United States in a World in Crisis: The Geopolitics of Precarious Work and Super-Exploitation 9004415653, 9789004415652

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United States in a World in Crisis

Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor David Fasenfest (soas University of London)

volume 160

Critical Global Studies Series Editor Ricardo A. Dello Buono (Manhattan College, New York) Editorial Board José Bell Lara (University of Havana, Cuba) Walden Bello (State University of New York at Binghamton, usa and University of the Philippines, Philippines) Samuel Cohn (Texas A & M University, usa) Ximena de la Barra (South American Dialogue, Chile/Spain) Víctor M. Figueroa (Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico) Marco A. Gandásegui, Jr. (Universidad de Panamá, Panama) Ligaya Lindio-McGovern (Indiana University-Kokomo, usa) Daphne Phillips (University of West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago) Jon Shefner (University of Tennessee-Knoxville, usa) Teivo Teivainen (University of Helsinki, Finland and Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru) Henry Veltmeyer (Saint Mary’s University, Nova Scotia, Canada and Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico) Peter Waterman (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands) † (1936–2017)

volume 11 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cgs

United States in a World in Crisis The Geopolitics of Precarious Work and Super-Exploitation

By

Adrián Sotelo Valencia

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Created by María del Carmen Elena Solanes Carraro. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sotelo Valencia, Adrián, author. Title: United States in a world in crisis : the geopolitics of precarious work and super-exploitation / by Adrián Sotelo Valencia. Other titles: Estados Unidos en un mundo en crisis. English Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: Studies in critical social sciences, 1877-2110 ; volume160 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This work by the distinguished Mexican theorist Adrián Sotelo Valencia explores new dimensions of super-exploitation in a context of the structural crisis of capitalism and imperialism. Steeped in a new generation of radical dependency theory and informed by the legacy of his own mentor, the famous Brazilian Marxist Ruy Mauro Marini, Sotelo rigorously examines prevailing theoretical debates regarding the expansion of super-exploitation in advanced capitalism. Building upon a Marinist framework, he goes beyond Marini to identify new forms of super-exploitation that shape the growing precarity of work. Sotelo demonstrates the inextricable link between reliance upon fictitious capital and the intensification of super-exploitation. Poignant contrasts are drawn between US capitalism and Mexico that reveal the nefarious new forms of imperialist dependency”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019042157 (print) | LCCN 2019042158 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004415645 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004415652 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Precarious employment--United States--History--21st century. | Labor--Social aspects. | Globalization. | United States--Politics and government--21st century. Classification: LCC HD5858.U6 S6713 2020 (print) | LCC HD5858.U6 (ebook) | DDC 331.25/7290973--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042157 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042158 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-2110 ISBN 978-90-04-41564-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-41565-2 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To Mary, for walking with me on the same path, as always.

∵

Contents Foreword  xi John Saxe-Fernández List of Figures and Tables  xx Introduction  1

Part 1 Geopolitics, Imperialism and Neo-Protectionism in the United States 1 Geopolitics and Super-Exploitation  7 1 Geopolitics and the Extension of the Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force  7 2 Conclusion  11 2 Donald Trump and Imperialist Praxis  12 1 The Vicissitudes of Neo-imperialism  13 2 Executive Orders and the North American Crisis  29 3 The Wall of Ignominy  30 4 Sanctuary Cities: the Dreamers or the Fallacy of the ‘American Dream’  31 5 Regional Blocks and the Automotive Industry in Mexico: the Rules of Origin in NAFTA  34 6  N AFTA, the Tripartite Negotiations and Donald Trump’s Position  36 7 Conclusion  38

Part 2 Debates on the Extension of Super-Exploitation in Advanced Capitalism 3 Dependence and Super-Exploitation  43 1 Theory and Method of Exploitation in Marx  43 2 The Marxist Theory of Dependency and Marini’s Ideas  45

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3 Importance and Validity of Dependency Theory  52 4 Formulation Level of the Marxist Theory of Dependency  58 5 Point of Departure for a Reevaluation of Marini’s Thought  61 6 Globalization and the Law of Value  64 7 Dissociation of the Economic Cycle from the Employment Rate  65 8 Generalization of the Super-Exploitation of Labor in the Capitalist System  65 9 The New International Division of Labor  67 10 Redefinition of the State within the Framework of the Democratization Process in Latin America  69 11 Democracy and the Fourth Estate  69 12 The Sub-imperialism Subject  73 13 The Problem of Integration and Overcoming Dependence  75 14 Conclusion  78 4 Approaches and Theoretical Controversies  80 1 Generalization of the Super-Exploitation of Labor in Advanced Capitalism  80 2 Marini’s Approach  83 3 Criticism of the Concept of Super-Exploitation  87 4 Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force, or Labor?  88 5 Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force: Category or Concept?  88 6 Can the Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force Be Extended to Advanced Countries?  92 7 Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force or Violation of Labor Force Value?  94 8 Super-Exploitation: a Political Category?  97 9 A Dependency Theory without Super-Exploitation?  104 10 Unequal Exchange and Super-Exploitation  107 11 Marini’s Renovated Vision  114 12 Conclusion  116

Part 3 Crisis, Super-Exploitation and the Precarization of the World of Labor in the United States 5 Hypothesis on the Capitalist Crisis and Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force  121

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1 Dismeasure of Value and Surplus Value  121 2 Hegemony of Relative Surplus Value and Super-Exploitation  126 3 Does the Generalization of Super-Exploitation Blur Dependence Relations?  135 4 Conclusion  138 6 Fictitious Capital and Super-Exploitation of Labor in Contemporary Societies  140 1 The Globalization of Imperialism and the Crisis of Capitalism  140 2 Fictitious Capital, Precarization and Universalization of SuperExploitation of the Labor Force  143 3 Winners and Losers in the Fictitious Regime of Neoliberal Quasi-Stagnation  147 4 What Comes after the Terminal Crisis of Neoliberalism?  149 5 Conclusion  150 7 The North American Capitalist Crisis  151 1 Crisis of the Pattern of Accumulation and of the Mechanisms of Production of Value and Surplus Value  152 2 Crisis and the Relative Decline of North American Supremacy  157 3 Conclusion  166 8 United States: Precariousness of Work and Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force  168 1 Crisis, Tension and Social Fragmentation in Neoliberal Capitalism  168 2 Work and Social Tension  169 3 Precarious Work and Structural Reforms  171 4 (Temporary) Employment and Job Insecurity  179 5 Unemployment as a Condition of the Super-Exploitation of Labor  181 6 The Deterioration of Wages  186 7 Salaries versus Productivity in the United States  190 8 Two Stages of US Salary History  191 9 Living and Working Conditions  198 10 The Housing Problem and the Purchasing Power of the Minimum and Average Salary  200

11 Purchasing Power of the Salary and Basic Basket of Consumer Goods  202 12 Violation and Expropriation of Salary  204 13 Conclusion  207 Epilogue  210 Bibliography  213 Index  231

Foreword Extending the validity of Ruy Mauro Marini’s work to the elucidation of the exploitation of the working class in what is to this moment the epicenter of the exercise of power—the United States of America (US)—is not common in Latin American Social Sciences. But that is what Adrián Sotelo offers in this book, supported by the growing inequality and oligarchization observed in the US, as well as the powerful precarization of the workforce in the northern country. With analytic diligence and clarity in his explanations, the author addresses the central role of the super-exploitation of the workforce, not only in the imperialist dynamics deployed by Washington and its lumpenbourgeoisies in the capitalist periphery but recovering this dimension as a critical part in the current labor dynamics of the US, specifically since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA or TLCAN).1 The signing of this agreement formalized a downward standardization of salaries, embedded in a context of generalized precarization (gig economy2) in the US, with the consent of big capital based both in the US and Mexico. As pointed out by researchers from the Economic Policy Institute—Jeff Faux in particular (Faux 2017)—not only did NAFTA make 700,000 jobs disappear, but it empowered businesspeople in the negotiation of salaries. It also plummeted—virtually froze—the capacity of negotiation and caused the subsequent collapse of membership in US unions. More than just a ‘trade agreement’, NAFTA contains hundreds of pages of a vast framework of rules and procedures designed to offer investors in large corporations, and bankers—on both sides of the border and beyond—rules of the game loaded to their advantage, “giving privileged access to the US market of goods produced in Mexico, where salaries are meager and regulations weak. This FTA also contains subtle protection mechanisms for managers, investors, and corporations, including secret courts for labor and environmental disputes. Employers on both sides of the border have

1 This “Agreement” on the part of the US signifies a treaty level accord of the sort first established by Franklin D. Roosevelt that can be placed into effect with a simple legislative majority in both houses instead of requiring a two-thirds majority in the Senate as in the case of treaties. 2 Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘gig economy’ as: “a way of working that is based on people having temporary jobs or doing separate pieces of work, each paid separately, rather than working for an employer. Workers eke out a living in the gig economy, doing odd jobs whenever they can.” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/gig-economy.

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always been favored and protected, and on the other side of the Atlantic they thought of NAFTA as a ‘pilot plan’ for big capital.”3 The present book provokes great interest thanks to a themed and careful exploration of the period in which Donald Trump’s presidency come into force in the US, a power that since the end of World War II—and more intensely after the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11)—shows signs of becoming a domestic and international regime of exception via a growing and cruel military and commercial unilateralism. Of ocurse, the attack against the US labor force did not start with Trump. As US Senator Elizabeth Warren points out, it has been for decades that “armies of lawyers and lobbyists who represent a handful of giant corporations have pressed […] to pursue policies that maximize corporate profits” (Warren 2017: 2). But she cannot help but to warn that: …[i]nstead of strengthening the rights of working people, the Trump administration has pushed in the opposite direction. Since taking office, President Trump has signed several laws that directly undermine the wages, benefits, health and safety of American workers. The President and the Republican Congress have rolled back rules designed to make sure federal contractors don’t cheat their workers out of hard-earned wages. They’ve delayed safety standards that keep workers from being exposed to lethal carcinogenic materials. They’ve given shady financial advisers a few extra months to cheat hardworking Americans out of billions in retirement savings. The list goes on. WARREN 2017: 3

Although continuity and structural characteristics amongst this administration and its predecessors exist, we can now observe asinine gestures and mannerisms, similar to Mussolini’s, that reflect at every turn a liking for inflicting damage and pain upon the weakest inside and outside of the capitalist system that has been sinking into a crisis of accumulation since the 1960s/1970s. Just as Senator Warren suggests, the super-exploitation of the workforce under what can be characterized as National Trumpism is not to be under-­ estimated. Like National Socialism, it holds great political-electoral and ­psychopathological power that can be seen in Trump’s actions and words with a racist, classist, hateful tone and a unified dehumanization of ‘the others.’ In 3 North American Free Trade Agreement. https://www.nafta-sec-alena.org/Home/Texts-ofthe-Agreement/North-American-Free-Trade-Agreement. More detail on the impact of NAFTA over the American working class can be found in Jeff Faux (2013). Also, see Faux (2006) or in Spanish, Faux (2008).

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the past, this has amounted to a fatal prelude to exterminations. There is no better indicator of the cruelty contained in a government than the direction taken by its budget and the fact that in the first year of the Trump administration, civilian deaths in US wars in the Middle East and northern Africa had already exceeded the elevated records of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. This also had a domestic correlate in matters of public spending. Robert Reich, a university professor and former Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration, analyzed Trump’s first budget “in terms of values and priorities” in which a massive $3.6 trillion cut over a ten year period was proposed based on reductions in assistance for the poor, the homeless, Medicaid, access to food, Social Security Disability insurance, health insurance and care for children from low income families. Trump move to redirect these “freed up” resources into a vastly increased level of military spending while seeking “fiscal equilibrium” through massive tax cuts carried out in favor of corporations and the very rich. For Reich, the president’s budget “celebrates a cruel and virulent form of individualism—much like Trump himself.” 4 In the present book’s crucial fourth chapter, Sotelo formulates a novel hypothesis that has not been previously included in the academic literature and, as he claims, “was not contemplated even by Marini,” namely, a fourth modality in the super-exploitation of the workforce that would be being built through the imposition of labor precarity and its updating through the precarization process of all of the elements that constitute the world of labor, such as salaries, functions, categories, subcategories, employee benefits, labor costs, unionization, collective labor agreements, flexibility and deregulation.5 Sotelo’s approach coincides with Marini in that “the super-exploitation of the workforce is settling itself inside the systems of production and labor (organization) of imperialist countries structurally and systematically, ­ ­although subordinated to the logic and laws that rule the production of relative surplus value and its institutional correlates like the State, scientific-technical development, imperialism and autonomy of their capital cycles that they maintain as a hegemonic category. Thus, under this understanding and method, and in line with Marini, we consider that the dilemma of the universalization of super-exploitation of the workforce in contemporary capitalism is solved regarding both its reach and limitations”.6 To the vast anti-worker offensive described by US Senator Warren, one must add the use of “Right to Work” type laws, frequently used in the United States 4 See robertreich.org. 5 From this book: Sotelo, Chapter 4. 6 Also from this book: Sotelo, Chapter 3.

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to overwhelm unions by cutting off their sources of income. It was noteworthy that the Canadian representatives demanded the annulment of these “laws” during the negotiations of NAFTA. The initiative is part of Ottawa’s effort to get the US and Mexico to adopt upward standards for the workforce and not a “Right to Work” mechanism that accentuates worker precarization and union fragility. Jerry Dias, leader of Canada’s largest private sector labor union, said he was “very pleased with the position the Canadian government is taking on labor standards,” and added “Canada’s got two problems: The low wage rates in Mexico and the right-to-work [laws in] several states of the United States” (Slate, 2017). Thanks to the warning by Mayra Rodríguez Valladares (2018) of MRV Associates about the data offered by the US Federal Reserve the Report on the Economic Well-Being of US Households in 2017 (Board of Governors 2018), we have a more direct approach to the realities that support Sotelo’s novel proposal. The data are significant. In a synthesis of the general and crucial features of the economic structuring of US society in which the expansion of a precariat is experienced, the report prepared for the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve shows that the impact of super-exploitation of the workforce on the families of the bottom half of the US, i.e., the ‘precariat society’ (gig society), is a sociological as well as economic reality. In the words of Rodríguez Valladares7 published in The Hill: Data are powerful storytellers. The data tell a story of two Americas barely cohabiting within the same borders. One America is comprised of the people who are benefiting from a growing US gross domestic product and having the lowest unemployment rate in 14 years … 74 percent of adults responded that they were ‘ok financially’ and living comfortably. This is 10 percentage points higher than five years ago. The majority of survey respondents stated that they are ‘satisfied with the wages and benefits from their current job and are optimistic about their future job opportunities.’ Additionally, 95 percent of Americans have a bank account and hence are in a position to try to obtain credit if they needed it.

7 Mayra Rodríguez Valladares is Managing Principal of MRV Associates, which provides financial consulting, research and training on financial regulation issues. She has 25 years of ­financial regulatory experience from her time at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JP Morgan and BT Alex. Brown.

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Yet, the data also tell a worrisome story about a vast swath of Americans being left behind in this country’s second-largest economic expansion in its history. The plight of those Americans left behind should worry not only those affected, but all of us whether we are legislators, central bankers, regulators or ordinary residents. Their plight, especially if it worsens, will affect what legislative actions and policies will be needed to improve living standards for all. Rodríguez Valladares adds, “…leaving these people behind will impact our competitiveness in decades to come” (Rodríguez Valladares 2018). Indeed, the report allows us to see how the outlook of the world of labor has changed just in the last five years where 30 percent of American adults are now in the gig economy (precariat). This may seem great in terms of allowing Americans more control of their leisure time. The reality is that most people in the gig economy have to work much harder to have enough money to live, and they have to be able to cope with the risk and emotional strain of not having a stable, earnings stream. Forty percent of adult Americans, or 100 million people, cannot cobble together $400 in cash for a medical emergency without selling a possession or going into debt. While the figure may appear better than five years ago, when it was 50 percent, the US population has also grown since 2013 (Board of Directors 2018: 64). Worse yet, 20 percent of adults cannot pay all of their current month’s bills in full, which means that they also get hit with penalty fees and risk being cut off from any credit. Sadly, 25 percent of American adults skipped necessary medical care because they could not afford it. A large number of Hispanic- and African-Americans fall into this population in the process of precarization. In the words of Rodríguez Valladares, “[w]hen you break out African- and Hispanic-American responses, only 66 percent state that they were doing ‘ok financially’ as opposed to 75 percent for respondents as a whole (Valladares 2018).” Those percentages demonstrate that there is a rise in poverty for the most held back sectors of the former society of opulence and we see how in all categories considered needed to achieve a dignified life, Hispanic- and AfricanAmericans require much more effort than those of a Caucasian origin, ­although, as the report adds, “…40 percent of Americans who are struggling are about to face even more hardships this year and in the foreseeable future since we are in a rising-interest-rate environment. Any variable-rate loan or credit card debt that they have already, or will take on, will be more expensive” (Valladares 2018). The data from this report that deals with the configuration process of two US societies are very relevant because they come from the center of big capital itself. However, the levels of precarization and inequality are far deeper.

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On a macroeconomic level, the Federal Reserve numbers are outstanding, but the big problem is that this macro prominence does not reach average citizens, as shown by Tyler Cowen, economist from George Mason University and author of Average is Over (Cowen 2013). In this book he shows that even as the US recovered from the Great Recession, precarization and underpaid labor intensified. Cowen points out that of “the jobs lost during the recession, about 60 percent of them were in what are called ‘mid-wage’ occupations. What about the jobs added since the end of the recession? Seventy-three percent of them have been in lower-wage occupations, defined as $13.52 an hour or less.” Millions of people are looking for work and cannot find it. When it became known in Mexico that Robert Lighthizer—Trump’s trade representative, with an eye on the midterm legislative elections in the US and his fundamental “reelection project”—accepted on a tactical level the proposal from Democratic legislators to include the topic of labor related to “standards that can be met” within NAFTA’s renegotiation, Mexican employers and their neoliberal Mexican government were quick to reject this.8 This was because what would be at stake is the primary source of the vast wealth accumulated by the 1% of the population here and there through the super-exploitation of the workforce of Mexican workers, a condition of labor flexibilization, agreed to and formalized by the transnational companies and both oligarchies. NAFTA also facilitates the appropriation of natural resources and primary ­enterprises and public services of the country, including energy, security and ‘national’ defense. Was is not John D. Negroponte who said, NAFTA is “the cornerstone” that can align Mexican security and foreign policy with the principles of American foreign policy? Democratic Representative Sander M. Levin was responsible for reminding people about the central issue by observing that the compensation of Mexican autoworkers is a meager 19 percent of that of their unionized US counterparts. Even after more than two decades of NAFTA, this is one of the least asymmetric items! In the mid-1970s, average wages in Mexico were 31 percent of those in the US. This was just before the great offensive by financial capital (Wall Street, the Fed and the Treasury Department through the IMF-WB-IDB) was faced with the capitalist accumulation crisis that has been intensifying since then: real class warfare under the signature of “globalization” and “neoliberalism,” where the super-exploitation of labor is a fundamental part of the “imperialization” of the periphery. And Mexico in the role of a tenacious ‘model’ has been plundered relentlessly since 1982 when—according to a 2016 study by the 8 For more on this topic see Process Magazine #2125, July 22, 2017.

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Multidisciplinary Analysis Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico—one could buy 50 kilos 910 grams (112.24 lbs.) of tortillas with the minimum wage. In 2016, it was only 5 kilos 820 grams (12.94 lbs.)! The downward standardization of Mexican salaries, in the context of NAFTA, was endorsed by the upper echelons of the Mexican government and the unions that under Salinas stripped the voice from the workforce in the negotiation of the treaty, a condition that continues to this day, with accumulated effects in the US as well, given the practically non-existent growth in salary in that country. Luis Videgaray, Secretary of Foreign Affairs during the agonizing and bloody Peña Nieto government sought to extend the catastrophe six more years by keeping his party in power. With a nostalgic echo to the ears of the northern neighbor, just in the good old days, the government and private sector comprised a single negotiating team based in the “globalization,” meaning the potentiation of the negotiating capacities of the great transnational companies, from their center and their periphery. It is a stratagem for the super-exploitation of the workforce that combines wage caps dictated by the private sectors from inside and out with growing productivity but in a context for “North America” of a persistent downward salary standardization/stagnation with an elevated electoral risk for the Republicans and Trump. It is not surprising that in a recent interview Lighthizer asked himself: “Do I believe that Mexican labor laws have had a negative effect on the United States? … Yes, I think so.”9 He immediately added “the position of the US President Donald Trump and that of the Democrats on labor standards ‘are not that far off.’” It is clear that the commercial representative is talking about precarization and the brutal wage ruin in Mexico and not about the truly progressive laws that exist on paper, torn to shreds every day by the upper echelons of the government, corporations and union cronyism. This is also in the center of the interest of not just the bankers and investors in NAFTA, but also of US politicians. Ever since a free trade agreement with Mexico had begun to be contemplated, the Democratic leadership considered the absence of class instruments that would allow an increase in the income of Mexican workers as NAFTA’s primary obstacle. Now, for Trump, extreme inequality in the US is a matter of political demagogy, although he does not seem to be fully aware of what this entails, because he

9 The Baja Post “US will seek to negotiate ‘compliant’ labor standards in NAFTA”, June 26, 2017, in https://www.thebajapost.com/2017/06/26/u-s-will-seek-to-negotiate-compliant -labor-standards-in-nafta/.

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keeps exploiting it while getting rid of any existing regulation that keeps in check the mega speculative urges of Wall Street. According to a study by Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Sáez and Gabriel Zucman (2016) and data from Global Wealth/ Credit Suisse, at the base of the processes that carried Donald Trump to the White House is a structural issue observed decades ago, but which shows its face in this study that exhibits that, between 2015 and 2016, the wealthiest 1% of the US channeled in its favor the wealth of 90% of US households, equivalent to $4 trillion or an average of $3 million per household. The wealthiest 10% captured an average windfall of $1.3 million per household. Almost half of that extracted by the 1% came from the middle and lower class. The authors of the study estimate that the plutocracy took $17,000 per household/average from 90% of the population. The loss of wealth by the middle class rose to $35,000 per household/average. This amounted to 50 million households being batted with an estimated loss of wealth of $1,760,000,000,000 and for the poorest 50%, real household income did not increase in 40 years! US Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders was the only politician of the three countries of NAFTA that dared to say: In the United States, Jeff Bezos—founder of Amazon, and currently the world’s wealthiest person—has a net worth of more than $100 billion. He owns at least four mansions, together worth many tens of millions of dollars. As if that weren’t enough, he is spending $42 million on the construction of a clock inside a mountain in Texas that will supposedly run for 10,000 years. But, in Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, grueling hours and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers. SANDERS 2018

I quote him here also because he labeled his political campaign as ‘socialist’, something unheard of at that scale in the history of the US as well as in either of the other signatory nations of NAFTA. And, for Marini, the socialist revolution was the path to take. This was not to be for the US Democratic Party’s leadership that devoted considerable resources, efforts and borderline (if not openly illegal) electoral manipulation, to stop the solid electoral progress of Bernie Sanders. Sanders was the only major politician in the three NAFTA nations that dared to challenge the powerful fossil fuel industry and the internal combustion engine automotive industry, with a massive mobilization like the one when confronting fascism during World War II. This time the danger is

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global warming and climate change, that threaten as never before in recorded history, global biota, humanity included.10 John Saxe-Fernández

10

John Saxe-Fernández is a researcher at the Programa el Mundo en el Siglo XXI (The World in the 21st Century Program) of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Sciences and Humanities at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, he is Full Professor on the ­Faculty of Political and Social Sciences. He teaches the “Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Capital” seminar and is a member of the Postgraduate Faculty in Latin American Studies and Political Science. Among his recent books are: Crisis e Imperialismo (Crisis and Imperialism), CEIICH/UNAM, 2012 and La Compra-Venta de México (The Mexico Purchase), Plaza & Janés, 2002 (New electronic edition, CEIICH/UNAM, 2016). He is the coordinator of La Explotación de Combustibles fósiles no Convencionales en Estados Unidos: Lecciones para América Latina; Hacia una Sociología Política del Colapso Climático Antropogénico (The Explotación of Non-Conventional Fossil Fuels in the United States: Lessons for Latin America); and Towards a Political Sociology of Anthropogenic Climate Collapse, 2018/2019.

Figures and Tables Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Global economy trajectory (1945–2016) and average growth of advanced countries (2011–2016)  140 GDP by world regions: 1998–2016  165 Volume of world merchandise trade  166 Average annual growth of real wages in the world, 2006–2015  187 Average wages per hour in the manufacturing industry of several countries, 2005–2016  188 United States: Real hourly wage growth over business cycles, cycle peak to cycle peak  191 Gap between productivity and a typical worker’s compensation, 1948–2014  192 United States: Minimum wage with productivity, without productivity and current real minimum wage, 1950–2016  193 United States: Average price of the basic goods basket, 2008–2017  203

Tables 1 2

Salaries in emerging Asian economies  106 Growth rates in real gross domestic product by area and country, 1998–2017  161 3 Unemployment rate and total unemployment: Trends and projections, 2007–2017  183 4 Remuneration and productivity in selected countries, 2007–2016  189 5 Growth of labor productivity, total hours worked and real GDP for major advanced economies, 1999–2016  190 6 Main highly-skilled manufacturing occupations, 2015  194 7 United States: Average hours worked by full-time US workers, aged 18+, 2014  199 8 United States minimum monthly salary, 2008–2017  200 9 United States: Price of rental housing per month and year, 2008–2017  201 10 United States: Proportion of annual minimum salary and average annual average salary/rental price of dwelling, 2017  202 11 United States: Selected monthly and annual expenses, 2015  204 12 The SLF in dependent capitalism and in advanced countries  209

Introduction The present book is divided into three parts. Part 1 contextualizes the dimensions of super-exploitation in the framework of the geopolitical crisis of capitalism and imperialism and the necessity that this system has in consolidating the super-exploitation regime of the labor force to counter both its structural crisis as well as its inevitable fall in the rate of profit. Chapter 1 first gives a brief account of the significance of the geopolitical concept and its relation to the super-exploitation of the labor force. Chapter 2 then locates the current politics of the United States government commandeered by President Donald Trump especially in terms of his intension of promoting protectionist policies making use of Executive Orders, affecting the large working and immigrant classes in the country. In Part 2, the attention turns to existing debates surrounding the deepening reliance upon super-exploitation in advanced capitalism. Chapter 3 focuses on the relationship between dependency theory and super-exploitation, at the same time highlighting the relevancy of explaining contemporary phenomena that occurs both in Latin America and the global economy. Chapter 4 is centered on the contemporary debate on the question of the extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force in advanced capitalism and, in particular, in the United States. Two problematic issues will be addressed: (a) what is the super-exploitation of the labor force according to Marini? And (b) what is the possibility of its extension within advanced capitalism or in the core imperialist nations? We highlight this Marinist position in the same way the Brazilian writer would have: the labor force becoming the essential factor in extraordinary profits during the neoliberal phase of capitalism since the 1980s, right at the point where social-democratic and right wing academics were proclaiming the theories of ‘The End of Work’, clothed by neoliberalism and positivism (Habermas 1984; Offe 1985: 129-150; Reich 1992; Rifkin 1996; and Méda 1995. For criticisms see: Antunes 2003, 2005 and Sotelo 2003, 2012, 2015). Here we raise a working hypothesis which is new and which has not been contemplated by authors of dependency theory, not even by Marini himself, consisting of a fourth form of the super-exploitation regimen that is being constructed through the imposition of the precariousness of work and renewing itself through the process of precarization of all the elements that make up the world of work such as salaries, functions, categories and subcategories, social benefits, labor costs, unionization, collective bargaining agreements, flexibility and deregulation.

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Part 3 contains four chapters that tie super-exploitation to the increasing precariousness of labor in a context of structural crisis. Chapter 5 explains some Marxist arguments in the Grundrisse and in Capital in relation to the crisis of working hours, tied to Marini’s theory of super-exploitation of the labor force. The purpose is to demonstrate that Marx’s approach to the constant reduction of the necessary work hours and the unusual increase of unpaid surplus labor (the surplus value appropriated by capital) is the axis that articulates the increase in the exploitation of labor in general and, in particular, of the super-exploitation in the dependent countries. We resume and deepen our theoretical-methodological approaches elaborated in other works consisting of the study of the relationship between (relative) surplus value and the superexploitation of the labor force in order to understand, within the global ­capitalist formation, the extension of this last category in the world capitalist economy and in advanced countries. It will also address the hypothesis of the universalization of the law of value and the extension of super-exploitation to advanced capitalism as a tendency that, more than just conjectural, tends to be implemented in the production structures and work processes of advanced capitalism affecting the social relations between labor and capital. We understand, although it is not the subject of this book, that geopolitics and the dynamics of super-exploitation entail a profound impact on nature and the environment, in addition to seriously threatening the extinction of fossil resources such as oil, gas and coal, wild species and animals, increasing the structural and civilization crisis of world capitalism putting in danger the very existence of humanity (see Altvater 2014). It is necessary to mention, for example, the General Law of Biodiversity approved on December 15, 2017, by the Mexican Senate that, according to environmental groups, puts large areas of the country at risk including natural protected areas as well as especially conditioned spaces for native species and virgin ecosystems. With this law large mining and energy companies will be given the go-ahead to exploit these special spaces putting at risk these territories, entire communities and indigenous peoples. Chapter 6 argues that fictitious capital forces the system to suffer low rates of economic growth and, therefore, affects the general profitability of capital, for which it resorts ever more to the super-exploitation regime. Chapter 7 addresses the crisis of US capitalism and the possibilities that the government led by Trump, through its protectionist policies, could take the economy of that country and the world economy out of the current hole in economic and social growth. Finally, in Chapter 8 we give a concrete study of the nature of the super-­ exploitation of the labor force in the dynamics of a developed capitalist

Introduction

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c­ ountry such as the United States, because it offers a point of comparison with the nature of this phenomenon in dependent countries, especially Mexico. For this, we make use of the most relevant bibliography, although we must clarify that it is scarce, given the temporality, the proximity of the phenomenon that is still in the making, and due to the (almost) null debate on this relevant and transcendent subject that is only just emerging as a research minefield, as indicated in Chapter 3.

Part 1 Geopolitics, Imperialism and Neo-Protectionism in the United States

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Chapter 1

Geopolitics and Super-Exploitation In this chapter we will briefly reflect on the concept of geopolitics and its relation to the super-exploitation of the labor force in order to then give a global perspective of the problem of the extension and installation of this important category to economies and productive systems of advanced capitalism, a category that comes from the Marxist dependency theory. 1

Geopolitics and the Extension of the Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force

As Ruy Mauro Marini stated (1985a) on the subject of international politics, geopolitics is defined by geographic determinations as a consequence of three factors. The first has to do with the division of states in class societies within the framework of relations of domination and of subordination between them. The second is the unequal development of economies in the context of expanding capitalism and forms of labor exploitation. Finally, we will highlight how some strong states dominate and subordinate other weaker ones in the international, regional, national and local sphere. Geopolitics is made up of two dimensions: the economic and the political. For the purposes of the present book it is in our interest to place the first within the framework of the second. In the international political economic sphere, national and transnational forces operate together with monetary and financial organisms. Geopolitics is a material expression of the International Division of Labor (idl) on a global scale, from which every state strategizes in the midst of the globalization of capital leaving behind the political division of labor within its territory, principally within three sectors: technocrats, military and politicians. ramirez 2017: 59–60

From the above definition, we propose that the super-exploitation of the labor force began to operate in a first stage—beginning with the end of the colonial period in Latin America in the mid-nineteenth century, but in a more concrete manner with the beginning of the process of industrialization that took place

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in the 1930s—exclusively in the economic and productive systems of the economically, technologically, and financially dependent subordinate capitalist countries. The centers of power and finance of imperialist nations in advanced capitalism were then found in England, the United States, Germany, France and Japan. On the other hand, the unequal development of some economies provoked a correlative expansion of the exploitation of labor that tends to deepen and homogenize in this system as a whole. Thus, with the universalization of the law of value in the capitalist mode of production on a global scale, this panorama has been changing rapidly since the 1980s, accompanied by processes of restructuring, transnationalization, flexibilization and precarization of the world of labor under the command of large multinational corporations that operate simultaneously in different countries without losing their umbilical cord that unites them and keeps them linked to their countries and their original centers of power. In this sense it is necessary to mention that geopolitics cannot be considered without acknowledging the internal and international security policies of the United States, since it operates a strong surveillance using the Central Intelligence Agency (cia), as well as an intense intervention of the Department of Defense in the dynamics of business expansion (see Saxe-Fernández 2006). In this sense and context we locate the meaning of the geopolitics of superexploitation that, by virtue of the internationalization of the productive cycles of the dependent nations under the command of the economic and political powers of the advanced countries, has been installed in branches and sectors of the production of the latter. In other words, together with the hegemony it kept, and maintains, the production of relative surplus value in the central spheres of supranational power concentrated in the hegemonic capitalist countries and their territorial spaces of accumulation (the United States, Japan, Germany, and France) are designed to impose on the workers patterns of organization and production of goods and services that undermine the labor force and their precarization to forms that end up being similar to a super-exploitation regime, but not identical to what is seen in dependent countries. The globalization mechanisms that are disseminated in a particular way through financial systems under the control of fictitious capital (see Chapter 6) is today hegemonic on a global scale when compared to the other fractions of capital (productive, commercial, usurious). It makes it possible for this design and the new computer, telematic, communication and microelectronic technologies to operate in the interest of the massive diffusion of the new methods of exploitation and work organization that can be synthesized in the paradigm of flexible Toyotism of Japanese origin mainly based on the intensification of

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the labor force; the decomposition and flexibilization of the basic components of the job such as the salary, the category and the functions performed by the worker, which pass to be manipulated and planned from above under the free will of the managers of the companies and in the logic of the increase of the business profits that constitute the essential objective of the system. The result of all this is the precariousness of labor that is practically prevailing all over the world and which, from our perspective, expresses the most important metamorphosis assumed in the present century by the superexploitation of labor as an operative category—although not constitutive as it was historically for dependent capitalism—of the international economy (see Chapter 4). A map of the international productive territory, despite the national and regional differences that can be seen in terms of population, borders, ideologies, culture, political systems, economic potential and insertion in the world market, reveals that from the point of view of the work processes and the ­characteristics of their active subjects (workers) runs a parallel line that homogenizes the conditions of work and life for vast sectors of humanity. This is characterized by the increase in the average rates of exploitation of work in the context of the fall of the average rate of productivity, a decrease in nominal and minimum wages, and a decrease of purchasing power of consumer goods and essential services. This occurs not only to maintain ‘normal’ conditions for daily, weekly, and monthly exploitation of the work force, but also to maintain levels of unemployment, underemployment, informality and performance of jobs and activities of all kinds without the corresponding guarantees in terms of social security and contractual and human rights. This does not constitute a conjectural situation that can be reversed through retroactive policies of development and Keynesian ideas, which have been completely erased from the point of view of capitalist logic. For its part, neoliberalism has no other future and destiny—even in the periods of renewal and relative growth—than to deepen and extend the precariousness of the world of labor to try to counteract the current historical state of capitalism. From the point of view of space, territory and the processes of accumulation and valorization of capital, which has made possible the deployment of a geopolitics of the super-exploitation of the labor force on a global scale, there have been strong impulses of globalization of capital (transnationalization) and the opening of borders, above all commercial ones suggested by international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (true State instruments since 51% of the shares belong to the North American Treasury Department). A growing technological and productive homogenization has taken place that has laid the groundwork for the precarization of the world

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of labor, taking away social and labor rights and creating the structural, labor and political conditions to operate the super-exploitation regime without undermining the hegemony that the production of relative surplus value enjoys in the countries of advanced capitalism. In this sense, the assertion that the globalization of capital, be it through outsourcing or the application of direct or indirect investments in different parts of the world, is due to, as Dierckxsens (2017: 40) points out, the obsolescence of technology and not only to the increase in labor costs, regardless of the loss experienced in wages. Therefore we can say that together with the super-exploitation of the labor force, there’s a strong technological devaluation or obsolescence of capital in the hegemonic stage of productive heterogeneity (1950–1990), which for transnational capital is still profitable in dependent economies. Nevertheless, as Marini stated, it is losing its profitability as it homogenizes and devalues ​​technology and, in general, fixed capital, leaving then the selected work force as the essential factor of the process of reproduction of global social capital and of the profit rate. Marini explains (see Chapter 3) that the main mutation that occurred in the world of labor in the 1980s and 90s is bound to make the labor force the pivotal producer of extraordinary profits for capital and, especially, for the owners of large multinational corporations that have both the support of their imperialist states and that of dependent countries. In the case of the United States, which is an economy of war and armaments based on an Industrial Military Complex of Security and Intelligence (Sandoval 2017), subsidies hidden from large monopolies by military spending constitute one of the most advantageous practices both to overcome competition and to strengthen its expansion abroad. It should not be believed that the protectionist policy announced by the US government annuls the bases for the full expansion of the super-exploitation regime in the advanced countries under the North American leadership. On the contrary, regardless of the possibilities of the eventual implementation of said policy, the structural conditions of North American capitalism and the world economy make it impossible to retrace the economic, social, productive, and labor system to the conditions that prevailed during the post-World War ii period in terms of work processes, social benefits, salaries and social security. Due to the conditions that we observe in the following chapters, we consider that the current period, characterized from the point of view of the world of labor by precarization, flexibilization and super-exploitation, has no turning point. In any case, it will be the organized action of the working class, the proletariat and the popular classes that will determine, through class struggle, the

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paths to follow in order to reverse this pernicious situation completely unfavorable to their class interests. 2 Conclusion As outlined above, the geopolitics of super-exploitation has been made possible thanks to the processes of globalization of capital. Particularly, it has been the financial and structural crisis that has opened up the possibilities for this regime to operate in advanced countries. It may assume particular forms in accordance with the characteristics of these economies, which differentiates them from the economic-social formations of dependent capitalist countries. This is not dissolved by the extension of the super-exploitation regime to developed countries because it is they who maintain the hegemony of relative surplus value in their territories and productive spaces, and in the social relations of production that they deprive between labor and capital.

Chapter 2

Donald Trump and Imperialist Praxis The defeat of the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, and the triumph of the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump as President of the United States, is a faithful reflection of the structural crisis of capitalism that was noted by some national and international commentators as linked to the resounding failure of Obama’s administration in public policy. Therefore, the policies announced by Trump, at least in his political discourse, focused on protectionism and attacking nations that do not conform to the interests and prerogatives of the State Department and, of course, of its ruling classes. This discourse is aimed at compensating for the loss of wages and benefits of the white working class who were supposedly impoverished by the previous Democratic administration of Obama. It goes hand in hand with the brutal attacks against immigrant and undocumented workers, the majority of whom are Mexicans and against whom, in the first instance, it implemented its first executive orders (see Wolff 2018). It could be said, briefly, that while Hillary Clinton represents the class interests of the imperialist fraction of speculative financial capital (of a fictitious type), Trump represents those of industrial capital, civil and military, that certainly in the first case has lost ground in inter-capitalist competition globally. And in particular, against active competitors such as China, Germany and Japan, especially China that has expanded its scope of action, for example, to Latin America and Africa, particularly since 2010. Yet, we must clarify that from a historical point of view and of the imperialist geopolitics both fractions (Democrats and Republicans; see Note 6, Chapter 5) act as one when their interests are threatened and disrupted in any serious circumstance vis-à-vis the working classes or the states that are considered ‘hostile’ to the United States. So do not be fooled by the ‘benignity’ of any of these forces against the problems and contradictions of capitalism because they will always revert against workers and peoples. The verdict of the Supreme Court of the United States on January 21, 2010, known as Citizens United vs. The Federal Election Commission, which allowed the participation of private companies in electoral campaigns, reveals the extent to which the political system is completely designed to strengthen the interests of the ruling class and that of big capital.

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The Vicissitudes of Neo-Imperialism1

Historically, imperialist capitalism has constructed geo-political and strategic coordinates and parameters of its action in the world space. The former define the location and position in different points and spaces of the earth where military bases are usually established to guard and reproduce their interests. The parameters are those that guide the imperialist action in terms of the fulfillment of the objectives stipulated in the coordinates. The above is stated in order to emphasize that the imperialist system is not limited to the action of one country, such as the United States, Germany, France or England, a block (nato) or a region (EU). Rather, it corresponds to a global system within the very structure of operation of the historical capitalist mode of production in its current phase that we can characterize as neo-imperialist when we add the phenomena that have been incorporated such as fictitious capital, unusual development of technology, the computerization of processes and products, the deployment of so-called globalization, and the simultaneity of commercial transactions thanks to systems interconnected by means of computer technology, since the original concept was formulated creatively by Lenin and other Marxist authors. Or as Bellamy (2015: 37 and July 1, 2015) stated: “The question of ‘new imperialism’ is reduced to the question of neo-liberalism or any particularly brutal incarnation of expropriation”. In this context, regardless of the person that occupies the Imperial Presidency in the United States—that, according to Saxe-Fernández (2006: 29, 40, 122; see also Schlesinger 1973), we understand both as a concrete expression of contemporary imperialism and as a symbiosis between corporations and the State, which expresses itself in the pre-eminence of power executive—the president in turn must move within the strict framework which sets the parameters and coordinates of an imperialist system that, in order for it to reproduce itself, must necessarily do so by completing the actions of deployment of investments, appropriation of territories, invasion of countries, imposition of policies of any kind (protectionist or free-trade or their combination), reserving the right to at any time resort to the use of force. This explains why the United States is brewing a war in Syria (where it illegally occupies part of its territory, as in Iraq and Libya) as well as in the Korean Peninsula today. It 1 From our perspective, the prefix ‘neo’ encompasses the classical theory of imperialism in its Marxist sense in order to contemplate the new elements and phenomena that have been added over the course of its historical development up to the present day.

