Arghiri Emmanuel excerpt from "Réponse à Eugenio Somaini" on amerikan workers as net exploiters
Source: Arghiri Emmanuel, "Réponse à Eugenio Somaini" (pp. 53-109), 1973, in Arghiri Emmanuel, Eugenio Somaini, Luciano Boggio, and Michele Salvati, Un débat sur l'échange inégal : Salaires, sous-développement, impérialisme, translated from the Italian by M. C. Paoletti and A. Benaneti, François Maspero, Paris, 1975
Note follows.
Excerpt:
[ 77 ]
[ . . . ]
Exploitation
Au paragraphe consacré aux « antagonismes de classes »,
Somaini fait une déclaration surprenante : « On pourrait légitimement
parler d'exploitation seulement si on pouvait démontrer que,
si les salaires les plus élevés de certains pays étaient généralisés
aux travailleurs du monde entier, les profits (ou, mieux, la somme
de toutes les quotes-parts autres que les salaires) représenteraient
un résidu négatif. C'est uniquement dans ce cas qu'on pourrait parler
d'appropriation de la plus-value par les travailleurs de certains¬
[ 78 ]
pays, dans la mesure où, même en cas d'absence de profits, de tels
salaires ne pourraient leur être versés qu'aux dépens des autres
travailleurs. Cependant, il ne nous semble pas que quelqu'un parmi
ceux qui ont parlé d'exploitation (ou de participation à l'exploitation)
ait eu l'intention de soutenir plus précisément cette thèse et encore
moins qu'il ait cherché à en faire la démonstration 32. »
Non, en effet, personne n'a tenté cette démonstration et, pour
ce qui me concerne, jamais l'idée ne m'était venue que j'aurais,
avec si peu de chose, pu convaincre Somaini et tous ceux qui pensent
comme lui. Il existe des questions pour lesquelles on ne se donne
pas la peine de prendre un crayon et du papier. On a toujours en
tête quelques approximations grossièrement arrondies de quelques
grands agrégats. Avec cela on fait un rapide calcul mental. Si le
résultat est tel qu'aucune erreur possible dans les approximations
ne peut l'avoir renversé, on n'insiste pas. Ce calcul mental le voici :
le produit intérieur brut total des pays développés non communistes
est sensiblement inférieur à 2 000 milliards de dollars, celui des
pays sous-développés non communistes, sensiblement inférieur à
400 milliards. En prenant une bonne marge, défavorable à notre
thèse, arrondissons le total des deux à 2 500 milliards. Cela nous
donne un revenu national aux prix des facteurs, soit la somme des
revenus du travail d'une part, des revenus divers d'autres sources
(plus-value) d'autre part, de beaucoup moins que 2 000 milliards,
que nous pouvons arrondir — toujours dans le même sens défavorable
— à 2 000. La population du monde non communiste s'élève
à environ 2 500 millions *. Le pourcentage des actifs varie de 35 à
41 %. En prenant, au heu de la moyenne, la limite inférieure, donc
35 %, nous avons dans le monde capitaliste 875 millions de travailleurs,
qu'ils soient salariés véritables ou travailleurs indépendants
ayant droit à un salaire. Si la plus-value était zéro, donc s'ils se
partageaient la totalité de la somme des rémunérations des facteurs
de 2 000 milliards, il leur reviendrait 2 000 : 0,875 = 2 285 dollars
par an à chacun, soit environ 190 dollars par mois, environ un
dollar de l'heure, comme salaire moyen toutes catégories. Or, le
salaire du manoeuvre non qualifié aux Etats-Unis est 3-4 dollars de
l'heure et le salaire interprofessionnel moyen considérablement plus
haut, sans compter les charges sociales incombant à l'employeur
qu'on doit ajouter au salaire brut, puisqu'elles sont incluses dans le
revenu national. Cela signifie que, même si on a fait une erreur
de 300 % dans ses approximations, on est encore loin du compte.
Alors, on abandonne.
____________________
32. Cf. supra, p. 44-45.
* Ce texte ayant été écrit en 1971, les chiffres sont ceux de 1969.
[ 79 ]
Somaini désire-t-il encore une démonstration ? Soit. Je lui
en offrirai une, uniquement concernant les pays de l'O. C. D. E.,
pour lesquels nous disposons de statistiques précises, et je vais lui
démontrer que, même à l'échelle des pays développés, les salaires
ne pourraient pas s'aligner sur le taux américain sans que la plusvalue
ne devienne négative. J'espère alors qu'il sera satisfait.
