Introduction: Why Labour Regimes?

Capitalism's innate tendency to endless competitive accumulation and global expansion raises the question of where and how exploitation occurs. We argue here that exploitation is the primary starting point to understand the labour performed by the world's 3.5 billion workers, as well as the hundreds of millions of disguised wage labourers and unidentified homeworkers who appear to be self-employed (ILO 2018). The centrality of exploitation derives from Marx, who saw exploitation as an analytical category, not merely a normative description of poor working and living conditions. Exploitation refers to the difference in value between what workers produce and what workers are paid. This “excess” in value – surplus value – is derived from the part of labour time when workers are no longer working for their own reproduction but for the capitalist (Marx 1976 [1867]). As this process of value extraction from labour to capital is neither natural, nor homogeneous nor restricted to places and moments of paid work, its boundaries should be explored, rather than taken for granted.

In this chapter, we set out to develop the “labour regime” as a category of theory and tool of method to better undertake this endeavour. We develop labour regime analysis as a means to better understand the various ways in which exploitation manifests, occurs and intensifies. We draw on the analytical tools of historical materialism, and, like several other chapters in this volume, we counter “productivist” variants of Marxism that understand processes of capitalist exploitation as occurring exclusively within the “productive” sphere (e.g. the formal workplace). To this end, we draw on and develop debates on social reproduction and labour (e.g. Mies 1986; Bhattacharya 2017; and Mezzadri 2019) and on nature and labour (e.g. Barca 2019), by arguing that these spheres are as central to labour regimes and exploitation as the production of commodities and the circulation of capital. We start with the core assumption that production is the fundamental site of surplus value extraction, but we seek to show how the labour regimes that enable such a process necessarily straddle other spheres. In essence, there is no production without circulation, and also without the reproductive work that provides labour power, or the ecological relations that provide the matter, means and forces of production.

Preamble: What Is Marx to the Process of Fieldwork?

By the summer of 2018, when this project was originally conceived, two hundred years had passed since the birth of Karl Marx. This date has been widely celebrated with talks, conferences, lectures and edited volumes. One of these many exciting projects, titled Karl Marx's Life, Ideas, Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary, edited by Shaibal Gupta, Marcello Musto and Babak Amini (2019), gathers the contributions to a conference held in July 2018 in Patna, India, at the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI). I first wrote ‘Marx in the sweatshop’ – now a chapter in this collection – as a contribution to that conference. I conceived that paper as a fieldworker's celebration of the Marxian framework – a framework which, combined with feminist insights, has always strongly guided my research experience. As I wrote it, and prepared to fly to Patna, I realised that far more could and should be said about the potential benefits of deploying Marx and Marxian concepts and methods as a guide for today's ‘radical fieldworkers’ – those aspiring at ‘doing’ political economy across the world economy in practice, and committed to social and economic justice. By the time I landed in Patna, the idea of this volume – Marx in the Field – had already taken shape in my imagination, and I had contacted many of the contributors. I am excited that its final outlook looks spectacularly similar to my initial ‘headnote’. As beautifully explained by Michael Taussig (2011), our attention as fieldworkers is often captured by ‘fragments’; by encounters we suddenly experience and which are the outcomes of complex materialist explanations we then need to unpack and carefully analyse. To a certain extent, one could say this project was guided by an ‘imagined fragment’, an encounter between my conscious – unorthodox and feminist – use of Marxian methods of analysis and images from the field experiences that have shaped my concrete training as a social scientist through a continuous process of learning by doing.

Abstract

Introduction by Alessandra Mezzadri

As explained in the general introduction, the contributions included in this volume explore the potential of bringing Marx in the Field through three different lenses. The first lens implies analysing some key categories and tropes in Marxian analysis that are crucial for the study of our global present (e.g. Jan, Hanieh). The second lens entails, instead, exploring how Marxian main categories and concepts may appear concretely in the field, in ways that may seem fairly distinct – yet analytically and logically compatible – with those historically sketched by Marx in his work (e.g. Bernstein, Selwyn). Indeed, learning from Jairus Banaji (2010), when researching and ‘doing’ political economy, we should always distinguish logics from history. Finally, the third lens involves an engagement with actual methods of enquiry – either those deployed by Marx to study, for instance, accumulation and/or exploitation (e.g. Toffanin, Stevano), or those one could deploy today to produce an analysis consistent with Marx's method (Mtero et al., Harriss-White). In effect, as we have seen towards the end of this volume, all contributions adopt at least two out of these three lenses to explore the usefulness of Marx for historical and contemporary field research. Many, then, also analyse how Marxian analysis could/should be ‘contaminated’ with insights from other theoretical traditions (e.g. Mezzadri, Lombardozzi).

Abstract

Introduction: From Volume I of Capital to the Indian Sweatshop

One hundred and fifty years after its publication, Das Kapital remains relevant for the study of capitalist production. Marx's analysis of the ‘abode of production’ developed in Volume I still powerfully resonates with many issues facing the labouring classes worldwide, especially the developing world. First, many of these classes experience unacceptable rhythms, intensity and length of working hours, while remuneration often remains below what is defined as a ‘living wage’. Second, these classes remain exposed to high occupational risk, industrial ‘disasters’ and health conditions linked to overwork and exhaustion. The labouring body strains under the intense pitch and speed of work imposed by the ever-increasing velocity of circulation of raw materials, goods and delivery times characterising today's global economy. However, the most important reason Volume I should still be considered a vital reading to interpret key aspects of our contemporary global economy is for Marx's method. The very structure of the volume, in this sense, offers a crucial research framework.

