By RENILDO SOUZA*
In the competition between capitals and in the dispute between the United States and China, technology is compulsory, even at the expense of the living conditions of the working class.
Coolies were the Chinese and Indian workers most brutally exploited by European colonizers and were victims of racist persecution in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.[I]
But why, in this time of technological revolution, does it seem that there is a certain reinvention of coolies? Why, in this time of globalization, can “coolies” now come from anywhere in the world, except China? Why does the degrading condition of coolies seem to spread among, indiscriminately, immigrants and natives, especially in the Global South, driven, among other factors, by the extroversion of Chinese capital?
The aim of this brief note is to articulate the newness of the technological revolution with the oldness of capitalist exploitation of the working class, taking as a reference an important novelty of the old capitalism itself, that is, the internationalization of Chinese capital. The starting point is the episode involving almost 500 Chinese workers subjected to mistreatment during the construction of the BYD electric car factory in Camaçari, Bahia.
The Public Ministry of Labor opened an investigation into working conditions, health and safety at the construction site.
According to the article by André Uzeda, published on the portal Public Agency, the situation is dire: “Physical aggression, with kicks and beatings. Dirty, crowded, poorly lit accommodations with no division between men and women. Filthy bathrooms, with sinks and toilets not cleaned daily. Workers working without personal protective equipment, subjected to 12-hour workdays, from Sunday to Sunday.”[ii]
In the 90th century, Asian coolies worked as forced laborers on sugar plantations in the Caribbean and made up XNUMX percent of the workforce that built the transoceanic railroad in the United States. Chinese coolies also helped build the Panama Canal in the early XNUMXth century. In the history of labor, the word coolie has become synonymous with discrimination, degradation, and starvation wages. But it seems that this is a thing of the past that will never go away.
The new coolies, broadly understood, are the immigrants stigmatized in the United States and Europe. They are the South American garment workers in São Paulo. They are the rural workers in wineries and agribusiness. They are the food delivery people. They are the Uber drivers. There are many of them, and more and more of them.
The regressive transformations imposed by big capital through globalization, neoliberalism and financialization are the source of the new coolies. The economic, political and ideological conditions that authorize contemporary social barbarity have been created.
The multiple meanings of the emblematic BYD case
First, it is a typical case of capitalist modernity. Electric car technology is supposedly seen as a means of mitigating the environmental crisis. It is an advance in productive capacity. At the same time, due to the interests and logic of capital, the modern factory is associated with regression and backwardness, when it creates the conditions of coolies for workers.
If the urgency of the capitalist calendar had stipulated the end of 2024 for the delivery of the first part of the BYD plant, then it would be appropriate to rip the skin off the workers. There would be room for uninterrupted working hours throughout the week, violence, etc. The overseers could use the whip.
Secondly, the BYD case is very instructive. It is a lesson in critical political economy. There is the great Chinese private capital. It arrived supported by the strength and privileges of the Chinese and Brazilian states. And it came to fulfill its destiny, to multiply. It came to do what is absolutely normal, to increase the value of its capital. It came to exploit the workforce, even if some of the workers are Chinese compatriots themselves. Furthermore, since we are in the medievalism of the 21st century, it is necessary to do more than exploit, it is necessary to plunder.
Labor Standards in Africa
Since 2009, China has been Africa's largest trading partner. Over the past 25 years, China, interested in raw materials and energy, has completed a huge number of projects, especially in infrastructure.
Chinese companies often bring in workers to partially cover their overseas investments. Some are hired temporarily for construction and installation tasks, while others are employed as regular project workers. In Africa, there were 2015 workers in these projects in 263.696. By 2022, this had fallen to 88.371, mainly located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, and Angola.[iii]
Regarding the experience of the Special Economic Zones established by China in Africa, there are important problems related to the labor force. Ding Fei points out that “without firm state determination, the SEZs may lead to a race to the bottom among countries to lower labor standards, suppress trade union rights, and exacerbate the power of foreign investors.”[iv]
Furthermore, Fei complains about the Chinese hoarding managerial and technical positions. In fact, capital is taking advantage of the competition between African and Chinese workers.
The cruel colonial history in Africa has shaped the possibilities for the devaluation of labor. Authoritarian governments, detached from popular projects, do not prioritize labor protection legislation. And the foreign interest, obviously, is profit.
Sergio Carciotto and Ringisai Chikohomero investigated labor practices in Chinese companies in six countries: Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. They found that, “despite differences between countries and sectors,” abuses were being committed in Chinese mining, construction, fishing, and manufacturing companies. Rights violations were widespread. They included hiring methods, wages (deductions, overtime, payment methods), and even the exchange of jobs for sex or bribes.[v]
21st century – technological revolution and social abyss
We are in the age of satellites, the Internet, genetic engineering, robots and artificial intelligence, and so on. Karl Marx explained that large-scale production and technological innovations enable capital to extract relative surplus value. The brutality of extending the working day (absolute surplus value) has become historically outdated.
The increase in labor productivity allows the conditions for the reproduction of the labor force to be preserved, or even (theoretically) improved, even if the surplus value pocketed by the capitalist increases. In this sense, the working day does not need to be extended, even if the part of unpaid labor (surplus value) increases. Under these conditions, the workers' subsistence goods, with the increase in productivity, become cheaper, that is, the labor force is devalued. Thus, the part of the working day (value) necessary for the reproduction of workers decreases.