En 1969, le revenu total des salariés des Etats-Unis
s'élevait à ........................ 566 558 millions de dollars
Moins les salaires des forces armées 20 229 » » »
Revenu salarial de l'emploi civil .. 546 329 » » »
Le nombre total des salariés civils ayant été à la même date
de 70,274 millions, le revenu annuel moyen par salarié, en 1969
aux Etats-Unis, a été de $ 7 775 (546 329 : 70,274 = 7 775).
Le nombre total des actifs civils pour les 22 pays de l'O.C.D.E.,
soit pour l'ensemble moins la Turquie, a été en la même année
de ........................... 282 millions
dont
Salariés ..................... 218,9 »
Employeurs et personnes tra-
vaillant à leur compte, ce que
les statistiques des Nations
unies appellent les « indepen-
dents traders »............... 63,1 »
En admettant que les « employeurs et personnes travaillant
à leur compte » n'ont droit qu'au même salaire moyen, malgré leur
qualification moyenne supérieure — toutes les professions libérales,
avocats, médecins, artistes, etc., sont comprises dans cette catégorie
—, nous aurons donc, en cas d'égalisation des revenus salariaux
au sein du seul groupe des pays développés, à rémunérer 282 millions
d'actifs à $ 7 775, soit ......... 2 192 550 millions de dollars
Or, le total des revenus nationaux
aux prix des facteurs de ces mêmes
pays a été en 1969 de ............ 1 487 200 » » »
Nous aurons donc une plus-value
(total des revenus non salariaux)
négative de ...................... 705 350 » » »
(Il est clair que cette plus-value négative aurait été encore plus
élevée si nous n'avions pas écarté la Turquie de notre calcul. Nous
l'avons cependant fait parce qu'incontestablement la Turquie n'est
pas un pays développé.)
[ 80 ]
Si, maintenant, nous voulions inclure dans ce calcul les pays
sous-développés non communistes en extrapolant certaines données
qui nous manquent, nous aurions tout d'abord à verser dans le
pool une population totale additionnelle de 1 680 millions. Le pourcentage
moyen des actifs dans les pays développés est de 40,8 %.
En arrondissant à 40 %, nous avons un supplément de 672 millions
d'hommes et de femmes à rémunérer au taux américain moyen de
7 775 dollars, donc une masse salariale de 5 224 milliards à ajouter
aux 2 192 des pays développés, soit un total de 7 416 milliards de
dollars pour l'ensemble du monde non communiste.
Or, le revenu national aux prix des facteurs des pays sousdéveloppés
non communistes était en 1966 de 248 milliards de
dollars. Selon les estimations de Paul Bairoch, de 1966 à 1968,
il a augmenté d'environ 5 % par an. En comptant largement 6 %
par an jusqu'à 1969, nous avons pour 1969 (à intérêts composés)
295 milliards de dollars lesquels, ajoutés aux 1 487 des pays développés,
nous donnent un revenu national aux prix des facteurs pour
l'ensemble du monde
non communiste de .................... 1 782 milliards de dollars
Comme la masse salariale au taux
nord-américain serait alors de ....... 7 416 » » »
Il y aurait une plus-value négative de 5 634 » » »
c'est-à-dire onze ou douze fois la somme totale de la plus-value
actuellement réalisée dans l'ensemble des 22 pays de l'O. C. D. E.
et environ dix fois celle de l'ensemble du monde non communiste.
Les chiffres sont tellement écrasants qu'aucun biais statistique ne
peut avoir faussé le résultat.
[ . . . ]
Note:
In English, the above, from Arghiri Emmanuel's 1973 response to Eugenio Somaini, is practically identical to an excerpt MIWS has already published of Arghiri Emmanuel's 1975 paper "Unequal Exchange Revisited." The difference is that the later "Unequal Exchange Revisited" excerpt contains a more formal representation of the rough "mental calculation" Arghiri Emmanuel makes in his response to Eugenio Somaini. Rather than provide an English translation of the above excerpt, MIWS directs readers to pages 200-201 of John Brolin's thesis "The Bias of the World : Theories of Unequal Exchange in History" (monograph no. 9 in the Lund Studies in Human Ecology series, Lund University Press, Lund, 2006), which contains a translation of the part of page 78 in the 1973 response presenting the rough calculation.
