Excerpt from "Unequal Exchange Revisited" on amerikan workers as exploiters
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From: Arghiri Emmanuel, "Unequal Exchange Revisited," IDS Discussion Paper no. 77, 1975 August, pp. 62-67
Excerpt:
3.2. The Impact of Wage Variations
How can workers in underdeveloped countries be affected by
increased wages in developed countries, since all wages are
supposed to be independent variables? And if they are not
affected, how can one say that by obtaining increases in their
money wages, workers in developed countries exploit or share
in the exploitation of workers in underdeveloped countries.
It is clear that money wages in underdeveloped countries - which,
according to the premises of the theory of unequal exchange,
vary independently and extraneously - are not affected by
variations in money wages in developed countries - at any rate
not immediately or directly.
But it seems equally clear that the real incomes of workers in
underdeveloped countries are significantly affected by these
increases, because of the resulting increases in the price of
products imported from developed countries, in so far as these
products are part of their consumption, either directly, in
the form of goods, or indirectly, as the raw materials of other
consumer goods produced locally.
In other words, variations in the money wages of one group
determine variations in the corresponding relative prices, and
it is these variations of money prices that determine in turn
the respective variations in the real wages of the other group.
But if one takes an imported product not directly or indirectly
consumed by workers in the underdeveloped country, can one say
that in this case at least the only losers in that country are
the local capitalists, first, because of the fall in the world
rate of profit and therefore of their own earnings, and secondly,
because of an eventual rise in the price of imported luxury goods?
In the short term, the answer is yes. But in the long term
certainly not. Whatever their opposition to their own capitalists,
it is not at all a matter of indifference to workers in poor
countries that increased wages in foreign countries whittle
away the profits of their own national capitalists, which
constitute in any case a potential subject of bargaining and a
factor influencing their own demands for future wage increases.
However determined these workers may be to expropriate their
own capitalists, they cannot favour an expropriation which would
only benefit the working classes of another country.
The Share of Surplus Value Contained in Certain Wages and
The International Solidarity of Workers
Since exploitation in capitalistic relations consists of an
appropriation of surplus value, a worker cannot benefit from
capitalistic exploitation, even involuntarily and objectively,
unless his wages contain surplus value extorted from other
workers.
So long as this point is not reached, so long as the increases
obtained by workers of industrialised countries only represent
a partial recuperation (however large) of the surplus value
extorted from them by their own employers, there is no share
in exploitation and no antagonism between the working classes
of different nations.
So those who believe in the continuing international solidarity
of the proletariat in the present day world argue as follows:
If for one reason or another American workers are less exploited
than Mexican workers, this is no reason for the latter to try
to diminish American wages, thus achieving equalisation from
below. They should, on the contrary, act hand in hand with
American workers, so that together they may expropriate the
exploiters, recover all the surplus values, however unequal
these may be, and improve their respective conditions, although
one group will probably automatically gain considerably more
improvement than the other.
This argument might be valid if the premises were well founded.
For it is true that in so far as a worker is a donor of surplus
value, however reduced this may be, there is no breach of
solidarity, whatever the rates of pay. But this is not the case.
Today, the vast majority of American workers, and even those
in other large OECD countries, are no longer donors but
receivers of surplus value; and naturally this surplus can only
come from the labour of workers of other nations, even though
it is not directly extorted by those at the end of the line.
This is what upsets the basic pattern of the class struggle on
the international level. It means that even if one were to
expropriate all the capitalists of the planet, the value produced
would not be enough to ensure equalisation from above; and a
fraternal socialistic world would have to expropriate not only
the capitalists but also - partially and to the amount of
foreign surplus value appropriated today - large sections of
the working classes of certain nations. This is enough to make
these sections, who know very well what they are doing, turn
their faces resolutely against any kind of fraternal socialistic
world.
None of this is merely theoretical. No Marxist would deny that
certain wages, far from providing surplus value, contain it.
The question of whether this only happens with the 200,000 dollar
annual salary of an Executive Director at General Motors, or
with a Sub-Director's 100,000 dollar salary, or already with
the wages of a qualified French worker at 4,000 francs a
month, is a mere matter of calculation, not of conceptual
analysis. In the same way, whether the "workers' aristocracy"
as defined by Lenin includes 5% or 10% or 90% of the working
class of this or that nation at this or that moment is not
a question of principle but a matter of history and of general
economic conditions. The calculation can be made as follows
(1969 figures, but the proportions today are about the same
or even more pronounced):
a) Even in the most developed countries, wages could not
be aligned at the highest (American) rate without the
global surplus value of the area as a whole becoming
negative:
In 1969, the total income of wage-earners in the United
States was $566,558 millions
less the wages of the armed forces $ 20,229 millions
Wage income of civilian labour force $546,329 millions
The total number of salaried civilians being 70,274,000 at
the same date, the average annual income per wage-earner
in the United States in 1969 was $7,775.
The number of civilian employees in the 22 OECD countries,
i.e. for the whole area less Turkey, was in the same year:
282,000,000
of which
employees 218,900,000
employers and the self-employed, i.e.
what the United Nations statistics
call "independent traders" 63,100,000
Admitting that "independent traders" only have a right to
the same average salary although they have higher average
qualifications (all the liberal professions, lawyers, doctors,
artists, etc., are included in this category), equalising
wage incomes within the developed group of countries would
mean paying 181 million active workers at $7,775, i.e.
