Bad conditions for workers even in imperialist countries

Mail thread on the continuing subordination of women even in "developed" industrial societies.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?zx=7as9n55y8u51&shva=1#inbox/1248ad610636d2e9

Choppa Morph wrote:

> But to say workers seldom have 74 hour weeks for starvation wages
> is sheer nonsense. Unless you're thinking of relatively privileged
> and well-organized workers in industrialized countries.

If we are talking about the proletariat, aren't we by definition
talking of industry?

Nope - the proletariat (according to Marx) is made up of who own nothing to sell but their labour-power - no other "productive" assets, like computers. This definition makes a big difference. The industrial proletariat is, obviously, sells its labour-power in industry. Nowadays in imperialist countries ("our" advanced industrial nations) the public sector and services are mostly industrialized - the workers there are wage-earners involved in producing the commodity labour-power, ie us human beings.

But yes, industrial workers in developing countries have relatively
bad conditions. But as I mentioned before, I was referring to France
& the US - where workers do not have starvation wages. Very different from conditions in 1848 London or Paris - which were worse than conditions in China today.

Not by much. And industrial workers in developed countries are still risking life and limb and internal organs due to the pace of work required and the lousy conditions and machinery not adapted to human bodies. Not in the "posh" industries featured in "aren't we great" Readers Digest or airline glossies, but in normal industries manufacturing paint or plastics or the like. Not to mention the service industries.

Read Barbara Ehrenreich's illuminating book "Nickel and Dimed" on this.


> A lot of "rich" countries also have workers forced to work two jobs
> to survive.

Bullshit. "Survive" is not a meaningless term.

Again - read Ehrenreich - she's talking about basics. Food and shelter. Why the hell have soup kitchens sprung up again, or homeless people become a problem once more?


They "need" two jobs to have big homes, cars, electronic toys, etc
etc - environment-destroying "things" they are "forced" to buy to
serve big capital. If they didn't enslave themselves to consumer
society, "they" could work 20 hours a week and do much better than
"survive". The average Westerner spends more on each car they own
each year than the world-wide average total annual income. And yet
cars are planet-destroying luxuries. Most French families spend more on cell-phones than the annual incomes in poor countries. No one needs a cell phone. Survive?

This is for the "lucky" ones. Two income households able to put themselves in debt ("credit worthy"). I wasn't talking about them. In our society(ies) you now need two incomes to sustain a "normal" standard of living. This normal standard of living DIFFERS FROM COUNTRY TO COUNTRY - that's very important to bear in mind. Never mind if this standard includes the kind of crap you mention - a daily paper, for those who can still afford it, can be sewage like the Daily Mail or filtered sewage like the Guardian. We're more often talking about "social survival" (keeping above the contempt level) than actual physical survival. If you look at the worst cases of "social" death in "developed" (excuse me while I vomit) countries, the list is still endless. The street-sleepers of Paris (under bridges, on underground ventilation grids) are a good (!) example. All kinds of diseases on and inside their bodies, including gangrene and organ failure. Frinstance.


I'm not questioning that the distribution of resources is skewed. But
don't tell me that we have to swallow the television commercials to
know how to "survive".

The TV commercials are a worry, but only cos they reinforce the generally shitty situation of those with nothing to sell but their often unwanted labour-power. Like the rural poor in the US with no access to health care (cf the "health fairs" mentioned in a previous thread), who drink way over the Danger level of sweet fizzy drinks, or smoke, etc. Only the extremely poor, anywhere in the world, are unable to get hold of such destructive poisons - tobacco and alcohol or narcotics.

This relates to the breast-feeding part of the thread cos of the efforts by very big capitalist groups to replace healthy reproductive behaviour (like breast-feeding) with artificial and often harmful commercially profitable behaviour (bottle-feeding using milk substitutes).

C