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should simply be noted that, after the attacks on September 11, 2001, the US has fought at least 11 wars around the world. An event that, at the same time, served to overshadow a statement made by the then Secretary of Defense of the United States, Donald Rumsfeld, one day before the September 11 tragedy, that $2.3 trillion could not be accounted for and had been lost by the Pentagon. As Anderson (2014: 141) states: The Democratic Party takeover of the White House in 2009 brought little alteration in American imperial policy. Continuity was signaled from the start by the retention or promotion of key personnel in the Republican war on terror: Gates, Brennan, Petraeus, McChrystal. Before entering the Senate, Obama had opposed the war in Iraq; in the Senate, he voted $360 billion for it. Campaigning for the presidency, he criticized the war in the name of another one. Not Iraq, but Afghanistan was where US firepower should be concentrated. Within a year of taking office, US troops had been doubled to 100,000 and Special Forces operations increased sixfold, in a bid to repeat the military success in Iraq, where Obama had merely to stick to his predecessor’s schedule for a subsequent withdrawal. The emphasis placed on the candidacy of Donald Trump, which nobody would have bet on at first, overshadowed the role played by all previous rulers, Democrats or Republicans, particularly the Obama administration, in terms of their invasions of sovereign countries, wars, deportations of thousands of undocumented people and other atrocities of the imperialist system which is in no way derived from a ‘peculiar way of governing’ but of an aggressive foreign policy that represents, since the end of the US Civil War (1861–1865) the interests of the big monopolies. Everyone wanted to wish away Trump’s victory against Mrs. Clinton who considered herself a follower of Obama’s policies, painted by the hegemonic media under the sponsorship of Wall Street as a ‘defender’ of human rights; and as someone who would ‘save’ the most important program of the Democratic Administration: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ppaca also known as ‘Obamacare’) and halt the deportation of undocumented people. The mainstream media ignored their warmongering efforts against nuclear powers like China and Russia. There is nothing new under the sun! Only the illusory design of public figureheads that appear different in a perverse reality that threatens the very existence of humanity.2 2 During the Obama presidency, the US military bombed Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Since assuming his first presidential term on January 20, 2009, the president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after bombing seven countries, arming the Islamic State and provoking military conflicts in several countries (see RT January 20, 2016).

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Like the Roman Empire, in the United States the power of the president is almost omnipotent. The president is chosen indirectly every four years in November, not by the people, but by 270 delegates who make up the Electoral College consisting of 538 members of the political elite of that country selected in individualized ways by each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The presidential candidate is given the authority to select who will be the vicepresidential candidate. The Electoral College was established in the original US Constitution as a compromise between direct election by a popular vote of eligible citizens and election solely by a vote in the US Congress. It is, therefore, an indirect vote and not an electoral system based on universal, direct and secret voting—as seen in other capitalist countries—since 1787 when the founders of that country decided not to trust their citizens but rather to deposit all the weight of the election on the States. That system was ratified by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution (Amendment xii) in 1804 and survives to this day, not without presenting serious problems. In the 2016 presidential election, for example, it was demanded that the votes be recounted. Many in some states, especially Democratic Party supporters, asserted suspicions that electoral fraud had occurred. The ‘popular vote’ gave the Democratic candidate a majority of around three million votes, making Trump announce that in the event that he lost the election, he would not recognize those results (Wolff 2018). From a certain angle, Trump is the product of television and of the antidemocratic electoral system. In effect, as Goldstein says (La Haine May 14, 2017): He won the presidency using his television career as a springboard and through taking advantage of the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party leadership, and his campaign strategists also took advantage of the antidemocratic institution of the Electoral College to win an electoral victory while losing the popular vote. (Clinton was certainly also an enemy of the people: corrupt, militaristic and owned by Wall Street.) Of course, without forgetting his participation in the overthrow of democratically elected presidents such as Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (deposed and expelled from the country on June 28, 2009) and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (dismissed through a controversial impeachment trial on June 22, 2012), as well as his, albeit covert, role in the recent parliamentary coups d’état that have been seen in Latin America in recent years. For a global perspective see Petras January 10, 2017. Along this same line, on March 9, 2015, President Obama issued an interventionist decree declaring Venezuela to be “a threat to the security of the United States” that was rejected both by the Venezuelan people and by popular, social and union movements throughout the world. (For a definition of the Democratic Party and Obama, see Unión del Barrio August 15, 2017.)

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A heap of analyses, opinions, and reports, from mass media and from social media networks, were diffused to coincide with the speeches of the candidates in an attempt to persuade the general public to support and vote for them. Mrs. Clinton’s discourse was practically the same as the arguments of past Democratic presidents, prioritizing warmongering threats against Russia and China.3 Meanwhile, the xenophobic, racist and conservative Trump primarily went against the undocumented and immigrants in general. He promised to ‘recover’ the power of the United States—framed in what is known as ‘American Exceptionalism’ (Lipset 1996)—through protectionist policies that already existed under the neoliberalism of the ‘free market’ that is in crisis today. By the way, it is not the only occasion in which this ebullient euphemism has been evoked (for a critical view, see Hodgson 2009). Thus, for example, the US president Barack Obama spoke of the ‘exceptionalism’ of the United States before the 68th UN General Assembly, as a response to the article written by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin for The New York Times (see Putin September 12, 2013) where he questions this national singularity proclaimed by the leader from the White House. In his speech Obama stated “some may disagree, but I believe that the United States is exceptional, partly because we have demonstrated good will, through the sacrifice of blood and money, advocating not only for our own interest, but for the interests of all”. In this regard, the analyst Eric Draitser (September 29, 2013) addressed Obama’s speech and said that the old notion of the exceptionality of the United States has deep roots in the American psyche but that now the world has undergone a ‘tectonic change in global geopolitics’ that puts into question the superiority of Washington. For Draitser this really means the desire of the United States: to assert its right to dominate politically, economically and militarily or in any other way where it deems appropriate … Obama is using this rhetoric to put himself above Putin morally, above the Chinese, and above any of the so-called ‘troublemakers’ in the UN Security Council … The language that Obama is using is used not only to show that, somehow, the United States is above other countries, but also that it is above international law, 3 “Clinton… is furiously anti-Russia and is one of those who are pushing to use nato, Ukraine and so on, to surround Putin’s Russia, and we must not forget the country that is now the biggest boogeyman: China” (Valenzuela 2017: 107). In fact, as Chomsky (2017, 204–205) says “… the hawks in Washington see China as a potential enemy of the first order, and a good part of the military planning is being oriented according to that eventuality”.

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above the same institutions that the UN represents, and above all that has happened since the Second World War. Draitser concludes that all of Obama’s anger against Russia and Putin corresponds to the fact that Russia does not accept ‘exceptionalism’ and that we are seeing ‘a tectonic shift in global geopolitics’, since the countries that 10 years ago would not have dared to question the notion of exceptionality and the capacity of the United States as well as their right to assert its military authority throughout the world, are now doing so. Unlikely as it is, Trump has promised the resurrection of a protectionist ­industrial capitalism that will promote a process of ‘re-industrialization’ that, ­according to him, was strongly damaged by the previous Democratic administrations, especially through nafta. As a representative of the interests of US industrial capital, Trump said he would promote protectionism, even threatening to impose sanctions and taxes on entrepreneurs who intend to invest and take their factories abroad, particularly to Mexico where real hourly wages in dollars are 10 to 14 times lower than those in the United States. In this protectionist context, Trump said that he would apply compensatory taxes consisting in the imposition of a 35% tariff on all those companies and capital that leave the United States (see Table 4 and Figure 5). Even members of the Austrian Marginalist School, under the emblematic figure of the Nobel Prize for Economics, Friedrich von Hayek—father of austerity policies—were left stunned, since for advanced and dependent capitalism these types of policies were functional in the ‘Welfare State’ environment that today everyone repudiates, especially neoliberal entrepreneurs, the main supporters of the ‘free market’ such as the imf and WB. It is evident that with the protectionist policy proclaimed by the new president of the United States, this situation will be exacerbated, not only for Mexican workers, but also for Americans themselves. In fact, the ravages on this side of the border are already beginning to appear due to demands to prevent the installation of new transnational plants of North American origin in Mexico, from which they extract multimillion-dollar profits at the expense of the super-exploited labor force. Thus, Trump managed to convince the owners of the American company, Carrier, which specializes in air conditioning equipment, to halt a move of their factory to the state of Nuevo León, Mexico, supposedly ‘saving’ around a thousand American jobs in Indiana. Will the owners of this company maintain workers’ wages 10 or 14 times higher than those that would be paid to Mexicans, whose income is historically low? Similarly, the transnational company Ford, at the behest of Trump, decided to cease the expansion

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of its factory in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. We must point out that this American policy, though attributed to Trump, is not new. In this regard, Juárez (November-December 2017: 16) notes that following the 2008–2009 crisis, the uaw union and the management of the three major North American car companies (GM, Chrysler and Ford) signed agreements in 2011 cancelling investments that were to be made during the next 5 years in Mexico, Brazil and China with the reorientation of said investments to the United States. Under this new government administration we will have to see how they will solve the problem of having to pay much higher wages per hour in the United States, with a differential of up to thirty times that paid to Mexican workers (see Figure 5). Therefore, from the point of view of business and capital, it is an inconvenience to return these companies and jobs to the United States, being that in congruence with their capitalist interests they are looking for low-wage countries and regions in search of extraordinary profits. Remember that capital has no homeland; it has only interests. And it defends them at all costs! We must emphasize that one of the comparative advantages between Mexico and the United States, in terms of immigration and the global cycle of capital, has been precisely the economic annexation of the former by the latter country (see Saxe-Fernández 2002). This is coupled with agricultural and manufacturing production based largely on export maquiladoras commanded by international capital. The Mexican economic system has specialized in the massive export of supernumerary, cheap, docile and flexible labor that does not practically count with human and labor rights and that has nurtured the ranks of the army of workers in the United States allowing the bosses of this country to obtain large and juicy profits in industry, profitable agricultural activities and services of all kinds (see Chapter 6). Therefore, undocumented activity is not, as the Republican president thinks, something harmful to the economic cycle and the reproduction of capital. On the contrary, it turns out to be the greatest advantage that American capitalism has in order to obtain high rates of exploitation and an accumulation of surplus value derived fundamentally from the combined mechanisms of intensive and extensive labor and the very low salaries that, even today, are located below the wages of Chinese workers and other countries of the so-called third world (see Figure 5). This is one of the advantages that help explain the historical dynamism of the US economy since at least the 1960s. That is why we say that the protectionist policies that President Donald Trump threatens to impose as part of his security and labor practice are not only doomed to failure, but also will have to be redesigned by Congress confronting the rebellious and competitive reality of a complex global capitalism in a secular crisis whose internal dynamics have

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established the mechanism of the super-exploitation of the labor force as the best system of production of surplus value and capital accumulation based upon the flexibility of labor, labor deregulation, low wages, the precariousness of the components of the world of labor, and the evisceration of workers’ social and contractual rights practically all over the planet. In our view, the illusory nature of this policy is not so much that it cannot be materialized, since the history of capitalism has shown that it has been in different times of its development. In fact, it was imposed during the crisis of subprime mortgages during the crisis of 2008–2009 with the intense intervention of the State to save the fictitious capital from wreckage. But the fact that this proclamation, with a certain dose of demagoguery coming from a businessman-president prone to liberalism, is made at a time when global capitalism faces more than merely a crisis of globalization or of the ‘free market’ economy identified with the capitalist practices of neoliberalism. It is a systemic and civilizational crisis that is part of a secular cycle of decadence, not only of capitalism as a form of accumulation and exploitation of the labor force, but as a mode of production and life, in whose heart Humankind no longer has any future or, if it has one, it will be within barbarism, its own extinction (see Mészáros 2001). From another perspective, perhaps this is the best way to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, which largely explains, from the 19th Century to the present, the ‘American miracle’ and its ‘exceptionalism’. It is evident that in the current era of so-called globalization or monopolistic globalization of capital, the main advantage, not only comparatively but also competitively, on a world scale is precisely the wage differentials, which tend to fall all over the world. In this neo-imperialist era of high concentration and centralization, extraordinary capital gains are the engine of contemporary capitalism (Marini 1996) and are preferably based on the super-exploitation of the labor force, so that its price is constantly pressed downward, contributing to the increase of unemployment, the average exploitation rate in the system, the flexibilization of the labor force and its precarization, as well as the deterioration—or disappearance—of labor rights and benefits such as pensions and retirement, social security systems, training, scholarships, food vouchers, housing and health programs, among others. Another factor that deserves our attention is that the United States cannot be treated as any other country with which it could be compared to (Mexico, South Africa or Brazil). Additionally, and different from these, it is the main representative and chief of the capitalist-imperialist world system through its economic and financial organisms: such as the imf and the WB; diplomats, such as the UN; the ministry of the colonies, as is the oas to the United States;

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and militaries, such as nato. This is often forgotten and as Chomsky (2017: 222) says “… It is often misleading to focus on a single region of the world, forgetting that Washington plans on a global scale”, a practice that Petras and Veltemeyer (2005: 14) say is: … a project of world domination, submission of peoples and countries around the world to the interests and the dominant power of an imperialist state. Imperialism, according to this definition, takes on different forms and involves the application of economic, ideological, political and military power. Even ex-president Carter defined the United States as an “oligarchy with unlimited power to bribe” (The Intercept July 30, 2015). So we affirm that any representative of the executive of the imperial presidency, independent of the party to which they belong and from being elected by the College of Electors, essentially does not change the vocation or the imperialist practices of the United States. At most they govern and make ­decisions in their own peculiar way, but obviously within the unalterable framework of its imperialist policy throughout the world. It is in this context that we must view the differences between Barack Obama and Donald Trump on matters such as immigration and Free Trade Agreements, foreign interventionism, domestic politics, healthcare, and sanctuary cities, to mention just a few topics of interest. As a result of Hillary Clinton losing the presidential election in the Electoral College, a campaign was launched that sparked hysteria in the corporate media, among the Left’s own intellectuals, and even those on the Right, creating a sense that Trump was going to bring about the ‘end of the world’. It was seen as the mephistophelian stage of ‘human civilization’, as if we were not already in the aftermath of a civilizatory hecatomb caused by capitalism, threatening the very existence of humanity. This narrative was prevalent in the media, such as in the pro-Clinton cnn, whose spokespeople predicted that she would be the winner of the electoral contest. Since it did not go their way, a whole series of ‘explanations’ were discussed to justify what had transpired. The truth, essentially, was that the ritual was fulfilled and the president-elect was precisely the one who threatened to expel from his country 3 million undocumented immigrants in a first wave because, in his opinion, they were rapists, thieves, murderers, vicious and all other kinds of qualifiers, exposing his deep racism and xenophobia. The furious onslaught of the US President against migrant workers, especially against 11 million undocumented Mexicans was widely repudiated by social organizations in the US.

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Part of the myths and fallacies that motivated sectors of the electorate, including Hispanics, to vote for the Republican candidate were the following: (a) immigrants take Americans jobs; (b) there is a very limited number of jobs, therefore, a greater number of immigrants will bring more competition that, at the same time, will put downward pressure on salaries; (c) undocumented workers, foreigners, particularly Mexicans that constitute the majority, are vicious, rapists and criminals and ‘degrade’ the public and social life of Americans; (d) North American unions are against immigration because it ‘harms’ the white American working class; e) immigrants do not pay taxes; (f) they are a burden on the economy; g) they send remittances to their countries of origin and ‘harm’ the United States, causing strong fiscal deficits; and h) they represent a ‘danger’ because they are invading the United States (see Chomsky 2011). All these myths promoted by the dominant media controlled by Washington caught the minds and consciences of a one-dimensional North American society (Marcuse 1964) currently in a deep crisis—which, among other explanations, is the crisis of the ‘American way of life’ and the so-called Welfare State. The corporate controlled media manipulates this malleable society with ideas using mass media, electronic and social networks, and helped propagate the poor arguments that the Democratic candidate presented throughout her campaign. These arguments were guided by the policy guidelines implemented by her party and those marked by the class interests of financial capital— forming an ideological orientation that resulted in the election of the Republican candidate. It is evident that this ideological spectrum radiated by the North American ruling classes and the national and international media will damage Mexico-US relations and, in particular, cast shadows of uncertainty over the populations of both countries. On top of all of this, in the face of structural, financial and monetary crisis, remittances from the United States are central to obtaining foreign currency in Mexico due to the precipitous drop in oil derivatives due to the decrease in the average price of the mixture. Mexican oil exports fell from $116 to $53 dollars per barrel in March 2012 according to the Ministry of Economy of the federal government. Remittances also remain the main source of foreign currency because tourism has been affected by the violence of the repressive and counterinsurgent practices of the Mexican State throughout the national territory, including massive violations of human rights that help create a climate of widespread insecurity in the country that ‘scares’ tourists and visitors. In short, we are looking at an imperialist system, as portrayed by Lenin and other Marxist analysts (see Bellamy 2015), that does not change despite the arrival of Trump or of any other person who has been elected. The United States is an active protagonist despite the increase in its problems and its relative

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decadence4 as some authors linked to world system analyses, and dependency theory, demonstrate. Indicative of this loss of United States supremacy is the fact that the Obama administration fell as a heavy burden on a government already reaping the most negative results of recent decades. Not only because the Democratic candidate lost the elections in the Electoral College amid a series of criticisms and after having shown that she had the support of Wall Street and financial capital, and not because Obama never fulfilled his promises to push for immigration reform in his two terms of government, but also because of the serious limitations of successfully imposing his aggressive policies against various nations of the world. A paradigmatic case is Syria, where the imperialist project commanded by the United States and terrorist groups against the legitimate government of President Bashar Hafez al-Assad is being lost, thanks in large part to the military, logistical and strategic support provided by Russia as an allied power. It must be remembered that at the same time that the government of that country proclaimed that it was about to defeat the terrorist forces in Aleppo, the United States and the UN proposed a ‘ceasefire’ the intention being to use that truce to their advantage and to regroup and strengthen the forces that the State Department called the ‘the moderate opposition’. The United States failed to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria that enjoyed overwhelming military support from Russia, finally achieving the liberation of the strategic city of Aleppo by defeating and expelling the terrorist forces that sought to divide it in favor of the geopolitical and strategic interests of the West and the United States, in the same way they did to Iraq. TeleSur television reported that in mid-September 2017 the Syrian army had achieved total control of 85% of the national territory, at the same time predicting an imminent victory.5 The important thing is that up until now the Syrian-Russian strategy of maintaining Syria’s territory and nation-state intact has come out on top. Similarly, and also without success, there were attempts at overthrowing the democratically elected Bolivarian government. It is noteworthy that in the absence of solid arguments to explain the defeat of Mrs. Clinton and the triumph of Donald Trump, the emotional outgoing speech given by Obama went as low as to accuse the Russian president, Vladimir 4 For illustration of this relative fall of the United States, even at the military level against powers the size of Russia and China, see Sapir 2008. 5 On December 8 and 9, 2017, respectively, the Russian Ministry of Defense, President Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced the complete liberation of the Syrian territory and the final and complete defeat of Daesh (Islamic State). Meanwhile Iraq officially announced the end of the war against Daesh and the defeat of the Islamic State. Both cases, especially the first one, meant a resounding strategic failure of the military option for the United States.

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Putin, of being the architect of the victory. According to him (cyber) espionage was used against the Democrats and their candidate. Yet, it was Mrs. Clinton who was discredited by the fbi for endangering the security of the State through controversial emails. At his annual conference, the Russian president stated: “The administration of the outgoing President of the United States, Barack Obama, divided the nation by calling for voters to not vote for the President-elect (Donald Trump), that was a step that divided the nation”. He also recalled that the Democratic Party not only lost the presidential elections, but also the Senate and Congress where Republicans now have the majority. Mockingly Putin asked, “Is this also my work?” in reference to the accusations that he was directly responsible. He added: “All of this shows that the current Administration suffers structural problems and the elite of the Democratic Party does not understand the real situation”. He took the opportunity to assert “I think it is positive that 37% of the voters of the Republican Party sympathize with the Russian President … That means that a large part of the American people have the same idea of how the world should be, sharing common problems and dangers” (efe and AP, Moscow, Russia, December 23, 2016). Another event of undeniable importance was the approval by the UN Security Council, on December 23, 2016, of a historic resolution condemning the Israeli settlements in the West Bank with 13 votes in favor of the members of the Security Council and the surprising abstention of the United States. For the Palestinian government, this represented a heavy blow against Israel. However, it was leaked that Trump, in coordination with the government of the latter country, tried unsuccessfully to prevent the adoption of that resolution. This gives an indication of its foreign policy on the Middle East in the next months and years6, as well as in other regions such as Latin America, especially in relation to Cuba and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela today besieged by the internal forces of the extreme right. There was also a declaration by the US government saying they will not rule out military intervention against this South American nation. Kurt Tidd, the admiral and head of the United States Southern Command, signed operation “Venezuela Freedom-2” agreeing to unconventional war aimed at the overthrow of the constitutional government of Venezuela in order to reinstate the right wing government and return it to the neoliberal Fourth Republic controlled by the United States. 6 With the announcement of the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem (which is the legal and legitimate capital of Palestine) on December 5, 2017, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the ‘capital’ of Israel. This aroused strong and intense reactions of unrest in different countries, governments and international organizations that considered such a unilateral decision to have enormous repercussions for the global peace process in the Middle East.

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In the context of the crisis of the global capitalist system, these events mark a turning point in world history characterized by the relative decline of the supremacy of the United States, as commander of the imperialist system, in the context of the emergence of new powers of undoubted nuclear stature such as Russia, China, India, North Korea and Israel among the most important, and with undoubted capacity to destroy the planet several times over. However, even under these conditions, US military spending in 2016, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (cited by Peterson Foundation June 1, 2017) totals $611 billion against $511 billion that is the total for China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany. It is not by chance, therefore, that the rhetoric of the elected president of the United States revives old protectionist and nationalist policies, practices and ideologies accompanied by rabid racism, particularly against non-white communities, exacerbating xenophobia and making promises that are practically unrealizable. He promises for ‘the good of the American people’ and ‘humanity’ to revive what was once called ‘American exceptionalism’ that will ­return to them the old imperial power that it enjoyed historically against practically all the countries of the world, particularly in the post-World War ii ­period. This ‘ideal’ of the elected businessman makes one recall the racist stench pronounced by a California State Attorney in 1930: “… It was us whites who found America first and we will protect ourselves in our enjoyment of it” (Chomsky 2011: 4). As president-elect, Trump caused his first diplomatic incident with China by having a telephone conversation with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, prompting the Chinese Foreign Ministry to file a complaint. This broke with diplomatic protocol that had existed for decades, something that may not have happened if the president-elect had been Mrs. Clinton. Inside the United States the racist and xenophobic promulgation of Trump and his entourage of the ‘white’7 (as they like to self-qualify assuming that you can classify the human being into ‘races’ as you do with animals) engulfs North American social and political fabric, intensifying racism and encouraging fascist and farright organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, to hold open demonstrations in support of the president-elect. Thus we have the uncovering of the sewers of 7 In his first speech as president Trump said: “Today’s ceremony has a very special meaning … Because today we are not simply transferring the power of one administration to another, or from one party to another, but we are transferring the power of Washington, to give it to the people”. Reading between the lines this phrase refers to that ‘white race’ that founded the United States.

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historical racism and violence, as well as an enkindling of class struggle in the United States. It should be mentioned that there are around ‘784 active hate centers’ (Sanders in Tasini 2015: 143). An unfortunate event occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 14, 2017 when a known ultra-right and white ­supremacist group took to the streets to defend a statue of Robert E. Lee, a general of the Confederate slave states during the Civil War. During this event a white neo-Nazi man killed one person and injured several other people who had joined the anti-fascist counter-protest. The media and others have said that this incident took place because of President Trump’s racist policies, inspiring and encouraging racists with his statements.8 These examples demonstrate that all social, political, cultural, geo-strategic and military problems that surround the practices of imperialism on a global scale in no way depend on the personality of those who temporarily assume the political crown of the ongoing global power (United States). On the contrary, it is the historical-structural conditions of multiple relationships and determinations of class struggles, economic and political crises, natural calamities and environmental disasters that are the main problem. It is the ­implementation of neoliberal economic policies under the auspices of the ­International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And it is the annexation of countries and territories, coups d'états, crises of bourgeois democracy and an endless number of problems whose solutions are far from being found that are central. These are what in the long term determine the action of the rulers and the peculiar way in which they affect the course of imperialism’s development on a global scale.

8 Although from an earlier period in the US, we must mention the horrific massacres perpetrated by unhinged individuals such as the one that occurred in Blacksburg, Virginia on April 16, 2007 where there were 33 dead and 29 injured; Tucson, Arizona with 6 dead and 14 injured on January 8, 2011; the July 20, 2012 tragedy in Aurora, Colorado with 12 killed and 59 injured; and that of December 14 of the same year with 20 dead children and 6 adults in Newtown, Connecticut. A terrible massacre left 59 dead and 527 injured at a country music concert on Sunday, October 1, 2017, perpetrated by a shooter from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Yet another tragic event occurred on February 14, 2018 (on Valentine’s Day, a day paradoxically meant for love and friendship) perpetrated by a 19-year-old student, Nikolas Cruz, with a R-15 semi-automatic rifle that killed 17 students and injured 14 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the city of Parkland, in southeastern Florida. The ngo Gun Violence Archive reported that in less than two months of 2018 there were already 30 mass shootings. However, before these atrocities occurred the government neglected to reform the laws that allow the indiscriminate sale of weapons and their use. Because for the system in the US, like war, this business means juicy profits defended with blood and fire by parliamentary leaders and governmental authorities.

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The White House businessman is a genuine representative of North American imperialism who, beyond his egocentric, authoritarian and remarkably aggressive profile, does the job for a system that began to be built in the second half of the 19th Century. Imperialism is an economic, political and domination system, whose raison d'être is territorial expansion, the dispossession of peoples, communities, countries and entire regions, that does not hesitate to resort to use of force and war (Selser 1994, 1997, 2001). A Republican triumph in a capitalist world that is currently submerged in deep systemic crisis and decadence is perfectly natural. That is why it is completely secondary if the Imperial Presidency is occupied either by Bush, Obama, Clinton or Donald Trump. At most, the only thing that changes is ‘the style of governing’, but only within the structural order of the geopolitical and military interests that overdetermine it and whose synthesis expresses the unity of the military and financial leadership within the US power bloc. It is a delusion, to say the least, to think that the course of history would have changed radically if it would have been Hillary Clinton, or someone else in power. Ultimately, the behavior of the United States would not change, for example, in Latin America in terms of attempts to overthrow the progressive governments (of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador) considering what they have already done, in Argentina and through the parliamentary-institutional coup in Brazil, for the benefit of US interests, the imf and the WB. To forget that premise is to attribute the essential dynamic of changes to circumstantial, ­secondary and subjective factors such as the election of a candidate, the particularities of his or her performance, and his or her personal good or bad intentions. By doing this we misunderstand that social and human phenomena run and are constituted as historically determined global products that dialectically articulate multiple relationships that explain their nature and their ­dynamics within a concrete totality.9 These facts, we insist, are typical of an imperialist system regardless of who heads it. The most serious thing is that sectors of the left have assumed these theses to the extent to the extent of defending ominous and neo-Pan-American treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta), present characters of the ruling elite such as Mrs. Clinton or Obama as ‘democrats and human rights defenders’ and, what is more regrettable, cite them as the architects that will ‘solve’ the serious crisis of the global capitalist system, not understanding that this crisis is a genuine

9 Against the fragmentation of knowledge, the American philosopher, quantum physicist and disciple of Albert Einstein, David Bohm (2002: 32), labeled the method of holistic, procedural and non-divisible apprehension, as “Totality Not Divided into Flowing Movement”.

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product of its structural, social, political, environmental and military contradictions that far exceed the individual actions and the will of the rulers. It is logical and completely viable to think that Trump’s presidential management, a team of white billionaires in power, will affect the world with its peculiar way of intervening in domestic and global events. These facts reveal the behavior of a ruler in the unalterable framework of imperialist politics that all the representatives of the United States obey, both in their own country and in relation to the nations of the world. Not to abide by these guidelines may even imply the dismissal of the president in turn, as happened, for example, with President Richard Nixon after losing the war in Vietnam. In our opinion, the emphasis placed on protectionist politics constitutes a historical turning point in international relations which the United States maintains with Mexico and, of course, with Latin America. There is an impulse to apply a ‘nationalism at all costs’ that recalls the best moments experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s where, alongside the expansion of US imperialism, there were internal measures designed to ‘protect’ the United States from the economic crisis and the attacks from abroad. That was the famous ‘New Deal’ consisting of a set of measures implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1937 to counteract the causes of the economic crisis that erupted in 1929. It was based on a protectionist policy that aimed to guarantee the recovery of the growth rate of the United States through programs to combat unemployment and sponsor a future development that was ultimately not achieved. It was only after World War ii that the United States finally emerged as a super-power in the international sphere, only to be contained by the other superpower, the extinct Soviet Union. The ultra-nationalist Trumpism recalls the most nefarious moments of furiously anticommunist McCarthyism driven, in the context of the Korean War, by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Cold War period in the United States (1945–1985). Today we can just add supremacism, sexism, xenophobia and racism to the mix and we get a complete picture of the characteristics of the Trump administration for the next four years and beyond. The emergent revival of protectionism in the United States represents a failure, and at the same time expresses the crisis of the neoliberalism of the imf and of great international capital, that by blood and fire prevailed in the last three decades with greater or lesser intensity across the world. In a way the bottom of the iceberg was revealed with the defeat of Hillary Clinton who represented the interests of financial capital both in the United States and outside of it. The triumph of the Republicans was characterized as disastrous yet, according to the Department of Commerce, US gdp grew only 1.6% in 2016

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(see Table 2), the weakest growth since 2011 and slightly above the average for the period 2007–2013, which was 1.1% (see Table 5). The policy and strategy of Trump intends to promote protectionism within the United States that will tentatively allow it to recover its deteriorated industrial and educational system with a view to recovering the so-called ‘American exceptionalism’ and, by this means, counteract its visible loss of hegemony in the international system.10 But let’s not be naive; it will continue to impose the free market, commercial openings, privatization, and the classic restrictive and monetarist policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank externally. That is, in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East they will maintain and intensify their destabilizing policies, especially in Syria, when it suits their expansionist and militaristic interests. In this context, war is only a pretext to hide policy and strategy failures. A project of this nature requires time and investment to create the possibility of counteracting the deep contradictions of a capitalism in a systemic crisis that is increasingly immersed in a quagmire without an exit from economic stagnation, expanding unemployment, precarization of work, and the sharpening of the struggles of classes and all kinds of conflicts and social calamities. These conditions drive them to recover their rates of profit by revitalizing the war and weapons economy, combined with the increase in exploitation and the super-exploitation of the labor force (see Chapter 7 of this book). We will have to see what happens first, a ‘rebirth’ of that prototypical industrial economy of Fordism-Keynesianism that flourished in the first half of the 20th Century with a ‘Welfare State’ and a workforce with ‘reintegrated rights’, or the term of a failed administration that has to rethink its imperialist project of capitalist redeployment on other bases and in a global context completely different from what it was after World War ii. What needs to be understood fundamentally, in the long term, is that the two exhausted ‘projects’ are not viable for the ‘saving of capitalism’ on either side of the border and in the international environment. It will take at least more than four years. It remains to be seen whether Trump can manage to incubate the industrial-production egg in the belly of the worn-out American capitalist system before it explodes in his face! You cannot compare the administration of a Trump hotel brand with an extensive and complex country like the United States that lives inside the convulsive and chaotic world capitalist economy.

10

For a prospective of thought tanks see National Intelligence Council January 2017.

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Executive Orders and the North American Crisis

There’s a dangerous imperialist hologram that inhabits the mind of Donald Trump and which radiates rays of light in opaque circles that gradually dissipate until they vanish. Flanked by borders and walls that divide it, not only geographically, physically, territorially, and culturally, the United States intends to ‘shield itself’ from ‘external enemies’ such as the bulky and ‘dangerous’ human crowds, including millions of undocumented Mexican workers that the new government equates with terrorists. It intends to do this by using its powerful military and anti-immigrant paramilitary groups (such as the official border patrol) and racists (such as the Ku Klux Klan, which most of the time is supported and promoted by the United States). This is just a continuation and deepening of Obama’s ‘border security’, in other words its militarization, only now it is presented by Trump (Chomsky 2011: ix). Donald Trump’s attitude should not be of any surprise, for in less than a week he decreed two Executive Orders of enormous importance not only for Mexico but for the whole world and, in particular, for Latin America. It is clear that the businessman is the purest expression of the need to implement a policy that focuses on the defense and preservation of the interests of the capitalist system as a whole. This is done by trying to recover its own national space through protectionism and an offensive against immigrant and undocumented workers, especially the Mexicans whom it has super-exploited in a b­ arbarous and cruel manner since the 1960s when Mexico, a dependent and underdeveloped country, became an exporter of a cheap supernumerary labor force to its northern neighbor. In a decree on January 23, 2017, Donald Trump ordered the official exit of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (tpp), signed on February 4, 2016 by 12 countries in the Pacific and Asia that represent around 40% of the world economy and one third of total international trade: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Brunei, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Peru and Chile. It must be remembered that, among other objectives, this agreement promoted by the United States was to counteract the growing increase of China’s presence and influence in world trade and reestablish US power. The North American Free Trade Agreement was signed on December 17, 1992, and came into operation on January 1, 1994. Serious concerns and omens were raised which assured everyone that in the event that the pan-Americanist fta disappeared, the world would enter into a schizoid situation of chaos and anarchy, and the (capitalist) system would decompose. Obviously, in the promotion of this calamitous scenario, the hegemonic media, with their seat in developed

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countries and correspondents in underdeveloped countries, play a central role. 3

The Wall of Ignominy

On January 25, 2017, Trump decreed two Executive Orders on immigration matters. First the construction of the border wall 3,000 kilometers in length on the border between Mexico and the United States supposedly to “fight the illegal trafficking of people and drugs and prevent terrorist acts”. However, this is not new. People forget that there was already around 1,600 kilometers of wall and fences, whose building began in early 1994 during the Clinton administration, first in California and later in Arizona and New Mexico (Toro 2017: 228). According to Wikipedia, on December 15, 2005, the United States Senate approved a plan to reinforce the border between the two countries and build: … a border wall of about 1,123 kilometers, a length that could compare it to the Great Wall of China. On May 17, 2006, the United States Senate approved by a majority (83 votes in favor and 16 against) the amendment that foresees the construction of said wall with 595 kilometers of extension plus 800 kilometers of barriers to prevent the passage of automobiles. With this in mind, we must recall the lightning visit that the businessman made to Mexico, while he was still a candidate for the presidency of the United States, at Peña Nieto’s invitation (who was advised by Videgaray, with the ­absolute silence of the members of Congress). Here he was emboldened, and reiterated that he was going to build a border wall of 3,145 kilometers along the border between the United States and Mexico to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants. He went on to say: “I promise… it will have to be paid for by Mexicans in any way, even by confiscating the remittances millions of undocumented workers who work in the United States”. At his first press conference as President-elect, on January 11, 2017, Donald Trump reiterated the threat that Mexicans would have to pay for the Wall of Ignominy between Mexico and the United States, either through direct payment in cash, through taxes or through the imposition of conditions that force the country to pay by pressing it during the renegotiation of the Free Trade Agreement (nafta). Finally, on May 1, 2017, the United States Congress approved, by 235 votes in favor and 192 against, the defense budget presented by the White House for the amount of $788 billion. Money which was requested as a budget for the Pentagon and of which $600

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million will be allocated for the construction of some sections of the wall of ignominy. Despite this, its construction becomes more and more remote. 4

Sanctuary Cities: the Dreamers or the Fallacy of the ‘American Dream’

daca is the program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that grants residence and work permits every two years. It is intended for those who came to the United States ‘illegally’ when they were children. One of its benefits is that those covered under daca temporarily avoid deportation; however, it does not grant citizenship nor permanent residence. This has to be done through other channels and procedures. People brought from childhood to the United States are known as dreamers. There are around 800,000 of which more than 622,000 are undocumented Mexicans who have been able to survive in the United States without fear of being deported thanks to this program that was created by decree on June 15, 2012 by President Barack Obama. However, Trump canceled it on September 5, 2017. Trump now intended that applicants would be investigated for criminal records or for being a threat to national security and they must be students or have completed military service. If they pass the investigation, their deportation is deferred for two years with the possibility of renewal and they become eligible to obtain, for example, a driver’s license, a work permit, or enroll in college. Protesters from the threatened group denounced that around 800,000 people would lose benefits under the envisioned cancellation of this program. While final approval of the decree soon became embroiled in prolonged litigation, fear and stress set in for thousands of young people who remain in the US in a state of defenselessness, even though the Department of National Security has affirmed on several occasions that “… although they no longer have daca protection …” these Dreamers are not a ‘priority’ for deportation since immigration agents only endeavor to persecute immigrants with criminal records. However, according to a study by the Center for American Progress about 8,000 undocumented youth, an average of 122 per day, have lost the benefits of daca. The objective of the Trump government is to ultimately eliminate the ‘sanctuary cities’ (approx. 300 across the United States) by suspending the federal funds that have been allocated to them up until now. This measure equally affects counties or states that refuse to provide federal authorities with information on the immigration status of persons who are detained by the police. So far, the mayors of ‘migratory sanctuaries’ refuse to collaborate with the federal

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migration authorities, claiming that they will not carry out functions of this nature. This Executive Order, together with others issued by the tycoon-president, often declared through his twitter account, are supposedly aimed at guaranteeing ‘border security’ and the application of immigration laws, as well as ­‘improving the internal security of the country’. This includes, among other measures, the hiring of 5,000 border agents, the detention of ‘suspect’ persons that violate state, federal and migratory laws, and the prohibition of the practice of ‘catch and release’ consisting of the release of detainees for immigration violations. With this new provision the detainees will remain in police custody, that is, prisoners, while their deportation is determined. Local and state police officers will serve as ‘immigration agents’ through the reinstatement of the 287(g) Program, which is an agreement between local law enforcement agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice), which empowers police to enforce immigration laws, acquire resources (public or private) to build ‘immigrant detention centers’ and prepare reports that quantify and detail the economic, military and humanitarian aid that the United States has given to Mexico, directly or indirectly, in the last five years. This constitutes a state of counterinsurgency and internal detention framed as internal security, making all people ‘suspicious’ and ‘criminal’ before the gaze of agents and police until they can prove their innocence. Other domestic public security measures in the United States include: ­enforcing the full application of immigration laws against all immigrants considered ‘deportable’ and using all available systems and resources to enforce immigration laws; canceling funds destined to cities and counties called ‘sanctuaries’; guaranteeing the ‘deportation of people with deportation orders’; elaborating ‘lists of deportable persons’ that include all those considered by the authorities to be a ‘risk’ for the public or national security, such as those convicted or accused of committing crimes, immigrants who are involved in fraud or people who have ‘abused’ public benefits or who have deportation orders; and, imposing fines and sanctions on undocumented immigrants and those responsible for their illegal entry into the national territory (the so-called ‘polleros’ who generally act with impunity, with the complicity of Mexican and/or United States immigration authorities). Additionally, they plan to hire 10,000 agents for the Immigration and Customs Office (ice). From a position of strength the State reserves the right to demand that the countries receive their emigrants once they are deported from the United States under threat of imposing sanctions in the case of rejection or non-compliance. Using the threat of extinguishing daca and building the wall, Trump declared in the media

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that “… there can be no daca without the desperately needed wall at the Southern Border and ending the horrible chain migration and the ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration, etc. We must protect our Country at all costs!” (Chicago Tribune December 24, 2017). In short, either daca is preserved along with the wall or, if not authorized by Congress, the program must disappear affecting thousands of immigrants and families. Keeping with this line, the tycoon-president signed a decree, Executive Order 13769, entitled: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, dated January 27, 2017, prohibiting or delaying the entry into the United States of citizens from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and establishing that the citizens of these countries, predominantly Muslims, will not receive visas to enter the United States until their situation is ‘determined’ by means of a thorough investigation. However, this last provision was soon to be suspended by judges, not without first causing irritation in the population who had large protests and demonstrations of repudiation, even in airports. A relative triumph was achieved after this social mobilization that encouraged Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Federal District Court of Brooklyn (New York) to rule that refugees or other persons affected by the measure cannot be deported back to their countries. The Justice Department filed an appeal against the suspension and the businessman wrote in his twitter account: “Due to the prohibition being lifted by a judge, many very bad and dangerous people may be entering our country, a terrible decision”. This appeal was soon to be dismissed by judges, and to date it has not come to fruition. Symptoms of social unrest against the pernicious Executive Orders began to show a few days after the inauguration of Trump’s mandate. It was recognized as an anti-democratic instrument of the American political system which seriously damages the rights of thousands of undocumented workers and immigrants, many of whom, having their papers in order, would still have to leave the United States simply because they are Muslim. There was also a conflict that brewed from another Executive Order, to resume the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines suspended by the previous president, Barack Obama. The two projects faced strong resistance from environmental groups and indigenous peoples who denounced the oil pollution that comes from tar sands oil whose production emits 17% more ‘greenhouse’ gases. The Dakota Access Pipeline had already caused protests and resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux indigenous tribe who claimed that the construction of the pipeline would damage their sacred burial grounds and contaminate the waters of the Missouri River on which their way of life depends.