$2,192 billion
But the total national income at
factor price in these same
countries was in 1969 only $1,487 billion
There would therefore be a
negative surplus value of $ 705 billion
Equalisation from above is therefore impossible, even inside
the richest countries in the world. (It is clear that this
negative surplus value would have been still higher if we had
not left Turkey out of our calculations. But Turkey is
obviously not a developed country).
b) If we include in this calculation the non-communist
underdeveloped countries, extrapolating certain missing
data, we shall have in the first place to add an additional
1,680 million people to the total population. The average
active population in these countries is 40.8%. Rounding it
off at 40%, we have an additional 672 million men and women
to pay at the American rate of 7,775 dollars, i.e. a wage
bill of 5,224 billion to add to the 2,192 of the developed
countries, i.e. a total of 7,416 billion dollars for the
whole of the non-communist world.
Now, the national income at factor price of the non-communist
underdeveloped countries was 248 billion dollars in 1966.
According to Paul Bairoch's estimates, it increased by
about 5% a year between 1966 and 1968. Leaving a margin and
calculating at the rate of 6% a year to 1969 (at compound
interest), we arrive at the figure of 275 billion dollars
for 1969. Added to the developed countries' 1,487, this
gives us a total income at factor prices for the whole
non-communist world of:
$1,782 billion
As the wage bill at North
American rates would be $7,416 billion
There would be a negative
surplus value of $5,634 billion
i.e. a sum eleven to twelve times higher than the total surplus
value at present produced in all 22 OECD countries and about
ten times higher than that of the whole non-communist world.
The figures are so telling that no statistical error can
have affected the results.
c) At a zero amount of surplus value (that is to say if,
after expropriating the capitalists and other receivers of
surplus value all over the world, one decided to distribute
the whole social product in wages and stop all accumulation
and all technical progress) each active worker of the
non-communist world would receive an average of
1,782 billion = 1,868 dollars per year. In other words,
954 billion
a quarter of the present North American wage, and a good deal
less than the wages of all advanced countries of the western
world, - i.e. roughly equivalent to wages in Greece or Portugal.
And even this result depends on the assumption of simple
reproduction alone.
And in Real Terms....
6% of the world's population already consumes over 40% of
the world's raw materials. Present world production in
physical terms could only feed, clothe, house, etc., about
600 million people on the American level.
Americans consume nearly 700 kilos12 of steel per head
per year. If the whole world started to consume as much,
all known reserves of iron ore would be completely exhausted
in 40 years, - provided the world's population ceased to
increase, otherwise depletion would come even sooner.
The same equalisation of world consumption from above,
still with a stable population, would exhaust the known
reserves of copper in 8 years, tin in 6 years, etc.
But where the deadlock is total is once again oil.
At the level of North American consumption, the world
needs some 14-15 billion tons a year. But known world
resources only amount to about 80 billion tons, which,
with a stable population and economy, would be enough
for 5 years.
If we add reserves yet to be discovered or those which
might be exploited with new technological inventions, we
could, according to OECD experts, count on twice that
amount, or about 160 billion tons. In other words, and
assuming the same stable situation, there would be enough
to last 11 years. Finally, taking into account the
marine subsoil of the whole planet, we arrive, according
to certain experts, at a total of 320 billion tons, i.e.
22 years' consumption at the American rate.
3.3. Ecological Constraints
But exhaustion of present and future resources is not the only
factor preventing world equalisation from above. Ecological
limits constitute another factor.
If the present developed countries can still get rid of their
waste products by dumping them in the sea or expelling them
Into the air, it is because they are the only ones doing it.
Just as their inhabitants can still travel by air and fill
the world's skies only because the rest of the world does
not have the means to fly and leaves the world's air routes
to them alone. And so on...
3.4. International Solidarity
In all these calculations it is not a matter of abstract concepts
like surplus value, capital, etc., or book-keeping categories
like profit, interest rates etc., but of the consumption of
real substances. So it is the vast mass of the population
and the wage-earners themselves who are implicated. Similarly,
leaving aside all other considerations and all other
antagonisms, and given the objective natural and technological
conditions of today and the foreseeable future, the rich
countries can only consume all the commodities that make up
their material welfare, which they seem keen to preserve,
because the others consume very little or nothing at all.
They can only abstain from recycling their waste products
because the others do not have much to recycle; otherwise the
ecological balance of the world would be irrevocably
disturbed. This is what destroys working-class solidarity
between the rich and the poor countries.
Everything happens today as though certain nations had
been able to fuse into a sort of class-nation, while others
remained merely nations divided into classes. This means
that in the first type of country a true political struggle
becomes more and more impossible: there can only be a
strictly economic struggle, as there has always been inside
any class. This also means, in a sense, that the countries
on the periphery are henceforth not the weakest link in the
chain but the only true revolutionary area. Their local
conservative forces are allied, not with certain classes in
other countries, but with certain nations belonging to the
same class. At any rate, the physical terms of the problem
as set out above show clearly that its solution has as its
framework and parameters mankind as a whole. Any class
contradictions that may remain in the developed countries
become secondary. The main contradiction - the motive force
of change - is henceforth to be found in international
economic relations.
12 1,400 pounds.