Essay: The Silent Colonization of Vulnerable Populations
Sierra La Fey Intro to Sociological Theory
INTRODUCTION: Like creatures of the underworld, irregular migrants are obscured by shadow; they are faceless and foreign. Migrants all over the world leave their homes because they cannot make ends meet in their local economies. In many cases it is not a choice, because their local economy doesn’t provide enough for everyone. As a vulnerable population, they end up being exploited in mass numbers in the same way that colonizers used the colonized to to fund their empires. In this case the empires are corporations capitalizing on vulnerable populations in the name of efficiency. A trend of economic instability in the developing world has benefited corporations because it has perpetuated the existence of vulnerable populations. Marx said that colonization and formally free labor were essential to the origins of capitalism, but what he didn’t foresee was that colonization—in modern guise—would continue to be important in the maintenance of capitalism as the units of production continue to grow. I postulate that what irregular migrants experience is an informal colonization that perpetuates their vulnerability and has slowed the inevitable polarization of the classes predicted by Marx wherein capitalism destroys itself. Additionally I argue that class conflict has been mediated in ways unpredicted by Marx himself, but still exists as the basis of stratification today.
I will begin by abstractly outlining economic trends in the developing world and in the American economy, asking first and foremost: who have these trends benefitted most? In my discussion of the processes of modern capitalism and the extent to which it operates I focus in on one particular case of migrant laborers in Sicily. I will briefly tackle the history of the Sicilian Mafia in my discussion of intermediaries and how this makes Sicily an ideal place for outsourcing. All these elements come together under my analysis of trends that have kept the capitalist system alive, such as what Marxists refer to as legitimization. The fact is, people will not revolt until the end stages of class polarization when they are desperate enough in sufficient numbers.
CHE COSA SUCCEDE E CHI BENEFICIA? The increasing number of stateless, migrating individuals is mainly and most importantly a result of the decolonization of resource-rich countries followed by an expansion of the free market system to include them in the formal eradication of global economic barriers (mainly in the last forty years). Neoliberalism allows companies to establish more “efficient” means of production, so the need for cheap and especially unregulated labor rises. I postulate that the existence of these instrumental yet unofficial processes of attaining resources to cut costs in the means of production exemplify what Marx wrote was required for the start of capitalism, but in this case it is being used as a way to save capitalism from itself. Colonialism in a modern context does not involve a formal occupation by a single entity, and in fact I cannot prove that it is an occupation at all. While the extent to which this modern colonization was initiated is uncertain, it is the circumstances of its existence that lead me to define it as such. In the same way that colonizers saw vulnerable populations as opportunities to cash in on, corporations outsource labor from vulnerable populations in order to increase what is known as efficiency. The relationship between the people in power and the laborers is the same in both situations: instead of inspiring sympathy, vulnerability signals to the people in power that they have a chance to make more money, therefore there are incentives to ensure that laborers remain vulnerable.
Generally speaking, the infiltration of capitalism into the developing world following periods of colonial rule and subsequent decolonization led to different kinds of economic and political instability thereby resulting in a dislocation of people and therefore, labor (Sørensen 1998). There are general trends of debt accumulation in the developing world, a simultaneous accumulation of wealth in the upper classes, and a perpetuation of the historical relationship between pleb and elite. While the settings have varied in time and place, the circumstances contain a common thread: class struggle. The ruling classes have consistently taken steps to secure their power over those beneath them. Sometimes, those beneath them rise up and revolt when they realize their needs aren’t being met. The reason class conflict has remained relevant from slavery to feudalism to capitalism is because the classes themselves remained. As long as there is stratification amongst the classes there will be class conflict.
The class conflict we see now in capitalism is more abstract than it was for previous economic systems. First, people don’t recognize it because the lines between capitalist and worker have blurred. If someone is both a capitalist and a worker, they can not reach class consciousness because they themselves obscure the division. Second, other divisions in society have taken the front stage for a long time now. This is indeed false consciousness (Marx). While real prejudices do divide people, a broader perspective reveals what it is that most black people and white people, most female people and male people, most queer people and cis people, and so on all have in common: Most of them are members of the work force, being exploited (to varying degrees) by the upper class. But a certain level of exploitation is normalized in our culture and therefore not seen as such. In order for people to achieve class consciousness, the exploitation of workers must worsen and people of different statuses must experience it together. The distractions preventing this from taking place clearly benefit the ruling class, but to what extent this trend was foreseen and allowed—or orchestrated—is uncertain. They have slowed down the disintegration of capitalism by suspending the onset of class consciousness, which Marx rightly identified as a key stage in the ignition of Revolution. Another phenomenon that has slowed this inevitable end of capitalism is that of neoliberalism. The elimination of barriers to business through expansion into foreign territories represents the continuation of a global system of stratification that benefits consumers and depends on profits made through the exploitation of vulnerable populations.
