarchist theoretician Peter Kropotkin called 'mutual aid' tends to persist. All this is normal and healthy. These are true 'family values,' and a good society would try to encourage and maintain them.

      In the long transition from subsistence cultures--cultures which existed (and some still do) without producing any surplus--to contemporary industrialized society, the possibilities for having more material surpluses, first by the exploitation of slave labor and, much more recently, by the use of nonmetabolic energy, seemed to be unlimited. Science and technology seemed to offer what slavery alone never had--surpluses for everybody to enjoy.

      Scientists had a part in this mythical world-to-be of opulence for all. Remember, not so long ago, when nuclear-generated electricity was predicted to become 'too cheap to meter.' We were promised free electric power. In fact, the costs of electricity, both in money terms and in terms of environmental degradation, have continually risen. And the entire nuclear enterprise is an ecological nightmare, an utter catastrophe.

      Along with the growing surpluses came the possibility for some people to appropriate larger portions for themselves than were generally available for the population at large. Competition, and desire for wealth without working for it, grew, along with the institutionalization of mechanisms to protect and further enrich those who already had acquired more than 'their fair share.' It is a long and sordid story, the concluding chapter of which is called 'the history of western civilization.'

      Remember, all surplus wealth derives basically from two sources: human physical labor and the exploitation of natural resources. Slave labor, although it is no longer officially condoned--Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, states, ''No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms''--in spite of this declaration slavery still persists, the reason being that it is very profitable for those who exploit slave labor. (See the handout from my Science for Humane Survival course, Child labor and the GATT, which reprints an op-ed column from the 11/23/94 NY Times.)

      The exploitation of child slave labor for profit is a grievous example, but only one of many that could be assembled, to substantiate my contention that the pervasive ideology of US culture is leading precipitately to the destruction of humane values.

      There is also abundant evidence that the ideology of greed unlimited, of profits above all else, is leading precipitately to the destruction of the biosphere. The destruction of forests worldwide, the continuing emission of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), of which DuPont continues to be the leading manufacturer, with the accompanying depletion of the protective stratospheric ozone layer and the predictable increased incidence of melanoma (deadly skin cancer), increased emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, causing global warming and a gradual rise in sea levels, the litany of destruction goes on and on. I'll spare you the details. They are to be found in many readily-available publications.

Academics and subversion of the dominant, fatal culture

      Nothing compares to the urgency of halting the worldwide ecocide-in-progress. To achieve that--if indeed it is not already too late--requires a massive change in the level of consciousness of the world's people, who must come to realize that greed is a fatal malady, that nation-states are the most destructive institutions ever invented. They extort from the world's people, for war, about a trillion dollars a year ($1,000,000,000,000/yr) of the surplus produced, to enforce the status quo. Multinational corporations and nation-states must be replaced by life-sustaining institutions if we are to survive.

      As faculty, we can try to engage in and teach critical thinking--that is the first step, to come to know the world as it really exists--and then to try to change ourselves and to encourage our students to resist being turned into conformists by the institutions that dominate the culture. I will be glad to share the materials I have assembled with any of you who are interested in trying to develop similar or related radical, critical courses.

Child labor and the GATT

(the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)

The following is an op-ed piece by Anna Quindlen titled

Out of the Hands of Babes

that appeared in the 11/23/94 New York Times

      Would you buy a rug if you knew that it had been woven in India by 10-year-olds beaten if they didn't work fast enough? Would you wear a shirt if it had been sewn by a 9-year-old locked into a factory in Bangladesh until production quotas for the day had been met? Would you eat sardines if the cans had been filled by 12-year-old Filipino children sold into bonded servitude?

      The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, known as GATT, is the most sweeping free-trade pact in history, but like many agreements among different nations with different agendas, much has been lost in the translation. One of the losses in the GATT negotiations was the right of children not to be exploited, overworked and underpaid as a source of cheap and compliant labor around the world.

      From the children who make carpets in India, sometimes 16 hours a day, seven days a week, to those who sew in Bangladesh for as little as five cents an hour, the International Labor Organization estimates that there may be as many as 200 million child laborers worldwide. Some are working in sweatshops that contract to make American goods. In testimony before the Senate earlier this year, a 15-year-old from Honduras told of girls working up to 80 hours a week at a factory manufacturing Liz Claiborne sweaters.

      Child labor is the dirty little secret of foreign imports. Senator Tom Harkin, who wants to outlaw U.S. imports of all products made by children under age 15, says the problem is that Americans don't know that some of what they buy, including toys for their own kids, has been manufactured by children working the kind of hours, under the kind of conditions, that many still associate with the darkest days of the Industrial Revolution.

      "You give me any cross-section of 100 Americans," says the Senator, "people from any income level, any area of the country, and I think the reaction would be overwhelmingly against buying the products."

      Mr. Harkin is a voice crying in the wilderness, and the wilderness is the gilded thicket of free trade, thorny with U.S. concessions. Mr. Harkin's bill to keep products made with child labor out of the United States would probably be a violation of GATT, which provides only for those restrictions spelled out in the trade pact.

      During various GATT negotiations, developing countries successfully argued against child labor provisions, insisting that children have always worked in their cultures, that to try to interfere with child labor is protectionist and punitive when a child may be the only wage-earner in a desperately poor family.

      But the tradition of children helping on small farms and the innovation of locking them into a hotbox of a factory for 14 hours a day are worlds apart. The reason they may be the only wage-earner in some areas is because adult workers have been laid off in favor of children, who are infinitely more exploitable and provide bigger profits for prosperous factory owners. And nations that really want to compete in a global economy will educate their kids, not work them half to death before they've even reached puberty.

      After the bad publicity of the Senate hearings, Liz Claiborne announced that it was ditching the Honduran contractor, then decided instead it would "work with the facility" to "meet our human rights standards." A few American conpanies have been ahead of the curve; Levi Strauss and Reebok, for instance, had already demanded that their contractors overseas hire only workers over age 14. In India a consortium of carpet makers has started an industry campaign that tags those products made without child labor. That's the least Americans deserve, some assurance that what they buy has not been manufactured by kids.

      Amid attempts to protect elephants from ivory poachers and dolphins from tuna nets, the rights of children go remarkably unremarked. "This is the last vestage of slavery sanctioned in the world today," said Senator Harkin. If GATT passes, an opportunity to end these children's servitude will have been shunted aside for the alleged bonanza of free trade. But consumers can vote with their credit cards only if products are labeled. At the very least the slogan "Not Manufactured with Child Labor" should shame those companies not in a position to affix it to their products.

All comments and criticisms are welcome. <george.salzman@umb.edu>

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