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Regional Blocks and the Automotive Industry in Mexico: the Rules of Origin in nafta

The 1980s witnessed a process of transition centered on the exhaustion of the mass production model (Fordist-Taylorist) that emerged in the first decades of the 20th Century and developed widely after World War ii, and a new production model called ‘flexible automation’ was implemented specializing in the manufacture of the automobile. According to various specialized research this model, also known as the ‘slender production system’, has the following characteristics: 1) It gives extensive attention to the systems of training and specialization of the workers with direct results in the increase of productivity, that is to say, the organic relation between each unit of effective time of work on the part of the workers and the type and use of the machinery and technology with which that work force is related in the productive space of the factory. 2) Variation in the type of automotive products, both in the terminal industry and in auto parts, accompanied by a fragmented diversification of the markets. Unlike the Fordist-Taylorist model, a single product can address the changing structure and the needs of differentiated and segmented markets. 3) The Toyotist model revolutionizes production costs, since competition is no longer verified only in terms of prices and salaries, but also in relation to the quality and productivity of finished products. Hence the boom, in the 90s of the last century, of the production method known as Total Quality Management (tqm) of Japanese origin (Coriat 1991). 4) The development of the strategy of multiple and variable markets, driven by automotive manufacturers and incorporated into other industries, achieved a substantial reduction in the inventories of companies through the adoption of production and administration mechanisms that have strengthened social relations between the suppliers and the manufacturers, and thus reached the possibility of planning more exactly for the tastes, styles and needs of the consumers, through the ‘revolution of quality’ and not only for prices. 5) This led to the structuring of a new supply method known as Just-in-time (jit) manufacturing (just-in-time production or the Toyota Production System [tps]), which allows the simultaneous adaptation of production (machines, raw materials, etc.) to the changing structure of international demand that claims evermore the elaboration of new products that,

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under the previous system, was impossible to develop in terms of its physical, technological, financial and market characteristics. 6) It is said that this new model of production and organization of work also revolutionized demand, which made it possible to reduce the stocks of the plants. However, this is exaggerated because, although the Just-intime system somehow made it possible to manage production according to demand, it has not been able to solve, structurally, the large and complex problems of overproduction of goods in capitalism. On a global scale, the automotive industry has become the leading sector of the industrialized countries that have substantially increased their levels of productivity and the scales of competitiveness of their transnational corporations in various parts of the world. Therefore, in the last 20 years, but ­particularly throughout the 1980s, the manufacturers insisted on promoting a p ­ rofound revolution in their forms of production and business organization that submerged the entire branch into an intense process of restructuring, which has been adopted by most companies in other industries. We can affirm that the course of competitiveness and productivity in the world will depend, to a large extent, on the form assumed by the global restructuring of the automotive industry. Although at present it is concentrated in a small nucleus of companies, they nevertheless make 70% of international sales. Thus, for example, in 1987, in relation to total production, only 10 companies competed for the first places. General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, ­Peugeot-Citroen, Renault, Chrysler and Fiat among others. At present, this is still the automotive map led by the large transnational companies of Europe, the United States and Japan, to which we can add some South Korean companies such as Hyundai and Kia Motors, and China’s saic Motors. It is this ­productive, dynamic core of the world automotive industry which leads the technical ­innovations, the methods of business organization and work, the new config urations of the markets and the new ways of supplying auto parts for the assemblers, as well as the territorial location of plants in different parts of the world. The revolution and the restructuring of Toyota at the international level created regions that produced for the automotive industry, which, in fact, can be traced to the 1970s, 80s and 90s, when three large regional blocks appeared on a global scale: the European region headed by Germany; the region of Southeast Asia led by Japan; and the North American region, led by the United States, including Canada and Mexico. The importance of the automotive industry in the negotiations of nafta lies in the fact that it is a highly dynamic sector of the national industry in Mexico, which, after the petrochemical industry, contributed 2.3% of gdp, and

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9% of the total of the gdp of the manufacturing industry in 1990. In the same year this industry generated 10% of manufacturing employment, calculated as some 400,000 workers distributed as follows: 60,000 in the terminal industry; 140,000 in the auto parts industry; 120,000 in the maquiladora automotive industry; and, finally, 80,000 that are occupied in the distribution chains of the country. In 2015, this participation in manufacturing gdp reached 18.5% and contributed 20.9% of manufacturing employment in this same year. However, despite the importance of this industry at the national level, there are a number of problems that concern the competitive insertion in the regional context. In the first place, the fact is that it is an industry fully controlled by the leading international companies such as General Motors and Volkswagen, to mention two of the most important ones. Secondly, there is a low participation of the maquila industries of Mexico in the national production chains, since most of their production takes place in the United States and to a lesser extent in Canada. Finally, due to the fact that: … nafta has not meant a relevant factor for the growth of the productive capacity of the industry, even though the commercial opening has represented the opportunity to increase sales abroad, at the same time the country has increased consumption of imported goods: exports as a proportion of gdp represent 28.5%, while imports 33.1%, with data for 2016. idic August 2017: 1

From the above it is evident that the generation of deficits is only alleviated by external indebtedness, cuts to public spending (including social spending), and increases in taxes on the population. 6

nafta, the Tripartite Negotiations and Donald Trump’s Position

As the Republican candidate, as president-elect and acting president, Trump declared that he would reform or, if necessary, abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) signed between Mexico, Canada and the United States, among other reasons, because he considers it an ‘unfair’ treaty and because “it is one of the worst that the United States has signed … and has cost thousands of American jobs”. A few weeks later a document was leaked, presumably an Executive Order that the president was going to sign, with the title: “Notice of withdrawal from nafta” (Executive Order January 10, 2018). The letter says: “… It is the policy of this administration to renegotiate, or withdraw from, the trade agreement that does not serve the interests of the United States”

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(Forbes April 29, 2017 and Reforma April 28, 2017). Trump backed his various initiatives through threatening to reformulate the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) as a ‘disaster’ for the United States: “nafta is a disaster for the US economy. What we agreed to with Mexico and Canada is a disaster, we are going to revise the treaty” (La Jornada April 21, 2017)11 he exclaimed. What Trump does not say—and of course, this does not interest him—is that since the treaty came into operation the number of Mexicans that live below the poverty line has increased to 14 million and about 2 million small US farmers have been displaced by big businesses (Sanders in Tasini 2015: 133). The determination of the national content of 34% for the auto parts industry and 62.5% for the Rule of Origin12 of the finished vehicles in the recent negotiations of nafta poses an important challenge to the national industry, insofar as it will have to deepen its restructuring and confer greater national content in relation to imports of auto parts, equipment and strategic automotive inputs to face international competition in better conditions. Since the negotiations of nafta began, the most difficult and controversial sectors to define their ‘rules of origin’ have been productive branches as diverse as financial services, insurance, agriculture, energy, auto parts and terminal automotive industry. In the case of this last industry, negotiations could be unlocked by setting the ‘national content’ or ‘national value added’ at 34%, which should contain the products of the auto parts industry of the three countries that make up the Treaty and 62.5% as Rule of Origin or ‘regional content’, for all those manufactured automotive vehicles that wish to enter the US and Canadian markets and enjoy the Preferential Regime. That is, the elimination of tariffs on the entrance of vehicles which prove to have a rule of origin. Trump’s government proposes to increase the rule of origin up to 85% and convert it from regional to national depending on each country, where evidently the great beneficiary will be the United States because it requires that of 85%, at least 50% come from the United States, to which the other two members of the 11

12

Trump: “nafta was a disaster and continues to be a disaster for our country”, “Remarks by President Trump at Signing of the Memorandum Regarding the Investigation Pursuant to Section 232(B) of the Trade Expansion Act”, The White House, Washington, D.C., April 20, 2017 in: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2017/04/20/remarks -president-trump-signing-memorandum-regarding-investigation. The rules of origin are the percentages that nafta requires the goods to contain. In this case, automobiles, produced with inputs coming, in some percentage, from the region that integrates the Treaty, in this case, North America (United States, Mexico and Canada). They are included in Annex 401 of nafta that refers to the local content that they must have in the products that are exchanged between the countries so that they are free of tariffs.

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Treaty are opposed. Above all, Mexico is hurt the most because it is a dependent and underdeveloped country without a proper national industry, exclusive of maquiladoras that are predominantly transnational. Below we summarize the results of the Fourth Round of negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement held in the United States. We collected the information from the Reforma newspaper (October 17, 2017). This is the regional content, particularly of automobiles, that must be manufactured in the nafta region in order not to be penalized with tariffs. For cars and pickup trucks: − Regional content: from 62.5% to 85%. − US content: 50%. The United States government is pushing for an ‘expiration clause’ to be incorporated into the fta that stipulates the obligation to renegotiate every 5 years to evaluate its extension or its extinction in terms of US interests. In addition, the United States government is pressing to eliminate Chapter 19 on the ‘Settlement of disputes and conflicts’ between members of the fta, such as antidumping and countervailing measures to make it voluntary to appeal or not. Experts estimate that the costs of an eventual exit and extinction of the fta would result in the loss of some 50,000 jobs in the auto parts industry in the United States if Mexico and Canada impose tariffs as they did before the signing of the fta. The increase in the international regional content of origin in automobiles is calculated to cause losses of about 24,000 jobs in the United States and 1,000,000 jobs in Mexico, together with the collapse of production in branches such as textiles and automotive that are strongly integrated to the North American economy. Canada, too, would lose around 125,000 jobs.13 7 Conclusion The United States government’s stance to promote protectionism and all kinds of policies aimed at compensating the United States in the economic crisis and to recover its ‘exceptionalism and unilateralism’, must be observed in a context of multipolarity and competition between powers at the international level. For the workers, this does not mean that their living and working conditions will gain substantial improvements with the promises of the government headed by Trump. Furthermore, from the perspective of the world of labor, 13

For the background, as well as for different topics of the fta, see Sánchez (coordinator), tlc, Twenty Years, Ratings and Perspectives, Juan Carlos Editor-lxii Legislature of the Senate of the Republic of Mexico, 2014.

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they will have to deal with the consequences of such protectionist policies that are completely favorable for capital and the ruling class, with the deterioration of the real wages of the workers and the increase of the average rates of exploitation and super-exploitation of the labor force. In the next chapter we address the debate on the effects of such policies on living and working conditions, with particular emphasis on the ongoing process of extending super-exploitation in productive and labor systems that seriously affect working class immigrants, though with greater or lesser intensity in accordance with their struggles, their demands and their specific location within the class structure of American society.

Part 2 Debates on the Extension of Super-Exploitation in Advanced Capitalism

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Chapter 3

Dependence and Super-Exploitation This chapter aims to explore the theoretical perspective of the exploitation of work in Marx. In the chapter following, we discuss the relationship of one of the most important theses of the Marxist dependency theory (tmd) elucidated by Marini: the extension of the super-exploitation of work to advanced capitalism as a new form of the expanded reproduction of capital, to counteract the economic crisis of capitalism and the growing problems in the production of value and surplus value that press the fall of the average rate of profit in the system. 1

Theory and Method of Exploitation in Marx

With respect to Marx’s theory of the exploitation of labor, some observations are imposed that have often been misunderstood or ignored by the critics of Marxism and dependency theory. In the first place, Marx erects his enormous work (Capital), at a very high level of abstraction. Thus, for example, in relation to the theory of value, it supposes a situation in which this value corresponds to its price. A correct methodological question that, nevertheless, does not mean that this is indeed the empirical behavior in the historical reality of the capitalist mode of production. Secondly, the concept of exploitation of labor, as the fundamental social relation of historical capitalist society, for Marx is a relevant concept that builds the theory of surplus value and profit within the capitalist mode of production and no other. That is, in the absence of the concept of exploitation, the elaboration and understanding of the law of value is unimaginable as the central axis of capitalist production and accumulation. The German author alludes to this himself when he writes: Every production enterprise of merchandise is, at the same time, a company for the exploitation of labor power, but under the capitalist production of merchandise, exploitation becomes a formidable system, which, as it developed historically with the organization of the process of work and the gigantic progress of technology, it revolutionizes the entire economic structure of society and eclipses all previous epochs. marx 2000. Vol. ii, p. 37

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To forget this premise, or to omit it, in the analysis of the concrete reality of the capitalist social relations of production is not only to limit the structural view from which the totality is appreciated, but also to grossly distort the social and labor reality producing fragmented and fetishized visions that hide fundamental relationships. This brings us to a third observation, relative to the fact that from the definition of the law of value, Marx exposes the methods of exploitation of labor identified with absolute surplus value and with relative surplus value, as those basic to the reproduction of the capitalist system in a long-term historical context. This means understanding both forms of surplus value as articulated concepts within a specific historical-social formation, in which work processes and social relations of production are combined. The periodization that arises from these two concepts of surplus value is none other than the one that incorporates the predominance, or lack thereof, of the productivity of labor based on technological development over the extension of the working day and the intensity of work or its articulation. That is, it sets the tone for studying the genesis of the development of the capitalist mode of production in its multiple articulations and definitions that result from it. Strictly speaking there is no independent phase of capitalism that has been based exclusively on the prevalence of absolute surplus value (in the prolongation of the working day) and another phase that left that behind to build on the exclusive domain of relative surplus value. Rather, we consider that since the industrial revolution that began in the second half of the 18th Century, in which this form of surplus value began to gain ground until it ­became hegemonic throughout the entire system, the other forms and mechanisms corresponding to the first, and other forms of production such as cooperation and craft work, coexist with it and unfold in each historical process of its substantial development. In other words: …the periodization of capitalism, according to Marx, is not resolved in a period in which absolute surplus value prevails and another in which relative surplus value prevails, but in the manufacturing period in which, together with the extension of the working day, the method of extracting absolute surplus value, we can observe the increase in the intensification of work and its standardization, a method of production of relative surplus value, with which the real basis for the full validity of the law of value is felt. Thus, the empire of the laws of the market and a manufacturing period in which the pressure of capital increases in favor of the prolongation of the day, a tendency counteracted by the workers’ struggles for the reduction of

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it and, on the basis of the industrial revolution, the productivity of labor is developed. It is also a method of production of relative surplus value, opening horizons to the deployment of the productive forces only limited by the relations of production in which it is framed. marini, sotelo and arteaga 1981: 66

It is from here that we must view the prism of Taylorism, Fordism and mass production up to the modern systems of organization and exploitation of the workforce centered on today’s flexible Toyotism. Each one of them involves social relations immersed in a virtuous combination for capital supported both in the forms of production of absolute and relative surplus value. Something we will return to later when we analyze the super-exploitation of the labor force. Finally, let us consider that the attempts to establish an ‘inverse proportionality’ of the absolute and relative surplus value in the texts in which the theory of the super-exploitation of the labor force has been developed, are derived from an enormous incomprehension of the different forms that it, the surplus value, can assume in its concrete articulation within certain conditions of production and circulation of capital. Therefore, it was necessary to carry out this task to locate the specificity of capitalist exploitation in dependent countries, even if they resemble, according to some authors, the historical dynamics of classical capitalism. Unlike other authors within the framework of dependency, the entrepreneurial task to develop a political economy of dependence and exploitation in Latin America was undertaken, precisely, by Marini. It is this line of work that, in our opinion, deserves to be deepened, in order to comprehend the contemporary conditions and contradictions of capitalist exploitation. 2

The Marxist Theory of Dependency and Marini’s Ideas

In his Dialectic of Dependence, Marini formulated an outline for the Marxist dependency theory, a noble task which is open to contributions since it is a passport to present and future generations of intellectuals, students, academics and collectives that are investigating and publishing in Europe, Argentina, Brazil or the United States. It is a critical perspective in the face of the dominant theories with roots in Eurocentric ideas that spread from the centers of power since the 1980s and 90s in the midst of the capitalist crisis and the disintegration of the socialist bloc and that, today, are in a systemic crisis.

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An example of this is the International Monetary Fund that, faced with the bankruptcy of the American firm Lehman Brothers in September 2008, ­logically, from its ultra-neoliberal perspective called for State intervention to ‘save capitalism’ and overcome its difficulties. While the most conspicuous representatives of international fictitious capital were backing away from their market laws and appealing for State aid to save themselves from ruin and bankruptcy, capitalism was being restructured by ‘structural reforms’ in Europe and throughout the world, which is on the verge of recession and the deepening of its difficulties in the economic, political, social and military orders. In the words of Vasconcellos (2014: 23–24): the guru of monetarism, Milton Friedman, can be considered as the godfather of the current financial crisis. Yet now he is not the economist of the moment, because what is taking place today on the stage of the imperialist right is the need to return to Keynes. Even Bill Gates and George Soros, facing the crisis of sub-prime mortgages, are stating that they are Keynesians which does not mean that they are progressive and advanced, because Keynes himself wanted to make England a minor ally of the United States and since 1933 was dedicated to avoiding the collapse of capitalism. Now it is up to Donald Trump to try and avoid this collapse with supposed protectionist and interventionist state policy measures. What Marini does in Dialectic of Dependency is to take up Marx, Lenin, Bukharin and other authors, such as Mandel, including Brazilians and Latin Americans, and build categories and apply them to the study of the development of the laws of the Latin American dependent capitalist social formation which on a concrete level makes it possible to chronicle the country and the region since: …capitalism penetrated Latin America at the national, regional and local levels. Planted by the metropolis, the capitalist structure is ‘ubiquitous’ throughout the geography of the satellite. With the arrival of colonialism what was a pre-capitalist geography became capitalist, so it would not make sense to designate it ‘pre-capitalist’. vasconcellos 2014: 67

Marini’s thought is bold, deeply critical, objective, concrete and projective. He easily forges categories and concepts that allow one to erect suggestive hypotheses and create a specific theory: that of dependency. The basic categories

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touched upon for this are: labor-value, surplus value, super-exploitation, profit, land rent, reproduction pattern, unequal exchange, transfer of value, social classes, state (counterinsurgency, fourth power), sub-imperialism and antagonistic cooperation. Without these there is no dependency theory and there would only be a sociological-Weberian or other approach to dependency such as that of Cardoso and Faletto (1969) that privilege the mode of domination, class alliances and a dependency category that is just a transitional one that can be overcome without overcoming capitalism—which is what Marini rightly proposes. For this, he takes up Lenin’s theory of imperialism and simultaneously incorporates Marx to build the formulation of super-exploitation theory and only later integrates unequal exchange to then arrive at the definition of dependency: …understood as a relation of subordination between formally independent nations, in which the relations of production of subordinate nations are modified or recreated to ensure the expanded reproduction of dependence. The fruit of dependence cannot but reap more dependence, and its liquidation necessarily supposes the suppression of the relations of production that it touches. marini 1973: 18

In his Written Report, Memoria (Marini 1991) which was a requirement for his reincorporation to the University of Brasilia, Marini himself considers that Dialectic of Dependency is an ‘undeniably original’ text that helped to open new paths for Marxist and Latin American studies in the region. It locates, using a different perspective, the study of the Latin American reality under the socio-historical specificities of our countries. It is also considered that there are other texts that are complementary and essential to the original: “The Cycle of Capital in the Dependent Economy” (Marini 1979: 37–55); “Extraordinary Capital Gain and Accumulation of Capital” (Marini April-June, 1979: 19–39); and “State and Crisis in Brazil” (Marini July-September, 1977: 76–84), which was material he prepared for an open competition to obtain a position as a professor on the Faculty of Economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. These texts show that there was a logical and dialectical continuity in Marini’s writings, articulated with the fundamental notions that he originally raised in Dialectics of Dependency and that, definitely, had nothing to do with structuralism, nor with the functionalist theories of modernization and underdevelopment. In my opinion this overlap updates the main point of the Marxist dependency theory in the general framework of Marxist thought in the 21st

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Century as the only critical doctrine and methodology of capitalism in all its forms and extensions to the set of dominant paradigms. The synthetic approach of Marini in Dialectics of Dependency articulates the super-exploitation of labor with the development of productivity (this is also linked to relative surplus value) in the dependent countries, thus discovering their intimate correlation and structural differences with developed countries. Marini highlights that: …influencing a productive structure based on the greater exploitation of workers, technical progress made it possible for the capitalist to intensify the pace of work of the worker, raise their productivity and, simultaneously, sustain the trend to remunerate them in a proportion inferior to its real value (1973: 71–72). And in another essay he says: …but once an economic process has been launched on the basis of superexploitation, a monstrous mechanism is launched, whose perversity, far from being mitigated, is accentuated by the dependent economy’s technical progress which increases productivity. marini 1978: 63–64

Marini thus demonstrates that the super-exploitation of labor restricts the internal markets of consumption of the majority of the population, especially the salaried, so the dependent system tends to turn to the outside to solve its problems and ensure its cost effectiveness. Thus, for example, the unfolding of the Latin American export economy is a phenomenon that was projected from the mid-19th Century to the mid-20th Century, something that has been fully documented by the historians of the region.1 Again, as Marini warned, Latin America’s economy, which today is in crisis, has been unfolding abroad since 1982 in an incessant search to try to alleviate its difficulties of production of goods through productive specialization for the world market. In regard to this, Marini’s approach is as follows: The unbalanced configuration of the Latin American economies, with a marked preponderance of the sumptuary goods industry, and the restriction of their markets, determined primarily by the super-exploitation of 1 For example, Halperín 1993, Cardoso and Brignoli 1979, and from the perspective of the Marxist dependency theory, Vitale 2011.

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labor and expressed in a growing concentration of income, actually pushed them towards the crisis, leaving them no other alternative than to—parallel to the attempt to open new fields to foreign investment, which reproduced in an expanded way the initial contradiction—try and achieve preferential external markets…. marini 1996: 52–53

It is not by chance, therefore, that today most of the Latin American countries, progressive or neoliberal, rest in two patterns of accumulation and reproduction of capital sustained in mono-exporting economies, although with a ­certain degree of technological development with respect to the basic characteristics that they developed during the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. On the other hand, since the 1950s—when industrialization in Latin America was carried out, particularly in the largest countries of the region, ­Argentina, Brazil and Mexico—absolute and relative surplus value began to be articulated in the field of emerging industries. In particular, transnational companies began to import their investments, their technological patterns and their methods of business management and workforce, as it occurred for example in the automotive industry with the Fordist-Taylorist system of mass production in the long post-war period. Thus, a dogma was created which stated that the full development of capitalism under the leadership of transnational monopolistic companies and of foreign capital in dependent countries was finally possible. With the advent of capitalist development over ‘national bases’ through industrialization, it was thought, in effect, that dependence was definitively ‘overcome’. But in reality: …when many believed that this transition ‘extinguished’ dependency and the theory that sustained it, Marini’s thesis on the super-exploitation of labor was superimposed on the economic-social reality of the region and was redefined according to its structural features. luce 2012: 119–141

In support of the verification of this hypothesis, in the course of the 1960s, the largest dependent countries in the region, particularly Brazil, began to experience recurring structural crises and merchandise production, but operating, unlike in the past, on an industrial base and not only on the old export economy of raw materials and food (Marini 1973: 75). In the course of the 70s, this situation would push the economies of the region in countries such as Chile, Argentina or Brazil to embark on the path of

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productive restructuring to adjust their economies according to the world market. An approach that in the Marxist dependency theory was developed under the concept of capital reproduction pattern implying dialectical articulation between production, distribution, exchange and consumption (see Marini 1982). For Marini, the basis of this pattern is the super-exploitation of labor which, as a production and exploitation regime articulates the intensification and prolongation of the working day, and the expropriation of the part of labor necessary for the worker to intensify his labor force, defined as “…a mode of production founded exclusively on the greater exploitation of the worker, and not on the development of his productive capacity” (Marini 1973: 40, my own emphasis). For Marini this mode of production—in contrast to what his critics affirm—does not annul, in the dependent economies, the relative surplus value. On the contrary, it develops in a restricted manner. It does not generalize, it does not impose its logic, nor its hegemony in the production and accumulation of capital—as it does in advanced economies—even in periods of intense industrialization as occurred in Latin American countries in the last quarter of the 20th Century. Particularly in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, which significantly increased their industrialization coefficients in the postwar period until the end of the 70s. This thesis marks the substantial difference between industrialized and dependent capitalism. In the first, there is the increase in the productive force, where the hegemonic regime that was imposed after the industrial revolution in England, is commanded by relative surplus value. In particular, where it helps to reduce the amount of socially necessary work time for the production of the value of the work force and, consequently, the necessary working time, which results in an increase in the mass of surplus value and, therefore, in the quota. In addition, relative surplus value governs the reproduction of capital as a priority and overdetermines the process of constitution and the concrete varieties assumed by the super-exploitation of labor in the context of its historicalstructural specificities (see Biondi Guanais 2018). On the other hand, in dependent economies, things happen differently, although within the process of capitalist production. Here, the super-exploitation of labor is the hegemonic category that subordinates relative surplus value that is developed restrictively along with other mechanisms of exploitation of labor, from archaic forms of exploitation and production such as absolute surplus value, servitude or slavery, but completely subordinated to the logic of super-exploitation. In this regard, Marini’s conclusion is clear: …The conditions created by the super-exploitation of labor in the dependent capitalist economy tend to hinder its transition from the production

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of absolute surplus value to that of relative surplus value, as the dominant form in the relations between capital and labor. The disproportionate gravitation that takes place in the dependent system of extraordinary surplus value is a result of this and corresponds to the expansion of the industrial reserve army and to the relative strangulation of the capacity of production. Rather than mere accidents in the course of dependent development or elements of transitional order, these phenomena are manifestations of the particular way in which the general law of capital accumulation affects the dependent economy. In the end, it is the superexploitation of the work that we have to refer to in order to analyze them. marini 1973: 100, our emphasis2

From this thesis it follows that dependent capitalism develops in function of super-exploitation, without stagnation—as critics unfoundedly claimed—and reinforces it at the same time as it hinders the generalization in the productive system of relative surplus value that in advanced capitalist countries is hegemonic and overdetermines the other forms of exploitation, in particular, absolute surplus value. The most important conclusion we can draw from above is the one that indicates that, as a result of both forms of exploitation and of the various regimes of production of surplus value, integrated economies are so constituted and these are the advanced capitalist ones and those not integrated into their territorial-national spaces (dependent and underdeveloped): …the developed countries have two triumphs in hand: the first is their immense superiority in terms of research and development, which is what makes technical innovation possible; there is a real technological monopoly that aggravates the dependent condition of other countries. The second is the control exercised in the transfer of industrial activities to the most backward countries, both for their technological capacity and investment, a control that acts in two ways: one, prioritizing the transfer of industries less intensive in knowledge to the most backward countries. Two, dispersing the stages of merchandise production between different nations, thus preventing the emergence of nationally integrated economies … These two faculties, which are the privilege of the developed centers, have an impact, as they have always done, on the international division of the work in the plane of the production. marini 1996: 58–59, my own emphasis

2 This emphasis highlights that Marini worked with the general laws of capitalism while focusing on the particular forms assumed in a dependent economy including the super-exploitation of labor.

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In order to eradicate the erroneous characterization of Marini’s thought as being ‘economic reductionism’ it is necessary to emphasize its indication—that many of its critics have omitted, sometimes deliberately—particularly that “… the implications of super-exploitation go beyond the plane of economic analysis and must also be studied from the sociological and political point of view” (Marini 1973: 101). Taken together, the essence of Marini’s thought exposed in his works in terms of the theory of dependence3 is the super-exploitation of labor, which consists of remunerating work force below its value, the structural basis of the cycle of capital of the dependent economy that develops and reproduces, even with the development of labor productivity and relative surplus value, to the extent that the latter fails to become hegemonic in the economy and society, being partly responsible—together with the action of the State and private capital—of underdevelopment and the backwardness that characterize our societies in general. From which it is inferred that the expanded reproduction of dependence extends and intensifies as global capitalism develops, at the same time that strong movements of extension of the super-exploitation of labor are manifested in the economies and in the productive systems of the advanced capitalist countries and in the international economy.4 3

Importance and Validity of Dependency Theory

One may or may not agree with Marini about the central theses that emerge from his conception of dependency theory. But what can certainly not be ignored is the original contribution that, in our opinion, Marini makes in the specific field of the exploitation of labor, that is, the fact of proceeding to link organically and dialectically the forms of relative and absolute surplus value (the headache, or the nemesis, of the critics) with the development of labor productivity. Therefore, it is technology that the neoclassical and developmentalist authors, together with the investment of capital, perceive as both ‘producer of value’ and of ‘social development in general’ hiding its deep lacerating

3 See Marini Memoria, 1982, in http://www.marini-escritos.unam.mx/, where the author ­recounts the intellectual biography of the theory of dependence and its fundamental contributions. 4 For the role played by super-exploitation of labor as a lever for the development of productivity, an issue that involves relating the current flexibilization of the labor force and labor markets with the dynamics and consequences of the introduction of new technologies in Latin America, see Luce June 2012: 119–141.

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and degrading effects on the world of labor. Let us insist that this last proposition means that dependency theory in no way moves in the field of the t­ heories of the economic stagnation of neoclassical line, as the critics claim unfoundedly, but in the unharmonic and anarchic capitalist development in macro and microeconomic conditions of structural dependence. Marini says that the central thesis in this regard is that the more technology develops the more that exploitation of labor takes place, and not the other way around. In our opinion, this is true for the following reasons. First, because historically Marini’s dependency makes it impossible at the structural level to carry out the central thesis that the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has proposed since its inception: that, insofar as Latin America developed industrialization and import substitution, retaining and reinvesting ‘technical progress’ and developing domestic markets— particularly in the relatively more developed countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina—would reach their full economic ‘autonomy’ to the same extent (Rostow 1960; cepal February 1962: 1–24; and Prebisch 1987). Not only has this not occurred in the last decades, but on the contrary we have increasingly seen, as Marini proposes in various works (Marini 1992), a deepening of the hard and characteristic features of dependence, although with a changing of their forms: subordination to the world market; superexploitation of the labor force; unequal exchange of value and surplus value for the benefit of the advanced capitalist countries, the fourth power and antagonistic cooperation; lag of the productive systems of the consumption needs of the working masses; and sub-imperialism (Marini 1973, April–June 1977, 1985 and 1985a). The liberal, social democratic and neoliberal currents present a flattering outlook for the ‘developing countries’ (inspired by World Bank approaches) and a panorama that tends toward ‘independence’ and to the ‘sovereignty’ of nations and the labor force. On the contrary, the dependency thesis of the super-exploitation of the labor force sees a tendency to the exacerbation of the super-exploitation of the labor force, stimulated to a great extent by the flexibilization of the work that occurs in the productive dimension of our economies and societies. Marini’s original contribution that so deserves our attention consists in the following affirmation. That Latin America contributed to hasten the passage from absolute to relative surplus value in classical capitalism at the time of the industrial revolution; a concrete idea that becomes the guiding thread of any contemporary theorizing on the super-exploitation of the labor force. Therefore it is necessary to at least think about the following topic: the role that contemporary Latin America is playing as a wage region for the development

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of industrialized countries such as the United States, Western Europe and Japan, especially in light of the conversion of many of our countries, such as Mexico, into food importing countries. In this directive, the nafta is registered between the United States, Mexico and Canada around very low salaries that Mexican workers earn, 10 or 15 times less than those of the other two countries. Even at the inter-professional level, this wage difference can reach up to 30 times per hour (see Chapter 8). Another important issue is the role played by the super-exploitation of ­labor as a lever for the development of productivity, an issue that implies relating the flexibilization of the labor force with the introduction of new technologies in Latin America. The increase in the productivity of labor, whether in its production of relative surplus value or not (when it does not affect the cheapening of the goods and services that constitute the value of the labor force) in every way deepens the super-exploitation of the labor force and at the same time increases the rate of capital gain by producing a greater quantity of goods. Marini’s approach in this regard is that the super-exploitation of the labor force does not deny the possibility that dependent countries become specifically capitalist, because it never opposes the concept of superexploitation with the behavior of the development of labor productivity in dependent countries, nor even on the basis of relative surplus value, which is developed but subordinated to the super-exploitation of the labor force regime. Take two texts from Marini himself where we find the dialectical relationship between super-exploitation and productivity. In the first Marini writes: …influencing a productive structure based on the greater exploitation of workers, technical progress made it possible for the capitalist to intensify the pace of work of the worker, raise their productivity and, simultaneously, sustain the tendency to remunerate it in proportion less than its real value. marini 1973: 71–72

And in another sentence he states: …but once an economic process is launched on the basis of superexploitation, a monstrous mechanism is launched, whose perversity, far from mitigating, is accentuated by the dependent economy who resorts to the increase of productivity through technological development. marini 1978: 4

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No one can doubt that in our countries, particularly since the 1950s, the import substitution industrialization in Latin America developed strongly and the production methods of absolute and relative surplus value were articulated under the hegemony of the latter in the exclusive field of cutting-edge industries (electronics, automotive, durable consumer goods, capital goods) commanded by the predominantly North American transnational corporations. These import their investments, their technological patterns and their methods of business management and force of work as it happened, for example, in the automotive industry with the Fordist-Taylorist systems of mass production promoted after the World War ii and, later, with Toyotism of Japanese origin in the 80s coinciding with the entrance of neoliberalism and the so-called market economies with a predominance of monetarist approaches, imposing austerity and reducing public spending to the detriment of social spending. On these points, which deserve to be illuminated through critical and objective analysis, some elements have been advanced. For example, Marini (Preface 1993) defines globalization as the process centered on the generalization of the law of value, that is, in the determination of socially necessary labor time for the production and reproduction of the labor force in truly international conditions for the first time. However, we must clarify that this diffusion in no way implied overcoming the structural dependence of the Latin American countries, much less the super-exploitation regime that prevails to this day. In addition to conceiving in this novel way the process of globalization as that legal-institutional framework for nations to settle their international relations, Marini also highlights the debate on the question of the super-exploitation, as that process that would not only be exclusive to the Latin American dependent economies, but, with globalization and the structural and superstructural processes that accompany it, would be generalizing to less and less restricted work environments and to the work processes of the industrialized countries themselves, affecting more and more generalized segments of the working class of those countries (Sotelo 2010 and 2012). Such is the case, for example, of the automobile industries within the Free Trade Agreement (nafta) of Mexico with the United States and Canada, where the existence of a labor force ten or twelve times cheaper in Mexico with respect to the other countries, has made Canadian and American manufacturers move their factories to Mexico as a means to achieve a decrease of the real wages of the workers of that region of ‘North America’, stimulating at the same time the growth of the industrial army of reserve and, therefore, the increase in the rates of exploitation of work. This is what, in essence, Marini refers to when he talks about the universalization of the law of value, which

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qualifies, basically, as a process of historically ongoing globalization that, although unequally, affects all salary scales both at the minimum and interprofessional levels that operate in the same branch of production. Here we must note that while both the determination of wages and the formation of the value of the labor force are strongly influenced by national conditions, nevertheless the globalization of the law of value implies that, beyond their historicalstructural differences and macroeconomic, socially necessary work time for the production of goods, the labor force is also influenced by international conditions through productive investments in work processes, financial systems, the implementation of cutting-edge technologies and, finally, by the growing influence of networks such as the internet in the conditions of operation and determination of the law of value and labor markets (see Alves 2018). It is in this context that we place the flexibilization of labor as a device of the new pattern of capitalist reproduction specialized in production for export as the most refined product of the most significant structural and institutional changes that have been occurring in recent years in terms of the international division of labor, mainly through structural reforms promoted by the State. The result consists, from the point of view of capital, in the fact of conceiving this flexibilization of work as the ergonomic decomposition5 of the workplace of the worker of the unitary elements that integrated it, such as salaries, contractual category and functions performed, in independent and polyvalent elements to be reactivated according to the needs of production and the changing dynamics of the markets by introducing ruptures and tensions in the world of labor (see Chapter 8, on Work and social tension). Obviously, this does not break with the centralization of the capital of said components but it controls them through business management by means of sophisticated procedures that allow their rationalization and improvement in the production and work processes. This flexibilization has caused new phenomena in the spectrum of the labor world that, in our opinion, tend to worsen living and working conditions in addition to fortifying the super-exploitation regime, that is, the effective articulation between the production of absolute surplus value, relative surplus value and the expropriation of part of the consumption fund of the labor force and the consequent reduction of wages below the value of the labor force: a) The determination of wages by the levels of labor productivity, a trend that is currently immersed in the economic policies of modernization in

5 Ergonomics is responsible for the study of man-machine systems; more precisely it is defined as the “communications technology in men-machine systems” (de Montmollin 1967).

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Latin America and in the advanced capitalist countries. This is a phenomenon that works against the worker to the extent that the trends to stagnation of wages, or its clear decline, are increasingly independent of the movements of the productivity of companies, which even when they are rising they do not benefit the salary scales, much less the economic and social benefits as seen in the United States. b) The search for efficiency and international competitiveness of fixed capital in determining globalized value. This issue implies greater techno­ logical dependence to the extent that the productive, monetary and ­commercial cycle of the technical-scientific processes of the dominant ­technological pattern is monopolized by the large industrialized centers and, in particular, by the monopolistic firms of transnational corporations. c) Finally, wage policies that blur their social and welfare dimensions through a State that increasingly minimizes its responsibilities to the economy and society by following the hardest canons of neoclassical and neoliberal manuals. The laissez faire in this neoliberal capitalism acquire their full dimension both against workers and humanity. The flexibility of labor, as a juridical-institutional device of the ongoing productive restructuring of the new pattern of capitalist reproduction, appears to show in its socio-labor aspect what is substantial within the process of transition from one labor paradigm to another. That is the deregulation of work and the weakening of collective labor contracts for their subsequent conversion into flexible devices, easily adaptable to the needs of accumulation and valorization of capital in the structural dimension of factories and capitalist markets. As we pointed out, to promote these processes of deregulation of the world of work, capital has been imposing labor reforms in the most diverse countries of Latin America, Europe and the United States, to codify laws, regulations, codes and statutes that consecrate the new rules of the game that will operate the antagonistic worker-employer relations (Sotelo April–June, 2013 and May 2, 2017; Thè and Soriano September 22, 2016). Against the affirmations that confer a functional and positive correlation between technological development and improvement of working conditions, we support the following corollary: this correlation is deployed in a way that is inversely proportional to that proposed by the ideologues. The greater the technological development and increasing incorporation of state-of-the-art technologies in production and work processes, the greater the unemployment generation through the bankruptcy of companies and massive and/or selective dismissals, stimulated by restructuring, privatization policies and transnational commercial opening. These are conditions that arise from the analysis of the Marxist dependency theory and its guiding principle sustained

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in the category of super-exploitation within conditions of a process of structural dependence that has been reinforced by technological modernization that, at the same time, drives a further advanced development of dependent capitalism into the sphere of the interests of big financial capital and of the modern fraction of the world and Latin American bourgeoisie, at the expense of decimating the working and living conditions of thousands of Latin American workers who, seeing their fundamental rights violated, have no alternative but to go to precarious employment, accept low wages that do not meet their needs with high exploitation rates via prolongation of the working day, labor intensity or wage reduction as has been happening in recent years. This is one of the conditions that capital and the State demand of workers to maintain their sources of employment. For those segments of the labor force that do not accept these conditions or that do not fit into the restructuring plans of the companies, the future that awaits them is to be located in the ‘informal sector’ of the economy or, frankly, in open unemployment and in misery. 4

Formulation Level of the Marxist Theory of Dependency

I believe that it is necessary to follow the footsteps of these theoreticalmethodological and research premises to locate the dimension of the contemporary Latin American dependent capitalist social formation that is the level at which Marini is located, in order elaborate the Marxist dependency theory. In this regard, in an interview, Marini says: …dependency theory is not born as Marxist thought, it incorporates Marxist instruments … the more it advances in its approaches, the more it needs Marxism until finally it is considered entirely on the plane of Marxism. sotelo July–December 1990: 53

For this reason the author insists that only Marxist theory could study and understand dependence fully, so the structural-functionalist elements had to be extirpated and completely overcome for the explicit purpose of producing a new theoretical elaboration (Marini 1992: 102). A large amount of criticisms of the Marxist dependency theory—many of them unfounded and with very weak arguments—were forged ignoring the epistemological level that emerged in the political debate of the mid-1960s in Latin America. This basically explained the problems of backwardness, dependence and underdevelopment, as well as the paths of transformation and liberation.

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In part, this was why there was a silencing impact from the Brazilian military dictatorship and the intellectual and media censorship that it institutionalized and which, in the case of Marini, provoked exile from his country for about 20 years. His thinking and fundamental contributions are scarcely being uncovered and reread in Brazilian classrooms, universities and academies even now. Even the dominant left, for example, in universities such as São Paulo or unicamp continue to ignore his work. Most Latin American academic centers today give an extremely restricted and marginal reception to his work. Marini (1978: 57–106) held a heated polemic with the Brazilians Cardoso and Serra (1978: 9–55) forcing him to respond with important clarifications of his main elaborated expositions in Dialectics of Dependency. However, only a few years ago this controversy was barely known in the Portuguese language in Brazil. From the beginning, apart from Cardoso and Serra’s criticisms that were published, he was virtually unknown in his own country. As Vasconcellos (2014: 114) says, Marini was censored before the unscrupulous attack of the Brazilian authors in the cebrap magazine that one of them directed. It was only afterwards, because of the efforts of Marini’s colleagues and friends that his masterful response was to become known to the youth and the general public, even outside Brazil. And in particular, thanks to the Mexican Journal of Sociology of the unam in 1978. With this in mind, it was the ignorance of Marini’s thought, as well as of other authors linked to him, which made it possible to ignore these polemics and the discussion of the theoretical-methodological and analytical level of the Marxist dependency theory. Vania Bambirra reflected upon the Marxist dependency theory in an interesting book published in Mexico in 1974, republished in Portuguese by the University of Santa Catarina6 forty years later. In the newer publication’s Preface, Bambirra states that: Many thought that the dismantling of Salvador Allende’s government would lead to the decline of the theory that had influenced his program but this did not happen and it continued to flourish as a theoretical framework for understanding the reality of Latin American societies not only in the works of its developers, its disciples, academic works, but also in the influence that it exerted on the leaderships of the revolutionary movements, and continues to exert on the progressive and socialist

6 Fortunately, the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Brazil, reissued this book by Bambirra, in 2013 for its dissemination in Portuguese to the Brazilian public, especially university students.