Similarly there has been a continuation of resource-extraction, which on the ground can look strikingly similar to the indentured servitude of serfs to their landlords, of the colonized to the colonizer—both enforced through violence. In the 60s and 70s, because nationalist governments owned agricultural marketing boards in African states they were able to extract surpluses from poor farmers to reinvest in industry and commerce, thereby allowing a reincarnation of colonial exploitation, (Stambuli 2010s). In 2010, Freeport-McMoRan a mining conglomerate that has been outsourcing since the beginning, paid the police and military in Indonesia $14 million to “support services and community programs,” (Kuhn 2011). When their workers went on strike for better pay, members of the Indonesian police and military broke it up using force. This example is not unique in its kind. Corporations that left America after the formation of unions often use violence or the threat of violence to keep workers in line on foreign soil. This pattern of resource extraction is a new colonization. The structure of the economy is different and the rules have changed, but one reality remains the same: vulnerability equates to business opportunity and threats of violence keep workers complacent. So long as this is true, we will continue to depend on their vulnerability for our comfort.
Starting from the movement initiated by Ronald Reagan to eliminate business regulations when imports such as automobiles, steel, and electronics from Germany and Japan proved to be too much competition, unions were under attack (Wilson 2013). American businesses couldn’t compete with foreign prices and took steps to change this. Striking down on unions, outsourcing, as well as an endless number of laws passed over the years that loosened restrictions on business all achieved this purpose (Pew Research Center 2015). Essentially, owners of the means of production observed that they were losing out to competition and then intentionally set in motion a trend of global expansionism that would give them the upper hand. In America, the middle class has been shrinking since the 70s—likely a result of what started with “Reaganomics”—meanwhile the upper and lower classes have steadily grown. A graph by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the productivity seen in America in the last sixty years has exponentially increased while—starting in the 70s—growth in median family income went from from growing exponentially to a slow climb. And now, 80 percent of Americans hold 7 percent of the country’s wealth, (Center for Budget and Policy Priorities). But this matters little when the middle class still remains near 50 percent of the formal population.
Despite the disintegration of capitalism having been slowed down through welfare, false consciousnesses (perpetuated divisions along status lines), and outsourcing, the middle class is still shrinking, as Marx predicted. But it is not shrinking fast enough and most people still view the current economic system as legitimate. Global expansionism has perpetuated the historical relationship between pleb and elite, but has also legitimized capitalism in the eyes of middle class. Outsourcing has proved that as long as most people in America can buy inexpensive luxury goods and produce, the system is perceived as legitimate. As the middle class shrinks, the polarization will become a reality for too many people and they will grow restless while the upper class looks for opportunities to secure power interests.
First said by O’Conner, globalization has led to less taxes on business so less money goes back to the state. This leads countries to try harder to get investors. Business that can afford to let countries compete for their investment obviously have an advantage over other businesses, but they also have an advantage over the state. Companies can not only evade national taxes but sue states that put limits on their power. According to an article in the Guardian, hundreds of foreign investors have sued more than half the world’s countries in the last 16 years claiming that their company was negatively impacted by varies government actions. In 2012 Ecuador was ordered to pay $1.8 billion to Occidental Petroleum (based in Houston) for canceling an oil-exploration contract (Kennard and Provost 2015). This is roughly the equivalent to what Ecuador budgets for healthcare. In the 90s there was a case in which Argentina was ordered to pay more than $100 million to the French conglomerate Vivendi for trying to limit the price the company charged its people for water and wastewater services (Kennard and Provost 2015).
In short, these legal cases illustrate what Marx predicted: owners of the means of production growing more and more powerful where the state takes second place. As he wrote was inevitable in monopoly capitalism, there are now a few very large units of production where the capital to labor ratio is unbelievably high. This is what has led to half of the world’s wealth being in the hands of the richest 1 percent (Credit Suisse Research Institute 2014). For Marx, material wealth means power and that is absolutely true in this case. If a country can be sued for setting a limit on water rates, clearly there is nothing that these companies can’t do.
As Marx predicted there is a general trend of increasing deficits in advanced capitalist societies meanwhile corporations operating there have grown richer and richer. Deficits have lead to cuts on the public spending that once cushioned the middle class. As we saw with the effects of Roosevelt’s New Deal, welfare programs can do a lot to “save capitalism from itself”. But without formal support, the middle class starts shrinking and capitalism starts an inevitable crawl towards its end. However because this process has been slowed down in other ways such as the rationalization of faceless foreign labor, the rising tides are slow to consume.
In advanced capitalist societies, there are not enough poor people experiencing vulnerability together for this polarization to be felt, for the proletariat to recognize their identity as a laborer being exploited in a system where there is never enough, ruled by a small group of super-elites who have far too much. While class consciousness has not taken off, the realities of exploitation are felt in every corner of the world. In Sicily, corporations rely on historical relationships between pleb and landowner to produce agriculture most efficiently. Unfree people are bound to the land and are managed by intermediaries. Intermediaries put distance between the exploited and those who own the means of production. Illegal labor is trafficked and managed by Mafiosi and the end product is sold to corporations for the lowest price possible.