Again, MIWS is not going to get into the details of Arghiri Emmanuel's theory here or MIWS's disagreement with some of Emmanuel's specific points. MIWS's disagreements aren't 'academic', and they differ from disagreements most of Emmanuel's critics have, but MIWS is content to let readers find problems in these particular works by Emmanuel MIWS has introduced. Just thinking about the issues Emmanuel raises about prices and international transfers of value is an advance. Bourgeois and chauvinist ideas about amerikan worker productivity and amerikan product prices as reflecting value created by amerikan workers are influential among so-called Marxists. The majority of "communists" have only absorbed a few things they read in the first few chapters of Marx's Capital and have even misunderstood that much.
As MIWS has pointed out, Emmanuel's theory of unequal exchange could be wrong, but what Emmanuel says above about equalization with u.$. wages and the resulting negative surplus value could still be correct. Eugenio Somaini prompted Emmanuel to show how amerikan workers could fit Somaini's definition of worker-worker exploitation. According to Somaini, workers could be said to exploit other workers only if profits became negative after wages were equalized with the higher-paid worker's wages. Alternatively, if the capitalists' profits were given to the lower-paid workers and those workers were still paid less than the higher-paid workers, then the higher-paid workers would be exploiters. Somaini provided the reasoning, and Emmanuel plugged in numbers from the real world to indulge Somaini, but this argument about whether a group of workers could be net exploiters is secondary to Emmanuel's main arguments (about unequal exchange and perhaps more broadly the contradictions between imperialists and settlers or the labor aristocracy in relation to oppressed nation workers).
The reasoning in the above excerpt is not unique to Arghiri Emmanuel. A similar illustration appears in MC5's book Imperialism and Its Class Structure in 1997. The particular things Emmanuel said about price and profit in the international context and how transfers of value are hidden in prices should be studied, but MIWS would like to emphasize that the above reasoning regarding worker-worker exploitation is not unique. By that, MIWS means that it shouldn't be shocking to scientific communists. First of all, while Emmanuel may have laid the groundwork, it would appear as if Eugenio Somaini, one of Emmanuel's critics, were the one who brought up the idea that a group of workers could be net exploiters, net recipients of surplus value. Others on other continents may have come up with the same idea and developed the same reasoning independently. Whether they end up accepting them or rejecting them, people in any place may contemplate similar ideas -- a sign that those ideas have a basis in science and are universal in nature. They could occur and reappear anywhere in the course of studying international economics scientifically. So, not only is the labor aristocracy thesis universal in terms of who could arrive at the thesis and uphold it scientifically; the particular net exploiter thesis is universal, not particular to any one nation or exclusive to the imperialist countries. One can predict that people in different nations will take up and even originate the same ideas and even the same conclusion about amerikan workers, whether they have done a detailed investigation of the conditions of the Euro-Amerikan nation or not. The numbers Emmanuel used could be obtained from books. English- and French-speaking educated literate communists in any nation have little excuse for being oblivious to the kind of argument Emmanuel addressed.
Concerning Emmanuel's particular illustration, Emmanuel humors his opponents in several ways, explicitly and implicitly. Emmanuel assumes that First World workers work the same number of hours as Third World workers, which leads to underestimating the amount of value First World workers appropriate. Emmanuel does not address the unproductive sector and assumes that all First World factor income represents value created by workers somewhere, whereas actually much of the First World product doesn't consist of commodities with exchange value. Emmanuel does not count as part of First World workers' wages the infrastructure in the First World that workers there benefit from, and Emmanuel assumes no investment and no social programs and projects, an assumption that leads to exaggerating the amount of income that individual workers would receive if they weren't exploited.
Once one has calculated the average wage "at a zero amount of surplus value" (no surplus value, all value created distributed evenly among workers) and realized that the majority of First World workers receive more than that wage, one will start to realize the phony nature of the prices of the things First World workers produce and how it is possible for prices to not reflect the value the local workers produce. There is thus a natural link between Emmanuel's illustration in reply to Somaini and Emmanuel's theory of unequal exchange, but it is not an exclusive relationship; there are a variety of theories, involving prices and hidden transfers of value, that would be consistent with Emmanuel's illustration. By itself, Emmanuel's illustration demolishes a number of chauvinist ideas and ideas related to the theory of the productive forces about development and living standards, and is useful for revolutionary practice. One does need to be a North American communist party to use Emmanuel's conclusion about amerikan workers to combat ideas about productivity related to the theory of the productive forces.