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governments that were elected and that are governing in several countries of the continent. bambirra 2013: 26, our translation

A vital question must be asked: is the breakdown of structural dependence not part of the agenda in those countries? We must reconsider this essential issue for social change and the future of the peoples of Latin America. It clarifies that the road to socialism through peaceful means practically throughout the world is a very remote and almost exceptional possibility. However, without giving a final verdict in this regard, Bambirra tells us in her preface that the phenomenon of the emergence of progressive governments in Latin America takes place in a context of crisis that she considers a terminal crisis of the system that can lead to a more or less peaceful transition without civil war or general insurrection. It is obvious that the author is thinking of the cases of Bolivia and Venezuela that are meddling in politics in order to accelerate the great engine of the history of transformation and social change, a situation that is still in the making in those countries. Certainly, Marini’s dependency theory pondered social struggle and change through revolutionary processes led by their respective vanguards (Marini 1985), understanding, however, that not every revolutionary process entails an eminently military exit, although it may at some point go through a military process. As is the case in Colombia today where there is a process of negotiations with the government that for the time being has led to the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the guerrilla of the farc-ep and not yet with the National Liberation Army (eln). Or as is the case in Venezuela where, although there was a conquering of the political power through elections by the Bolivarian forces led by commandante Hugo Chávez Frías, the nation has not been exempt, as it happens at present, from the violence on the part of the organized right as shown by two failed coups d’état (April 11, 2002 and February 12, 2015 and a subsequent spill of violence and guarimbas) that were effectively fought off by the Bolivarian government against the domestic and international right linked to the United States government. The Marxist dependency theory conceives the simultaneous struggle against imperialism and capitalism, not in stages, nor for the reasons put forward by the historical currents of the communist parties. Marini correctly argues that the anti-imperialist struggle, if it is not simultaneously anti-capitalist and for the eradication of structural dependence, will fail to successfully achieve its strategic objectives. Indeed, we must go deeper into this because the other perspectives from the left (Endogenism, Gramscism) have not yielded satisfactory results for the masses and for most of the popular sectors in the

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last decades. On the contrary, they are immersed in the neoliberal policies promoted by the right wing in power. In Venezuela there is no way to exit 21st Century Socialism (see Chávez ­January 2011). We are seeing the enormous difficulties currently facing the Bolivarian project and its government. The right wing are battered in a context of intense class struggle, as President Maduro calls it, and the ruling classes opposed to this project do not waver in using violence—for example through the famous guarimbas (street riots, vandalism and blockades of streets and avenues)—and using all the means at their disposal to defeat the constitutional government of Nicolás Maduro and reestablish and defend their interests with the support of the United States. The same happened in Ecuador where the right wing insisted on discrediting the Citizens’ Revolution and attempted to overthrow it through what the then President Rafael Correa called a ‘soft coup’. They did this after the official proposal of the law of inheritances and capital gains that affected the interests of the powerful enriched oligarchy of the country that represents less than 2% of the population. An articulated onslaught of the right and the extreme right in Latin America is taking place against all the governments considered ­progressive and any content and social vocation committed to being the alternative to neoliberalism. Thus, a peaceful or violent solution is not a matter resolved by the government or by the Venezuelan people or by the other so-called progressive governments: it will depend on the correlation of forces and on the future development of events in those countries, at the regional and international level. From the above we can summarize that the Marxist dependency theory is able to provide novel theoretical-methodological elements to explain the ­essentiality of the structural and political-social phenomena of the Latin American current that, obviously, did not exist at the time when the author published that splendid book. As it has happened with other authors, Marini was silenced by the military regime and by the later regimes headed by the civil governments after the democratization that took place in the continent after 1985 (For this topic see Salles 2013). 5

Point of Departure for a Reevaluation of Marini’s Thought

Marini is a transcendent author, particularly among the circles of the Latin American and world left who, unlike others,—such as Cardoso who rolls himself in the ramshackle sewers of neoliberalism or the old representatives of the communist parties whose organizations disappeared—continue to influence

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important sectors of the progressive Latin American intelligentsia (Traspadini and Stedile 2005 and Marini 1992). Despite the loss of prestige and the attempts to place it in oblivion, Marini—together with other people such as Gunder Frank and the Brazilian philosopher Álvaro Vieira Pinto, practically unknown to date (Vasconcellos 2014: 101)—is epistemologically reemerging with new vigor. Not among the generation that practically gave the arm a twist and turned towards fashionable theoretical perspectives; but in the ranks of the new generations, the workers and other social forces and movements. For example, the Landless Workers’ Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (mst) of Brazil has vindicated Marini, and other representatives of popular movements, leaders, academics, and students, who are increasingly using Marxist dependency theory. There are even groups that have emerged in social media networks that often promote the thinking of Marini and stimulate discussion on it, as well as dissemination through other electronic means of communication.7 In order to reevaluate Marini’s thought and its relevance in the light of contemporary events, it seems pertinent to return to the definition of dependence as ‘subordination relation’ (Marini 1973: 18). Thus, for example, the subordinate relations of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Latin America, Asia, and Africa to the advanced countries and with the United States are modified and/or recreated: for what? To ensure the extended reproduction of dependence! Not to overcome it, a question that would imply the simultaneous anti-capitalist and prosocialist struggle. Is this definition of dependency still valid? In my opinion it is and it is at this level that we have to generate, as C. Wright Mills said, a sociological imagination that creates new categories, concepts, hypotheses, theses, renewed ideas that account for the world in which we are living and the role that our region plays in it. For this, the second step we have to take is of critical importance. The first step is the one that we discussed about the location of the level at which the dependency theory has to be developed, as Bambirra correctly stated. The crucial second step is to adjust the theoretical-methodological framework of said theory to the contemporary conditions of dependency and see what new phenomena are added to the analysis and the themes. What we may call neodependence. In other words, we must specify the concrete forms assumed by the accumulation of capital, the production of value, of surplus value, the rent of land, the State or the class struggle in societies structured on the periphery 7 This is the case, for example, of the magazine Rebelion; http://www.rebelion.org/; of La Haine, http://www.lahaine.org/; and of International Alternative Journalism (pia), http:// www.noticiaspia.org/; among others.

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of advanced capitalism under dependent capitalist reproduction patterns in their respective historical social formations. From the perspective of the Marxist dependency theory we think that there are new problems and research lines that need to be elucidated. Thus, at the level of the concepts, I consider that the prefix ‘neo’ must be given specific propositive contents according to the architecture of the Marini dependency theory outline with a focus on the super-exploitation of the labor force. In reality, it means that the worker is expropriated by capital from part of his fund of reproduction and the value of his labor power and this becomes a source of capital accumulation. Essentially, Marini proposed this thesis for countries that operate in conditions of structural dependence—particularly Latin American ones—and that today, due to the scientific-technological development and the secular crisis of historical capitalism, the capitalist system as a whole is progressing toward a geometric fall of its compound rates of growth and productivity (Harvey 2012). We consider that, contrary to the negative effects that the fall of the Soviet Union and the affirmation that the Washington Consensus produced in social thought, among others—events that were used by neoliberalism to announce the ‘end of history’—a kind of reversal is occurring marked by the structural, systemic and civilizational crisis of 2008–2009, the resurgence of critical thinking. Specifically, there’s a resurgence of Marxism, in general, as a theoretical and analytical horizon of reflection in a very important nucleus of European intellectuals and thinkers and in the United States itself. It is rethinking holistically—against the one-dimensional fragmentation of knowledge imposed by neoliberalism—to remove all the webs that the neoliberal straitjacket imposed on us and is beginning to rescue topics such as the labor theory of value, unequal exchange, the transfers of surplus value to the advanced centers, the role of the State and the super-exploitation of the force of work, etc., in order to understand the essentiality of contemporary economic, social, political and cultural problems. Unlike the neoliberal, social democratic and neo-developmentalist approaches that are now completely exhausted, which once presented a promising outlook for the ‘developing countries’ (as the dominant international agencies like to classify the dependent countries) painting a panorama of ‘independence’ and ‘sovereignty’ of nations and the labor force. In reality, the theses of the super-exploitation of labor and dependence envisage a tendency towards the exacerbation of exploitation and the struggles of class stimulated by the flexibilization of work that occurs in the productive dimension of our societies through the impulsive imposition of all kinds of ‘structural reforms’ proclaimed by the dependent bourgeoisies and by the international monetary

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and financial bodies that represent the economic and geopolitical interests of the advanced countries and imperialism. 6

Globalization and the Law of Value

This topic deserves to be examined from the perspective of the critical and objective analysis of the Marxist dependency theory. A key to this is the socalled ‘globalization’ that Marini addressed in several works (Marini 1993; see also Saxe-Fernández 1999). In particular, one of the last pieces he wrote (Marini 1996) nowadays remains relevant in view of the depth of the crisis of capitalism and the almost nil possibilities of overcoming it. It is only through the ­repression of workers and oppressed classes by capital and the State that it survives, as is the case in many parts of the world such as in Greece, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Honduras to name a few. Marini defines globalization as a process centered on the generalization of the scope of validity of the law of value, that is, on the determination of socially necessary labor time for the production and reproduction of the labor force in truly international conditions for the first time. In addition, this concept of globalization thus defined would be extended not only to the labor force, but also to the other elements that determine the cost of production, that is, to fixed capital, in which the means of production count, and the tools of work and land (considered as a means of production, but also as a means of circulation: as a raw material). They are incorporated into the final product: merchandise. What is common in these three elements (labor, land and capital) lies, Marini says, in the fact that globalization—with its financial instruments— spreads, almost simultaneously, technical progress (information technology, biotechnology, new materials and microelectronics) in global production processes. Technologies designed by—and private property of—the great scientifictechnological-financial centers to commercially develop a new technological paradigm that is qualitatively different and superior to that which was known as a Fordist system of mass production. A system that dynamized the industrial production in the long post-war period and that, in the course of the 80s, would give way to the Toyotist system of production and organization of social work on the basis of the application of new technologies, knowledge and of the monumental intensification of the labor force as a method of extractionproduction of surplus value. As an extension and universalization of the law of value, following the thread of Marini’s thought, globalization generated a series of phenomena of

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various kinds in the course of the 80s that need to be discussed and analyzed through, at least, six interrelated phenomena. 7

Dissociation of the Economic Cycle from the Employment Rate

This point is fundamental to understanding the contemporary problems of the capitalist crisis, economic growth, and the behavior of the employment and unemployment rate since the mid-1970s. Thus, says Marini, after stably displaying unemployment rates equivalent to 4% of the labor force until 1973, these rise rapidly in the twenty-four most industrialized countries and reach their peak in 1983 (8%) affecting more than 30 million people. Despite the fact that the recession had been overcome in the early 1980s, unemployment still oscillated around 6% in 1990 to grow again in subsequent years (Marini 1996: 55). In this way, and verifying Marini’s thesis, we find that in 2012, in oecd countries, the unemployment rate reached 7.9%, 10.5% in the whole of the European Union, and 11.4% in the countries of the Euro Zone in that same year. In short, capitalism has been able to maintain its growth through an increase in unemployment, wage reduction and the increase in the exploitation of labor, combining the monumental flexibilization and precarization of the world of work in recent years. 8

Generalization of the Super-Exploitation of Labor in the Capitalist System

In addition to conceiving globalization as the juridical-institutional framework of indispensable reference among nations, Marini understands the super-exploitation of labor as an extensive process throughout the contemporary world as is happening in Europe, the United States and Japan to mention the main emblematic emporiums of Western capitalism. For example, in Europe ‘zero hours’ work contracts are proliferating, barely concealing the existence of an invisible slavery that puts the worker in an indefinite position, at the service of capital for his ruthless exploitation and extraction of surplus value. A paradigmatic example of this is Great Britain—the classic capitalist empire that created the great modern industry—where around 1 million people currently work under this modality, under the whip of this semi-slavery work regime within the civilized and democratic Western capitalism (for a description of the ‘zero-hour contract worker’ see El Telégrafo March 4, 2017). Two other ‘novel’ forms of ‘atypical work’ now are ‘mass work’ and the transfer (migration) of

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retired people, mainly European, to low-income senior citizens’ residences in underdeveloped countries. Both forms must be integrated within the concept of super-exploitation of Marini’s work. In this way the worker, Marini says—in a frank rebuttal of the theories of the end of work that argue that work is no longer a central category in the contemporary world (for example, Offe 1985: 129–150; Habermas 1984; and Méda 1995. For a critique see Antunes 1999; Sotelo 2012 and 2015a; and Alves 2000)—becomes the essential factor that produces extraordinary profits due to the tendency to equalize the organic compositions of capital in the world economy and the process of technological homogenization that increased the importance of the worker as a source of extraordinary profits (Marini 1996: 65). In this way, the super-exploitation of labor became a fundamental factor in facing the intensification of capitalist competition on a world scale counteracting the difficulties that capital faces in the production of value and surplus value. In this context, the new organization of work, such as Toyotism and other flexible devices corresponding to ‘neo-Fordism’, must be located and aimed at intensifying the labor force and bending its resistance to changes in order to reassess the worker as source of production of value and competitiveness for capital. From the sociological point of view, we characterize this phenomenon as the advent of a monumental process of precarization of the work force that extends on a planetary scale, which, in a few words, deteriorates the conditions of life and reproduction of the working classes. According to the International Labor Organization these are conditions experienced by more than 3 billion human beings all over the planet. Within this social perspective a research line emerges: the issue of concentration of income as one of the perverse features of the dependent economy, which continues to encourage production at the borders of the restricted market, with the bulk of the production focused on luxury products, which do not enter, or only do so in a very limited proportion, in the consumption of the majority of the workforce. Only restricted segments of the population (the dominant and middle classes) will continue to benefit from the conditions of dependent capitalism. This concentration of income reflects the changes underway in the productive sphere, that is, where the income of the different classes of society is forged. In this way, a polarized production structure leads to polarization and growth in the upper and lower spheres of domestic markets and, consequently, in incomes. The empirical evidence of the Latin American countries has revitalized the theory of dependence at this methodological and thematic level.

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The problem of concentration of income in the dependent economy causes the system to seek outward outlets, while sponsoring the super-exploitation of labor as an internal measure by the lumpen-bourgeoisie and capital to recover from the losses implied by transfers of value towards the centers, and the fall of business profits. At the same time, the need to forge a new international division of labor is reinforced, commanded by the great imperialist powers. 9

The New International Division of Labor

For Marini, the new international division of labor provokes a return of dependent countries to the simpler international division of labor of the 19th Century, but under fully capitalist methods and coverage of reprimarized, extractivist economies which are aimed at the world market and which are the current configuration of countries like Argentina, Brazil and Chile among others (Marini 1996: 59). Even countries such as Mexico, which erected a pattern of accumulation of export manufacturing capital, continue to coexist with the agrarian and mining economies corresponding to the primary export economy. Globalization and the new international division of labor have modified international relations and the old center-periphery ‘model’. Where the dependent nations were called exporters in the 19th Century and industrialized in the 20th Century with certain development focused on the internal market, they are turning again to the outside in the 21st Century. Brazil and other ­countries of the Southern Cone, for example, transfer value and surplus value (unequal exchange) in parallel with its conversion into mono-export and extractivist economies. Brazil now exports 40% of primary goods leading with soybeans, and the copper standard is higher yet for Chile. These types of reproduction patterns are hegemonic in the Latin American region: extractivist and reprimarized, nations turn their heads abroad, alongside the pattern of secondary Mexican manufacturing-maquiladora accumulation dependent on the North American economic cycle and its automotive transnational companies. At the economic level, one of the characteristics of what we might call the ‘new dependence’—due to the adherence of new phenomena that have occurred in recent decades—is the propensity to specialize production in Latin American economies stimulated by the systematic application of neoliberal economic policy with certain contents of technological development. The specialization of production is a concept that defines the new profile of these

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economies in terms of the orientation of their resources (capital, labor and land) to the most profitable activities of the world market, to the detriment of production and internal markets, causing strong movements of recession, crisis and recurrent imbalances. As a result of the specialization of production, economic restructuring and changes in the historical pattern of capital reproduction, we can see, for example, that the percentage of Argentina’s manufactured exports went from 23.2% of the total in 1980 to 25.7% in 1988. Even so, this country maintains a high proportion of primary products in its exports. Brazil increased its manufactures more significantly: from 38.7% to 47.8% of total exports in the same period. The most radical change was experienced by Mexico where manufactures increased from 29.9% of total exports in 1980 to 70.5% in 1991, while primary products were reduced from 11.5% to 7.6% and hydrocarbons (oil and gas) from 58.6% to 21.9% of exports in the same period marking a qualitative change in the pattern of reproduction of capital. What explains Brazil’s serious economic difficulties after having experienced a relative boom in its rate of economic growth—of 3.5% and 5% average, between 2008 and 2013, against an average fall of -2.9% between 2014 and 2017—is China’s decline in its import guidelines that seriously affected that country and others, such as those of the Southern Cone. This did not happen in 2008–2009 because of Brazil’s growth, one of the highest in all of Latin America, precisely because of China’s expansion in that period. Recently, however, the economic growth rate has slowed (standing at around 7%) as well as India and other so-called ‘emerging’ countries like Nigeria and South Africa (see Table 2). From the perspective of the Marxist dependency theory this opens a field of study of interest for the theory of dependence: will there be a new center in the global economy represented by China, next to the traditional centers, such as the United States, Germany, France and England? How will this influence another central issue, the constitution of what we can call ‘new peripheries in the world economy’ arising from the disintegration of the socialist bloc? How is the historical empire-dependence international relationship affected, qualitatively and quantitatively, with the emergence of China as the second economic power of the planet, particularly against the United States? Will the unequal exchange that involves transfers of value and surplus value to the centers in these new conditions continue to operate? All of them ask questions that give thematic content to the ‘neo’ prefix and, through it, to social science and contemporary Latin American theoretical and critical thought.

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Redefinition of the State within the Framework of the Democratization Process in Latin America

Marini was unfoundedly criticized because of his supposed ‘marked economism’; a mechanical extrapolation that, it was claimed, he made from an economic and political-social point of view without any theoretical and analytical intermediation. There’s nothing more false than this. Also, because he supposedly ‘did not address’ as a specific object of study the concept of State as political scientists do, which is not accurate because in several of Marini’s texts there are valuable and sufficient elements that address this, a task aimed at forging a theory of the Latin American contemporary dependent state. 11

Democracy and the Fourth Estate

Following the sequence from the populist state, going through the counterinsurgency state —which corresponds to the military dictatorships—until reaching the constitution of the State that Marini calls the Fourth Power that shelters the presence of the armed forces and corresponds to the advent of the ‘governable and restricted democracies’ that emerged in the mid-80s practically up to the present. Considering the study of the nature of the State and its relationship with the government and the existing regime in the so-called progressive countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela, it is possible to understand the link the author made between State, democracy and socialism to understand the nature of power in contemporary times. In this respect, Marini’s ­concept of the Domination System is very useful—and its conceptual differentiation with the concept of the State—understood as “…a set of elements on which a class bases its power, and the institutional expression of that power, the State, taken as the cusp of the system of domination” (Marini 1976: 93). To understand the question of the State, it is necessary to locate two processes that occur in parallel until the end of dictatorships and the arrival of governable democracies. On the one hand, the end of the expansive period of military dictatorships with the Argentine dictatorship in 1976 that lasted until the fall of the Chilean dictatorship in 1990–1991, and, on the other, the end of the revolutionary cycle—which began with the triumph of the Cuban revolution—in 1989 when the Sandinista insurgency in Nicaragua was defeated with the low intensity war and a series of very particular phenomena that occur in that region. This is reinforced by the collapse of the ussr and its inclusion in the area of ​​capitalism that will have a brutal impact to such an extent

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that almost all the communist parties of the planet disappear, and the advent of the Washington Consensus (1989). But a particularly disastrous effect of the above has been on the plane of thought, of the development of ideas. Since then, the only remaining country in the socialist and critical thinking sphere—in the middle of the swamp of neoliberal capitalism—is Cuba, a beacon that illuminates the process and is still there—supported by the ongoing experiments of Bolivia and Venezuela—with alternatives different from capitalist neoliberalism, from the perspective of eclac and, of course, from other retrograde and negative experiences from the economic and social point of view, such as the Mexican neoliberal ‘model’ in its full structural failure. For Marini, the state of the fourth power is that in which the armed forces exercise a …role of vigilance, control and direction over the whole state apparatus. This structural and operating characteristic of the State will only be, of course, but the result of the subjugation of the state apparatus by the armed forces (beyond the structures of parliamentary democracy) and of the legal order of military origin imposed on political life, in particular national security laws. marini 1987

This is how Marini describes the constant pressure and blackmail of the Latin American military to guarantee and maintain its influence, status and institutional determination in the affairs of the State as a condition for accessing the transition to democracy, particularly in countries such as Argentina, Chile and Brazil, which rushed into such regions since the mid-1980s. Obviously, in the case of Brazil the implicit commitment of the political bureaucracy and the representatives of the state power has been to guarantee unrestricted amnesty to the military repressors as a sine qua non condition of their return to the barracks, despite the fact that the people and citizens demanded that the State accept their responsibility for the crimes committed by the dictatorship (Salles 2003: 131). Thus, an agreed transition was established without rupture, peaceful and conservative, in which “the economic policy did not change, the Armed Forces maintained their capacity for political intervention intact and that later was progressively and partially reduced, responsibilities were not defined by State terror and the bionic senators (elected indirectly or appointed) participated in the constituent assembly of 1987–88” (Salles 2003: 134–135). This commitment, incidentally, is sustained to the present time in terms of violation of human rights during the military regime as evidenced by a report

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by the National Truth Commission (cnv) dated December 10, 2014 that documented the brutalities perpetrated by the military dictatorship in Brazil, by the way, still the only country in the Southern Cone that does not judge the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the dictatorship (Comissão Nacional da Verdade (cnv) de Brasil. Relatório December, 2014). In this way, since the 1980s, the commitment to the military caste was forged to amnesty them and institutionally distance them from any possibility of trial that would lead to imprisonment, sine qua non to harmonize the ‘peaceful transition’ to democracy. “A strategy began to be developed that would be fully implemented in the 80s, when the double movement of military ideology and democratic restoration demanded an immediate solution” (Marini 1992: 22, our translation). The disastrous results of the US defeat in the Vietnam War, the rise of the ‘human rights’ policy promoted by the Carter administration and the effects of the Falklands war (April 2–June 14, 1982) contributed decisively to this. While certain events helped to promote democracy—controlled, restricted and governable—in Latin America, this did not imply in any way the loss of influence on the state apparatuses by the Latin American Armed Forces, but rather a restructuring, no longer as direct protagonists of state power, but now under the shelter of civil institutions and their formal constitutional powers—executive, legislative and judicial—that had been asphyxiated by the bloody dictatorships of yesteryear. Marini states: It has to do with carrying out a political ‘opening’ that preserves the ­essence of the counterinsurgency state … (consisting of) the institutionalization of the direct participation of big capital in economic management and the subordination of the powers from the State to the armed forces, through the state organs that have been created, in particular, the National Security Council … It is leading … towards a State of four powers, or more precisely, to the State of the fourth power, in which the Armed Forces will exercise a role of vigilance, control and direction over the whole state apparatus. marini October–December 1978: 27–28

From the perspective of the US Department of State, this originated, for the Latin American reality, the concept of ‘viable democracy’ … that promoted a democratic-representative type of regime protected by the Armed Forces … that did not constitute a real rupture with the doctrine of the counterinsurgency. marini 1992: 23

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In other words, Marini argues: The strategists of Washington have begun to shuffle a new formula for Latin America, which is expressed in the idea of a ‘viable democracy’. The vagueness of the concept conceals the conviction—often expressed by the Geisels, the Videla and Pinochet—that the Latin American peoples are not yet ripe for ‘full democracy’. But it also points to a political ­solution that, without reaching ‘full democracy’, translates into an institutional regime that, by respecting essential democratic freedoms as much as possible, may have some social support. With this nuance, the American formula is closer to the practice of the Brazilian military than to that of their Argentine, Chilean, Uruguayan colleagues … Putting the euphemisms aside, ‘viable democracy’ really means restricted democracy, which corresponds to the search for the institutionalization of the Latin American counterrevolution. marini December 16, 1976

Furthermore, he states: …Brazilian political life was characterized, until the mid-1980s, by the effort made by the military to maintain the initiative and control of the liberalization process, in an attempt to achieve an institutional reformulation that would formally assure them a position corresponding to the Fourth power of the State. The exercise of this power would remain in the hands of the corporate organs of the military institution, and of the intelligence apparatuses, and its highest authority would be the National Security Council. Similar formulas inspired the Chilean Constitution of 1980, and also the one that the Uruguayan military took to plebiscite in 1982, in which it was rejected, as well as the demands presented by the Argentine military on the eve of leaving power, only partially attended. marini 1992: 24

Marini adds “a balance of events shows that only in Chile was the state of four powers fully reflected, although, far from guaranteeing political stability, it has become a constant source of institutional conflicts” (Marini 1992: 24–25).8 As

8 This last paragraph does not appear in Marini’s article (July–December 1985: 3–11), since it was added in his book published later, in 1992, when the Chilean process had matured.

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can be seen, the State of Counterinsurgency in the case of Brazil—other authors speak of the ‘State of National Security’—corresponds to the period of the military dictatorship that came to power through the coup d’état, while, for the democratizing phase, said State became one with the Fourth Estate. This means that when there is a crisis of the dependent capitalist reproduction pattern and the State based on the dictatorial regime, the military will try to renegotiate with the system (the bourgeoisies, with foreign capital and, particularly with the United States), their privileges and perks and that somehow there is a return—often formal—from the military caste to the barracks, although in fact they continue to exert an overdeterminant influence on the economic, social and political dynamics of our nations. This phenomenon, which emerges concomitant with the democratization process Marini calls the ‘Fourth Estate State’, which is added to the legislative power, the judicial power and the executive power, and, of course, the military power, although the military caste is no longer in the center of the system of domination as it existed in the 60s and 70s in the most dictatorial and bloodthirsty societies of Latin America and the Caribbean. On this political plane as a result of the process of democratization experienced by the region which had led to the generalized constitution of civil ­political regimes based on the division of powers formally expressed in the executive, legislative and judicial branches, a central conclusion is highlighted. That the tensions between the bourgeois representative democracy in power in Latin America and the growing social struggles and mobilizations, particularly by the popular sectors and the workers, generate very marked tendencies towards political authoritarianism (an expression of the existence of the State of the fourth power) as can be seen in those regimes that, after the period of dictatorships, came to power mainly through elections, as is the case in Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, Chile or Paraguay. This working hypothesis is that of a necessary concentration of power in the State in order to ensure the specialization of production (the new model of the reproduction of dependent ­capitalism) and the maintenance of a polarized, regressive and highly concentrated income structure in favor of capital (national and foreign) and to the detriment of the workforce and the majority of the population. 12

The Sub-imperialism Subject

A contemporary theme that is spilling a lot of ink, and that has provoked numerous studies, is the one related to sub-imperialism (Sotelo, 2017a). What is Brazil today and what role does it play at the regional and international levels?

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For Marini, the theme of sub-imperialism—also called ‘privileged satellite’ or in Gunder Frank’s words about Brazil: “a minor partner of the United States in Latin America” ​​(Frank 1969: 200)—was a question of economic and political strategy. Its methodology had to consider a series of questions; first its historical expansionism and its current expansion is well argued by Salles (2013). In addition, it must be considered how Brazilian capitalism depends more and more on outward expansion and the modalities that this expansion assumes in Latin America and overseas. It is stronger today due to the internal austerity policies being promoted by the de facto president Michel Temer, who keeps Brazil in a deep crisis and recession, and where companies and capital as a way of looking for a n exit look outward. That is, they look toward international trade today even though it is also experiencing a significant contraction that coincides with the low growth rates experienced by the world economy in recent years (see Chapter 7 of the present work). In this regard Marini perceived—but did not measure its magnitude or its strategic importance simply because the phenomenon had not fully developed at that time—that who is heading the subregional expansion now is actually the Brazilian State through the nedsbb (see Boito 2018: 71), the National Economic Development and Social Bank of Brazil, to countries like Bolivia and others in Africa. This issue needs to be deepened in light of the current global economic crisis and the particular contradictions that Brazil is going through, especially after the institutional coup against the constitutional and legitimate government of Dilma Rousseff. The Marxist dependency theory, and Marini in particular, provide the general framework for understanding the phenomenon of sub-imperialism in its totality, as it is constituted in concrete historical conditions within the Latin American capitalist social formations that are the intermediate level where dependence is inserted as theory and object of study, as we saw above. Although several countries in the region have sub-imperialist characteristics and traits, only Brazil is constituted as a State and an economic system with these characteristics. Therefore, it ends up differentiating itself from the dominant imperia l isms of advanced capitalism (United States, Germany, France, Japan, England) and the rest of the countries on the periphery of capitalism in the dependent areas that do not possess the conditions, mechanisms and processes necessary to constitute themselves as sub-imperialists. Rather, they end up being dominated by the classical imperialist powers and by the bourgeoisies and sub-imperialist ruling classes that are in economic, social, political and military conditions to overturn their productive apparatus, their investments, and exports in order to obtain significant benefits through the exploitation of labor by capital. They also compensate for the constant transfers of value and surplus value in favor of the imperialist centers given their

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substantive condition of being countries that are simultaneously dependent on the imperialist productive systems and on the dynamics and contradictions of the world market and the international division of labor. A concept used by Marini to apprehend the sub-imperialist phenomenon was what he calls antagonistic cooperation that reflects the relationship between an imperialist (United States) and a sub-imperialist (Brazil) country. It implies antagonism, relative confrontations of powerful national bourgeoisies, but without reaching breakdown, or open confrontation, but cooperation and inter-bourgeois c ollaboration that is more the rule than the exception, and what will govern the relations between these bourgeoisies of the United States and other dominant centers of power (Marini 1985a: 77).9 The current de facto government led by Michel Temer cooperates fully and has no major antagonisms with the United States; they complement each other in terms of regional geopolitics (Ramirez 2017). 13

The Problem of Integration and Overcoming Dependence

Marini insisted on the question of the integration of Latin America. He ­conceived it as a historical need of the peoples to strengthen their unity and identity in the face of the Pan-American expansionism of imperialism that has historically bee n registered in the region, driven by US imperialism. He reviewed the integration processes that occurred in the past from the Hispanic Americanism that unfolded after independence forming national States before the attempts of t he ‘reconquest’ on the part of Spain; the Pan-Americanism that, after the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, in 1823, extends from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and, later, to South America under the tutelage of the United States in its expansionist confrontation with Europe. In this way, …the importance that Latin America is gradually assuming for the United States will lead them to accentuate their projection on it and, going beyond the Caribbean—which they always consider their direct zone of influence—to seek to alienate the continent as a whole. The American international conference—which, summoned by the North American government, brought together in Washington, from the end of 1889 to the 9 This is what happened with the friction between the United States and Brazil during the government of General Ernesto Geisel (1974–1979) because of the issue of human rights and nuclear energy that ended with the agreements signed with the Federal Republic of Germany to launch a nuclear factory (Salles 2013: 86).

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beginning of 1890, the nations of the hemisphere—marks the beginning of an active diplomacy, which took shape in Pan-Americanism. marini 1992: 118–119

Inter-Americanism, which emerged after the World War ii and, in particular, with the creation of the Colonial Ministry officially known as the Organization of American States (oas), which replaced and renewed the old Pan-Americanism, went on to support the thesis of ‘Latin American integration’ under the undeniable hegemony of the United States: …within the framework of a growing integration of the productive apparatuses of the Latin American nations, through direct investments of capital and the action of the commercial and financial mechanisms. Thus, the counterpart of North American hegemony was the configuration of a new form of dependence, more complex and, at the same time, more radical than that which had prevailed in the past. marini 1992: 128–129

The most important result of inter-Americanism was the creation, in 1961 in Punta del Este, of the Alliance for Progress (alpro) on the initiative of the United States and with a triple objective: to strengthen the structural dependence of the region, to solve the problems of the dependent bourgeoisie that brought on the economic crisis, and strengthen the blockade against Cuba. Later, at the end of the 1950s, at the initiative of Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, the Latin American Free Trade Association (alalc) was created with the objective of increasing trade amongst them through tariff reductions and the promotion of free trade, at the same time as counteracting the influence of the gatt, created in 1947. However, as Marini points out, the alalc ended up being a favorable instrument to the interests of large transnational corporations to the detriment of Latin American countries. In addition, under the patronage of the United States and local businessmen, the Central American Common Market (cacm) was established in Central America in December 1960. In 1980, alalc was replaced by a new organization: the Latin American Association for Development and Integration (aladi), which seeks to redress the problems of intraregional trade liberalization and to demand renegotiations in this area. However, the first truly regional organization, the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (sela), was created in October 1975 composed of 28 Latin American nations, relatively independent of the line of the

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United States. The Common Market of the South (mercosur) emerged on March 26, 1991 through the signing of the Treaty of Asunción. Later, at the initiative of the US government and transnational corporations, nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement) arose through an agreement that was signed by the Mexican government on December 17, 1992 and enforced on January 1, 1994, as the Zapatista insurrection began in the Mexican southeast. Today, the Trump government has challenged this treaty if it does not conform to US interests, even threatening to abandon it. In addition, to counteract mercosur, the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative of President George H.W. Bush was implemented on June 27, 1990, supposedly to make ‘an association’ for the 90s. At the same time it promoted ‘market-oriented reform programs’ in the region to ‘guarantee’ economic growth and political stability. An attempt to prolong the neoliberal nafta, signed between the United States and Canada, was the North American ­proposal to create the Free Trade Area of ​​the Americas (ftaa) in Miami (December 1994) to expand it to the rest of the Latin American States and the ­Caribbean, with the exclusion of Cuba. However, at the Fourth Summit of the Americas, in Mar del Plata (November 2005), the ftaa was ultimately deposited in the dustbin of history. Faced with these projects of ‘integration’ commanded and induced by the United States, alternatives have arisen focused on the social and national interests of the Latin American peoples. Such is the case of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (alba) that, on the initiative of Cuba and Venezuela, was created on December 14, 2004 (as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) and, later, was renamed the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America in its vii Extraordinary Summit held in Nicaragua (June 29, 2009), signed by the Heads of State and Governments of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. Perhaps the consolidation of that renewed Latin Americanism that Marini spoke of is crystallizing with the intense process of integration and political, economic, social and cultural unification of the region since the creation of the Caribbean Community (caricom, August 4, 1973); of mercosur (March 26, 1991); of the Central American Integration System (sica, December 13, 1991); of petrocaribe created by President Hugo Chávez on June 29, 2005; the Union of South American Nations (unasur, April 17, 2007); and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (celac, February 23, 2010), also considering alternative media such as telesur, an alternative news network created on July 24, 2005 and that began its regular transmissions on February 9, 2007 in Venezuela.

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The process, however, has to be much more profound and radical. According to Marini, under his theoretical-political considerations, for there to be a genuine economic integration that, at the same time advances in the process of political integration, there has to be an updating of the ideal Bolivarian integration, in such a way that the Latin American peoples can: …build new political and legal superstructures, endowed with negotiation capacity, resistance and pressure that is required to have an effective presence before the existing super states, those that are emerging in Europe, in Asia and in America itself. marini 1992: 146, our translation

14 Conclusion These are the new contemporary issues that must be addressed and developed critically and with a historical-contemporary perspective capable of apprehending and elucidating the phenomena that today explain their ­conformation and behavior in the interest of a true understanding capable of contributing to the development of social struggles aimed not only at ‘overcoming neoliberalism’ but also capitalism and, even more important, dependency. These are the true causes of all the difficulties and calamities that workers and societies in the world go through. They are themes that help to critically update the Marxist dependency theory and Marini’s thought—and not to reject it. The wave of phenomena and the limits to which historic capitalism is coming, if not its definitive fall—which is desirable of course—present structural limits whose nature it is necessary to investigate to create new concepts and categories that finally build better future alternatives, capable of transcending this monstrous system of wage slavery and misery sustained in the capitalist mode of production to contribute to hasten its imminent historical decline. To deploy this strategic objective, the Marxist dependency theory and Marini’s thought, under the self-criticism and recovery of the main lines of Latin American social thought of the 20th Century, should aim to recreate a new, alternative theoretical base for the 21st Century of a global nature that is able to apprehend and characterize the historical reality, its surreptitious tendencies and the secular cycles in which the peoples, communities and societies of our America are immersed. In short, an urgent elaboration, with the renewed strength of critical thinking and a theory placed at the service of peoples, workers and science, as a

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visible path that makes it possible to collectively erect a new economic, social and human world order without exploitation or regimes of domination based, for the first time in the history of humanity, on freedom, democracy and on social and human relations of equality and fraternity between men and women, peoples, societies and communities.

Chapter 4

Approaches and Theoretical Controversies A rich discussion has arisen as a result of Maríni’s thesis regarding the possibility that, in developed or advanced capitalism, the regime of super-exploitation of the labor force is constituted. In this chapter, we discuss two theoretical perspectives that have arisen both from the authors who support it and from those who deny it and affirm that this would imply diluting the dependency theory. 1

Generalization of the Super-Exploitation of Labor in Advanced Capitalism

In recent years an idea has been gaining strength regarding the possibility that an intense sft (Solution-Focused Therapy) process is spreading in the developed world, that is, in the advanced economies of central capitalism, due to the many difficulties that capitalism is experiencing on a global scale. Marini was the pioneer of this approach (1993 and 1996; Sotelo 2010; Smith 2016; ­Arrizabalo 2016; Martins September–December 2017). Other authors have shown skepticism about this idea or hypothesis. For our part, we assume it in a proactive and indicative way as a research guide, not a truth wrapped in a rigid and dogmatic scheme but only to initiate a process of investigation and reflection in the theoretical-methodological framework of the Marxist dependency t­heory. In particular, we adhere to Marini’s thesis as he originally ­formulated it: In this way it is generalized to the whole system, including the advanced centers, what was a distinctive feature—although not exclusive—of the dependent economy; the generalized super-exploitation of labor. marini 1996: 65

In both perspectives, there is not yet that accumulation of data, information and evidence with which other topics within the social sciences count, enough so that this work can be successfully crowned and put to good use. However, some steps can be taken in this direction in order to check it and, if necessary, validate it in light of the mutations and crises that contemporary capitalism is experiencing in its current neo-imperialist and neoliberal phase.

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On the other hand, the understanding of the possibility that capitalism extends super-exploitation to its advanced areas, still remains in its infancy and is restricted to certain theoretical expressions, some empirical ones, and to a small nucleus of authors who have perceived it in the light of the problems of contemporary capitalism (Martins 2011; Smith 2016). This is explained, in part, by the recent nature of the phenomenon that is gradually spreading through a series of economic measures and public policies that are being implemented in the imperialist countries under the guidelines of the imf, the European Central Bank and The European Comission; a triad also known as the ‘Troika’. Even so, more and more authors recognize and value the importance of super-exploitation of labor as a specific mechanism of exploitation. For example, Smith (2016: 250–251) recognizes that super-exploitation is a third mechanism for extracting surplus value from the worker, including in dependent countries: Global labor arbitrage—that is super-exploitation, is forcing down the value of labor-power, the third form of surplus-value increase, is now the increasingly predominant form of the capital-labor relation. The proletarians of the semi-colonial countries are its first victims, but the broad masses of working people in the imperialism countries also face destitution. The new, youthful, and female proletarians of low-wage countries dug capitalism out of the hole in which it found itself in the 1970s, together with workers in the imperialism countries. It is their mission to dig another hole to excavate the grave in which to bury capitalism and thereby secure the future of human civilization. However, the issues and contents regarding this problem that are addressed in the context of the crisis of capitalism are multiplying and, regardless of the various interpretations that have been made, it is expressed in the social aspect and in the precarious world of work through a series of measures that negatively affect wages, working time and consumption in the countries of the European Union, in the United States, in Japan and, of course, in Latin America as witnessed today by the cases of Argentina and Brazil, where wildcapitalist neoliberalism has been reimposed, and majorities have seen their living and working conditions reduced with disproportionate increases in unemployment, poverty, precariousness and wage reduction (Salvia and Donza 2017). For capital there is no other possible way out other than further deepening these reforms, thus underpinning the entry of the super-exploitation regime into these societies and opening the possibility of constituting, for the first

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time in history, an authentic international proletariat capable of raising common tasks of transformation and radical social changes. In any case, the economic, political and institutional bases are being created so that the super-exploitation of labor can operate and extend its radius of action to the developed countries, as Marini correctly proposed. In this way, super-exploitation becomes the ring that binds the new systems of work organization (post-Fordism, Toyotism, organizational reengineering) sustained by the intensification of precarious and temporary work, as well as a marked trend of declining real wages of workers as it happened systematically since the Reagan-Bush administration in the United States (Chomsky 2017: 157). When we affirm that the super-exploitation of labor is installed in the international economy in no way do we consider that it no longer constitutes the defining characteristic of the dependent economy. If this were the case, Marini himself would not have made this approach, which, unfortunately, was not mentioned by his critics. On the contrary, it means, that capital, in its pursuit of profit, has no qualms or limits in exploiting the labor force, even in redoubling exploitation (or hyper-exploitation) to maintain its reproduction on a growing scale according to its profitability. This is consistent with another of Marini’s proposals which articulates the law of value with the tendency towards the universalization of super-exploitation in advanced countries: We must bear in mind that the tendency that goes in the direction of ­increasing super-exploitation is not only valid for the capitals that yield value, in the process of transfer, but also applies to those who appropriate value, since it is evident that it allows them to obtain amounts of value higher than what they could normally incorporate. In other words, the universalization of the law of value, tending to allow only transfers of value that, in their context, can be considered legitimate, does not point to the suppression of super-exploitation, but rather to its exacerbation. marini 1993: 10

It is dependent capitalism that ‘yields value’ and those aggrandized appropriate it for their own benefit. The extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force allows capital to obtain a huge surplus value through this procedure where the most benefited are the hegemonic capitalists of the imperialist countries that appropriate this additional value. The only limit is marked, in any case, by the class struggles and by the structural and political-social determinations of both formations of the world capitalist economy.