However, at the same time, Marx warned: “…all methods of increasing the social productive power of labor…are at the same time methods of increasing the production of surplus value…”.[vi] In the context of a technologically advanced economy, large capitals located on the technological frontier, such as BYD, depend mainly on relative surplus value for their profitability. But they also resort to brutal plundering. Relative surplus value has not replaced absolute surplus value. (See the debate on the 6×1 scale right now in Brazil)
Furthermore, BYD would be an example of a type of capital that also absorbs a portion of extraordinary value, maximizing its profit within the automotive sector. In this case, it is an extra surplus value, of a temporary nature. BYD has a superior and more competitive technology, electrification, in relation to its combustion engine competitors. As long as this technological gap persists, there will be a transfer of value from “obsolete” sectors to modern ones.
Furthermore, the expansion of capital in large-scale enterprises implies the incorporation of the labor force in an increasingly smaller proportion, as Marx already explained. The accumulation of capital itself, with a larger scale of production and technological advances, creates a superfluous portion of workers.
Astonishing technological leaps are combined with masses of surplus workers. One thing is linked to the other. These contingents of superfluous labor explain the ease, resourcefulness, and offensive of capital in recent decades to exploit workers. Hence, new coolies, labor analogous to slavery. Hence, labor and social security reforms.
Parentheses – the other modern voracity of capital
Let us open a parenthesis here to simply announce another modern vein of social degradation. These are the processes commanded by trillion-dollar investment funds. These are processes resulting from the current state of overaccumulation of capital in contemporary capitalism.
Thus, the immense surplus capital, in search of appreciation by any means and all over the world, usurps, privatizes and commodifies the economic and social infrastructure (retirement, education, health, water and sanitation, transport, energy, housing, etc.). Capital, in an attack on the State and labor, takes by assault all the means necessary for the social reproduction of the labor force and transforms them into financial assets, a source of income for itself.
Automation, digitalization…
The current technology race between the United States and China is attracting attention. According to Bloomberg, of the 13 key technologies in the Made in China 2025 plan, China is already a global leader in five and competitive in seven.[vii]
Ya-Wen Lei published a book in 2023 (The Gilded Cage), the result of extensive research into the problems of innovation in China.[viii] Manufacturing is said to be the old sector that is being automated by robots. The internet sector is the new sector that is digitalizing various activities. The author, alarmed, highlights the pride that all Chinese people have in the country’s technological transformations. Local governments are cracking down on labor-intensive firms and “seeking to replace workers with robots.”
The metaphor of the golden cage represents the success of techno-state capitalism alongside the oppression of the instrumental power of technology and the law. According to Ya-Wen, it constitutes an “amalgam of modernist ideology, techno-nationalism, technological fetishism and meritocracy”. As can be seen, Ya-Wen expresses a strongly critical point of view. But, surprisingly, by omitting the centrality of the contradiction between capital and labor, she is unable to escape the technological fetish. This is clear with her concept of the techno-developmentalist regime.
For the author, science and technology play a central role in the process of socioeconomic development. This regime would be constituted by the State, institutions, ideas, culture and practices around technological themes. In this new course of China, increasing numbers of workers in “old” manufacturing sectors quickly become unskilled.
BYD electric cars are associated with degrading working conditions in Brazil. Accelerated robotization is driving workers out of work in China. In the competition between capital and the dispute between the United States and China, technology is compulsory, even at the expense of the living conditions of the working class.
Faced with John Stuart Mill's lament that machines had not brought about any advantage for workers, Marx observed: “But that is not at all the purpose of machinery used in a capitalist manner… It is a means for the production of surplus value.”[ix] It is still so. Marx was right!
*Renildo Souza is a professor of economics and international relations at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). Author of, among other books, The China of Mao and Xi Jinping (UFBA Publisher). [https://amzn.to/3BcOCN2]
Notes
[I] “Conditions in China are such that the entire Chinese coolie class, that is, the class of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, rightfully fall under the category of undesirable immigrants to this country, because of their numbers, the low wages for which they work, and their low standard of living.” (Theodore Roosevelt, 1905, State of the Union Address. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/11/25/247166284/a-history-of-indentured-labor-gives-coolie-its-sting)
[ii] https://apublica.org/2024/11/denuncia-operarios-chineses-estariam-sofrendo-agressoes-em-fabrica-da-byd-na-bahia/#_
[iii] https://www.sais-cari.org/data-chinese-workers-in-africa.
[iv]https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5652847de4b033f56d2bdc29/t/5b9a9dcd575d1f3c474af67f/1536859598690/Ding+Fei+_+Working+Paper+_+V2.pdf.
[v] https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/chinese-labour-practices-in-six-southern-african-countries
[vi] MARX, Carl. Capital: critique of political economy. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013, p. 700.
[vii] Bloomberg News. 30/102024/XNUMX. Why the US Is Struggling to Stop China's Tech Supremacy Push. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-us-china-containment/
[viii] YA-WEN Law. The Gilded Cage: technology, development, and state capitalism in China. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
[ix] MARX, Carl. Capital: critique of political economy. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013, p. 445.
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