Practically, MIWS would like to establish connections between the kinds of ideas in Emmanuel's work, and people's war. There needs to be people who both uphold people's war and can work with the ideas Arghiri Emmanuel raises, not just one or the other. This is necessary to break with neo-colonialism ideologically now and prevent counterrevolutionary restoration and capitulation in the future. Wherever MIWS looks, it sees problems or limitations, which is why there has to be a synthesis and MIWS is not choosing one writer over another. Emmanuel's work expresses solidarity with the international proletariat in a general way, but there isn't an emphasis on people's war. J. Sakai also doesn't talk about people's war, in Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat, but Settlers correctly shows the nature of Euro-Amerikan worker politics. Lin Biao's "Long Live the Victory of People's War" upholds people's war, analyzes the global principal contradiction, and correctly locates the bulk of revolutionary struggles in the First World, but, on its own, doesn't say anything about North Amerikan workers specifically -- significant when it first was published, but a potential drawback today relative to other texts that are available. H. W. Edwards showed that the majority of u.$. workers were labor aristocracy, but clung to the idea that they were proletarian and, among other errors, incorrectly claimed that communists could lead the labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries away from its alliance with the imperialists.
MIWS sees that some connections have already been made between writers. The Maoist movement has discussed Arghiri Emmanuel's ideas in the context of H. W. Edwards' and J. Sakai's, and even J. Sakai has discussed Arghiri Emmanuel on settlers. Arghiri Emmanuel's ideas are contemplated in academia, but nobody there openly upholds people's war and the parasitism and labor aristocracy theses. MIWS has a role to play in that regard, drawing the lines between analyses of international economics, and strategy and Maoism generally. The majority of Emmanuel's fans today may be in the proletarian camp, but not yet Maoist.
Regarding language, again, MIWS is not really designed to carry out struggles in French. MIWS is making advances in French only because nobody else is doing it. Otherwise, MIWS's output is pitiful. The French "Maoist" Web sites MIWS knows of are revisionist, and so it is easy for anything MIWS puts up in French to have an edge. Anyone could easily surpass MIWS in distributing materials in French. MIWS has provided examples of what is possible, the kinds of material that could be distributed. Existing material could also be translated. MIWS has chosen to focus on English and on educating people who already have certain skills. As long as they understand what they're doing and have thought things out, there is nothing stopping others from creating a Web site with a different focus.
Third World academics and other intellectuals in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including intellectuals in the Middle East, who speak French as a second or even first language, but not English, shouldn't be forgotten. There are also Third World intellectuals and First World intellectuals, interested in literature and research outside their own country, who speak both English and French. MIWS is geared to intellectuals in general and also people who are becoming intellectuals, particularly those who are skilled in logical and mathematical reasoning, as MIWS has said -- people who have a good chance of keeping up independent study of key issues without close supervision by MIWS and working independently as scientific communists in the long term. Those who are oppressed nation people may be the only oppressed people who come across MIWS. Among First World readers, some may be gender-oppressed, but not proletarian. Otherwise, MIWS's immediate audience is not oppressed. Any decisions MIWS makes about its approach are made with that fact in mind. MIWS has particular reasons for using French, such as Arghiri Emmanuel, some promising discussions of international economics in French, and the widespread use of French in international contexts. It is not that there is a French-speaking imperialist nation proletariat that MIWS expects to read MIWS. MIWS is not mass-oriented to begin with organizationally, though it reflects the viewpoint of the international proletariat more than most "communist" Web sites. It is not possible to practice mass line directly through just a Maoist Web site like MIWS, which does not even accept feedback, deliberately. There are no masses as a group around on the Internet that MIWS could effectively practice mass line with from a distance to help become scientific communists. Partly, this is because of constraints that are regrettable. On the other hand, MIWS doesn't have any power and isn't leading any local struggle that would benefit most from mass line. It isn't really possible to interact with the super-exploited directly from a Web site, particularly one that isn't based on a party and not focused on agitation. Trying to leads to watering down Maoism.
2007 November