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Globalization generalizes and stimulates the law of value, the determination of the value of the labor force and of the merchandise (material and immaterial) for the time of socially necessary work for its production and reproduction under truly international conditions. With the help of computers and the Internet, it is more feasible to know and determine the value of the workforce of Japanese, German, North American or Mexican workers and measure their quantitative and qualitative magnitudes. With the law of value, the superexploitation regime is installed in developed countries, although adopting particular forms. This hypothesis finds theoretical support in the thought of Marini (1996: 49–68) and it was precisely he who warned early in some of his writings what many authors prefer to ignore or misinterpret. With the extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force there has been a trend characterized by three factors: (1) technological diffusion tends to standardize goods to facilitate their exchange on a global scale, which in the long run; (2) caused a greater homogenization of the productive and technological processes; and (3) triggered a process of equalization of labor productivity and its intensity. In this sense, the importance of super-exploitation in the international production system was resized against all the forecasts made by the ‘end of work’ theorists. Marini (1996: 61) revealed the tendency of the system to homogenize constant capital and directly affect the determination of the rate of profit. He found in this phenomenon a point of inflection that divided two historical epochs of world capitalist development. The first epoch is characterized by the structural and technological heterogeneity of the system. As a result of the foregoing we obtain a second strategic conclusion of the Marinist analysis: technological homogenization by stimulating the equalization of the organic compositions of capital in the world economy causes the worker to become more important as a source of extraordinary profits (Marini 1996: 65). The final result is that super-exploitation is constituted as the main factor that faces the intensification of capitalist competition on a world scale in order to counteract the growing difficulties faced by capital in its contradictory process of production of value and surplus value, putting it in a dangerous slope before dismeasure of value.1 1 The ‘dismeasure of value’, as defined elsewhere (Sotelo 2010: 131) is a “… problem that produces, on the one hand, a marginal reduction of socially necessary labor time to the d­ etriment of the production of surplus labor and, on the other hand, a strengthening of the moments and spaces of production of anti-value, both phenomena are translated into increasing

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…the lack of a source of intensive and generalized extraction of relative surplus value (which is what distinguishes the dynamics of mature capitalist accumulation), and the attempts to compensate for this lack by resorting to the extension and deepening of the absolute surplus value…. piqueras 2014: 144

We add, in our theoretical perspective of super-exploitation, that together with absolute surplus value, it has operated on an enlarged scale the intensification of the labor force that has brought the Toyotist system and the expropriation of (a part) of the consumption fund and the wages that corresponds to the value of the labor force and its conversion into a part of the accumulation of capital. Computer technology manages to suppress, virtually and relatively, the limitations of physical time and spatiotemporal differences between production centers and consumer markets, no matter how distant they may be. While at the same time extending the unemployment caused, increasing the rate of ­exploitation of employed workers through the increase of the working day (absolute surplus value), its intensification (relative surplus value), and the remuneration of the labor force below its value (super-exploitation). These three conditions are essential to the super-exploitation regime in any circumstance from which Marini infers that: …it is generalized to the whole system, even to the advanced centers, which was a distinctive (although not exclusive) feature of the dependent economy; the generalization of labor super-exploitation. The consequence (which was its cause) is to make the mass of surplus workers grow and to exacerbate their pauperization…. marini 1996: 65

It is important to note that in Underdevelopment and Revolution Marini still did not see this trend more and more present in advanced countries. Indeed, pointing out the differences between absolute surplus value, based on the prolongation of the working day, and the relative value, which occurs, even without altering the length of that day when the socially necessary work time ­decreases production and reproduction of the labor force, arguing that:

d­ ifficulties to achieve the self-valorization of capital and, therefore, negatively affect the rate of profit”. This thesis finds support in Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 227, et seq. For another perspective see Prado 2005.

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It is still possible to identify a way of increasing surplus value, originating from a reduction in wages that does not correspond to a real reduction in the necessary labor time. This case tends to be exceptional in advanced capitalist countries, but it has a generalized character in backward capitalist countries, such as Brazil, where it creates a situation of super-exploitation of labor. In the text exclusively for the purpose of simplification, the expression absolute surplus value is also taken to designate this latter modality. marini 1985: 148, my italics

As we see, Marini established an equivalence between the super-exploitation of absolute surplus value as an increase in the working day. Once this equality is dissipated and assuming the specificity of super-exploitation as a specific regime of surplus value production, the idea is to conceive, in addition, superexploitation as a mechanism of exploitation of a structural nature that authors like Cardoso reduce to a phenomenon of conjectural nature. In fact, in a critique of Marini, Cardoso and Serra (1978: 51) argue that: …at the same time that he establishes the logical deadlines of ironic imaginary needs (stagnation, underconsumption, super-exploitation, sub-imperialism) he transforms into an irrepressible tendency what is the phase of a cycle, and what need is an alternation or contradictory possibility. It is appreciated, then, that for these authors the super-exploitation of the ­labor force constituted only a phase of a cycle, that is to say, a conjectural phenomenon that can be very well surpassed, even, within the functioning structure of the dependent capitalism. Under this same conviction and ideological lineage Cardoso worked busily as secretary of the Treasury and then as president of Brazil. This is why super-exploitation is becoming an important factor in the world economy and its processes of valorization and accumulation of capital, which does not annul the structural relations of dependence with the imperialist centers. It remains to be said that in the current conditions of the relationship between dependence and exploitation it is necessary to develop articulated studies that are deployed in four directions, which make up the following from the point of view of the new features of dependence. In the economic sphere, one of the characteristics of what we can call the ‘new dependence’ is the propensity to productive specialization of Latin American economies, stimulated by the systematic application of neoliberal economic policy. Thus, we can say that the productive specialization is a concept that defines the new profile of Latin

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American economies based on their propensity to specialize and orient their resources (basically capital, labor power and land) in the most profitable ­activities overturned to the world market, even to the detriment of domestic production and the market, causing strong recessive internal movements and recurrent imbalances. The second line of research, from the social point of view, deals with the concentration of income as that perverse feature of the dependent economy, which continues to stimulate the production in r­ estricted bands of the market; therefore, orienting the bulk of production as sumptuary production, insofar as it does not enter, or enters very little, into the majority consumption of the labor force. The reduced segments of the dominant, middle and intermediate classes of the population are those that continue to benefit from the development of the dependent capitalism embedded in the world market. Obviously, the concentration of income is only a reflection, more or less approximate, of the ­underground movements that occur in the productive sphere, that is, where the income of the different classes of society is forged. In this way, a polarized production structure leads to increasing polarization in the high and low spheres of internal markets and, therefore, of income. The empirical evidence referring to Latin American countries revitalizes the methodological level of the theory of dependence regarding the verification of the conformation of two spheres of the internal market: one split towards the internal market of low income and the other towards the high income market, with the irruption of a third sphere focused on the world market strongly controlled and monopolized by big transnational companies. Thirdly, it highlights the line of research concerning the increasing extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force, even in the labor and productive systems of the developed capitalist countries that is observed with greater intensity after the great capitalist crisis of 2008–2009 in the European Union, Japan and the United States, affecting the living and working conditions of their populations. Finally, a fourth articulated level of dependency analysis and its relation to the super-exploitation of labor lies at the political level, confirming the problem of the relationship between democracy and the growing propensities for political authoritarianism observed in those countries where the right has triumphed. This working hypothesis requires relating the necessary concentration of power in the State from assuring the productive specialization of the new dependent capitalist reproduction patterns and the maintenance of a polarized structure strongly concentrated in favor of the income of capital, and to the detriment of labor. In sum, the super-exploitation of labor, the productive specialization, the concentration of income, unemployment, misery and the exclusionary policies

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of the Latin American capitalist states, formally democratic but really rooted in the counterinsurgent and authoritarian power structures, configure the perverse traits of a structural dependence that is opposed to the claims of Latin American democratization by the workers and the popular classes of Latin America, whose political meaning is none other than the requirement of greater participation in the decisions that affect them to resolve their main demands. 3

Criticism of the Concept of Super-Exploitation

As a possessor of money, in the commodity market, the capitalist is not faced with the ‘work’ in general (Arbeit), but with the worker (Arbeiter) who actually just sells his labor force (arbeitskräfte); but more specifically sells the use value of his or her labor force (Wert der nutzung). In Capital, Marx distinguishes the concept of ‘work’ from that of ‘labor power’ when he says that “Labor … is the substance and the immanent measure of value, but in itself it has no value” (Marx Vol. I, 2000: 449). Supposedly Dias finds an ‘imprecision’ in Marini in the use that this author makes of the concepts ‘work’ and ‘work force’. But Marini was perfectly clear about Marx’s demarcation of the difference between labor and labor power, as well as the conclusion that labor on its own ‘lacks value’. Marini uses them as synonyms, not only in his paramount work Dialectics of Dependence but also in all his texts that refer to the topic of super-exploitation and the concepts of labor and labor-force, without altering the conceptual essence of Marx’s theses of the critique of political economy. This difference is seen, for example, in the following passage when he writes that: The superiority of capitalism over other forms of mercantile production, and their basic difference in relation to them, lies in the fact that what they transform into a commodity is not the worker—that is, the total time of the worker’s existence, with all the dead points that this implies from the point of view of production—but rather its labor force, that is, the time of its existence usable for production, leaving the same worker the responsibility to take over non-productive time, from the capitalist point of view. marini 1973: 43–44

Therefore, while it is true that other authors do not differentiate ‘labor’ and ‘labor-force’—without considering their conceptual and analytical implications—Marini builds his Dialectics of Dependence always in the light of this

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conceptual and categorical differentiation, allowing it to erect superexploitation as the structural and constituent foundation of dependent capitalism in conjunction with its insertion in the world capitalist economy. 4

Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force, or Labor?

In light of these considerations, when Marini talks about super-exploitation, in essence, he is referring to both the work force as a concept and the worker himself. What should interest us should not be trying to find a non-existent imprecision between both concepts, but to understand the qualitative function that Marini’s theory plays in the elucidation of the essence of dependent capitalism that rests upon super-exploitation. Therefore, when in Marini’s texts we read the category of super-exploitation, we assume that he is referring to what the laborer, the worker, essentially sells and that it is the use value of his labor force and not his labor in general, their physical and total corporeality as befits the slave regime. In this regard, for example, Marx clarifies that: “The living working time that the capitalist acquires in the exchange is not the exchange value, but the use value of the capacity for work” (Marx 1980: Vol. ii, 195). If this were not the case, if Marini did not understand this essential difference it would be extremely difficult to reach the conclusion identifying super-exploitation as the essential category of the dependent capitalism system, both in its specificity as a producer of value and surplus value, as in the concrete manner in which it is produced and reproduced in correspondence with its dependent and subordinate insertion to the hegemonic centers of advanced capitalism, and which correspond precisely to the most dynamic ones such as the United States, England, Germany, Japan or France, in addition to others located in the nomenclature of that type of capitalism. 5

Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force: Category or Concept?

Dias (2013: 72) undertakes the task of clarifying the super-exploitation of the labor force category, in particular to envisage a supposed ‘imprecision’ in its use by Marini. On this subject, three issues are raised: one, related to the laborforce and labor relationship; a second in reference to the discussion on Marini’s theory on the difference between labor force and super-exploitation; and finally on the discussion about whether the latter is a category or a concept. In the end, the author discusses in what sense one can understand the Marinist

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hypothesis that poses a tendency to the extension of super-exploitation in advanced countries. To address the issue of the plausibility of the super-exploitation of the labor force (category, concept, mode, notion, mechanism or regime?) becoming generalized to the capitalist system as a whole, including to advanced countries, Dias wonders whether it is or is not a category, a concept, or a mechanism of exploitation producing surplus value. Put simply, the answer is positive to the second and even as an instrument, while it is negative if it is a category because it is a ‘founding’ of a reality (dependent capitalism) that cannot be extrapolated to other realities, that is, from the periphery dependent on the imperialist center. Let’s see: It is simply understood as specific ways of raising the rate of surplus value, so that wages fall below the values of the labor force, of course, since it is the operation of capitalism, whatever it may be, that does it. Considered as a category, in the terms discussed here, specific to dependent capitalism, as a way of compensating precisely the structural constraints that define dependence—mechanisms of value transfer—, of course not. dias 2013: 90

In the first place, the author accepts that for Marini super-exploitation is not synonymous with ‘greater exploitation’—because it has ‘a theoretical meaning of its own’. Immediately, however, he asks whether Marini sees it as a category or not, for which he refers to the philosophy dictionary of the Italian philosopher Nicola Abbagnano to define the meaning of categories and their differences with concepts, precisely in philosophical terms and that, for reasons of the nature of our research, we will not address in this book.2 Considering that the category, and not the concept, of super-exploitation is the center of the Marxist dependency theory and its foundation, it is yet not so in the theoretical system of Marx where this category is just a form or mechanism to raise exploitation. But also for another reason: due to a premise of a methodological nature consisting of the fact that in Capital he always assumes that the price of goods and labor corresponds to their value. This was obviously a valid premise in the very high level of abstraction that Marx later considered in Volume iii of Capital to address the problem of the transformation of values​​ 2 In addition to Abbagnano (1971), see Aristotle (2004); Kant (1998); Garcia (2000); and Bagu (2008).

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in production prices. Since for Marx this question of the super-exploitation is not a category, Dias (2013: 90) concludes, therefore, “Marini does not clarify the difference between categories and ways of raising the rate of surplus value, this answer that becomes obvious, in this author, is not clear”. It is clear that this question ‘is not clear’ because Marini does not part in any of his works from an abstract-philosophical discussion of the categories in the terms in which this author does. What we can say is that the categories as expressions of the constitution of reality are not metaphysical or teleological, that is, idealistic. They do not arrive to establish themselves forever. This means that, rather, they are historical-social, temporary and are modified as reality itself is modified (­Lenin 1975). A socialist revolution, for example, overthrows the super-exploitation, and even the law of value, to constitute a new mode of production and a new non-capitalist social formation, that is, socialist and with it all the epistemological categories of capitalist reality. Secondly, we consider that although established in a very high level of abstraction as opposed to concepts, these categories correspond to hierarchical orders of reality. What we interpret in the subject that concerns us, that is, ­super-exploitation, is a certain reality that can be the dependent capitalist formation. Or, as Marini says, the founding element in another reality, in classical and advanced capitalism, is only a subordinate category to another founding category of that reality, as it may be the relative surplus value that in said capitalism constitutes the motor, or fundamental category, of the production of surplus value and of the accumulation of capital. It should also be noted that although super-exploitation is the category by antonomasia of dependent capitalism, it would not have any specific meaning had it not been constituted in terms of the development and expansion of world capitalism, in the same way that it would lack an explanation without the subordination dependent on the same. There is, therefore, the dialectic between the two that in our hypothesis is expressed in the constitutive and operative character of the super-exploitation category. The unequal and combined development of capitalism, for example, does not replace super-exploitation but serves as a dialectical tie that assembles and specifies the transfers of value and surplus value, through the specific cycle of the dependent economy, to the center of the capitalist countries for its accumulation and reproduction of capital. From the foregoing, he points out that the author who tries to clarify Marini’s theoretical ‘inaccuracies’ about the theory of value and super-exploitation engages in a reiterative discussion with the supposed objective of clarifying the question that he himself formulated about whether super-exploitation raises the absolute surplus value and also the relative surplus value:

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The last clarification regarding the categorical treatment given by Marini is related to one of the most present elements in the debate on the Marxist theory of dependence. This is the well-known question of whether overexploitation in dependent economies implies only the raising of absolute surplus value or whether it incorporates elements of relative surplus value. dias 2013: 90

The author then enters into a discussion about the conceptual differences between labor productivity and intensity, which we will not address here (see Chapter 5) because we consider that Marini clarified this discussion sufficiently well in several of his works on these concepts (Marini 1978 and 1979). On this question we observe that, although Marini addressed the consequences of the intensity and productivity of work in the rate of extraordinary profit (1979: 24), Dias disregards this important reflection that is fundamental to the Marxist dependency theory. In addition to evoking this question the author exposes his lack of understanding of the specificity of super-exploitation and its difference to absolute and relative surplus value. In this regard Marini writes in Dialectics of Dependence (Marini 1973: 92–93): …the concept of super-exploitation is not identical with that of absolute surplus value, since it also includes a mode of production of relative surplus value which corresponds to the increase in the intensity of work. On the other hand, the conversion of part of the salary fund into the fund of capital accumulation does not strictly represent a form of production of absolute surplus value, since it simultaneously affects the two working times within the working day, and not only the time of surplus labor, as it happens with absolute surplus value. Super-exploitation is defined more by the greater exploitation of the physical strength of the worker, as opposed to the exploitation resulting from the increase of his productivity, and tends to be expressed in the fact that the labor force is remunerated below its real value (our emphasis). The expropriation of part of the workers’ consumption fund that becomes an additional source of capital accumulation, and the remuneration of the value of the labor force below that value—as a product of that expropriation— constitute the mode and specificity, at the same time, are inherent in the difference of super-exploitation with respect to the concepts of absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. What we can agree on with Dias is that in no

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way is the dependent capitalist economy based, solely and exclusively, on the production of absolute surplus value through the prolongation of the working day or in the different forms assumed by the intensification of the labor force. The increase of the rhythm of work by the machinery or of the radius of action of the same, as Marx demonstrates, can derive, as exploitation mechanisms, in the production of relative surplus value, depending on its incidence, or not, in the sectors producing basic articles and those of a social and historical nature that affect the determination of the value of the labor force in social, not individual terms. Either through the branches of the production sector of means of production, or in those other producers of consumer goods destined toward the replacement of the work force as merchandise. We consider that this issue was settled by Marini (1978: 63–74; 1985: 16–18, 20, 107–116, 199) in concluding that the foundation of the dependent capitalist economy is the super-exploitation that combines the forms of the production of absolute and relative surplus value, to which it adds a third specific mechanism of exploitation and production of surplus value, and that is the expropriation of part of the consumption fund. Which constitutes the value of the labor force of the worker and its conversion into an additional source of capital accumulation. Here the key (whether you want to use category, concept, mechanism, or all combined) is the concept of mode of production based on the greater exploitation of the worker, and not in the development of their productive capacity (Marini 1973: 40). 6

Can the Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force Be Extended to Advanced Countries?

Based on these questions, Dias goes on to discuss this issue which summarizes affirmatively if it is the case of conceiving the super-exploitation as a concept and instrument of production of surplus value, while denying it if it is understood as a category. If the specificity of dependent economies is in need of responding to the different mechanisms of value transfer to the center of world capitalist accumulation based on super-exploitation, this category could not be used to understand the specificity of core capitalism. dias 2013: 90

We diverge from this somewhat simplistic reasoning that detracts from the necessary dialectical mediations and articulations between concepts and categories, such that it is the reality itself that is the unit of multiple relationships

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and determinations. Our central hypothesis is that super-exploitation has historically been a constituent of Latin American economies and societies that are dependent, but increasingly operational, on the production of value and the valorization of the capital of advanced capitalist economies. There would remain an objection by Dias: that although concept-mechanism accepts that super-exploitation can operate in the central economies, this happens in a conjectural way: If super-exploitation is understood as a specific way of raising the level of exploitation of the labor-force, there would be no objection in this chapter. After all, it is in capitalism’s nature, whatever it is, especially when it is in difficulty to continue with its process of accumulation, through raising the rates of surplus value. dias 2013: 94

Only we have to clarify that capital constantly struggles to increase surplus value in any of its stages, be it in descent or ascent, an issue that has nothing to do with the fact that super-exploitation is or is not a phenomenon passenger. This is the classic thesis of many authors who consider super-exploitation as a mere device that transitorily activates in the advanced capitalist countries at times when it presents difficulties in the production of surplus value and profits and after the crisis is overcome it ‘returns’ to its ‘normal state’. In contemporary capitalism this behavior is not appreciated anywhere, nor in its most ­recent stages. Rather what is observed is a growth characterized by low rates of economic growth and recurrent crises. Beyond the philosophical-conceptual appraisals of the categories, for us the essential thing is to conceive, as a mechanism or as a category, super-exploitation as a device that is installed—in part to counteract the fall in the rate of profit and the dismeasure of value with the intervention of the State in the ­developed capitalist-imperialist countries in a structural way. Not cyclical or conjectural—in the very functioning of their productive and labor systems, subordinated to the logic and the historical regime of production of relative surplus value, not to compensate the transfer of value but the growing problems of the ­production of value and surplus value (dismeasure of value). As Piqueras (2014: 141) says in relation to the crisis of capitalism that comes b­ etween 2008–2009 with the epicenter in the United States: “…there was no surplus value in the production that could be achieved to pay the high valuation rates required by finance”. We consider that this is the line that emerges from the conception of Marini in the texts where he reflected on this. It must also be acknowledged that he did not develop the subject in depth and perhaps he left it for others to venture

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into, as indeed is happening today. The important thing is to consider that the sense that conferred to the increasingly concrete and generalized tendency of the extension of super-exploitation in the system as a whole, was to conceive it as a structural mechanism and not only transitory in times of crisis, as suggested by Dias in his text (he confirms this in his recent 2017 work). Furthermore, we keep in mind the horizon of the fall in the rate of profit due to the ­articulation of two movements found: the increasing tendency towards ­thehomogenization of constant capital (fixed and circulating) and the conformation of the labor force as the mechanism and an essential factor in the production of extraordinary profits in the system as a whole. Both phenomena will have a differentiated effect on both dependent and advanced capitalism without dissolving their conceptual and categorical specificity in the contours of their respective socio-economic formations. In this regard it is worth considering this observation of Alves (2016: 51) which does nothing but enrich the previous thesis, in the sense that the precarization of the labor force is an articulated product of both a lower rate of cheapening of the value of constant capital (fixed and circulating), which affects, therefore, a proportional reduction in the rate of profit, as well as the acceleration of the devaluation of the value of labor (dismeasure of value). From another angle, the first phenomenon caused a ‘slowdown’ in technological innovations since the 90s or a “…brake in the scientific application to production” (Piqueras 2014: 118). Both movements articulated that the Marinist thesis confirmed the importance assumed by the worker (his or her laborforce) as an essential force in the production of extraordinary surplus value and, therefore, of extraordinary profits in the time of prevalence of fictitious capital as a dominant capitalist regime and the ideologies of the ‘end of work’. 7

Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force or Violation of Labor Force Value?

Osorio argues that “super-exploitation is a particular form of exploitation and this particularity is that it is an exploitation in which the value of the labor force is violated” (Osorio 2016: 155, author’s italics). On the market side, this violation of the labor force occurs in the act of buying and selling labor while in production it is caused by a greater intensive and/or extensive wear that implies, according to the author, an ‘abnormal wear’ of the same, even if it is remunerated. The result is that the salary ceases to equal its total value. In short, for this author super-exploitation is reduced to the simple violation of the law of value (Osorio 2016: 131–181).

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The slightly different approach taken by Luce (2013: 145–165) is more dialectical and less mechanical when it comes to the meaning of the words ‘violation’ or ‘transgression’ of the law of value. In this regard, he says: “To begin with, the words transgression and violation should not be read in the sense of an annulment of the law of value. In fact, for Marx, the law of value does not imply price equality” a subject that Marx deals with in Chapter ix of Capital Vol. iii, which shows that goods are not bought and sold for their values, but for their production prices and that these are governed by market prices. From the foregoing, Luce deduces that: …the super-exploitation of the labor force consists of the law of one’s own tendency of dependent capitalism, which follows the orientation to counteract the transfer of value to which the dependent economies are undermined by an international division of labor … The category of super-exploitation must therefore be understood as (i) a set of modalities that imply the remuneration of the labor force below its value and the premature exhaustion of the worker’s physical and psychic strength; and (ii) which form the basis of dependent capitalism, along with the transfer of value and the division between the phases of the capital cycle. luce 2013: 147

This quote can be interpreted in four articulated and dialectical dimensions of the meaning of super-exploitation: (a) the remuneration of the labor force below its value as a result of the expropriation of a part of it; (b) the reduction of the useful life of the worker; (c) the transfers of value and surplus value to the imperialist countries; and (d) the split of the capital cycle of the dependent economy into two spheres of the internal market: one, of high consumption destined to the layers, and middle and upper classes, of the bourgeoisie and the oligarchy; and another, the low sphere, corresponding to popular and worker consumption. These dimensions constitute the foundations of dependent capitalism to which we must add the output of exports represented by the world market, especially in periods of crisis. This will differentiate quantitatively and qualitatively capitalism dependent on the metropolitan although, as Marini and Vania Bambirra say, under their same general laws. Luce qualifies in this way the characterization of the idea of ​​violation or transgression of the law of value by conferring an articulation with the thesis that, in the end, this action perpetrated by capital does not mean that the law of value no longer works—or is canceled—but it is ultimately the historical-structural configuration that ends up taking on the dependent capitalist formation in relation to the world economy. Thus, it clarifies this controversial point that avoids reducing super-exploitation to the mere act of violating the law of value.

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Let’s go back to Marini’s approach to evaluate this last conclusion: …the three mechanisms identified—the intensification of work, the prolongation of the working day and the expropriation of part of the work necessary for the worker to replenish his labor force—configure a way of production based exclusively on the greater exploitation of the worker, and not on the development of his productive capacity and whose essential characteristic consists in that … the worker is denied the necessary conditions to replace the wear and tear of his work force. marini 1973: 40

On the one hand, the prolongation and intensity cause a greater wear on the labor force that results in its premature exhaustion, while the expropriation of the consumption fund and its conversion into capital accumulation prevents it from even consuming what is strictly necessary “…in order to keep their work force in a normal state, in capitalist terms, these mechanisms mean that the work is remunerated below its value and correspond, then, to super-exploitation” (Marini 1973: 41–42). We must retain two things: (a) that the three mechanisms correspond to the production of absolute surplus value, to relative and super-exploitation, and configure a specific way of exploiting labor with a charge in the greater exploitation and not in the development of productive capacity as it happens in the advanced countries; and that (b) it is precisely this mode of production which is the foundation of the dependent capitalist economy. This mode of production is the concrete form assumed by the universal capitalist laws in dependent economic-social formations. From which it is deduced that the ‘violation of the law of value’ is the expression, par excellence, of the ‘state of normality’ and of permanent functioning that it assumes by virtue of the attributes identified above. Although the essential characteristic of super-exploitation, in general terms, consists of its remuneration below its value—which must be determined in both quantitative and qualitative terms to establish the level and magnitude of that normality—it results, as Marini points out, in a way of exploitation that combines, empirically, the prolongation of the working day, the intensity and, finally, the particular mechanism of the super-exploitation; expropriation in favor of the accumulation of capital of a part of the consumption fund and of life that corresponds to the worker. There is one final point on the theme of the universalization of the superexploitation in contemporary capitalism. Osorio recognizes this possibility, but on the condition of:

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…distinguishing the specific forms that predominate in the imperial world (sic) and in the dependent world with the differentiated consequences in the forms capital reproduces, as well as in the differentiated bases that establishes for the development of the class struggle. osorio 2016: 182

Obviously it is not about erasing the specificities assumed, in any case, by super-exploitation in advanced capitalism. If so, this author would be right in his statement that would be nullifying not only the dependency theory, but the relationship and raison d’être of the pair: imperialism/dependency or, if you like, ‘center/periphery’. But like Dias, the super-exploitation in the centers is of a conjectural nature only and it operates in periods of crisis like the one that has been felt for several decades in global capitalism depositing, by the way, all its weight onto the backs of the workers. Our position is different, we consider that, as stated by Marini, super-exploitation is being installed in the productive systems and in the organization of work of the imperialist countries in a structural and systemic way, although subordinated to the logic and laws that govern the production of relative surplus value and its institutional correlates such as the State, scientific-technical development, imperialism and the autonomy of its capital cycles that maintain it as a hegemonic category. Thus, ­under this conception and method, and along the lines of Marini, we consider that the dilemma of the universalization of super-exploitation in c­ ontemporary capitalism is resolved, both with respect to its scope and its limitations. 8 Super-Exploitation: a Political Category? Arrizabalo (2016: 165) criticizes what he calls the ‘notion’ of super-exploitation of Marini in the sense of discarding it and reducing it to a simple technique based on the inability of the labor force to replenish its use value and to reproduce itself under ‘normal’ conditions. His approach is the following: Marini formulated the notion of ‘super-exploitation’, for Latin America in particular, associated with three mechanisms: ‘the intensification of work, the prolongation of the working day and the expropriation of part of the work necessary for the worker to replenish his workforce’. First we must clarify that what this author calls ‘notion’ is, for Marini, within a global understanding of the theory of value/labor and the critique of political economy, a mode or regime of super-exploitation that is articulated dialectically

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with the production of absolute surplus value and relative surplus value, without which that ‘notion’ would have no meaning. Second, from the above, the author infers, without understanding the essence of Marini’s approach, as we will see later, that said super-exploitation: …refers to the real fact of life and work conditions so deeply precarious, that the reproduction itself of the worker seems to be threatened and, therefore, cannot even be reproduced as such labor force; it would also seem that we should talk about something more than exploitation, that is it would be necessary to speak of super-exploitation. arrizabalo 2016: 165

The key to Arrizabalo’s criticism comes from the word ‘normality’. In fact, he adds: Marini states that consumption is denied, which allows the labor force to be conserved in a ‘normal state’. However, he argues, in reality there are no such ‘normal states’ as an irremovable reference for establishing the reproduction of the work force. arrizabalo 2016: 165

Without further explanation, super-exploitation as a theoretical notion “… clashes with the very foundation of the law of value”, because according to the author, “…the degree of exploitation is not defined in a technical or absolute way, but in a relative way; it simply consists of the participation of wages in the total of the new value produced” (Arrizabalo 2016: 166). And how are salaries determined? The formula with which the previous quote ends expresses the new value created by the labor force and corresponds to the ratio of variable capital (wages) to surplus value () while the rate of exploitation of the labor force is determined by the relationship between the socially necessary labor time () to produce and reproduce the labor force divided by the unpaid surplus labor time (corresponding to the effective magnitude of the surplus value produced by the worker and whose expression is): Operating rate (%) =

nw * ew **

* Necessary work ** Excess work The exploitation is a social relation between labor and capital, from which surplus value results and what:

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…In the framework of this relationship, the worker, working to obtain a given remuneration, creates a value corresponding to it in a limit that is lower than the working day to which he is attached; consequently, in the excess time to which the reproduction of the value expressed by its remuneration strictly corresponds, it creates a surplus value. The relationship between these two times of production contained in the workday represents the degree of exploitation to which the worker is subjected, a degree that is, then, equal to the rate of surplus value. marini 1985: 113

We must consider the differences between the concepts ‘exploitation rate’, ‘mass’ and ‘rate of surplus value’ to understand the different modalities assumed by the super-exploitation category in the context of the law of value. Because, as Marini warns, one of the specificities of super-exploitation consists precisely in simultaneously modifying the two magnitudes of the total working day and, therefore, the mass and the rate of surplus value with their respective repercussions on the profit rate. It is curious that a Marxist author of undoubted analytical rigor, such as Arrizabalo, does not notice that the word, ‘normal’, in Marx’s theory, refers to the quantitative and qualitative determination of the value of labor power (x time to produce, for example, x amount of food, health, housing, recreation, clothing). That is to say, its essential components as value of use, determined by the time of socially necessary work and by all the material and historical-moral values ​​that constitute it. And this is precisely what Marini refers to when he affirms that the super-exploitation, in addition to the prolongation of the working day and the intensity, includes surplus value: …A third procedure, which consists in reducing the consumption of the worker beyond his normal limit, for which “the necessary background of the worker’s consumption actually becomes, within certain limits, a fund of capital accumulation”, thus implying a specific way of increasing the excess labor time. marini 1973: 38–39, the author’s original italics

It is very important to point out that in the previous quote the phrase: “the necessary fund of consumption of the worker becomes, in fact, within certain limits, a fund of accumulation of capital” is attributed to Marx (2000: 505) when he writes that: It will be recalled that the share of surplus value depends in the first instance on the degree of exploitation of the labor force. Political economy

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attaches such importance to this factor it is identified with the promotion of accumulation by intensifying the strength of the performance with the promotion of accumulation through the redoubled exploitation of the worker. In studying the production of surplus value, we always start from the assumption that wages represent, at least, the value of labor power. However, in practice the forced reduction of wages below this value is of too great importance for us not to pause for a moment to examine it. Thus, the necessary background of the worker’s consumption actually becomes, within certain limits, a fund of accumulation of capital. marx Vol. i, 2000: 505, italics in original

Even Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1977: 72) writes in this regard that what can be considered as normal is: Man must always live by maintaining himself with work. Therefore, his salary must be enough at least for his maintenance. It is essential, more often than not, that they earn more than what they need, otherwise it would be impossible to maintain a family, and then the race of those workers would never go beyond the first generation. If the above does not correspond to the law of value because it ‘clashes’ with its own foundation, then Marx himself would be placing himself in an anti-Marxist position or, at least, very far from it. But as you can see, when Marx uses the expressions ‘redoubled exploitation’ of the labor force and salary reduction below the value of the labor force, obviously it presupposes that there is a ‘normality parameter’ (where the price of merchandise corresponds to its value) and that, in capital, is given by the magnitude of socially necessary labor time expressed both in quantity, time and, finally, in money that, in the case of the worker, corresponds to his salary, of course as long as the price corresponds to the value. Therefore there is nothing mysterious when Marini, relying on Marx, defines super-exploitation as a specific mechanism of exploitation and extortion of surplus value by the capital derived from the expropriation of part of the workers’ consumption fund, which it turns into an additional source of capital accumulation (Marini 1973: 38–39). In a capitalist system, what prevents capital from expropriating part of that consumption fund? In any case here we have to introduce the class struggle as the determining factor within the structural conformation of super-exploitation. Rather than viewing the word ‘normal’ as a subjective value or moral character as does the neolithic economy in the style of Böhm-Bawerk for example, Arrizabalo evades

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citing the objective mechanism that determines super-exploitation and qualitatively differentiates the capitalist social formation dependent on the one corresponding to the countries of advanced capitalism. In this way, Marini ­synthesizes the super-exploitation concept: …the three identified mechanisms—the intensification of work, the prolongation of the working day and the expropriation of part of the work necessary to the worker to replenish his labor force—configure a mode of production based exclusively on the greater exploitation of the worker, and not in the development of its productive capacity. This is consistent with the low level of development of the productive forces in the Latin American economy. marini 1973: 40

How does the production of labor increase in the capitalist economy? There are three methods pointed out by Marx. But first we must point out that there is no surplus value when only the quantity of use values ​​increases through an interaction between labor force and scientific-technical d e velopment. Here the unit value of the goods falls but there is no creation of surplus value because the necessary work is not reduced. The first method, the most primitive, consists in the prolongation of the working day or absolute surplus value. The second refers to the intensification of the labor force. The third, the most complex, which concerns the production of relative surplus value, is based on this interaction but affects branches and sectors of production that determine, directly or indirectly, the value of the labor force causing the reduction necessary in labor time and, therefore, the increase in surplus value. On the other hand, super-exploitation includes the theory and mechanisms of surplus value in a (dependent) context where, due to the low level of materia l and scientifictechnological development of the productive forces, determined at the same time by the cycle of capital and the constant transfers of value to the centers, preferably emphasize the prolongation of the working day (which includes the production of absolute surplus value), the intensification of the rhythm, and the wear and tear in the productive process of the labor force that may or may not correspond to the relative surplus value as it affects the branches of consumption and means of production connected with the first in the production of articles that enter, and determine, the value of the labor force. As for the production of relative surplus value, which raises the material productive forces of society through scientific-technological development and contributes to the reduction of labor time socially necessary for the p ­ roduction

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of goods, including the labor force of the worker, it occurs, of course, in the dependent economies, although subordinated to the super-exploitation mode that, at the same time, overdetermines it. Among the various causes of super-exploitation of the labor force in dependent economies, Marini highlights a fundamental historical-structural nature and that consists of the fact that: …The participation of Latin America in the world market will contribute to the axis of the accumulation in the industrial economy shifting from the production of absolute surplus value to that of relative surplus value, that is, the accumulation becomes more dependent on the increase in the productive capacity of the work than simply of the exploitation of the worker. marini 1973: 23

It is this contradictory relationship between super-exploitation and relative surplus value based on the increase in productivity that generates and reproduces the dependency relations within the binomial Center-Dependency, advanced countries-dependent countries in the contour of world capitalism. As you can see, the essence of Marini’s approach, which coincides with the central thesis of this book, is that the dialectic between the production of absolute and relative surplus value, with its specific mechanisms of production articulated, highlights a third specific element of exploitation based on the greater exploitation of the worker. And not on the development of labor productivity, which, as we have previously stated, although it was intensely deployed in the course of Latin American industrialization in the dependent countries of greater relative capitalist development such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, particularly in the post-World War ii period, however, always constituted— relative surplus value—a mechanism subordinated to the super-exploitation regime. In this contradiction lies the essence of Latin American dependency and underdevelopment. Without developing this point, which is not the subject of this book, we emphasize that this situation is exacerbated by the deindustrialization experienced by the Latin American economy since the entry of neoliberalism in the course of the 80s. Finally, Arrizabalo criticizes Marini unfoundedly in the political plane stating that he supposedly supports the idea of ​​the existence of ‘two qualitatively different types of exploitation’: the ‘normal’ and ‘super-exploitation’. First, note how this author differentiates super-exploita t ion from normality, a question that Marini never makes, and then blames him for ‘confronting’ the working classes of the dependent world with those of the developed world because:

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…It paves the way for a hypothetical conflict between the passive ­subjects of both (two differentiated segments of the working class, the ­workers of the advanced economies and the workers of the backward economies), as their shared interest in abolishing exploitation disappears, that one of these segments would have the immediate priority of reaching the mere exploitation that allows it to overcome its particular situation of superexploitation. From here some expositions are d erived that are known as ‘third-world’, in the sense that they cons i der the central nucleus of exploitation develops between nations and, th e refore, the workers of the most advanced economies are part of the exploiters. This formulation collapses immediately, both from the theoretical point of view … and empirically, as soon as the inequality of classes is not analysed with vigour in these more advanced economies, but r ather their necessary increase. arrizabalo 2016: 166

It is necessary to clarify that both relative and absolute surplus value and super-exploitation are based on a rule of normality and that is precisely what determines the value of the labor force in capitalism and in contemporary societies. Therefore, it is improper to assign to Marini an imaginary opposition between super-exploitation and ‘normality’ and artificially replace them with ‘working class of the center’ and ‘working class of the periphery’, respectively, in such a way that, when Arrizabalo affirms that: “This formulation collapses … both from a theoretical and empirical point of view”, evidently in a theoretical and empirical vacuum since in none of his texts does Marini formulate such falsehoods regarding supposed clashes of the working class against the ­working class derived from his thesis regarding dependence and the super-exploitation. Perhaps other ideological speculations, alien to Marini, did but that is the case neither of the Marxist dependency theory nor of Marini, so we do not deal with them here. He, rather, postulated the unity of the working class on the international level—as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Che and many others did at the time—not to “improve the conditions of the salaried workers” within their own capitalism—which is rather the position held by the Keynesians and the reformist Marxists—but to overcome it in terms of the construction of a new democratic and socialist economic and social system led by the working and popular classes. Not losing sight of the fact that the struggle is not between the working class of the dependent countries against the working class of the countries of advanced and imperialist capitalism. This can only be sustained by a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the work of the Brazilian

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thinker. And of course the capitalists of the dependent countries themselves who are interested in consolidating the fragmentation—of the working class—and, therefore, their defeat. 9

A Dependency Theory without Super-Exploitation?

In his article: “Successes and Problems of Super-exploitation” Katz (2017) proposes to ‘demonstrate’ that dependency theory can exist without the concept of super-exploitation that was allegedly ‘omitted’ by Marx, and that theory can be ‘updated’ by the concept of ‘generalized precarization’. In synthesis, he postulates a ‘theory of dependence without super-exploitation’ based on ‘low salaries’. Katz (2017) makes a critical assessment of the Marinist concept of superexploitation concluding that it can be replaced by the ‘low remuneration’ of the labor force ‘resource’ (sic!). For this, it includes both ‘contraceptive’ superexploitation authors (Cardoso-Serra, Cueva and more) that may or may not accept the theory of dependence, as related to this concept (Bambirra 1978; Osorio 2016; Martins 2011; Higginbottom 2010; Smith 2016; Sotelo 2012) however, the author’s understanding of it remains undetermined. It is based on authors who in their time were critical of Marini, as was Cueva (1974): Cueva criticized Marini’s concept in which he shares his diagnoses of the dramatic situation faced by Latin American wage earners, and also pointed out that some term referring to these nightmares should be used, which is why he stated that the theoretical mistakes of super-exploitation did not invalidate the practical presence of simile of that category … Its divergence with the concept and coincidence with the Marxist theory of dependency opened a path of important reflections. katz 20173

And the list could be enlarged: next to Cueva, Cardoso-Faletto (1969), Singer (1980) and others, there are authors like Bartra (1978 and 1991) who, under the ideological clothing of the Mexican Communist Party and the French structuralism of the time, contributed argumentation against the theory of ­dependence 3 It is necessary to clarify that Marini never moralized the ‘dramatic’ situation of the ‘Latin American wage-earners’, much less ‘their nightmares’. Marini was rigorous and always used Marxist concepts, laws, hypotheses, and categories characteristic of the critique of political economy.

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in favor of a conception consistent with the structural dualism of ‘sub-capitalism’. Bartra, like Cueva—who, by the way, confused the category of pauperism with that of super-exploitation (see Bambirra 19784 and Sotelo 1994: 289–318)— favored the ideological garb of Althusserian structuralism, of the ‘articulation of modes of production.’ Returning to the previous citation, a ‘path of important reflections’ that, according to Katz, was opened by Cueva precisely against what Cueva ­ (1988) later affirmed when he claimed that the theory of dependence and super-­exploitation (Moreano 2008)5 are ‘resolved’ in total dismissal of the super-­exploitation category, which is the essential rudiment of the Marxist ­dependency theory of Marini and other dependency theorists. They would ­replace it with a ‘dependency theory’ on its own without super-exploitation. Drawing on other authors, Katz feeds his position by pointing out that the differences in productivity and class struggles explain the ‘wage divergences’ (low, high and medium) that “structurally separate an underdeveloped region from another advanced one”. And with wisdom we state the obvious: “That’s why the values ​​of the labor force (and the corresponding consumption baskets) are substantially different”. But this is not the core of his approach, nor are there any inconsistencies such as: In the developed economies, the high value of this resource (sic)—the work force of Adam Smith—restricts the drama of impoverishment only to the excluded … In both cases, the prices of labor goods (sic) are established by the capitalist rules of exploitation. To suppose that in the imperialist countries of advanced capitalism the ‘drama of impoverishment’ does not affect the ‘not excluded’ is to say that the majority of the workers o f society are metamorphosing reality according to the presumed existence of a fictitious capitalism with a human face (see Chapter 6). 4 Cueva says: “Therefore, even that trait that Marini points out as more typical of these—[the dependent societies, AS], that is, overexploitation … could well be enunciated with a rather classic name: the process of pauperization…”, Cueva 1974: 67. However, “… the concept of super-exploitation should not be confused with that of pauperization, as Cueva does … because it refers to the living conditions of the worker and not the productive process” (Bambirra 1978: 70). 5 As Moreano says in his presentation of Cueva’s book Between the Anger and the Hope of 1967 (Agustin Cueva Hoy 2008: 14–15): “Over the years, it is evident that the most advanced theses of the Dependence theory has shown its surprising validity, Agustín Cueva recognized it on several occasions, and Ruy Mauro Marini—whose Dialectic text of dependence is ­undoubtedly the greatest theoretical effort of interpretation in Latin America—accepted Cueva’s contributions to the debate”.