Raimondo Catanzaro author of Men of Respect writes that the Mafia is an ideology that encompasses a way of life based on a particular code of honor centered around accumulation of capital by force. It developed with the abolition of feudalism and the introduction of market capitalism, where wealthy elites secured their positions by preventing a direct relationship between pleb and the newly-formed Italian state. Absentee landowners and the new land-owning bourgeoisie introduced into the market a system of “heteroregulation based on violence,” (Catanzaro 1992). This led to class conflict wherein the lower class wanted more opportunities in the new capitalist system while the elites tried to limit them. Instead of being subordinate, some members of the lower classes joined in the market of violence to secure opportunities for themselves. The rise of Mafiosi in Sicily should be seen as the rise of entrepreneurs who accumulated a capital of violence to secure honor and legitimization in this context (Catanzaro 1992). Since then, some of these uomini d’onore have come to be landowners themselves. The historical market of violence serves well in regulating their informal labor force. Organized crime serves as the other main industry which even more so involves the exploitation and indentured servitude of both men and women.
Sicily’s economy is best described as broker capitalism, which has limited the region’s ability to expand the scope of its markets and create any long-lasting structural changes or investment (Catanzaro 1992). Therefore the economy depends on exports of its oranges, wheat, lemons, and other products (Progetto India 2012). This makes the region vulnerable to dependence on corporations like Coca Cola who seek to get around labor restrictions. As the scope of Sicily’s formal market remains small, capitalists and consumers will reap the benefits.
Coca Cola sets the price they want for oranges and lets countries scramble to compete in response (Ferrara and Wasley 2016). In Sicily, Coca Cola benefits from the historical market of violence and exploitation. Amnesty International has identified in Southern Italy a “widespread” abuse of migrants in food industries (Wasley 2013). As intermediaries, Mafiosi and traffickers are held responsible. There are many reasons why the owners of the means of production can very rarely be held accountable for perpetuating these processes of stratification: The people being exploited don’t have any legal rights so they are powerless; Coca Cola is a multi-tiered bureaucratic black hole which makes it very difficult to say who exactly is responsible; and the economic system itself has led us to this very problem so states won’t prosecute on its behalf. States serve the needs of the ruling class and right now the ruling class is made up of those who own the largest units production.
CONCLUSION: In an accurate historical context (one that does not ignore colonial histories), we can observe that neoliberalism has enabled a silent colonization in the orange groves of Sicily. Most people with dark skin who try to seek asylum in Italy have a very low chance of getting their cases approved, no matter their story. And because they have no opportunity to formally enter the labor market, they are forced to take work that allows them to remain invisible—a situation which is widespread and normalized. While race struggles are very real in this situation, the trend of exploitation goes deeper. Displaced by economic instability, unresolved colonial histories, and climate change irregular migrants are stateless, invisible, and powerless. It is this universal quality of vulnerability that attract to them those powerful enough to cash in. It is not because they are Black that they are being exploited, but rather a continuation of the story we’ve heard before. The way in which colonizers believe they have an implicit right to take what is their’s, to get rich and fund an empire, is no different than capitalists’ belief in their right to efficiency—whatever it takes. Both attempt to justify their exploitation of vulnerable populations by insisting they are helping the wretches. These circumstances of the migrant labor phenomenon (which are not unique to Italy) lead me to classify it as a means of silent colonization.
While Marx suggested that colonialism is needed for the start of capitalism, this is only half the story. To maintain economic growth and prevent a fast polarization of classes in advanced capitalist societies, businesses—who always have incentives to cut costs—rationalized (Weber) the exploitation of vulnerable populations so that suffering would be experienced in silence. Naturally consumers got to reap some of the benefits. To borrow an idiom, they were given an inch so they wouldn’t take a mile. This process of silent colonization has rationalized efficiency by taking advantage of historically-unequal relationships and has legitimized capitalism by placating the middle class. A prevailing false consciousness reigns supreme in America where we are distracted by other divisions in society. While these divisions are real in the lives of those involved, the fact is the elite profits from them because they function as distractions to the more embedded conflict: exploitation of the laborers by the upper class. Without a clear understanding of the class struggle, there can be no Revolution. Any revolution started on the basis of something else will only lead to a perpetuation of the class struggle which is the real reason global stratification has continued into the present. In our false consciousness we attempt to justify this stratification… political instability, corruption, racism… but these are distractions to keep us from realizing that the upper class weighs heavy on our toil and we can never be free in such a system. We must recognize the one thing we all share across borders and statuses of all kinds.
“…You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
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