Living in a ‘Material’ World

An enquiry into the world of sweatshops should entail some reflections over the types of commodities produced by sweatshops. These are no secondary issues for any study of capital–labour relations. Marx himself started volume one of Das Kapital with a chapter on commodities. Marx's primary aim was to insist on the social relations underpinning production and showing how the extraction of labour power – exploitation – was a crucial constitutive aspect of any type of commodity production. In Marx's words (1967, p. 72, in Coronil, 1997, p. 60), ‘the existence of things qua commodities, and the value relation between the product of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom’. Arguably, there are many ways to interpret this. One is that the physical properties of commodities have very little relation to the social process deployed to produce them. Another is, instead, that in the process of becoming commodities, things should not be viewed as simply linked to their physical status but primarily as an expression of the social relations deployed to produce them. These are fundamentally different explanations. The former suggests that physical and social ‘materialities’ fundamentally differ, while the latter instead highlights the presence of multiple, different types of ‘materialities’ epitomized by the commodity form. Marx addressed the complexities of commodity production in relation to their value. Indeed, he did insist on the twofold value of commodities in capitalist production, their use value and exchange value. Given his aim of de-fetishizing commodity production and to deconstruct the concept of ‘utility’ deployed by classical political economists, his focus was primarily on exchange value which is also the main feature of producing ‘things’ under capitalism. However, this does not necessarily mean that use value is of no relevance. It simply means that, in the sphere of production, commodities are ‘bearers of value’ (Marx, 1990, p. 143) in multiple ways.

Surplus Extraction as a ‘Joint Enterprise’

In the 1990s, as the first wave of international sweatshop scandals shook the liberal conscience of many western customers, Wal-Mart and its then famous line created by Kathie Lee Gifford – the American TV host and actress – were turned into the main capitalist monsters to fight (see Klein, 2000). Today, despite Kathie Lee's role has been usurped by other global figures – in particular by Amancio Ortega Gaona, the billionaire owner of the Spanish clothing giant Zara (see Hoskins, 2014) – global brands are still considered the primary avatars of the horrors of capitalist development. In fact, the history of textile production as a whole is linked to some of the darkest chapters in the violent history of world capitalism. Indeed, it is linked to rise of Britain's ‘satanic mills’ and to the evolution of colonialism. It is also linked to black slavery, as powerfully illustrated by Beckert (2015) in Empire of Cotton, where we learn how cotton, which became common currency in Indian Ocean trade (Riello and Parthasarathi, 2010; Riello and Roy, 2010), was deployed as means of exchange to pay for slaves from Africa. Clearly, these chapters in our history were hardly the outcome of the behaviour of a few. Could we demonize the East India Company without making reference to the British Crown, or to the powerful western, and also non-western merchants who benefitted enormously from the colonial enterprise? We could not. Historically, transnational trade networks always relied on imperialist designs, but these were also drawn with the help of the astute enterprising spirit of powerful regional merchants, coming from many corners of the world (Hobson, 2004). As also vividly illustrated by historical novels like Amitav Ghosh’ (2011) River of Smoke, Indian merchants were hardly only ‘middlemen’ subordinated to colonial capital (Roy, 2014).

Global Products, Sweatshop Labour: Introducing the ‘Made in India’

We wear and consume globalization on a daily basis. The majority of the products we purchase are global products, created through a complex organization of production stretching across the world economy. Garments are the global product par excellence. If we read the labels of the clothes we wear, we immediately realize that, at present, they come from a staggering number of different countries. Today, even the least remarkable among local clothing shops, malls and boutiques in many developed as well as emerging economies is likely to sell ‘global’ garments: jeans made in Bangladesh, T-shirts made in India, trousers made in China, Cambodia or Vietnam, coats made in Italy, Turkey or Mexico. Being produced in so many different parts of the world, these garments share a number of common traits. First, they are often extremely cheap. In the last four decades, the price of readymade clothing has fallen massively. In Europe and the US, retail stores such as Primark or Wal-Mart sell garments for the price of an ice cream or a slice of pizza. Second, garments come in myriads of different styles that change more rapidly that even fickle consumer taste could ever do. In fact, it is this continuous process of change – the ‘fast fashion’ model – that is increasingly leading to shifts in consumer taste among middle classes worldwide. Third, while vaguely indicating the country of production, garments hardly provide any other clue regarding their exact origins. This labelling politics contributes to the representation of production regions as undifferentiated lands, effectively hiding the exact location of production, and with it the source of value.

Eventually, we do learn where exactly given garments come from. Sadly, however, this process of discovery is generally linked to the unfolding of terrible industrial disasters or the unveiling of sweatshop scandals. Until April 2013, consumers had perhaps never heard of an industrial area called Savar, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Now, many do, after the collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-storey building hosting garment factories producing for global buyers.