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The debate about the value of the labor force also leads to misunderstandings. Katz mentions that it cannot be quantified because it incorporates physiological and social components, in addition to the historical-moral and, we add, cultural. It reminds us that for Marx the essential is to determine the value of the labor force of all commodities by the quantity and time of labor socially necessary in their elaboration. And this is, effectively, the definition of the law of value that operates against classical, neoclassical and Keynesian theories. And he asks himself: “which goods are privileged and which ones are discarded?” Do those requirements include the car, vacations and health services? If ‘Western welfare standards’ are used, do they guarantee the full and total reproduction of the value of the labor force? Then he assumes that, for example in Japan and the United States, there would be super-exploitation. If so, who knows by what hazards of fate do we consider a nation such as Bangladesh, holding without data and without any basis, that: “…it could be said that the burden of super-exploitation does not reach Bangladesh, where the elementary reproduction of the work is done through a basket of ultra-basic consumption” (sic!). With this, he moves away from the social and labor reality expressed by the dramatic data that we record in Table 1 related to Asian countries that, by the way, do not weigh much the consumption of the employees of ‘ultrabasic’ products. Table 1 

Salaries in emerging Asian economies (in euros)

Bangladesh Cambodia China Philippines India Indonesia Malaysia Pakistan Sri Lanka Thailand Vietnam

Livable wage

Minimum wage

329.40 352.95 524.4 388.1 249.75 308.6 357.70 264.8 288.7 335.20 354.70

68 121.25 248.10 276.6 155 204.5 195.9 101.9 56.40 172.5 138.70

Source: Modaes Latinoamérica, June 2016. https://www.modaes.com/entorno/ bangladesh-sri-lanka-y-camboya-encabezan-la-brecha-entre-salario-minimoy-digno-es.html.

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As we can see, Bangladesh does not turn out to be one of the countries most ‘favored’ by Asian capitalism, right along with Sri Lanka. In reference to the same country Smith (2016: Figure 5.6: 159) shows the insufficiency of the hourly wage of the Sri Lankan workers of the textile industry in relation to its ­purchasing power in 2008 with the indicator ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ which measures the standard of living of a country and allows it to be compared with that of others, and Bangladesh appears below countries like Pakistan, India, Egypt, Peru and Mexico. Wanting to show the differences between advanced capitalism and the underdeveloped dependent countries supposedly in the determination of the value of the work force, Katz confuses and equates the concept of poverty with super-exploitation, recalling what happened with Agustín Cueva when he identified the latter with that of pauperization: “The great diversity of national parameters that currently exist to define poverty patterns illustrates this statistical complexity”. As we can see, the author, of course, began by discussing the question of the determination of the theory of value and super-exploitation and ended by talking about the obviously diverse ‘poverty patterns’, not only among the countries of advanced capitalism (United States, Germany, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece) and those of the dependent and underdeveloped, but, even, within the latter. 10

Unequal Exchange and Super-Exploitation

Unlike the approaches of the developmentalists and Shumpeterians, the transfers of value and surplus value from the periphery to the center, based on the divergences of productivity and the prices of production in the international market, strengthen what is called ‘unequal exchange’ that obviously affects the dependent and underdeveloped economies. But what Katz affirms is not derived from this attribution to Marini where he places the cause of the ‘economic-social backwardness’ to super-exploitation. Marini is much more dialectical and original in establishing the world market-unequal exchanges-superexploitation relationship in dependent economies. His approach is actually the following: The super-exploitation of labor is spurred by unequal exchange, but it does not derive from it, but from the profit fever created by the world market, and is fundamentally based on the formation of relative overpopulation. An economic process based on super-exploitation, a monstrous mechanism is set in motion, whose perversity, far from being

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­ itigated, is accentuated by the use of dependent economies to increase m productivity through technological development. marini 1978: 63–64

Marini derives the transfers of value and surplus value of super-exploitation (remember that capital per se does not create value or surplus value), which is intensified by the unequal exchange between advanced and dependent capitalisms in favor of the former within the framework of the existence of an extended and structural industrial reserve army (see Felix 2017). In this sense Marini (1973: 40) reaffirms this thesis when he writes that: “The effect of the unequal exchange is—insofar as it puts obstacles to its full satisfaction—that of exacerbating that desire for profit and thus sharpening the methods of extraction of surplus labor”. That is why the following statement by Katz is obvious: Transfers of surplus value between different bourgeoisies do not imply any type of exploitation, they establish modes of domination regulated by coercion to compete in adverse conditions for the periphery. Again it must be noted that Marini never made such a statement. But we must emphasize the inevitable consequence in the medium and long terms of these transfers of value and surplus value to central capitalism: sooner or later it helps to double the exploitation of the labor force of dependent countries. Evidently, the transfers of value, surplus value and profits between the different fractions of capital, in themselves, only cause a redistribution of those values ​​among the different bourgeois fractions. They do not imply the direct exploitation of the labor force, simply because this redistribution by the distribution of the existing surplus value and, therefore, of the profits, occurs in the sphere of competition and the circulation of capital, and not in the field of production and the process of work and valorization where, indeed, the value and surplus value of capital appropriation is created and produced under strict norms of exploitation and the scientific organization of labor. However, it must be added that the struggle between the various monopolistic fractions of capital and of the dominant classes exacerbates, as Marini says, the increase of productivity through technological development and, in particular in the dependent and underdeveloped countries. This is correlative with the greatest increase in the exploitation of the working classes by the capital structured in systems and regimes of super-exploitation jealously erected and guarded by the dependent bourgeoisies or, as they are called by Frank (1972), lumpenburgeoisies and the capitalist State. It is worth noting that at present the

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d­ ependent countries, no matter their ‘degree of development’, such as Brazil, Egypt, South Africa or Mexico, continue to transfer value and surplus value to the hegemonic capitalist countries of the center recreating unequal exchange, which stimulates and feeds back super-exploitation, although it does not come directly from this onerous exchange, as Marini himself clarifies. Only the incomprehension of the above leads to statements like this: This record of changing and stratified values ​​of the workforce (high in the center, low in the periphery and medium in the semi-periphery) requires using classical Marxist concepts, distanced from the beginning of super-exploitation. katz 2017

In this perspective, Katz proposes that in order to ‘overcome’ Marini one must ‘advance in the updating of dependency theory’. Relying on Dussel, this is ­derived from a supposed confusion of Marini’s work between the causes and effects of super-exploitation and unequal exchange, in which the Brazilian author ended up pondering, supposedly, the second as the cause of the first. Hence, for Katz, super-exploitation (which does not exist either as a concept or as a category) is in any case ‘a secondary effect and not the epicenter of dependency’. And what is the substitute here for super-exploitation with which Katz’s new dependency theory will be crowned? To answer this he resorts to the help of Dussel: The correction introduced by Dussel allows us to overcome the over-dimensioning of super-exploitation, it also contributes to introducing payment replacements below the value of the labor force for remunerations commensurate with the low value of that resource (sic!). dussel 2014

With this rethinking we can move forward in the updating of dependency ­theory. The lifeline for updating dependency theory, according to Katz’s assumption, is the formulation of that theory but without the uncomfortable ‘epicenter’ of super-exploitation for which he now resorts to the help of Samir Amin, who supposedly formulated the thesis of the world organization and the mechanisms of protection of surplus value of advanced capitalism, which is possible due to a supposed “…convergence of different economic-social formations within the same world market” that enable advanced countries to be ‘self-centered’ while the dependent and underdeveloped remain ‘disjointed’. And he concludes that this characterization highlights that dependency

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r­elations are determined by the polarized structures of the world market, which reinforce the particularities of the work force of underdeveloped countries. Here we enter a dead end: dependency relations are determined by the ‘polarized’ structures of the world market and ‘reinforce’ the particularities of the labor force of dependent countries. But what Katz and Amin do not explain is: (a) why, and due to what causes, this structural configuration of world capitalism occurs; and (b) what are those particularities of the work force of the underdeveloped countries? It will be said that is the low salaries that the workers of these countries receive, but we can say that the same happens in large sectors of workers of the imperialist countries that are subjected, day by day, in recent years, to the reduction of their real wages, to the precarization of work and its flexibilization, as well as to a verifiable process of deregulation of the world of work, of their rights and conquests, from the so-called structural reforms implemented by the bourgeoisies and the states of capitalism advanced in conjunction with international financial and monetary agencies. Quite ­simply, two states, one from the ‘periphery’ (Brazil) and another from the privileged ‘center’ (France) demonstrate the above. With Amin’s arguments, Katz explains, in the style of the neoclassical economists, that the divergences of the workforce and the production of extraordinary profits in the dependent countries obey a supposed ‘immobility of work’ in the dependent countries, instead of attributing the cause to the effective articulation of technological competence and super-exploitation, as Marini certainly does to the point of erecting the labor force as the main producer of extraordinary profits since the 80s (1996: 65): The counterpart of this situation is that it increases the importance of the worker as a source of extraordinary earnings. Although, of course, their qualifications and skill vary from nation to nation, his average intensity rises as he uses superior technology, without necessarily translating into a significant reduction in national wage differences, which means that the internationalization of production processes and the constant diffusion of the industry to other nations will be accentuated, not simply to exploit the advantages created by commercial protectionism, as in the past, but above all to cope with worldwide intensification of competition. The super-exploitation of the labor force plays a prominent role in this movement. Here it is truly scandalous to speak of ‘immobility of labor’, for example between Mexico and the United States—that is, in a dependent country and an advanced imperialist capitalism—when, historically, day-to-day migrations

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and immigrations of labor are made to the benefit of the United States, “…in comparison with the vertiginous displacement of capital and goods” that supposedly—only—occurs in the central countries. With all this our author is spared the work of talking about super-exploitation, preferring to do so with the elementary notion of the existence of a global structure of low wages in the periphery and high in the centers, which is not a novelty as other authors have investigated this since the beginning of the 80s (see Fröbel, Heinrichs and Kreye 1980). A reality that Marx himself warned about early in his main writings and, in particular, in his Grundrisse and, of course, in Capital (a subject adressed in Sotelo 2010). Nothing new under the sun! From here everything is explained by low wages, even the ‘little’ extension of ‘peripheral Fordism’ (Lipietz 1985) in dependent economies that “…is indispensable for explaining the greater intensity of the crisis in underdeveloped countries”. Although Marini does not speak of the Fordism that narrates the subjection of the worker to the assembly line in the production of automobiles in literal terms and that is rather a descriptive, rather than analytical, manifestation of relative surplus value, nevertheless he ponders the latter in its limitations to generalize and establish itself as hegemon of the capital accumulation processes of the dependent countries, being hindered by structural and sociopolitical dependency relations to lead the accumulation and reproduction of capital as historically occurs at least since the industrial revolution in advanced capitalism. In this regard, Marini (1973: 100, original italics) concludes: “The problem is thus to determine the character that the production of relative surplus value and the increase in labor productivity assume in the dependent economy”, asserting that: …The conditions created by the super-exploitation of the labor force in the dependent capitalist economy tend to hinder its transition from the production of absolute surplus value to that of relative surplus value, as the dominant form of relations between capital and labor. Is Fordism not a mechanism of exploitation and organization of work aimed at the production of relative surplus value? For Marini from this contradiction enormous gravitation is derived, that in the dependent economy assumes the extraordinary surplus value for the benefit of the great national and foreign capital, and in a preponderant way, of the enormous transnational monopolistic companies. Katz pretends to explain the imbalances between the narrowness of the internal consumption markets due to insufficient investments by capital, supposedly due to the existence of ‘low-wage economies’. Thus, he says:

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Marini rightly recorded this enduring contradiction of the peripheral economies, but he made an extreme analysis without noticing that this imbalance is not based on super-exploitation. The withdrawal of consumption is due to the simple validity of reduced wages of the value of the labor force. What would happen to Katz’s theory of dependence in the hypothetical case of an increase in wages in dependent economies: would it be equated with the value of the labor force or be above it? Here we return to the universe of tautologies: why are wages reduced? By severely ruling out the super-exploitation of labor as one of the essential causes of the narrowness of the internal consumer markets for workers and the popular classes that make up the majority of the population, there is no other recourse but that of low wages as the essential explanatory factor. We must argue, however, strictly speaking, that super-exploitation does not identify mechanically with the existence of low, medium or high salaries. But, as Marini stated in various texts, what institutionalizes and formalizes it in the dependent economy is the existence of a mean wage that is generally below the real and total value of the labor force, but above, in some proportion, the general minimum wage that exists in all the capitalist societies of the world. The super-exploitation of the labor force is an essential category that expresses the process of expropriation, as we said, on the part of the value and the workers’ consumption fund, although the remuneration is above that value. This is a fourth form that the super-exploitation of labor assumes even in advanced capitalist societies, which Marini did not warn us about and could not have done so, simply because it is a phenomenon that is beginning to be observed in these societies particularly since the 1980s with the monumental large-scale deployment of the precariousness of the world of work (see Chapter 8). A part of the high wages of the working class of the imperialist countries, which are above the social value of the labor force, is expropriated by capital through precarization. It is very likely that the intensification of this process that severely threatens the social and contractual rights of workers reduces wages below the historical social value of the labor force and, therefore, places the remuneration below that value. This is already happening in the United States and is becoming generalized to the capitalist countries of the former Welfare State that was longed for by the Keynesians and social democrats. But we must emphasize that this also depends on the struggles of the workers and their favorable or unfavorable result in the correlation of forces against capital and the State.

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The debate about where exploitation is greater, whether in the periphery or in the center, has no more value than the question of whether the chicken or egg came first. Simply put, exploitation ultimately implies a relationship of forces between labor and capital and will be greater or lesser, in an imperialist economy or in a dependent one, and in it’s multiple branches and productive sectors, according to the results of class struggle. In some advanced branches of the countries dependent (for example, in the electronic, automotive or telecommunications industry singularly transnationalized, and that coexist with super-exploitation) the scale of the exploitation of labor could be greater than in the countries of advanced capitalists; and vice versa. Here you can find branches of production where the exploitation and surplus value are higher than in the dependent countries. The political and geo-strategic vision of global capitalism articulates the set of processes, sectors and productive branches, individual and collective labor forces, infrastructures, institutions and means of communication, among others, for the sake of a common goal: maximum profit making that is vital to perpetuate capitalism in crisis in its current epoch of decadence. In this context we understand the extension of super-exploitation (Marini) and the form that it assumes under the garb of monumental precarization as one of the great social issues of the 21st Century (Castel 1998). Against those who reduce super-exploitation to a simple ‘violation of the law of value,’ we agree with Katz in the following sentence: “Dependency is not based on violation but on compliance with the law of value”. That is why for us the substantive that defines the super-exploitation, once constituted and determined through research and statistics, the social value of the labor force, is the expropriation of a part of that value and its conversion into accumulation of capital. A phenomenon that is expressed, as Marini says, in daily life—and as a consequence of the above—in the fact that the work force is remunerated ­below its value due to the confluence of two movements, which are little understood by the critics of the Brazilian thinker: the historical structural ­increase in the value of the labor force and the consequent stagnation or ­miniscule ­advancement of wages and real purchasing power for their sustenance. Katz constructs his ‘theory of dependence without super-exploitation’ by means of the artifice of substituting the payment of the labor force below its value for the ‘low remuneration of that factor’ (sic!). Note that for this author the labor force, as in the classic and postclassic universe, is reduced to a simple ‘factor’. The other component of his theory consists of “…prioritizing international transfers of surplus value in the explanation of dependence”. Katz ­contends that Marini did not contemplate either component because he supposedly remained stuck in the ‘post-war Keynesian scenario’. Marini did not study, assures Katz, what happened in the last decades as the precarization of

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work, zero-hour contracts, outsourcing, widespread informality, the deregulation of labor standards, toyotization and automation of processes and productive activities, and their fragmentation into watertight compartments, etc., and an infinity of new economic and socio-labor phenomena that have emerged in the contemporary scene. 11

Marini’s Renovated Vision

If Katz were more insightful in the investigation and analysis of Marini’s texts, he would have noticed that this author did transcend the ‘post-war Keynesian scenario’, not only perceiving the problems derived from the Fordist mass production paradigm that became generalized after World War ii but also those of the modern system of organization and exploitation of work called Toyotist or Onhist that flourished in Japan and have become widespread in the contemporary world. This is why Marini states that: The companies resorted in large scale to the outsourcing of their personnel, which implies the dismissal of workers and their subsequent reemployment through small service providers, which exempts them from expenses for social benefits. At the same time, they adopted measures framed in so-called flexibilization, a procedure that obliges the worker, in exchange for stability in employment, to accept changes that affect the workplace and the salary in its duration and intensity. In the end they accentuated existed differences in the labor markets, creating an increasing distance between the worker and the material production process, which has contributed to increasing the hierarchy between them according to the degree of their qualification, both from the point of view of employment and renumeration. These facts, in the first instance, are largely ­attributable to technological change, the same thing that makes the incidence of knowledge in the production process stronger (1996: 56–57). This is an approach that, by the way, is very close to Marx’s general intellect in his Grundrisse (1980, Vol. ii: 230). So would not it be more productive to study and analyze these phenomena that emerged in the era of savage neoliberalism and proto-capitalist globalization with the theoretical, methodological and analytical tools offered by the Marxist dependency theory with its neuralgic axis centered on the theory of super-exploitation, which is the epicenter of the capital cycle of the dependent economy? Why is it believed that these various forms of segmented, flexibilized, precarious, just in time, interim, virtual work,

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etc., together with new regulations and modalities invented by capital to remunerate workers less and less, incapacitate super-exploitation as the explanation for a capitalist rationality that imposes that regime centrally within the imperialist countries? Contrary to Katz, we affirm that the prevalence of low wages in current capitalism is not synonymous with the lack of super-exploitation. On the contrary, it is this latter category that ultimately explains this salary configuration at the local, national and international levels, together with global factors such as the economic crisis, problems of unemployment, scarcity of natural resources particularly fossil fuels, over-accumulation of capital, underconsumption and realization of merchandise that today explain, to a large extent, the situation of structural stasis in which contemporary capitalism is immersed both in its productive sphere and in international trade (Beinstein 2016 and Saxe-Fernández 2012: 42). Regarding the question of the extension of super-exploitation to advanced capitalism, we simply comment that the arguments used against this proposal by both Katz and other authors who have criticized this position are unfounded. It is not really a question, as in the mathematics of applying a syllogism to the Aristotelian style that reads, for example: if A = B, and B = C then C = A. If the super-exploitation of the labor force is a constituent and specific category of the dependent countries (A), and is extended to the imperialist countries of advanced capitalism (B), then Katz would say, (C) “it has lost the specificity that Marini assigned” while, as if they were entirely right, …critics of the extension of the concept of super-exploitation highlight these contradictions, remembering that it is a category of dependent economies and claim that the extension of its incidence undermines the Marxist theory of dependence … They estimate that the pillars of that conception are put at risk. A syllogism does not solve the real problems of capitalism and superexploitation. With the limits imposed in the imperialist countries, and in the most advanced economies, by the hegemonic prevalence of the production of relative surplus value, of the fictitious capital and its connection with the incessant scientific and technological development sponsored by the great monopoly capital of those countries, it impregnates the processes of production and valorization of capital charged with the greater extraction of surplus value from the working classes, including important expropriations of their consumption fund and part of their salaries generating, then, super-exploitation.

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Finally, to build his dependency theory without super-exploitation, Katz elaborates a eclac-Wallersteinian scheme that includes four vertical parameters: (a) An advanced center; (b) a new center (?); (c) an ascending semiperiphery (?) and a descending semi-periphery (?); and, finally, (d) a periphery, which associates three (horizontal) extremely formal and ambiguous categories: (a) the ‘formally exploited’ (?); (b) the ‘informally exploited’ (?); and (c) the ‘super-exploited’ (?). With the crossing of these with the parameters, the aim is to determine the value of the labor force according to the theory of ‘value chains’ (see Hopkings and Wallerstein 1986: 157–170). 12 Conclusion For the purposes of this topic, which we have developed previously (Sotelo 2012), we synthesize our theoretical position and conception in the framework of the Marxist dependency theory on the plausibility of the extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force in the productive economies and systems of contemporary imperialist capitalism. The following is valid for future ­research, at a theoretical and methodological level, exposing our knowledge regarding this important thematic line. The substantial difference between advanced and dependent capitalism is that in the first the production of relative surplus value is hegemonic in the economic and productive system, as well as in the accumulation and reproduction of capital. While in the dependent capitalist countries this surplus value is subordinated to the hegemony of the super-exploitation regime. The important thing is to determine if the super-exploitation of labor is implemented and developed under the conduction of the economic cycle and ­relative surplus value and with the structural limits and blocks that these impose on it in advanced capitalism. This we have called operational super-­ exploitation. Or, if it constitutes the hegemony of the cycle of capital, the ­relations of exploitation, the production of surplus value and of the labor relations between labor and capital in the dependent countries, we have denominated it as constituent super-exploitation. In other words: The substantial difference of advanced capitalism, with respect to the dependent one, consists in the fact that relative surplus value is hegemonic in the productive system, while in the latter said surplus value is subordinated to the old capitalist forms of production, to absolute surplus value and to super-exploitation of labor that preceded relative surplus value. sotelo 2012: 165

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In dependent capitalism the dependency category does not lose its specificity because it continues to orbit around the super-exploitation axis; nor does the imperialist economy lose its own specificity since the axis of its processes of production, accumulation, reproduction and exploitation of labor continues to hegemonically depend on the production of relative surplus value from which super-exploitation is configured in a subordinate but structural way. In short, we consider that this is the promising path that can update and develop the Marxist theory of the super-exploitation of labor for the 21st Century, and not the formal Wallersteinian-eclac scheme immersed in a descriptive conception that does nothing but undermine the theory of dependency. To dispense with the super-exploitation category, which is the basis and main axis of the Marxist dependency theory, and simply replace it with a low-wage economy, as is clear from Katz’s approach, is like trying to reformulate, for ­example, Wallerstein’s world system analysis without its centers, without its peripheries, without its semi-peripheries and without its ‘external areas’ and replace them with the Negri and Hardt’s concept of ‘empire’. The debate about the extent of the super-exploitation of labor or the labor force has not yet spilled much ink. Among other things because this category is generally considered as exclusive of the dependent countries and that it could hardly be extended to the developed ones. However, in recent times an interesting polemic has begun on this transcendental subject that promises to enrich and deepen our knowledge in the perspective of the Marxist dependency theory by adding new forms of knowledge on the exploitation of work and its characteristics in the environment of the current processes of global restructuring of capital and its effects on the world of labor. That is why we consider that the previous debate, and the positions that are pointed out, are just the prelude to a great discussion that is developing in the medium and long term between the workers and the left intelligentsia in order to understand the new capitalist configuration of the international division of labor and capital, as well as the perspectives that are opening up for the working class and the proletariat in the 21st Century.

Part 3 Crisis, Super-Exploitation and the Precarization of the World of Labor in the United States

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Hypothesis on the Capitalist Crisis and SuperExploitation of the Labor Force From the above debate we synthesize our conception of the central theme of this book that consists of sustaining the plausibility of the extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force in advanced nations and productive ­systems. In order to do this, in this chapter, we make an effort to relate the hypothesis within the framework of the Marxist dependency theory and the ­substantial postures elaborated by Marx in both the Grundrisse and Capital. 1

Dismeasure of Value and Surplus Value

The main trends of capitalism discovered by Marx in his fundamental works, far from having been outdated or invalidated in terms of a complex and rebellious reality that supposedly discarded them for having been ‘overcome’ in the process of globalization and ‘financialization’ of the capitalist world economy, are being confirmed with mathematical accuracy according to this system, as a way of production and social formation, developed from its essential contradictions and reaffirming its structural and systemic crises, aimed at its selfdissolution. Of course, stimulated by the class struggle throughout the world, and by the conscious action of intervention by people in matters that concern their preservation and reproduction. These trends, which in our opinion were configured as structural behaviors and operate with the status of law, are: a) As the productive forces develop, there is a negation of the socially necessary labor time or the reproduction of the value of the use of labor power by capital to benefit the increase of surplus labor unpaid to the worker (surplus value). b) Through the production of commodities acquiring a predominantly scientific character—the general intellect (Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 230)1—the work process and the workforce assume the form of immaterial work 1 Amin (2012: 16) correctly clarifies that “The economy has always been ‘cognitive’, because production has always implied the implementation of knowledge, even in the most primitive hunter-gatherers of pre-history”. On the other hand, Gramsci (1975: 15) writes that: “There is

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pronouncing the phenomenon of alienation that is characteristic of ­capitalism and its social metabolism,2 as a source of inspiration for the ‘­theories of the end of work’. Both elements reproduce the false idea that capital is an ‘immutable thing’ that can work without the worker, without his labor power, and that is constituted in an automatic mechanism able, in itself, to produce the social wealth that is distributed in society outside the class structures and the social relations of production and exploitation. This is one of the ideas that feed what in sociology of work3 we call the ‘theories of the end of work’ that since the 60s and 70s of the last century, but particularly, in the last two decades, extended to the ­academic and scientific-political world sowing uncertainties about the essence of capitalism and presenting it as an ‘eternal’ category whose problems and contradictions can be ‘corrected’ through structural reforms (structural adjustment programs) and economic-social adaptations, and techniques, but obviously never overcome them.4 The third phenomenon that results from these tendencies consists, according to Marx, in the fact that working time becomes the only determination of capitalist production of use values and, to that extent,—here is what is transcendent—: “…the immediate labor is reduced to a more meagre, insignificant proportion (geringen) and qualitatively at an undoubtedly essential moment, but subaltern against general scientific work, the technological application of the natural sciences on the one hand, and on the other, the face of the general productive force resulting from the social structuring of global production, a productive force that appears as a natural gift of social work, even though it is actually a

no human activity from which any intellectual intervention can be excluded, you cannot separate the faber man from the sapiens” (author’s italics). 2 See Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 222–223. We use the social metabolism category of capital in the same sense as Mészáros 2001a: 48, when he says that as a “control mode and a single command structure … in which, for the first time in history, … human beings have to confront, in the form of capital, a mode of social metabolic control which can and should be constituted also—in order to reach its fully developed form—as a system global, demolishing all obstacles that come their way” (Ibid: 52). 3 According to Castel (1998), the work of Simone Weil, La Condition Ouvriere published in France in 1951, that describes the ‘work in crumbs’ or fragmented work, constitutes the beginning of the sociology of work that will continue with authors like Friedmann and Naville 1962. 4 In this sense, the notion of ‘new economy’ is attributed to Michael Mandel (1996). Originally a concept that was coined by the economist Brian Arthur, this was popularized mainly by Kevin Kelly (1997), editor of the North American magazine Wired. For a good critique of this current of thought, see Guillén 2007, especially Chapter 1 (pp. 35–74). For a critical view see also: Grobar 2007: 77–94.

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­ istorical product. Capital works, thus, in favor of its own dissolution as h the dominant form of production” (Marx 1980: 222). d) Articulated, these three processes convert the worker and his workforce, into a simple appendix of the machinery. In an ‘extra factor’ of production and “what was once the activity of the living worker becomes the activity of the machine, in this way the appropriation of labor by capital, capital in so far as it absorbs work in itself, is opposed to the worker in a brutally obvious way” (Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 227). This contraposition acquires its maximum rationalization with the flexible Toyotism that has hegemonized the world of production of relative surplus value and super-exploitation. Marx warns of a deep contradiction between the material basis of the magnitude of value for working time and its replacement by the machinery that hides the opposition between labor and capital. This remains the essential determination of bourgeois society, precisely due to the fact that capital does not find important mechanisms to replace this contradiction, which makes it remain in a process of crisis that leads it to its own dissolution. In keeping with this, the production of wealth appears entirely dependent, not so much on the labor force of the worker and the length of total social work but “…on the general state of science and the technological process, or on the application of this science to production” (Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 228). In this way a direct correlation is generated between science and the material development of capitalist production. Thus, as the latter unfolds, the same thing occurs with it and there are two disproportions: a) between the time of work and the wealth produced on one side; and on the other, b) between abstract labor and the power of science and technology controlled by capital (Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 228). But on the surface of society an illusory impression is always created—that is strengthened by the fictitious capital that feeds back its ideologists with the theories of the end of work, since it erases the trace of surplus value but generates profit—that finally capital managed to ‘become independent’ of the labor force and, at the same time, ‘solved’ the problem of the production of wealth and surplus value without the intervention of the former. It was thought, then, that a magic formula had been found to produce surplus value and wealth without the concurrence and participation of the human workforce, and now that role has been played by machines, technology, science and, finally, by fictitious capital and its concomitant fictitious profits (Carcanholo 2013). We must have arrived, then, in the naive world of Pangloss described by the French encyclopedist philosopher François Voltaire. As Carcanholo says, when fictitious capital stands as the hegemonic device of capital in the world from the mid-70s:

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Work, therefore, lost its centrality and technology, information and the domain of knowledge were erected to the category of magical entities capable of everything and became an object of worship. Finally capital would not need to dirty their hands in production to be itself an able being capable of generating profits, high profits. Furthermore nature would be secondary. carcanholo 2013: 137

However, as Antunes (2018: 257) clarifies: “Fictitious capital is not a separate and opposed alternative to the productive world, but it controls it to a large extent and only a fraction of it, of fictitious capital, deviates from production”. It would have created, thus, artificially of course, an illusionary effect with its inertial force, according to Valenzuela (2017: 60) “…which generates profits and does not suffer from realization problems”. Or the best of all possible worlds that even the most extreme of speculators would envy! The above indication is essential to understanding the ideological bases of most of the theses of the end of the work so fashionable in our times, baring them in the light of the constant crises of capitalism and its propensity to drop its rate of profit at the worldwide level because of the diminishing participation of the labor force in the production of value and surplus value. The same capital, concludes Marx, involves a contradiction that is expressed in the fact that, insofar as it tends to reduce the maximum socially necessary labor time, even hypothetically approaching zero, on the other hand it can not do without this time (already reduced to the extreme)—and rather depends on it—both to measure wealth, and to produce value and surplus value (Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 229) since capitalist reproduction depends on these last two categories.5 Surplus labor, then, on which surplus value depends, at the same time as it becomes the strategic objective and the science that seeks to prolong it, is constituted in the question of vie et de mort necessary work (Marx Vol. ii, 1980: 229). It should not be forgotten that capital is accumulated work that is constantly increased by the living work of the worker. Thus, there is a kind of investment in which the socially necessary labor time depends on the unpaid surplus, the first which is systematically reduced as the productive forces of society develop, and the second, which grows less due to the systematic ­displacement of the workforce by technological development and the i­mplementation

5 Again we quote Amin (2012: 33) to emphasize that: “The reproduction of capitalism is based on the extraction of surplus value. The production of value (and not wealth) defines the horizon of your worldview. It is worthwhile, then, to avoid the confusion between value and wealth”.

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of ­automation in production processes. Both movements, however, cause a strengthening of the secular trend to the fall of the average rate of profit in the system that in the long term will be offset by the indebtedness of companies and the emigration of capital to the financial sphere of speculative capital. The growing reduction of socially necessary work time, with the consequent increase in surplus unpaid work, translates into two phenomena correlated in the medium and long terms. On the one hand, it generates the dismeasure of value that we have already broken down following the theoretical-methodological footprint of Marx’s Grundrisse and Capital (see Sotelo 2010 and 2012; Prado 2005; and Alves 2012) and, on the other, it stimulates the migration of productive capital predominantly to the financial sphere where it is centralized and causes a greater monopolization of the world capitalist economy in a few hands. Both phenomena end up punishing the average rate of profit, while stimulating inter-capitalist competition with the supreme aim of appropriating extraordinary profits. In the end these are subordinated to super-exploitation as we saw earlier and at the same time accelerate the monopolization of the world economy. This is the perverse cycle of super-exploitation—always accommodating to capital—that we can identify with the Prometheus Tragedy that Alves (2016) talks about, when the capitalist crisis and the fictitious capital, which is hegemonic in contemporary capitalism, cause accumulated surpluses of capitalmoney (investment) derived from super-exploitation and neoliberal policies of precarization of work, to deviate into the speculative sphere of fictitious capital and feed it back; “…increasing the chronic instability of the commodity system, the increase of mass unemployment and wage precariousness, the degradation of the person who works, deepening the crisis of civilization of capital in its multiple dimensions” (Alves 2016: 45, author’s italics). This is the sequence followed by capitalism in the world and in the United States, according to Valenzuela (2017: 43): …Financial investment in recent decades has become more and more attractive in terms of performance. In which high interest rates are not the only influence, but fundamentally, in neoliberal contexts tend to unleash speculation and speculative bubbles, capital gains (difference between the purchase price and the sale price of financial assets) that are obtained through fictitious capital. The impact of this phenomenon has been so strong that many corporations that operate in the industrial space have diverted their investment funds to the purchase of financial securities, which allows achievements (profits) superior to those obtained through production.

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In the next section we attempt a dialectical interpretation of the relationship between the production dynamics of relative surplus value—which essentially implies the substantive reduction of socially necessary labor time for the production and reproduction of the labor force by increasing productivity using scientific-technological development when it affects the branches, sectors and companies that produce wage goods for the working class—and the increase in the average exploitation of the labor force. Which, it is worth mentioning, goes hand in hand with an unusual increase of super-exploitation in the terms raised by Marini in his fundamental works. 2

Hegemony of Relative Surplus Value and Super-Exploitation

The theory of the exploitation of wage labor linked to the Critique of Political Economy (cpe)—the basis of Grundrisse and Capital—is built on a very high level of abstraction where the concept of exploitation (as a fundamental relational category and constituent of historical capitalist society) is fundamental to the theory of surplus value and profit within the capitalist mode of production. In the absence of this concept one cannot even imagine the elaboration and comprehension of the law of labor-value as the central axis of the theory of capitalist production and reproduction, just as one cannot understand the Marxian theory of dependence—or the Weberian theory of dependence linked to Cardoso and the Escola de São Paulo. Marini contributed a specific theory about the nature of dependent societies using the tools of political economy, in particular, Capital, which contains a general appreciation of the development, crisis and decadence of capitalism contemplated from the Latin American perspective: This is why I consider that studies on dependency acquire the status of theory. Obviously, not in the sense of a general theory of the capitalist mode of production as this was accomplished by Marx, nor of the ‘dependent capitalist mode of production’ as this does not exist, but of the study of dependent capitalist economic-social formations. That is, an analysis at a lower level of abstraction, capable of capturing the specific combination of production modes that have coexisted in Latin America under the hegemony of capitalism. bambirra 1978: 26

The above quote locates the theoretical-methodological range in which Marini constructed his peculiar conception of the super-exploitation of the labor

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force—in the framework of the Latin American dependent formation— derived from the theory of the value and the prices of production that expresses the specificity of the social relations and of production that operate in the dependent economic-social formations within the capitalist world economy. Within the theoretical, methodological and analytical support of Marxism and the theory of value, Marini contributed important theoretical and analytical tools to the Latin American social science of labor, not integrated into other theoretical perspectives, to understand the world phenomena from a critical view of all the economic-social formations of the dependent countries that differentiated from the trajectories that marked the historical development of European capitalism. This did not imply, as it was interpreted, that he conceived of ‘two capitalisms’, but only one: the dominant imperialist and the dependent subordinate of the world capitalist formation. He indicated the necessary articulation of surplus value (absolute and relative) and the superexploitation with the productivity of labor as two forms of manifestation in the context of the expansion of world capitalism and the insertion and subordination of the dependent economies to the hegemonic centers. The most conspicuous result of his research can be summarized in that process by which technological and productive development increases super-exploitation, and not the reverse as functionalism and neoclassical economics argue through their mentors of ergonomic science. In this regard, Marini states that: Far from a development that integrates increasing layers of the population to consumption, based on the increase in labor productivity, what predominates in a dependent economy like Brazil’s is the forms of superexploitation (sharpened, indeed, by the increase in productivity), which not only exclude these masses from consumption, but also from the productive employment created by the accumulation of capital. marini 1985: xi

The author argues that, historically, the dependent countries contributed to the transition from absolute to relative surplus value in classical capitalism (England) at the time of the industrial revolution (mainly during the 19th Century). At present, these countries, no matter their degree of economic development, continue to transfer value and surplus value to the hegemonic capitalist centers, configuring the famous unequal exchange that stimulates superexploitation, although it does not come directly from it (Marini 1978: 63–64. For a discussion of unequal exchange see Emmanuel, Bettelheim, Amin and Palloix 1971; Emmanuel 1972; Mandel 1975; Frank 1979: 48; and Shaikh 2006,

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e­ specially Chapter 4). Lastly, at the same time, and contradictorily, these countries block, or discourage, the development of relative surplus value in terms of labor productivity within their production and capital reproduction systems, deepening tendencies to redouble super-exploitation based on the reduction of the workers’ consumption fund and its conversion into an additional source of capital accumulation (Marini 1973: 100). In this sense, super-exploitation is a genuine direct mechanism to counteract the fall in the rate of profit that the blockade causes, and attenuates, thus to some extent, its contradictions. In Dialectics of Dependency, in a high level of abstraction, we find a kind of typology of two economic-social formations that exist in the world economy (Marini 1973: 40). The first is based on the greater extensive and intensive exploitation of the labor force, and the second on the productivity of work and the development of relative surplus value linked to advances in science and technology. From the point of view of the production of surplus value two situations can be observed: one in which it is produced preferably without necessarily verifying super-exploitation and which, roughly speaking, corresponds to the advanced countries; and another, which is achieved through the superexploitation of workers in the dependent countries, regardless of the fact that in some sectors and branches of the economy there is a production of relative surplus value (automobiles, petrochemicals, electronics, production of machinery and tools, etc.) Marini states that: …the increase in surplus labor time always means a greater exploitation of the labor force, in this sense, the workers of the central economies are subject to a constant intensification of their exploitation. However, it is radically different if the greater degree of exploitation corresponds to a real decrease in the work required. That is, if it is done without the worker’s remuneration falling below its value, or if the extension of the ­surplus labor is done at the expense of the labor time necessary for the worker to reproduce their own value, that is, to create a value equivalent to that of the goods indispensable to their subsistence. In the latter case, the labor force will be remunerated at a price lower than its real value, and the worker will not only be subject to a greater degree of exploitation, but rather is the object of a super-exploitation. marini 1985: 115–116

This division begun to change from the 80s when the international economy entered a phase characterized by the continuous decrease of national economic borders in order to cover increasingly larger, demanding, complex and competitive markets led by the powerful multinational corporations, the

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f­ ictitious capital and the dismeasure of value. This intensified the competition between the big companies of the world to obtain—and appropriate— extraordinary profits that are the motor of the contemporary development of capitalism (Marini 1996: 49–68). In this context, technological development was deepened and disseminated to standardize goods and facilitate their exchange (this is the meaning of so-called globalization), which in the long run tended to homogenize the productive processes, the productivity of the work and, concomitantly, its intensity. This technological homogenization stimulated the levelling of prices and the generalization of the law of value (Marini 1996: 64 and Piqueras 2014: 110) through inter-capitalist competition and the unusual development of financial capital, at the same time that it impacted the world of work in its essential components: salary, category and function, as well as in the social and contractual conditions, dismantling the historical rights acquired by workers. According to Piqueras (2014: 112–113) the disintegration of the Soviet bloc and the full incorporation of China into the world market from the 1990s and its subsequent entry into the World Trade Organization (wto) at the beginning of 2000s (in December 11, 2001) completed the “…universalization of the law of value”. The opening of these nations and the world market, which began in the 80s, contributed to the economic and political practices of neoliberalism: external opening, privatization of the public sector, financial liberalization, dismantling of the social institutions of the welfare state, regulation of the labor force, employment and wages by market forces and by the extraordinary rate of profit. This era of the neoliberal welfare state, in the course of the capitalist crisis of the mid-70s, is succinctly expressed by Streeck (2016: 38) when he states that: Since the State could no longer be trusted, and given that almost everywhere the same democratic system of social control governed, the only solution that remained was an escape to the market: it was about freeing the capitalist economy of the bureaucratic and corporate political controls of the period of reconstruction, recovering profit margins that would be obtained through free markets and deregulation rather than through government policies with the danger of the social obligations that came with them (our emphasis). This transition to the neoliberal State (“Neoliberal State of Social Welfare for Privileged Elites”, we might say) resulted in the unleashing of a series of reforms, particularly labor markets and social security systems that sponsored the flexibilization of the workforce, and whose most conspicuous result was

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not only the “…fundamental revision of the postwar welfare state” (Streeck 2016: 39), but practically its liquidation, particularly in the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe. However, we must emphasize that at the center of this process of transition and subsequent consolidation is the extreme centralization of speculative financial capital, also called fictitious capital that is now dominant in the world according to the approaches of some authors (Chesnais 1993 and Autumn, 2016; Carcanholo 2013; Nakatani and Carcanholo 2015: 31–59; Alves 2016; and Valenzuela 2017).6 The peculiarity of the super-exploitation regime is that it hinders, structurally and socially, the development of productive capacity and the possibility of greater incorporation of cutting-edge technology in the labor processes of dependent countries. These phenomena make it impossible for relative surplus value to become a hegemonic system capable of leading the economic process of these countries, contrary to the theories supported by the Weberian dependency theorists, such as Cardoso and Faletto (see Martins 2013: 28 and Goto 1998: 107), who maintain that industrialization and foreign capital generalize it in the dependent economies, disregarding the obstacles identified by Marini, so that this does not happen and they, nevertheless, continue to prevail. One, then, enters into a vicious cycle that the (dependent) economy is unable to overcome because it never completed its cycle of industrialization and—in addition—because the obstacles prevail in preventing derivatives from the industrialization adopted in the past (truncated, unfinished and insufficient 6 Of course, this fictitious capital has a specific social and political class subject. In this regard, Alves (2016: 25) states that “The power of command of financial capital over other fractions of capital—banking capital, capital productive and commercial capital—is a political power constituted, for example, by financial deregulation, opening up of national economies and privatization of state-owned enterprises”. Thus the representatives of flesh and bone, with names and surnames, of the imf, the World Bank, the oecd, the Federal Reserve and all its tentacles personified in the countries that they dominate would be integral parts of this class and corporate subject immersed in fictitious capital. For Valenzuela (2017: 241–242) the dominant power bloc is composed of the big financial bourgeoisie, the great exporting bourgeoisie and the big monopoly bourgeoisie, where the first holds its hegemony in that bloc. For the representatives of the dominant bourgeois bloc in Trump’s United States see Petras May 9, 2017. For his part Dierckxsens (2017: 34) warns of the existence of two dominant factions of capital in the United States in conflict, both unproductive from the point of view of the value/ labor theory: the one that denominates ‘global financial capital’ (globalized Anglo-American financial capital that controls the Federal Reserve and Wall Street) and that of ‘financial-regional-continental capital’ (‘continental financial oligarchy’ that leads the fta and the EU) that, in some way, will be confronted with Trump’s ‘industrial nationalism’ (ibid: 35), although the latter is forced to make alliances with the second and with the ‘productive multipolarism’ (ibid: 46 and 49).

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[­Fajnzylber 1983] as well as by the way it was articulated with the cycle of ­capital, with the class structures and the political power of the advanced ­capitalist countries, in the specific case of Mexico with the North American economy). At this level of our explanation we highlight one of the threads of dependency theory that consists in determining the relationship between relative surplus value and super-exploitation: “The problem is in determining the character that relative surplus production assumes in the dependent economy and the increase in labor productivity” (Marini 1973: 100, author’s italics). Therefore, it is vital to consider two essential problems: the first, why and due to what causes, in the dependent economy, does relative surplus value have so many difficulties in achieving and constituting a hegemonic regime in the production and work systems, as happened in classical capitalism throughout its development after the great industrial revolution in England from the mid-18th Century and during the 19th Century. Secondly, how is it that, particularly when import substitution industrialization arises and develops in Latin America, almost exclusively in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, the super-exploitation of the labor force continues to subsume and limit relative surplus value, thus failing to become hegemonic and failing to compete with the large industrialized centers? For example, the policy established by the military dictatorship after the 1964 coup in Brazil prompted measures to counteract the economic crisis such as the reduction of wages that affected not only the working class but even sectors of the salaried petty  bourgeoisie (Marini 1985: 184). Another example occurred later in the midst of an ‘economic miracle’ (1968–1973) when the Volkswagen company in Brazil achieved, without significant technological changes, a significant increase in its productivity due to the increase in the speed of its assembly lines (intensity of the work) that enabled the average production per worker to go from 10.4 vehicles in 1971 to 14 vehicles in 1973 (Debate Proletario, No. 1, January–March 1978). To us, the essence of this problem lies in dependence and super-exploitation. Martins captures this condition well when he compares the dynamics of the dependent countries with those of advanced capitalism: While the centers tend, as the capitalist mode of production and its industrial technological base develop, to gravitate around the relative surplus value, the dependent countries will base their accumulation patterns in the super-exploitation of the labor force (our translation) (2013: 17).

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This means that, contrary to certain interpretations that deny the reality that super-exploitation is spreading to advanced capitalism, we see that it runs under the limits and the hegemony of relative surplus value in these countries, while the relative and restricted deployment of this modality happens without breaking the structural and political hegemony of super-exploitation that operates as a constituent category, as we mentioned above. The specific and characteristic that prevails historically in the dependent economies is the constitution of a dependent-articulated-subordinate mode of production to the world capitalist system, as Marini said about the superexploitation regime that hinders the implantation and generalization of relative surplus value as the axis of the process of accumulation and reproduction of capital, as well as the corresponding organization of work. This is because, from the beginning, advanced capitalism articulated and subordinated absolute surplus value (prolongation of the working day) and intensification7 to relative surplus value,8 at least since the industrial revolution in England and incorporated workers into the consumption (of part) of the goods produced by the Fordist factories of the great modern industry of the 20th Century (Castel 1998). This phenomenon influenced Marx (Capital Vol. iii, Chapter xiv, 2000: 235) so that he could observe the empirical possibility of super-exploitation—the reduction of the salary below the value of the labor force—as a coincidental and fortuitous phenomenon aimed at counteracting—along with other devices such as scientific inventions and the recurrence to the world market— the tendency for the rate of profit to fall,9 as a long-term structural behavior 7 The intensity of work produces relative surplus value when it is generalized and affects the productive branches of Sector I and/or ii that determine the articles or goods-salary of the value of labor force because it manages to reduce the total time socially necessary in the working day. But, when this does not happen, it does not change that value and the intensity as well as the prolongation of the working day result in a greater amount of merchandise. For details see: Marini April-June 1979: 19–39. 8 Aglietta (1976: 35) gives this dialectical articulation: “…The absolute and relative surplus values are indissociable. They create the need for capitalism to continuously transform the conditions of production”. Therefore, there is a—fictional—division of the history of capitalism that shares two stages: one based on the prevalence of absolute surplus value and another one in relative surplus value. Although this tends to become hegemonic in the system of capitalist production of goods, it does not exclude the first, as can be seen today where in practice, due to various factors, a powerful movement of global capital is deployed to increase the working time and, therefore, absolute surplus value through structural reforms and labor codes. See Sotelo 2012 and 2015. 9 We should note that Marx’s discovery of the law of the tendency to the fall of the rate of profit, in Capital Volume iii, is its fundamental contribution since “In theoretical terms what is expressed in the culmination of Capital: the law of the tendency to decrease the rate of

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and as a regularity of the general analysis of capital as Marini observed for dependent countries and economies in particular. This is consistent with the methodological premise sustained throughout Capital that says that the value of the labor force (like that of any other commodity) always corresponds to its price. A subject that will involve, in Vol. iii of Capital, the study of the conversion of the values, that is, of the socially necessary work time in production prices = C + V (Price of Cost) + G (Average Profit), an issue that did not develop, therefore, in the Market Price, already concretized in real capitalist competition (Dussel 2014: 60). This author points out that in Capital there are three conceptual levels of competence: the most abstract is book i; the intermediate one is book ii; and, finally, the most concrete is that of book iii (Dussel 2014: 61). The explanation is that: …The category of ‘production price’ is theoretically the last categorical stage at which Marx arrived in his ‘scientific’ life. He never reached the level of ‘market price’ or competition; for this he would have written the second treatise on competition. In a way, Chapters 4 and thereafter are corollaries. Chapter 3, so essential, indicates the fundamental contradiction of capital, but does not have the analytical centrality of the ‘production price’. dussel 2014: 67

Arrizabalo (2016: 136) explains the difference between the market price and the production price: just as the price of production fluctuates around the value, the market price does so based on the production price. He asks: “Does the incorporation of the notion of production price imply a questioning of the law of value, to which prices are determined by values?” His answer is obviously negative, saying that:

profit, explains in a dialectical way, the intrinsically contradictory nature of capitalist accumulation, from which important implications derive and, in particular, the need for intensifying exploitation”, Arrizabalo (2016: 81). In this way, “Marx’s theoretical approach, which starts with the law of value, culminates with the law of the trend in the decline of the rate of profit, which explains the limits of capitalism” (Ibid: 146). This thesis was confirmed, by Marx in Grundrisse (1980 Vol. ii: 281), when, in relation to the tendency to fall of the rate of profit, he affirmed that: “This is, in all respects, the most important law of the modern political economy and is essential to understand the most difficult relations. It is, from the historical point of view, the most important law. It is a law that, despite its simplicity, has never been understood and, even less, consciously expressed”.

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…values ​​actually govern prices, not directly but mediated by the social distribution from surplus value for appropriation as profit. That is why we say that profit is the modified form of surplus value. If it were not so, if there were n o value or surplus value, the average profit would be an average of nothing, that is, it would be nothing … The competition makes the individual profit rates level out to your average. arrizabalo 2016: 136

But he clarifies, against the neoclassical postulates, …that competition does not create profit but, on the contrary, it is this that generates the competition for its distribution. If there is no surplus value generated, there is nothing to distribute. That is why the capitalists are simultaneously allies and rivals, allies against the work to try to produce the highest possible surplus value and rival each other as competitors in their distribution with its modified form that is profit. arrizabalo 2016: 136

Marini’s merit lies in the fact that he forged the super-exploitation category as the hard core and guiding principle of capitalist development in the underdeveloped socio-economic formations of the periphery of the world system that made it possible to differentiate it, historically and structurally, from the development of the classic capitalist countries. The analytical correlation of relative surplus value/super-exploitation was never well understood by the critics of the Brazilian thinker as was seen in Chapter 2, since it is the axis of his theory and the bas i s for understanding the dialectic: development-underdevelopment-dependence. Applying this difference and correlation to the analysis of contemporary capitalism, in particular to the new historical stage that opened at the end of the 80s—with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the imperialist invasion by the United States of Iraq in the so-called Gulf War (1991),10 with the widespread and large-scale application o f information technology to material and immaterial production and telecom m unications (third industrial revolution)—Marini points out three conditions that capital had to join up to open this new stage of history. In the first place, he accentuated the degree of exploitation of labor throughout the system to increase the mass of surplus value, which was possible, he 10

The period that makes Sapir (2008: 9) characterize this stage of history as the prelude to the 21st Century and the “…emergence of the United States as a dominant and uncontested power”.

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adds, thanks to the defeats of the workers and popular movements in the core capital countries and those in the periphery, including Latin America. This actually made it possible to build and disseminate a rational political-ideological base to just i fy the imposition of neoliberal structural reforms throughout the world. S e cond, it intensified the concentration of capital in advanced ­economies to ensure investments in scientific-technological development and industrial modernization, which implied strong value transfers from the dependent Latin American countries (the so-called unequal exchange for which the extreme external indebtedness of the underdeveloped nations contributed enormously) that increased the accumulation of capital and, consequently, aggravated the problems of employment, salary, marginality and misery. As Bellamy writes (2015: 53), “Part of the imperialist rent remains in the peripheral country and is not transferred to the center, but is rather a payment to the local ruling classes for the role they play in the game of globalization”. The third condition enlarged the scale of the market to place the large investments necessary for t h e modernization of the industrial and services apparatus, thus canceling or counteracting the small and medium-sized companies who eventually became interested in participating in this modernization process. These conditions reinforced the monopoly character of the capitalist economy under th e influence of the expansion of its multinational companies throughout the planet, while at the same time achieving a reactivation of the laws and the basic mechanisms of the system: … especially the law of value … that operates by comparing the real value of the goods, that is, of the time of work invested in its creation, including the time required for inputs and means of production, as well as the reproduction of labor power (Marini 1993: 10) and expressed itself both in the generalization of the law of value/work and in the construction of a solid cross-border bridge that paved the way for the expansion of the super-exploitation regime in the productive systems and in the social relations of the advanced capitalist countries. 3

Does the Generalization of Super-Exploitation Blur Dependence Relations?

We propose that the super-exploitation of the labor force that used to be exclusive to the dependent economies is now becoming an articulated mechanism with the methods of production of relative surplus value. The transnational corporations and the State in the core capitalist countries have a powerful impulse given by structural reforms in the process of neoliberalism—labor, fiscal, treasury and social welfare—in contrast to what happens in dependent

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c­ apitalism, where the deployment of relative surplus value is systematically blocked by the prevalence of the super-exploitation regime that operates as the structural basis of the reproduction of capital on a global scale (Smith 2016; Higginbottom 2010; Alves 2016). We also postulate that the neoliberal structural reforms promoted since the 80s are not aimed at promoting, let alone generalizing, the production of relative surplus value and the productive cycle of capital (p … m … d … p), but rather the strengthening of the super-exploitation regime independently of the modernization of the technical-productive processes that are registered in some regions of the economy or, even, in strategic sectors linked to the world market such as agro-industry, automotive, oil, mining or export agriculture that are the engines of development of most of the dependent primary-exporting countries. In this context, the super-exploitation of the labor force is implanted in the core countries of the world system as a way to contain the fall in profitability and investments without altering its essence or replacing it in the dependent countries. From another angle, super-exploitation in the capitalist centers is the counterpart of the dismeasure of value and the prevalence of fictitious capital in the economic and political relations of domination. Therefore, the relation of periphery/center domination, metropolis/satellite or, better, imperialism/dependence as some authors suggest (Dias 2013; Osorio 2016; and, from another perspective, Hardt and Negri 2002) is not blurred.11 On the contrary, it is now doubly articulated both in the advanced centers of capitalism as well as in the regions we call ‘new peripheries’ in the world economy who came after the fall of the socialist bloc and the former Soviet Union by ex-socialist countries that remained linked to the center of the imperialist countries and transnational corporations from Germany, France and England, to mention the most important ones (see Sotelo 2007 and Toussaint November 10, 2017). The most relevant aspect that operates in favor of the most developed countries of the European Union is the abysmal wage difference that large transnational corporations take advantage of against workers who receive very low remunerations for the performance of their work, as expressed by Toussaint: This disparity allows large European companies to be very competitive, in particular, the German industrial companies that transfer a part of 11

Cardoso and Serra (1978) most definitely do, as Marini (1978: 102) says, erase the structural and categorical differences existing between advanced capitalism and dependent capitalism in order to reduce them to the simple descriptive figure of ‘development of capitalism in the center and in the periphery’ adopting docilely the center/periphery figure of eclac.

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their production to workers from countries like Bulgaria, Romania and others in Central and Eastern Europe. The parts are returned to Germany for assembly and final product finishing, and finally, those products, whose wage cost was compressed to the maximum, are exported to European Union countries or to the world market. It must be highlighted that inside of the EU no import/export fees are paid (2017). This reality has extremely negative consequences for the majority of the European Union, as expressed by Toussaint: What workers and people receiving aid from social services are currently experiencing in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain was imposed on workers in developing countries during the debt crisis of the years 1980– 1990. In the course of the 1980s, the offensive had also affected the workers of North America since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, of Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher—the Iron Lady—and the workers of the former Eastern Bloc were also subjected to brutal policies during the 1990s imposed by their governments and the imf. Henceforth, and in a much less brutal way than experienced by the peoples of the Third World (from the poorest to the so-called emerging economies), the offensive targeted German workers from 2003–2005. The nefarious effects for a significant part of the German population are felt even today, despite the success of German exports limiting unemployment numbers and a part of the working class not feeling the consequences directly. As of 2010, the social attacks extended to the rest of Europe (2017). In both forms of capitalism, the difference consists in the place occupied by relative surplus value and super-exploitation in production systems and in social relations. In addition, in the dependent countries, widespread informality, together with a high level of unemployment and structural underemployment, contribute to curbing the ‘modernization of the economy’ by preventing the generalization of the production of relative surplus value and its constitution as hegemonic within the system. It is necessary to clarify that these methods are frankly capitalist and in no way correspond to previous ‘non-capitalist’ or ‘pre-capitalist’ modalities of production, as Singer (1980) came to support in his criticism of Marini, who, by the way, did not understand the central arguments.12 In advanced capitalism, on the other hand, super-exploitation is 12

Without having understood the essence of Marini’s approach to the Super-exploitation of the labor force, Singer (1980: 202, author’s emphasis) asks: “…If the working class of Latin America (and, of course, also of the other undeveloped countries) does not live from the

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limited to the dominant cycles of capital—functioning in regional and international terms through the world market—under the hegemony of relative surplus value; the incessant increase in the productive capacity of work, the monopoly of the source code of science and technology under the exclusive domain of the imperialist countries and their application to productive and labor processes. Finally, the terms of the internal dynamics of the consumer markets demand a certain purchasing power of the working classes that dynamize them. Even while wage levels are being dramatically reduced forming low-wage working populations who are poor, precarious, versatile, flexible and with a low purchasing power and with limited access to acquire the basic satisfactions not only to maintain, in normal conditions, the reproduction of the labor force, but even to perpetuate biological and social life. In this way, super-exploitation becomes a reality increasingly present in the industrialized countries of global capitalism, and affects the working and living conditions of large segments of the working classes. The new morphology of this system is based on the super-exploitation of the labor force, but assumes different forms in each country and region depending on, as we have said, the regime that predominates, either of relative surplus value or superexploitation; or even a hybrid form resulting from both and, of course, in consonance with the class struggle. 4 Conclusion Today’s world is much more complex than that of previous decades. For this reason, in dependent countries, super-exploitation determines and limits the production dynamics of relative surplus value, despite advances in industrialization and incorporation of technology in production and labor processes through industrialization and through the substitution of imports, the development of agro-industry and of modern mining that incorporate components of computer science and of other microelectronic technologies. Meanwhile, in advanced countries—convulsed by the crisis and the severity of the austerity policies practiced by their neoliberal governments against their workers and populations—super-exploitation is a category that depends on the dynamics of production and reproduction of relative surplus value, and consumption of his own products, where do they then get their subsistence? The only possible answer (which Marini, however, does not make explicit) is that workers’ subsistence originates in other modes of production”. And of course! Marini did not ‘make explicit’ what this author refers to, simply because he never conceived of super-exploitation as a precapitalist category, but frankly capitalist.

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of political-institutional determinations referring to the dimension of the State and the power of the unions, by lowering the value of the labor force and influencing the reduction of the goods and services that constitute its consumption fund to help increase both the mass and the rate of surplus value (for the definition of these categories and their difference, see Aglietta 1976: 29).

Chapter 6

Fictitious Capital and Super-Exploitation of Labor in Contemporary Societies We find a positive correlation between fictitious capital, as a concept that characterizes the current phase of world capitalism, and super-exploitation insofar as the system contracts from the point of view of its compound rates of macroeconomic growth, capital and investments that are dislocated from the productive capital to the financial-speculative sphere, accumulating in a frantic search for obtaining maximum yields. The result of this phenomenon is to apply restrictive policies to both wages and living and working conditions while increasing the average rates of exploitation of work in its multiple manifestations. 1

The Globalization of Imperialism and the Crisis of Capitalism

The imperialist system—which emerged and consolidated from the mid-19th Century onwards—contributed to the generalization of the industrial and productive system of big industry in the next century, particularly after World War ii. Harvey (2012: 152 and 157) points out that the close connection between Fordism and Keynesianism during the period 1950–1974 was a response to the expansion of global capitalism (see Figure 1), which, at the same time, made it possible for newly emerging nations, that had liberated themselves from colonialism in Asia and in Africa, to once again be caught in the networks of dependence, underdevelopment and backwardness within the economic and 6 5 3.8

3.4 1.8 1945–1974

1975–1980

1980–1990 World Economy

Figure 1

1990–2000

3.4 1.6

2001–2010

2011–2016

Advanced Countries

Global economy trajectory (1945–2016) and average growth of advanced countries (2011–2016)

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004415652_008

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political systems of advanced capitalist nations such as England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States (for more on underdevelopment see Baran 1957; for a critique of Weber’s conceptions of underdevelopment, see Frank 1979). What resulted, thus, was something similar to what happened a century earlier with the Latin American nations in the period of the formation of their national states through the independence and national affirmation processes. The expansive period of postwar capitalism and monopolistic imperialism stimulated the development of the material productive forces of Latin American countries and others of the third world that managed to establish some segments of industry, first light and later heavy—on the production line, of means of production and semi-finished products—at the same time as adopting and developing niches of production and state-of-the-art technology markets, although dependent on the developed centers. This was the case of Brazil, Mexico and others like South Korea in the course of the 70s when they deployed the import substitution processes and, lastly, exports through the support of the State. But in the following decade, the pattern of neoliberal and de-industrializing capital accumulation, stimulated by the application of structural adjustment policies in the economic, social and political orders, was imposed. It seemed that, and history would confirm it with the passage of time, the dependent countries of Latin America concomitantly with the arrival of the 21st Century, entered into that status, as they did in the 19th Century, as dependent exporting economies of primary goods and products linked to the export of natural resources. That is to say, as Marini (1996: 60) argued, with “… forms of dependence that we believed disappeared with the nineteenth century”. In the next decade this process would be completed, particularly after the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 in Europe when the process of collapse began and with the crisis of the welfare state, understood as the state and political form that articulated the productive process with the social structure (Vasapollo 2004: 45). …in the wake of neoliberal economic policies that prepared the introduction of the euro and extended the single market, the extension of membership to new states of Central Europe has taken this process further by exerting external pressure on wages and labor rights with the blackmail of the relocation. Precarization and unregulated competition with migrant workers are the last phase of this process, which is not only restructuring the very composition of the European working class, but also their identities and political allegiances. búster 2005

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The economic and political pressures exerted by the European bourgeoisies from the centers of power concentrated in Brussels—and supported by exceptional socio-economic conditions offered by the New Eastern European peripheries arising from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in the imperial sphere, tend to precarize the world of work, to make it more flexible, lower its wages and extend the super-exploitation of the labor force to the working classes of the countries of the European Union. This is already visible in countries such as Germany and France and in all of southern Europe such as Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain. Based on these trends, the capitalist crisis that triggered a historical crisis of legitimacy of the neoliberal project in that region acts positively. From a c­ ertain angle, this crisis was reflected in the social nonconformity and the illegitimacy of the constitution of the European Union when questioning the European unifying project; a historical event that was expressed with a ‘No’ thanks to 55% of the total votes by French citizens which rejected the Constitution of the European Union on May 29, 2005, as well as the subsequent ‘No’ vote by 62% of the Dutch citizens. However, the British brexit vote was to be the most forceful expression of this historical-social phenomenon that has had enormous repercussions not only in the European Union, but also throughout the whole world economy. This was highlighted by the independence attempts of Catalonia to affirm its full territorial autonomy, exposing the policy of the monarchical Spanish State, until now only slowed down by repression exerted against the Catalan people. Both crises have structural and subjective roots, as Búster (idem) argues when he states that: the process of neoliberal restructuring of the European economy, initiated in its current phase with the Maastricht Treaty, responds to and aggravates the low level of economic growth and its capacity to compete in the global economy with the United States and Japan. The mechanism used by European capital since the 90s to counteract the fall in the rate of profit, which, among other factors, is the result of the low average growth of the European economy’s productivity and low investment in technology, is the “…increase in the exploitation of work, either directly by ­reducing wages and increasing hours of work, or dismantling the so-called ‘European social model’” (Búster, idem). This thesis also finds support in Brenner (1999: 396) who points out that the recovery of the profitability of the North American economy was derived from the containment of wages, technical change and the rationalization of the manufacturing industry. In addition, Petras and Veltmeyer (2005: 102) observe that:

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The downward profit rate in the key economic sectors (and their main multinationals) cannot be reversed if the labor legislation of the clientelist states is not ‘reformed’ through international financial institutions and repression—in charge of the police apparatus and military of the clients—of organized resistance …Rates of return of 35% are not obtained in democratic and participatory societies with full labor and union rights. Thus, we understand the meaning of the labor reforms that have been carried out in many countries, including Latin American ones where from the early 80s (with special emphasis on Chile and its military dictatorship) the regulations and labor laws have been adjusted to the conditions of valorization and profitability of capital under the auspices of the neoliberal policies of the State and of big capital increasingly focused on the super-exploitation of the labor force (see Antunes September 4, 2017; Sotelo 2014; Guamán and Illueca 2012). 2

Fictitious Capital, Precarization and Universalization of SuperExploitation of the Labor Force

The mercantilist neoliberalism that prevails in the Latin American countries and practically all over the world is oriented towards the supply of raw materials, and transfers value and surplus value to the benefit of the industrialized centers activating, in these, their processes of accumulation and reproduction of capital. The problems that this causes in the economic growth rates (pressing them downward) and in the current account of the balance of payments, in addition to permeating them with external indebtedness, is stimulating the export of labor, mainly to the United States, and strengthening the development of fictitious capital. This is defined by Harvey (2012: 206) as the “…capital that has a nominal value in money and existence over documents, but that, at any given moment, lacks the backing of real productive activity or physical collateral assets”. For Chesnais (2002: 63–64): …a ‘patrimony’ or a ‘capital’ made up of securities is fictitious capital, composed of credits, that is, promises about future productive activity, which are then negotiated in a very particular market that fixes its ‘price’ according to very special mechanisms and conventions. It operates, in this way, under the formula D-D “and not on the productive capital: P…M…D…P”. Fictitious capital, which generates fictitious profits according

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to Carcanholo and Sabadini (2015: 125–159), is now dominant in the world; it constitutes a regime or pattern of reproduction of capital. It is simply carried out in the sphere of monetary and financial speculation that characterizes the global capitalist economy. Chesnais denominates this regime as the “regime of accumulation of financial dominion” and defines it in the following terms: The fight against neoliberal globalization and its consequences presupposes that we begin by recognizing that we are facing a fully constituted regime and that it is also a particular configuration of imperialism. It is necessary to overcome the analysis of the ‘globalization of capital’ understood simply as a new stage in the long process of internationalization of industrial capital, and move towards the idea of a new regime of accumulation, which I call ‘globalized accumulation regime under financial domination’. chesnais 1993: 25–26

When the author states that this regime is dominated by the ‘financial’ they are referring to a central fact that is also organized at the local, national and international levels to generate the structural and legal-political conditions that allow private capital (national and international) to appropriate interest and dividends resulting from speculation (‘financial income’ or ‘fictitious earnings’) under stable and safe conditions for them (Chesnais 2003: 47). For this to take place, and be fully realized, it requires the active intervention of the State—and the implementation of reforms that liberalize financial markets based on monopoly interests—for the benefit of investors and international financial organizations. These are, more than the industrial capital, the real actors of the globalized regime of capital accumulation where their current institutional representatives are the imf and the World Bank “…as State and class instruments … subrogated to the US Department of Treasury” (Saxe Fernandez and Fal 2012: 38). For Chesnais, that regime, which is the product of the combination of economic liberalism and the deregulation policies promoted by the State, has three characteristics: (a) it constitutes a global systemic totality guaranteed by the supremacy of the economic triad: the United States, Japan and the European Union; (b) it subsists subordinated to the supremacy of financial capital; and, finally, (c) it maintains a strong propensity to yield low rates of economic growth (Chesnais 1993: 26 and Graph 1 of this book). These explain, as we said previously, one of the edges of the policies of capital and of the State tending to generalize the super-exploitation regime in the Marinist sense (see Chapters 3 and 4).

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Under the fictitious capital scheme, which involves the financial domination regime, the value of pension and investment funds and insurance in 21 oecd countries counted financial assets worth 13.4 billion dollars, which in 1990 represented 83% of the total gdp of those countries. By the middle of that decade, those assets reached 23.1 billion dollars, an amount that far exceeded a total amount of their consolidated gdp (cepal [eclac] 2001: 17). In 1999, the value corresponding to all the financial transactions carried out by these countries surpassed the total gdp of the main developed capitalist countries by 360%, a phenomenon that provoked intense movements of fictitious capital through the stock exchanges responsible for a greater concentration and centralization of capital without a counterpart in the creation of value (Vasapollo 2004: 144). Another indicator of the ‘financialization’ of the world economy, according to the Federal Reserve Office of the United States, indicates that financial assets over real assets (which are those that intervene in production) went from 38.8% in 1980 to 110.3% in 2003 (Sauviat 2005: Table No. 2: 43). In 2015, according to Beinstein: Derivative financial products constitute the decisive majority component of the global speculative scheme, only five US banks plus Deutsche Bank have accumulated these fragile assets for about 320 billion of dollars equivalent to approximately 4.2 times the Gross World Product (2015), that represents 65% of all the global financial products registered in December 2015 by the Bank of Basel (2016). What is important here is to emphasize that this type of capital is recycled in a profitable way to the industrialized and computerized countries of the neoimperialist system and causes, in turn, external indebtedness—with growing deficits in the balance of payments—and the de-accumulation of capital in most Latin American countries and the underdeveloped world that remains prostrated before international financial and monetary organisms in a kind of unconditional servility on the part of their bourgeoisies and financial oligarchies, essential to the reproduction of the structural enclaves of dependency. In the regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the New Peripheries (NP) and their expansion in the European Union (EU) as spaces for the production of wealth and the super-exploitation of the labor force pose great challenges and new problems for the populations and workers of these regions, among other things, because they imply increasing devaluations of their economies, of their exports and, above all, of their salaries and incomes with all the social, political and environmental calamities that this represents: social instability, demonstrations, popular uprisings and crises of legitimacy of political regimes.

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This at the same time affects, directly or indirectly, countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy and, recently, Donald Trump’s United States. These investments, along with the monopoly of technology held by developed countries and the supremacy of (fictitious) financial capital, cause contractions in dependent economies producing severe and recurrent structural and financial crises and cycles of capital de-accumulation (deindustrialization) to the benefit of the developed centers. All this stimulates transfers of value and surplus value from the dependent economies in order to continue being ‘subjects of credit’ of the international organizations through the risk rating agencies such as the North American Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service, and Fitch Ratings shared by the United States and the United Kingdom and that, together, dominate more than 90% of the global financial market as representatives of the interests of great international capital of financial dominance. The capital cycle of the neoliberal dependent economy—in the contour of crisis and recession processes such as that which affects much of Latin America—increases unemployment, stimulates labor migration to developed countries such as the United States, provokes social exclusion, and stimulates imperialist pressures and threats of military force when it becomes the last guarantee of maintenance of the system of domination as is currently the case with the imperialist threats of the United States to intervene militarily in Venezuela because its interests do not suit the policies implemented by the Bolivarian government and the National Constituent Assembly1 in charge of drafting a new Constitution. “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option”, Trump said while playing golf during a press conference at the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey (The New York Times, August 12, 2017). Obviously these phenomena (hegemony of fictitious capital, contractionary economic cycles and systemic crises that involve the financial crisis, energy, poverty, environmental and available patterns of knowledge) (Saxe-Fernández 2012) are negatively impacting employment, increasing unemployment and stimulating the flexibilization, deregulation and precarization of the labor force that, seen as a whole, represent the form assumed by super-exploitation in advanced capitalism. This, however, is imposed more as a necessity of capital to maintain its reproduction and their rates of profit at rising levels than as a system able to sustain them with increasing masses of value derived from technological development and increased labor productivity (relative surplus value.) In other words, capitalism has entered a pit with no exit where it 1 For an analysis of the National Constituent Assembly of Venezuela, see Sotelo (2017).

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i­ncreasingly produces less value and surplus value (dismeasure of value), issues that induce an extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force and of fictitious capital on a universal scale as a recurrent mechanism to maintain the system at increasing levels of extraordinary profits that are stimulated by an intensified inter-capitalist competition between the large monopolies and globalized conglomerates due to global distribution and the extraordinary rate gain. 3

Winners and Losers in the Fictitious Regime of Neoliberal Quasi-Stagnation

Based on all the above, we are interested in raising two questions that concern the hypotheses of this book. The first is to verify who should maintain a system that does not grow, or grows very little, and that is directed to quasi-stagnation. The second, little elucidated, refers to the fact that sooner or later the regime of financial domination, on which neoliberal capitalism is based, will enter its terminal phase—if it has not already done so—and will necessarily have to be replaced by another regime or economic and political system. The essential question is whether it will be capitalist or anti-capitalist in nature. For some it is still possible to re-edit the old and dilapidated capitalist neo-development and return to the post-war welfare state based on the internal market and on welfare policies. This is, essentially, the approach of the Keynesians, while for others, with whom we agree, this is not possible and the crisis will have to be resolved through an anti-capitalist solution, a socialist solution if you will, in favor of the workers and oppressed peoples. This is the discussion. In relation to the first question, it must be said that neoliberal economics, in a capitalist economy, finds its limits in the logic and in the modalities of the reproduction of global capital. It is necessary to raise the rate of surplus value and lower the value of the labor force, which is achieved through the defeat of the workers’ and trade union movements. These two conditions of reproduction, once achieved, collide with another trend that is inherent to the neoliberal model: the impossibility, for the reasons noted above, to boost the growth rates of the product (according to Figure 1) and the accumulation of capital, without disturbing the bases of the hegemony on which parasitic reproduction of the loan money capital cycle of the banking and financial fractions of the national and foreign bourgeoisie lie. Therefore, a crisis phase of the current pattern is opened, in the process of decomposition, so that the various social and political forces dispute the hegemony of power in order to find a replacement pattern (for Mexico, we discussed this topic in Sotelo 2017).

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For Valenzuela (1995) the central theme in this regard is to ask that if the model leads, in the medium and long term, to a situation of stagnation or quasi-stagnation, then why is it still valid? What holds it? The author provides us with two possible logical answers to these questions. 1) In the first place, because the loan capital money (one of the dominant subjects within the power block according to Note 6, Chapter 5) is interested in maintaining price stability, even at the expense of depressing the rate of growth, since inflation devalues i​​ ts money capital. So this does not happen or, at least, to slow down its movement, it directs its policy in the sense of slowing down the rate of gdp growth. This situation produces a ‘demonstration effect’ in the system. It decreases the rate of creation of productive jobs and increases the reserve industrial army in its various modalities: open, disguised or ‘inform a l’, precarious, intermittent, ­outsourced among others, and whose function is summarized in four important movements: (a) pressing wages downward; (b) an intensive or ­extensive increase in the rates of exploitation of work; (c) an increase in competition for jobs among the workers themselves; and, (d) an increase in the rate of profit of the fractions of the capital benefited with this situation. Combined, these factors are erected in the rational bastion of public policies to combat inflation: “To avoid inflation”, says Valenzuela (1995: 32) “the system chooses the route of economic stagnation”. In the same sense Piqueras (2014: 140) assures that “the recurrent monetarist policies of late capitalism, aimed at containing in f lation, eliminating obsolete capital and containing wages, did nothing but diminish economic activity and further reduce the purchasing capacity of the labor force”, that is, against the internal consumer markets due t o the fall in purchasing power. 2) Second, the above creates a paradox that has been warned about on multiple occasions by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and that is derived directly from the external sector, as an element of realization of the surplus: a situation of economic growth is maintained, the deficit has to be raised, and vice versa, as the dominant option emanates from the large financial and industrial capital, to whom, as we saw, the stagnation or a lower rate of gdp growth is appropriate leaving, then, the option to stop economic growth in order to obtain external surpluses and fictitious earnings. This is the great paradox of the savage capitalism of our days: to grow, the system has to generate growing deficits in the current accounts of the balance of payments of the countries and vice versa. But in order to not affect the dominant regime, the ‘more rational’ option is chosen: the ceasing of growth using super-exploitation.

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What Comes after the Terminal Crisis of Neoliberalism?

As for the issue of replacing one reproductive regime with another, the hypothesis raised by developmentalist Keynesianism that says that the capitalist crisis can be ‘reversed’ is entirely improbable for us due to the detriment of fictitious capital and reorienting investments, as was done in the past, to the productive sphere of capital with redundant effects in the social sphere: income distribution, improvement of the Gini index, increase in real wages and social benefits for workers. Some authors explicitly deny this possibility. This is the case of Carcanholo and Nakatani (2015: 103) who affirm that there are those who still believe in the possibility of a return to a new Keynesian type stage—or similar, that would not be so new—that could again make concessions to the workers, as a result of the possibility of a structural crisis of the parasitic speculative capital accumulation regime based on fictitious capital and the generation of fictitious profits. While hypothetically considering this possibility, the authors point out that it would not imply or solve the problem of acute social inequalities, much less address the needs and demands of workers. Rather, the crisis of parasitic and speculative capitalism would give rise, say the authors, to a baneful capitalism (Carcanholo and Nakatani 2015: 104) that stands barbarously with the ‘neoprotectionist’ policies of Donald Trump in the United States. They criticize authors who support the thesis of ‘reversibility’ within capitalism, from neoliberalism to a kind of productive social Keynesianism based on class collaboration. In another text Nakatani and Sabadini (2015: 155–156) rightly deny that: Capitalism can overcome the current phase—(of crisis)—enough to impose limits through economic and political mechanisms, on ‘financial capital’. Such conceptions accept that there is capitalism in today’s domain of financial capital. However, they believe that a return to productive capitalism is possible, and even capable of making concessions to the workers. On top of this, those who adhere to the mentioned conceptions believe that the opposition, financial capital versus productive capital, appears concretized in different hands, forming completely different fractions within the bourgeoisie. It would be much easier, and enough, to promote the progressive (sic) productive bourgeois fraction, the dominant sector, and ally with it, or better, subordinate politically to her (­authors’ italics). In the United States, President Trump’s protectionist political proclamations have not threatened, let alone put in check, parasitic or fictitious ­financial

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capital since, as Bernie Sanders says, “…Congress does not regulate Wall Street today, today Wall Street is the one that dominates the Congress” (cit. in Tasini 2015: 75). Thus, the government has been in charge of dismantling social security systems (such as ‘Obamacare’, see Chapter 7): reducing aid to sanctuary cities, implementing harmful immigration reforms for millions of documented and undocumented workers, and lowering taxes on the ruling classes and ­financial capital. 5 Conclusion In synthesis, we declare that at a global level the capitalist crisis in its neoliberal phase corresponds to the prevalence of fictitious capital and fictitious profits, in the environment that we denominate excess of value with all its consequences in the accumulation of capital and economic growth, as well as in the world of work. This crisis is not going to be solved with the return to Keynesian developmentalist-type practices, but it will try to find a solution, to some extent, through a deepening of this fatal and parasitic capitalism that will continue to protect the hegemonic interests of the great national and foreign capital that now imposes super-exploitation, even, to the working classes of the imperialist countries of advanced capitalism, in relation to the white working class of the United States.

Chapter 7

The North American Capitalist Crisis Much emphasis has been placed on the decline of the economic supremacy, or hegemony, of the United States in the global context. Previously, we observed some elements to account for this phenomenon. However, this does not mean that in the medium term this reality will disconnect or separate that country from the strategic-political-military hegemony that exists today in regard to countries such as Russia, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and even Iran. However, as we will point out in this chapter, in recent years, although it has experienced relative economic improvement since the great crisis of 2008– 2009, the United States still maintains its growth rate below its historical postwar average. Along with an exorbitant financial deficit, only alleviated in the external plane by its imperialist policies against several nations and, internally, by means of the increase of interest rates, containment of the wages, growth of the temporary employment and cuts for social programs, the US has supposedly solved the internal situation together with the increase of the rates of exploitation of work and the application of protectionist policies that favor big capital as shown by the recent tax reduction with the first tax reform applied by the Trump government to the detriment of social programs aimed at the wider population.1 1 The tax reform of Donald Trump was approved by the House of Representatives (with 227 in favor and 203 against) on December 19, 2017 and then, with minor amendments, by the Senate (with 51 votes in favor and 48 against) to be sent again to the House of Representatives for final approval on December 20, 2017. This in a climate of discontent and social rejection that was ignored by the corporate media at the same time that it spread the ‘success’ of President Trump to meet campaign promises. It contemplates a cut of taxes to companies and rents that would ascend to $1.5 trillion in a term of two years by lowering the tax rate of 35% to 21%, representing the greater fiscal exemption that favors to great capital and to the rich classes in the last decades, entered into force on January 1, 2018. Put simply, the companies and people of the United States, according to Sanders (cit. in Tasin 2015: 161), evade taxes worth $100 billion per year that are diverted to tax havens. It is important to point out that the upper part of the salary income is taxed with a tax rate of 39.6% (Sanders cit. in Tasin 2015: 30). According to various sources, this measure will mean that the State will stop collecting around $1 billion over the next decade. According to the newspaper Reforma (December 16, 2017) it is estimated that the measure increases the budget deficit by some $1.5 billion in the next 10 years to reach a total of $1.45 trillion and increases the national debt by $20 trillion. It also repeals the obligation to have health insurance, hitting the ‘Obamacare’ program and, consequently, millions of US citizens who will suffer its negative effects as of 2019, while currently there are 46 million Americans who lack medical insurance (Sanders cit. in

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Crisis of the Pattern of Accumulation and of the Mechanisms of Production of Value and Surplus Value

The historical root of the financial and real estate hecatomb of 2007–2008 is the structural crisis of the world capitalist economy, which had its roots in the United States and branched out into the rest of the international economy. We can get an idea of the characteristics of that crisis if we compare it with the one that broke out in 1929–33, which, like the present, occurred within a long depressive wave of the international economy.2 The difference lies in that the financial resources were barely around 30% of the world gross product, while now it exceeds more than 20 times that, revealing the hegemony that the United States has acquired with neoliberalism, fictitious capital and their financial institutions. The Bank of Basel estimates that world capitalist financial resources represent $612 trillion, that is, between 11 and 12 times the gross world product (data obtained from Denvir August 5, 2008). Citing data from Mitsubishi ufj Securities, Mészáros compares the size of the ‘real economy’ estimated at $48.1 trillion, with the so-called ‘financial economy’ (sum of stocks, securities and ­deposits), which amounts to $151.8 trillion. “In this way the financial economy has been inflated to three times the size of the real economy, growing especially fast during the last two decades”. (Mészáros 2008) Mészáros concludes that “we are now in the presence, not of a financial preeminence over industrial capital [but rather] that today’s capitalism is basically financial”. It can be said that the crisis of capitalism today is financial, due to the weight of fictitious capital in the dynamics of the economy as a whole; but it is also industrial, service, technological, agricultural and environmental and acts under the predominance of capital finance, and, within it, of speculative or parasitic capital.

Tasin 2015: 36 and 39). Regarding the medium and long-term repercussions of Trump’s fiscal reform, it is foreseeable that they deepen social inequality against the salaried majorities of the United States, while at the same time concentrating even more the available monetary and financial resources in the hands of the great capital and the enriched dominant and possessing classes of the United States. According to the Tax Policy Center (tpc) with the tax reform (gop Tax Law) the top 1% of society will receive an additional $33,000 per year, while the poorest will only get an additional $40 from that tax cut. 2 According to Mandel (1980) the world crisis of 1929–1933 occurred in the context of the depressive wave of 1919–1940. The current one, in our opinion, also occurs within a wave of this type that began with the capitalist world crisis of the mid-70s of the last century. A reevaluation of this theory can be found in an article that Mandel wrote before his death (2008).

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In this context we associate the management and crisis of Fordism-Taylorism, and its relative overcoming by Toyotism and flexible automation, with the modalities of neo-imperialism (of financial predominance) whose policies promoted by the World Bank and the imf, particularly since the 80s, have been directed to avoid, at all costs, the devaluation of capital, counteract the fall in the rate of profit and maintain its domination on a world scale. This is due to the fact that the crisis is one of overproduction (greater supply than demand) and of realization-subconsumption of merchandise and capital (therefore, production of anti-value and difficulties of the realization of surplus value). It must be remembered that crises are cyclical, that is to say that the capitalist economy periodically passes through a succession of moments of expansion, prosperity, recession, depression and crises in which the State and the policies of capital intervene. Each cycle has peculiar characteristics and is irreversible; its succession describes an ascending spiral as a structural historical process that in each cycle of around ten years sees the duration of periods of economic growth and value production decrease and those of recession, depression and crisis increase. In this regard Marx stated: This example of labor strikingly shows how even the most abstract categories, in spite of their applicability to all epochs—just because of their abstract character—are by the very definiteness of the abstraction a product of historical conditions as well, and are fully applicable only to and under those conditions. 1982: Vol. i, p. 26

Therefore, the categories are historical. This thesis is contrary to the dominant narrative, since it affirms that the categories of thought are a faithful reflection both of the ‘external reality’ to man (the empirical world, nature) and of history, and that in no way constitute isolated or eternal categories, as those of ‘globalization’, ‘end of history’, ‘postcolonialism’, ‘democracy’ or ‘postmodernity’ that preach idealistic currents.3 3 The following words of an Italian author of the 17th Century regarding ‘globalization’ are eloquent: “Communication among peoples has spread to such an extent throughout the terrestrial globe that it can almost be said that the whole world has become one city in which there is a constant fair with all kinds of merchandise, and where any man, through money and staying at home, can provide and enjoy everything produced by the land, animals and human industry. What a wonderful invention!” Geminiano Montanari, Della Moneta Trattato Merchantile, written in 1683, and quoted by Marx in the Grundrisse (Vol. iii: 151). At that time, only the ‘wonderful’ technology of communication networks (the internet) and its hardware,

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In short, as Lenin observed: The external world reflected by our mind exists independently of our mind. This materialist solution alone is really compatible with natural science, and it alone eliminates both Petzoldt’s and Mach’s idealist solution of the question of causality. lenin 1975: 89

In this way the contemporary capitalist crisis, although it has common features with other previous crises, its form of manifestation has peculiar characteristics that distinguish it, for example, from that of 1929–33, which necessarily has to be reflected in the concepts analysed (see Shaikh 2011). In addition, the globalized and savage character of current capitalism offers a certain margin and different outputs. This is not the ‘terminal crisis of the system’, in spite of its severity and spectacularity, that certain Marxists are postulating; but it is a prelude to the exhaustion of the progressive phase, from the point of view of the development of the productive forces, of capitalism in historical terms. Capital possesses devices that allow it to relatively self-regenerate in order to find self-valorization, among which are to be found, in times of ‘normality’: the intervention of the State in financial systems; the increase of tax rates; inflation; the extension of credit; the privatization of energy companies in the hands of the State; the manipulation of the exchange rates that favor the speculators; but also, in extreme cases—when the crisis and the class struggle are uncontrollable for imperialism and its security agents, putting the system of domination check—repression and brute force (as in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria). Ultimately, the imperialist war and the generalization of the socio-economic regime of labor super-exploitation are imposed as ‘exits’ to alleviate the crisis and allow the recovery of economic growth and the rate of profit, although at a much lower level than that achieved during the Trente Annés Glorieuses. Since the 80s, when the ‘stabilization strategies’ of neoliberalism and financial capital assumed supremacy, modern capitalist crises begun to demand, much more than ever before, the restructuring of the world of labor (that is, of wages, the organization of the work process, union courses and training programs, qualifications, and the reserve industrial army) in order to adapt it to the logic and operating conditions of the so-called ‘free markets’. In this

the computer, was lacking, appearing three centuries after those prophetic words were uttered.

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­ rocess, the policies of the capitalist state are aimed at stimulating the growth p of the profit rate, counteracting the pressures to reduce the rate of accumulation and favoring the restructuring and deregulation of the labor force (see O’Connor 1984 and 1973). These conservative policies of regressive industrial reconversion and adjustment of national economies to the requirements of large companies were not enough in the 80s and 90s, as they are not enough today, to solve the capitalist crisis. What it does is project into new spaces, dangerously threatening the viability of both the system and humanity itself. These spaces are now biodiversity, the environment, air and territory, which will be converted into merchandise, that is, subject to the rigid law of value and surplus value. Bensaid (September 3, 2008) expressed this point it in the following way: It is not only about the privatization of companies or even services, but, more broadly, the privatization of information, of rights (with the advance of power in the contractual relationship to the detriment of the law), of urban space, of water, air and everything that lives. It is a social disintegration that takes different forms in rich countries and in fragile states (…) It has also resulted in atrophy of the public space and a disturbing anemia of democratic life. This pattern of reproduction and social life is expressed in the significant changes in the State that make it a neoliberal, minimalist and entrepreneurial State; in a ‘criminal and security State’ (Bensaid) that is imposing itself with great force in the world in order to legalize the policies of big capital in economic, social and environmental matters, commodifying goods, territories and the labor force. In the ‘era of democracy’ this type of configuration can be called, as we saw earlier (Chapter 3), State of the Fourth Power (Marini 1987: 69–95 and October 18-December 1978: 21–28); a ‘democratic’ State with great influence of military power, which is capable of being revitalized both in the countries of advanced capitalism and, with much greater force, in the dependent and underdeveloped countries that have assumed a democratic political configuration. The neoliberal-conservative dimension that the capitalist state has assumed is substantially more functional to the reproduction of capital and completely incapable of meeting the growing food, health, education, housing and recreation needs of the masses as postulated by Keynesian authors and Neoclassical and Weberian currents. Or Oliveira’s (1998: 29) proposal for a ‘public fund’— resources that the State allocates to the reproduction of labor power, or to social security, welfare or food—an ‘anti-value’: “A public fund that has no value in

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sustaining capital, which destroys the self-reflective nature of value, central to the constitution of the capitalist system as a system for valuing value”. The theoretical implication of this idea, supported by Piero Sraffa, is a paradigm shift: this ‘public fund’ distorts the concepts and realities of capital and labor power; the ‘de-commodification’, and the former withdraws its functions from being a budget-parameter of the system, so that these functions can be directly managed by the public fund of the State. The difficulty of this thesis lies in the fact that the author does not ­investigate—and here lies all the weakness of his analysis and, therefore, his explanatory inability—the origin of the resources of that public fund from the perspective of the theory of value and the creation of surplus value, since it is from the latter that, ultimately, it is born. The State can redistribute part of the surplus value, but this depends on the nature of that State (fascist, dictatorial, democratic-progressive) in accordance with the class struggle and the power of the proletariat to force that State to serve its interests. But something else happened: the capital restructuring process adapted the productive system to the needs of the accumulation and reproduction of the capital of the developed countries of the West, forcing neoliberalism to resort to the privatization of a large part of the functions previously performed by the State as well as the imposition of shock-adjustment-stabilization economic policies. This adaptation was also achieved through phases of (relative) economic growth that, later, resulted in structural and financial crises in the world capitalist system which in Mexico had its peak in 1994–1995 and in 2001 (See Sotelo 2014, and Petras and Veltmeyer 2003). The beneficiaries of these policies were the large transnational corporations supported by the dependent states and the imperialists. It reinforced the cohesion of capital at the industrial, commercial, rentier, banking, financial and fictitious levels, with which an ideological panorama of ‘globalization of transnational power’ was presented. It proclaimed, then, the ‘end of history’ and labor in the context of the rise of the new economy (see Note 4, Chapter 5) and the ‘Washington consensus’. The result of all these changes during the 80s and 90s of the last century was not the constitution of a ‘productive, competitive and robust capitalism’ as a result of the neoliberal restructuring of fixed capital and variable capital (labor force); but of the parasitic form of fictitious capital (Chesnais November 1993; Carcanholo and Nakatani 2015: 89–124; and Carcanholo and Sabadini 2015: 125–159). It is a hegemonic supremacy in the globalized capitalism of the 21st Century that severely punishes the productive systems and the growth rates of productive and industrial employment. This supremacy of fictitious capital

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(which does not create value or surplus value but does subject productive ­capital to its dominance), coupled with the contraction of the average growth rates of the productive and economic system, submerged capitalism in the most severe crisis we have suffered since 1929–1933 (Shaikh February 2011). In short, the current financial crisis is only a manifestation of profound changes and adjustments in the world of labor that operate in the productive systems and in the business organization, where the precariousness of the world of work constitutes the surface of a much deeper phenomenon that is the generalization, in the advanced capitalist system, of the super-exploitation regime of the labor force and the imposition of a flexible relationship between labor and capital whose tendency is to consolidate itself as the new normativity of labor and contractual relations. This is the essence of the new social relations of production, which resulted from the crisis and from the restructuring of the capitalist mode of production on a global scale. 2

Crisis and the Relative Decline of North American Supremacy

However, it must be clarified that it is not possible to understand the dynamics and structure of the world economy without the participation of the United States as a global imperialist power, in the same way that North American dynamics cannot be understood without understanding the global economy. In this sense, the argument put forth by Vergopoulos (2005) stands out: in the past, the economic and political supremacy of the United States seemed invincible, while at the present time the ‘American locomotive’ is completely impotent to take the world economy forward, and rather it has gradually been ­submerged in imbalance and disturbance. Recently President Trump completely forgot this premise when affirming in the World Economic Forum at Davos that: “When the United States grows the world grows” even though this locomotive is strongly influenced by China’s economy since 2010 when it overtook the United States as the largest industrial and manufacturing center in the world (Stettner, Yudken and McCormack June 13, 2017). It is no coincidence, either, that currently more than 70% of industrial employment is located in dependent countries (Delgado and Veltmeyer 2017: 13). The 1985 Plaza Accords in New York, promoted by the then newly appointed Secretary of the Treasury James Baker—which brought together the so-called G-5 (United States, Japan, Germany, France and Great Britain)—was the first time the country imposed its policy on the rest of the world and

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d­ evalued its currency with the support of the other members of the group in order to promote their exports. Now this relationship of forces no longer exists, at least not in the same way that was so favorable to the United States that enjoyed its benefits from the middle of the last century through the impetus of the former Marshall Plan also known as the European Recovery Program (erp) for the economic reconstruction of the European economies devastated by the war. Today, however, this country is finding more and more difficulties and obstacles to impose its will in a forceful and unilateral manner as seen, for example, in Venezuela, Iran, Syria and North Korea. Among the causes of this situation is the growing deficit of the United States which forces it to resort to external debt, which could cause a contraction of the world economy without parallel in history (Vergopoulos 2005: 109 and 175) as the bulky US global debt jumped from $2.7 trillion in 1989 to more than $10 trillion in 2008 (approximately 65% of its gdp), most likely increasing as the crisis deepens. The result of this situation is alarming and paradoxical: “As long as the prosperity of the United States is maintained, its external positions will deteriorate and it will be less able to exercise the role of global economic and monetary stabilizer” (Vergopoulos 2005: 182). In this way, it has reached a point where the old ‘hegemony’ of US imperialism has given way to an accumulation of imbalances derived from international dynamics and the development of new geoeconomic and political blocs such as Asia, Europe and the Latin American one (alba) created on December 14, 2004 as a Bolivarian Alternative on the initiative of Cuba and Venezuela, which later became known as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America in its vii Extraordinary Summit held in Nicaragua on June 29, 2009. Vergopoulos points out the differences between the period of the Trente Glorieuses of world capitalism (1945–73) and the Déclin du néo-libéralism of protocapitalist globalization stating that: during the period of productive functioning of the world monetary system of Bretton-Woods (1944–1971) commercial aspects and stabilization of markets were prioritised, while today the focus is on financial aspects and international financial integration (2005: 116). With the Trump government in the United States a new situation is emerging characterized by financial instability, the decline of economic growth rates and the deep crisis of US imperialist hegemony due to the rise of new nuclear powers such as Russia, China, North Korea, India and Iran.

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From the second postwar period, the recovery reinforced the military power of the United States, which is, in the first instance, the one that promoted socalled globalization with its imperial and class interests in collusion with the European and Japanese imperialists. Capitalism experienced, thus, its most extensive stage of potential growth that somehow dragged with it the other economies of Western Europe, as well as Japan. Since then, beginning in the mid-1970s and in the course of the 1980s, the policies implemented by the governments of the developed capitalist countries, supposedly to counteract the effects of the crisis, prioritise the financial sphere and speculative capital, without proposing reforms that promote the development of the productive and social structure. In the 80s and 90s of the last century, then, the welfare state gradually transitioned from the accumulation of Fordist-Taylorist capital and its Keynesian policies to a new pattern of accumulation that privileges financial speculation, degradation (Braverman 1974) and fragmentation of the labor force under monopoly capital (flexibilization, labor deregulation and precarization), and the incorporation of technological development to the productive process and the organization of labor. At the level of international relations, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, an American unilateralism was established, which a decade later would give way to a certain dispute between the three blocs to strengthen their supremacy in their regional spaces. In this context, the crisis of August 2008 in the United States broke out in the form of a housing crisis that caused the collapse of 504 points or 4.4%, of the Dow Jones index on September 15 of that same year, after the insolvency of the US bank Lehman Brothers, which in turn caused stock markets around the world to suffer a catastrophe. The consequences were that the investment bank Merrill Lynch was acquired by the Bank of America and aig requested a multimillion ‘bridging loan’ from the Federal Reserve. That crisis demonstrated the failure of neoliberal policies. Indeed, in the face of the biggest bank failure in the United States in the last 24 years, which was that of the Californian bank Indymac (with $35 billion in assets), and in the face of the cascading bankruptcies of other real estate companies, the US State enabled an authentic Keynesian interventionist policy through the Treasury and the Federal Reserve who demanded that the government adopt measures to help private real estate consortiums like Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortage Corporation), with a debt of $740 billion, and Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortage Association), with $800 billion, in a rescue whose cost was estimated at around $100 billion. The collapse of giant financial groups such as Citigroup—which was rescued by the US government in November 2008 through a plan that included the acquisition of $20 billion in shares and guarantees of billions of dollars in

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assets considered ‘risky’—; Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers which on June 9, 2008, announced, without declaring bankruptcy, losses of 1,700 million euros. On November 10 the US government ‘rescued’ the largest insurer in the world, the American International Group Inc. (aig) for $150 ­billion due to deep imbalances in their financial balances. In general it is estimated that the losses amount to around 250 billion euros, while the International Monetary Fund placed the rescue at about 610 billion euros. Before the crisis and the possibility of bankruptcy of the North American financial system, on October 3, 2008 the Congress of that country approved the injection of $700 billion for the Department of the Treasury to acquire the debt classified as ‘bad quality’ from private banks in order to ‘rescue’ them. However, this rescue in a great act of state protection of the banks—and of the financial and real estate speculators that represent them—did not solve the crisis, but rather deepened it. According to Shaikh (2006: 71) in 35 economic cycles in 150 years in the United States since 1834, next to the great North American depressions of 1873–1893 and 1929–1941, 2008–2009 constitutes the first great depression of the 21st Century (Shaikh February 4, 2011) that extends to the present. After this crisis the recovery of the rate of profit in 2010 obeyed, according to Shaikh, an increase in the rate of exploitation of labor through a decrease in the growth of real wages of workers (Shaikh February 4, 2011, and The White House, Economic Report of the President January 2017: Figure 1–3: 25), along with other State policies such as the rescue of companies that had declared bankruptcy after the crisis with true Keynesian actions. The erratic neoliberal economic policy pursued by the government which favored fictitious capital further stimulated the economic slowdown to the extent of causing, in 2009, a severe drop in the economic output of the United States and a decrease in the economic activity of that country that contracted at an annual rate of 5.7% between January and March of that year, according to the Department of Commerce of that country (See Table 2). Thus, the global crisis was stimulated even further, particularly in the ­automotive industry, which continues to be one of the most dynamic in the manufacturing sector, whose private administrations even announced, and executed, mass layoffs of hundreds of workers, which will not be absorbed again in the future except in very disadvantageous conditions such as diminished rights, and precarious and segmented jobs. This is how, for example, in February 2009—in the midst of the subprime crisis—the US private sector cut 697,000 jobs, the annual unemployment rate that month was 8.1% and GM announced the firing of 3,500 workers in its subsidiary Opel in Germany. Other measures taken by the government and capital

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The North American Capitalist Crisis Table 2 

Growth rates in real gross domestic product by area and country, 1998–2017

[percent change] Area and country

1998–2007 annual average

World

4.2

Advanced economies (breakdown) United States Eurozoneb Germany France Italy Spain Japan United Kingdom Canada Other advanced economies Emerging market and developing economies Regional groups: Commonwealth of Independent Statesc Russia Excluding Russia Emerging and developing Asia China Indiad ASEAN−5e Emerging and developing Europe

2.8

2008 2009 2010 2011

3.0

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016a

2017a

−.1

5.4

4.2

3.5

3.3

3.4

3.2

3.1

3.4

.1 −3.4

3.1

1.7

1.2

1.2

1.9

2.1

1.6

1.8

2.5 1.6 2.2 1.7 2.1 1.5 −.9 −.3 4.0 3.7 .7 .6 2.0 2.1 .2 .6 1.7 .6 −2.8 −1.7 .0 −1.0 −2.6 −1.7 4.7 −.5 1.7 1.4 1.9 1.5 1.3 1.9 3.1 3.1 1.7 2.2

2.4 1.1 1.6 .6 −.3 1.4 .0 3.1 2.5

2.6 2.0 1.5 1.3 .8 3.2 .5 2.2 1.1

1.6 1.7 1.7 1.3 .8 3.1 .5 1.8 1.2

2.2 1.5 1.4 1.3 .9 2.2 .6 1.1 1.9

3.0 2.4 1.7 2.4 1.5 3.9 1.0 2.9 3.2

−.3 .4 .8 .2 −1.1 1.1 −1.0 −.6 1.0

−2.8 −4.5 −5.6 −2.9 −5.5 −3.6 −5.5 −4.3 −2.9

4.0

1.7

−.9

5.9

3.4

2.1

2.3

2.8

2.0

2.0

2.3

5.8

5.8

2.9

7.5

6.3

5.3

5.0

4.6

4.0

4.2

4.6

6.2 5.8

5.3 −6.3 5.2 −7.8

4.7 4.5

4.7 4.0

3.5 3.5

2.1 1.3

1.1 −2.8 .7 −3.7

−.3 −.8

1.4 1.1

7.5

5.6 −2.4

5.1

6.2

3.6

4.3

2.0

−.5

.9

2.3

7.6 9.9 7.1 3.7

7.2 9.6 3.9 5.4

7.5 9.6 9.2 10.6 8.5 10.3 2.4 6.9

7.9 9.5 6.6 4.7

7.0 7.9 5.6 6.2

7.0 7.8 6.6 5.1

6.8 7.3 7.2 4.6

6.6 6.9 7.6 4.8

6.5 6.6 7.6 4.8

6.3 6.2 7.6 5.1

4.2

3.1 −3.0

5.4

1.2

2.8

2.8

3.6

3.3

3.1

4.7

162 Table 2 

Chapter 7 Growth rates in real gross domestic product by area and country, 1998–2017 (cont.)

[percent change] Area and country

Latin America and the Caribbean Brazil Mexico Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan Saudi Arabia Sub−Saharan Africa Nigeria South Africa

1998–2007 annual average

2008 2009 2010 2011

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016a

2017a

3.1 3.0 2.9

4.0 −1.8 5.1 −.1 1.4 −4.7

6.1 7.5 5.1

4.6 3.9 4.0

3.0 1.9 4.0

2.9 3.0 1.4

1.0 .0 −.6 .1 −3.8 −3.3 2.2 2.5 2.1

1.6 .5 2.3

5.3 2.9

4.8 1.5 6.2 −2.1

4.9 4.5 4.8 10.0

5.0 5.4

2.4 2.7

2.7 3.6

2.3 3.5

3.4 1.2

3.4 2.0

5.2 7.0 3.7

5.9 3.9 7.0 7.2 8.4 11.3 3.2 −1.5 3.0

4.3 4.3 2.2

5.2 5.4 2.3

5.1 6.3 1.6

3.4 1.4 2.7 −1.7 1.3 .1

2.9 .6 .8

5.0 4.9 3.3

a All figures are forecasts as published by the International Monetary Fund. b For 2017, includes data for: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and Spain. c Includes Georgia, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine, which are not members of the Commonwealth of Independent States but are included for reasons of geography and similarity in economic structure. d Data and forecasts are presented on a fiscal year basis and output growth is based on gdp at market prices. e Consists of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Note: For details on data shown in this table, see World Economic Outlook, October 2016, published by the International Monetary Fund. Source: International Monetary Fund.

were: (a) reduced wages; (b) reduced working hours; and (c) freezing or reducing salaries of employees and executives while the official unemployment rate reached 9.5% in June 2009. The three American automotive giants, General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, asked the government for a ‘rescue package’ of $34 billion to prevent the industry from going bankrupt, while the presidents of the first two companies declared that they would be willing to merge the two, which would lead to a cut in hundreds of thousands of jobs in the automotive sector—and, by extension,

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in their productive complexes due to the ‘demonstration effect’ that the process would cause, thus affecting the whole of the industry—because of the elimination of the factories and operations that it would have caused. The capitalist crisis, centered in the United States, does not derive from a contradiction between the so-called real economy and the speculative economy, as formally presented by the media and most of the financial experts in the field, even if one of the coordinates of the crisis derive from fictitious capital with all its sequel of bankruptcy of companies, banks, businesses and productive systems, as is happening in the global automobile industry including in the United States. The financial, real estate and credit insolvency problems—which are as real as the fall of the rates of profit for the entrepreneurs—are only manifestations of the difficulties, obstacles and problems that occur in the productive dimension and in the valorization of capital (see Chapter 5). This is the fertile soil where governments are trying to alleviate contradictions by resorting to ­monetarist and cutting measures such as the issuance of currency and the regulation of the fiscal deficit to subsidize companies and businesses whose objective is purely and simply speculation, as it happens in Europe, in the United States, and is spreading to the rest of the world.4 Other measures, such as the timid intervention of the State in the economy and in the regulation of exchange rates are insufficient given the catastrophe that represents the deep crisis of the North American and European business emporium, which cannot find a way to solve capitalism without sharpening its contradictions and precipitating new growth of inflation, asset destruction and unemployment. Of course, it is not the end of the capitalist system, as is often suggested. But it is the prelude to the exhaustion of the progressive phase of capitalism, as a mode of production, and the beginning of a new phase tending towards structural stagnation that is much more destructive and contradictory for humanity, because now it incorporates natural resources, the environment and the ecological systems of the planet to the irrational, massive and indiscriminate exploitation for the production of goods and services (see Saxe-Fernández 2013: 9–40). The system can only thus remedy its destruction, and postpone it for some time … that is, if imperialist war does not break out first! Since World War ii and outside of the brief period of recovery and growth of the US economy in the Clinton era there has been no other sign that it can overcome its difficulties. In the first, the new economy, as it was called 4 In the United States, the seriousness of the crisis was expressed through the financial reform of the Barack Obama government of July 21, 2016, known as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act aimed at stabilizing the financial markets, with little success.

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(see Note 4, Chapter 5), associated exclusively with the microelectronic ­revolution and the internet, was like a sigh and an illusion of outdated intellectuals who imagined that capitalism would finally have the capacity to bend its contradictions to find a solid path of growth and long-term development, inclusive and democratic. For example, at the end of the 1990s, the oecd (1999) published a book with the significant title of The Future of the Global Economy. Towards a Long Boom? and summarized that: As the 20th Century draws to a close, the powerful forces of change represent a long and sustained economic boom for the coming decades: the transition to a knowledge-based society with its potentially huge productivity gains; more integrated global markets for goods, services, capital and technology; and a growing environmental awareness that could accelerate the shift towards new patterns of production and consumption that require fewer resources. The result could be several decades of above-average economic growth, substantial increases in income and wealth, and significant improvements in the welfare of the whole world. oecd 1999

During the 90s US capitalism seemed to draw a trajectory, which some presumed was structural, stabilized, economic growth, with a downward trend in the rate of unemployment and control of inflation, and that was accompanied by a behavior similar to that of finance. That is how: …The expansion of the economy was accompanied by a similar stock boom, due to its vigor and duration, with the one experienced during the 1920s. Between January 1991 and August 2000, when the peak of the boom was reached, the index Dow Jones of the New York Stock Exchange increased 4.09 times, while the nasdaq index, which measures the value of the shares of the new economy, multiplied 10.2 times guillén 2007: 36–37

The ‘miracle’ was surprising, as were its results: it was a new scenario that seemed to take the US economy out of the hole. However, unable to maintain the cycle of sustained growth that, by the same token “…ended at the end of the nineties in the stock market cataclysm of the dot-com companies” (Piqueras 2014: 143), the recession of the United States (in 2001, the gdp only grew by 1%) finally threw those illusions aside and ended …the idyll about the supposed disappearance or regulated attenuation of the capitalist economic cycle, confirming once again the cyclical nature

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of this mode of production, now at global synchronic levels and, on the other hand, it has made evident the impotence of the technocratic instruments (among others, those of financial engineering) to regulate the global capitalist economy, even if only in terms of US hegemony. grobart 2007: 82

Unlike the yearnings of the new economy, capitalism is immersed in a deep structural crisis that is not only commercial, financial, exchange and monetary— as propagated by the media and as we saw in the previous chapter—but of a much more complex, multifaceted and profound nature that is expressed throughout the system. It is increasingly difficult to produce enough value and surplus value to, on the one hand, create reinvested capital surplus and, on the other, reverse the current phases of the economic recession and, at the same time, guarantee a new stage of growth of the world economy similar to that identified by the new economy.5 It has been well below that which it drew in the post-World War ii period, during Les Trente Glorieuses, and which today presents a difficult picture of quasi-stagnation only solved by the still dynamic economies of China and India that, however, have also begun to experience difficulties that concern the monetary and financial circles and businessmen of the West (see Figures 1 and 2). 12 9.9

10 8 6 4

6.28 4.2 2.8

2 0

3

2.8 1.16

World

Figure 2

Advanced Countries

1.27 usa

3.1

2.4 0.34 Euro Zone

1998–2007

1

2.13

0.25

Japan

Latin America

China

2008–2016

gdp by world regions: 1998–2016

5 See Note 4, Chapter 5. We propose this thesis in Sotelo 2010 and 2012. It should be clarified that we are not talking about ‘development’, but about growth, which, from the point of view of neoclassical theory, “…consists of eliminating institutions and organizations of any kind that limit markets and competition, be they cartels, chambers of commerce and industry, unions and taxi drivers’ unions or minimum wages and protection of employment” (Streeck 2016: 131).

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3 2.5

2.7 2.4

2 1.5

1.3

1 0.5 0 Figure 3

0.26 2013

2014

2015

2016

Volume of world merchandise trade

Harvey (2012a: 109) assures us that, in the long term, capitalism has to grow at a compound rate of not less than 3% to survive. That is, in order to recreate an environment conducive to growth in which to invest the surplus of capital created by the work force. This thesis is also presented by Piqueras (2014: 142) when he argues for the reduction of its investment spaces, because “There does not seem to be a capitalist solution to such a challenge, beyond causing false exits through new fictitious capital swings” (idem). On the other hand Saxe-Fernández and Fal (2012: 41) accurately state that “…what is at stake is the impossibility that capital manifests, periodically, of being able to guarantee its conditions of reproduction”. The problem does not rest soley in the fact that capitalism does not grow in this magnitude (3% or a little more), but in the fact that world trade does not have a relationship with world gdp that has been declining in recent years passing through a coefficient of 3.4 in 2010 to 0.6 in 2016 (wto April 12, 2017). The same can be seen in relation to the volume of international trade that goes from an already low growth rate of 2.4% in 2013 to 1.3% in 2016, well below the global gdp growth which was 3.1% last year (Figure 3 and Table 2). 3 Conclusion This problematic and negative relationship between the sphere of production and reproduction of capital and the world market is one of the most relevant and expressive characteristics of what we call ‘excess of value’: the growing difficulties of capital in general; of its monopolistic companies ­internationally;

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167

and even of fictitious capital to create new value and surplus value, a question that explains and justifies the extension and application of the super-exploitation of the labor force as a mechanism that operates to some extent as a counteracting force of the contraction of the world market and the fall of the profit rate. This is, then, the problematic and complex scenario of the capitalist crisis that the US government faced under the presidency of President Donald Trump and that, apparently, is not the situation only for this government, but also for the other conservative governments of Europe, Japan and Latin America. Particularly where social rights and conquests have been dramatically reversed against workers and the public, as seen in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Germany and even in the United States itself.

Chapter 8

United States: Precariousness of Work and SuperExploitation of the Labor Force The precarization of work is the process of updating work precariousness to adjust the social relations of production to the social, political and technical conditions that accumulation and valorization demand, within the framework of the conflict between work and capital, under the determinations of the capitalist crisis and the need to recover its general rates of profitability. In view of this updating process, this chapter articulates the precarization, as a new form of the precariousness of salaried work, with super-exploitation of the labor force as a regime that conforms to the structural conditions and policies of the advanced capitalist countries, particularly, under the limits and over-­determinations imposed by the production of relative surplus value, which, however, remains hegemonic in the system, as we saw in Chapters 4 and 5. The graphs and statistical tables give an account of the above and we conclude, considering the differences with the dependent economies, particularly Mexico, that this regime is already a reality for millions of workers in the United States. 1

Crisis, Tension and Social Fragmentation in Neoliberal Capitalism

The word ‘barbarism’ in the Latin conveys ‘backwardness’, ‘savagery’ or ‘ferocity’. It has been, and is, widely used by evolutionary and structuralist theories in the social sciences, generally to confer a negative bias on the nonindustrial, peripheral, underdeveloped, ‘illiterate’ societies that are supposedly ‘below’ the Western capitalists—‘in lower stages of the chain of human and ­economic-social development’—those that, at the same time, call themselves ‘civilized’, ‘modern’, ‘developed’, with ‘higher ranks’ in relation to the former. This is how the dichotomy originated: ‘civilization vs. barbarism’ giving impetus to terrible atrocities against the indigenous peoples carried out by Western imperialists of advanced capitalism. There is a close relationship between work and barbarism that nowadays is clearly manifested in the increasingly widespread legal-institutional vulnerability of the sellers of their labor force in relation to labor and social rights. Unlike in the past, when there were at least some laws, regulations and labor

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004415652_010

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regulations that regulated and protected those rights attained by the workers and proletarian struggles in the course of the 20th Century, today the women and men who work, increasingly do so in conditions of vulnerability, precariousness, insecurity and physical and intellectual fatigue. In this way, a working regulation was imposed that returns the worker to conditions very similar to those that prevailed in the 19th Century under the impious whip of Taylorism, when the employers and the State were practically all powerful to implement and impose their conditions of exploitation, misery and of work that set the worker categories that constituted the world of labor. As this situation is neither conjectural nor accidental, but is systemic, structural and historical, it has been embedded within the socio-labor metabolism of the reproduction of capital and it’s overcoming necessarily implies the overcoming of that system. 2

Work and Social Tension

In the absence of a powerful and active organization of the working class capable of resisting and tackling the processes of restructuring, segmentation and flexibilization of work, capital imposes an environment of socio-labor tension that bifurcated in the intricate economic-legal-institutional system and psychic-emotional, ultimately neutralizing and counteracting the rebellious attempts of workers to fight for their interests and class demands (Standing 2011 and 2013; for a critique see Sotelo 2015). The current precariousness of work, through the process of precarization, produces an additional phenomenon that we define as social tension that is a state that keeps a community, group or social individual exposed to the actions of opposing and aggressive forces, as well as to a hostile, latent situation, between people, groups, social classes, nations and races. Logically, when this state of tension expands, there is the danger of fracture and, later, of the rupture of the network of the social fabric that articulates the world of work and its diverse participating actors. Social tension is a set of opposing social forces and relations that interact in labor and labor processes, in unions, in institutions and in legal-political regimes. These forces can provoke tension, but also ruptures, deformations and permanent crises that shake the established order, either in the sense of reinforcing it or, in the sense of contravening and subverting it. We emphasize that this socio-labor phenomenon of social tension is heterogeneous and unequal. First of all because in some places, countries, regions, legal-labor regimes, institutions and productive processes, there are still labor relations that maintain, in substance, the rights and prerogatives of workers

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within the integrity of a labor contract that articulates category, salary and function performed, as occurs in those European countries within the framework of the welfare state and Fordism—which today have entered into a deep crisis—while in others, for example, Spain, Greece and Portugal, or in many places of Latin America (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico) this is no longer the case. Here, on the contrary, deregulation, flexibility, informality, precariousness, instability in employment and the loss of social and labor rights were erected in a hegemonic regime in neoliberal capitalism. In the words of Beck (2000: 96): … workers never (regardless of their skills and curriculum) were more vulnerable than in our days: they work individually, without any collective counterweight and more independently than ever, they work in flexible networks whose sense and patterns are indecipherable to most of them.1 The heterogeneity of the work contract is manifested in two ways: one that maintains the old Fordist proceedings that articulated the role played with the other components: salary and category (A); and, the new one that corresponds to the neoliberal, flexible, Toyotist and polyvalent that makes possible the just in time system characterized by the disarticulation and the autonomization of said components (B). The latter (B) assumes the hegemony and tends to ­absorb the first (A) in the contour of the socio-labor metabolism of neoliberalism. It is unequal, because in both situations there are different cases depending on the characteristics of the country, its degree of economic development and, above all, the workers’ and union struggles to maintain their fundamental rights. In other words: the intensity and magnitude of the heterogeneity and inequality of labor, socio-labor and organizational processes will depend on the structural processes determined by the level of development of the organic composition of capital and the incorporation of technology; of the stability or crisis of the economic system; the characteristics of the State; and, finally, of the degree of cohesion, organization and struggle of the workers and of the exploited classes of society in the defense and improvement of their living and working conditions. 1 In another text, this author designates the ‘global risk society’ (weltrisikogesellschaft) to the five interrelated processes that post-industrial society has the ability to confront in the ‘second modernity’: globalization, individualization, the gender revolution, underemployment and global risks such as ecological crises and financial markets (Beck 2007).

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These characteristics that differentiate the heterogeneity and inequality of social and labor relations by countries and regions have a common ingredient: the tendency to precarious work as the economic crisis plays out and companies begin to adopt Toyotism and flexible methods of production and organization of work (for this topic from the point of view of education see Antunes and Pinto 2017). Some authors have insisted as Vasapollo (2007) points out that one of the characteristics of the current world of labor is the conversion of ‘atypical’ work as a rule rather than an exception, while for the French sociologist Castel (1998: 516) it is a gross error to consider precarious work—contracts for specific work, internships, part-time jobs subsidized by the State—as ‘­particular or atypical’ and adds that, in general, both unemployment and precarization, must be considered as phenomena “embedded in the current dynamics of modernization”. For his part, Beck (2000: 135) believes that “the deregulation and flexibilization of work introduces in the West as normal what for a long time was a surmountable catastrophe: the informal economy and the informal sector”. The same author establishes as one of the principles of what he calls ‘second modernity’ that “the formal society of work and full employment, and with it the network woven in the welfare state enters into crisis before a new mode of ‘delocalised’ production and cooperation” (Beck 2000: 28–29). According to this author, the ‘second modernity’, which implies ‘reflective modernity’, is defined by ecological crises, backward-paying work, individualization, globalization and the sexual revolution (Beck 2000: 25), including the crisis of world of labor (arbeitswelt) and the environmental crisis (umweltkrise). 3

Precarious Work and Structural Reforms

From being a product of the crisis of capitalism and labor markets, precarious work became a legal-institutional principle of labor regimes and individual and collective contracts that are consistent with the policies and interests of capital representative agents: the businessmen and their bureaucratic, repressive and administrative apparatuses. Indeed, It seems as if socio-economic security, as defined by the International Labor Organization (ilo), would have become the privilege of a social minority at the beginning of the 21st Century in most countries of the world. altvater 2011: 262

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This author mentions Germany, the most developed country in the European Union. In Italy, labor reforms implemented by the government with Law 848 of February 2003 fully introduced ‘the atypical work’ that dismantled, at least, three fundamental characteristics of the work prevailing before the ­reform that supported the ‘typical work’: (a) the stipulated schedule was of integral time; (b) it recognized the right to set the time and place for the promotion of the jobs of the employees, as well as for the start of the autonomous activity of the independent or autonomous workers; and, (c) finally, a great diversity of positions and roles were established between those who worked as employees and those who worked as independent workers (Vasapollo 2006: 49). Among other consequences of these so-called structural reforms that have been implemented in Europe, in addition to encouraging unemployment, they have stimulated the development of labor informality, according to Altvater, as a real ‘bumper of globalization’ that fulfills four functions: a) Ensures the subsistence of urban households. b) Contributes to the solving of the crisis of the labor markets. c) Reproduces itself in small informal and precarious companies, that ­super-exploit their workers. d) Houses a deep and exacerbated deposit of cheap labor force that nourishes the work needs of transnational companies (2011, 263). We also add that it stimulates the increase in exploitation and intensifies competition among workers that, among other effects, causes low wages, precarious employment and increased unemployment. The same happens with the increase in social tension among the working classes. In effect, Toyotism and flexible automation adapt the work to the markets and needs of companies (just in time) and generalize their precarization in a context of union weakness or of no worker organization. Thus, precarious work, the generalized reality that is increasingly incorporating broad sectors of the working classes around the world, in the first instance, introduces a state of tension in the subjects who see themselves losing their labor and social rights and are confronted with a harsh reality of scarcity and competition for jobs of any nature and, of course, an uncertain and questionable future that even creates mental health problems (nervousness, anxiety, depression, fear, suffering), in addition to the increase in accidents at work. Being able to spend, thus, weeks, months, or even whole years in unemployment, these workers end up obtaining an insufficient and precarious quasiemployment that provides a meagre income to half satisfy their needs and those of their families, and if they give up looking for a job it ends up favoring

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official statistics in the sense that the rate of open unemployment will show as if it has declined. Alcoholism, drug addiction, anguish and the permanent state of stress—on which the computer organization of Toyotist work is built—accompanies the interval of unemployment and is extended even when temporary employment is found, which barely allows them to survive. When that happens to an individual, the same happens on a larger scale, to hundreds and thousands of people who share the same situation of precariousness and that face similar ­adverse circumstances that entrap them. The workers’ collective, then, experiences a generalized phenomenon of social tension that is either organized for struggle or is shaping up to a possible social fracture—which can be extended to the worker family, to the couple, to the circle of friends and to the individual himself when feeling frustrated—signifying the disintegration and conversion to uncritical individualism that is the worst enemy of social struggles in general and of the workers in particular. From here to suicide, then, is a possible ‘exit formula’ from the objective and individual crisis. The result of all these changes, among others, has been an increase in illness and death at work as indicated by the afl-cio in a report on death at work (May 31, 2011). Also a wave of suicides in France Telecom, which had 100,000 employees in that country, was tragically triggered between 2008 and 2010 with more than sixty registered of which 27 are linked to work, according to the trade union platform Stress Observatory and Forced Labor Mobility (Pérez April 28, 2011). The International Labor Organization (ilo May 24, 2002) reveals that about 5,480 people die every day in the world due to accidents or occupational diseases, or 2 million every year. In addition, 270 million workers suffer from injuries and 160 million acquire occupational diseases such as rsi (Repetitive Strain Injury), which is an occupational disease that occurs due to repetitive efforts within an excessive workday of between 14 and 15 hours a day—which is very common these days—with little or no rest for the worker. Another collateral phenomenon is stress at work—what psychologists call ‘burnout’ (syndrome of exhaustion or chronic work fatigue)—that produces at least three disorders: emotional and physical exhaustion; low labor productivity; and, depersonalization of the worker. For this topic see Sennett 1998. From alienated and tense work a ‘capture-appropriation of the subjectivity’ is produced in the worker by the capital that increases work-related illnesses with an emphasis on mental disorders, which explains the drastic expansion of pharmaceutical businesses—and their transnational laboratories—that profit from human health and misfortune, particularly through the massive sale of

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antibiotics and antidepressants that generally do not act on the causes but only on the symptoms of the disease. If the class contradictions between labor and capital fail to restore a certain ‘equilibrium’ within the adverse junctures for the former as a result of ­negotiation and the class struggle between labor and capital, then a threshold is ­entered that can cause social fracture; a situation of mass unemployment eventually characterized by the absence of benefits or subsidies and, therefore, of security in society. This phenomenon implies an acute social regression derived from the restructuring of capital and its systemic crises in the world of work that entails an inherent reduction and consequent degradation of labor rights and living conditions not only of the men and women who work, but the population in general. The social fracture means a ruthless and dangerous ­process of fragmentation of the working class, its unions, socio-cultural spheres and symbols articulated in the family, in daily life, in the ways of thinking and in ideologies, as well as in the public dimension of everyday social reproductivity. When we speak of fragmentation, we refer to: … a confusion about the question of difference and sameness (or unity), but the clear perception of these categories is necessary in each phase of life. To be confused about what is different, and what is not, is to be confused about everything. So it is not accidental that our fragmentary way of thinking is leading us to a wide range of crises: social, political, economic, ecological, psychological, etc., both in the individual and in society considered as a whole. This way of thinking supposes the endless development of a chaotic and foolish conflict, in which the energies of all tend to be lost in antagonistic movements or, if not, in misunderstandings. bohm 2002: 39–40

Social fragmentation is a necessary and vital phenomenon of capital in general and of dominant ideologies in particular (positivism, evolutionism, sociological functionalism) to erect the scientific and technological organization of work—and its productive processes—as a function of interacting subjects that adjust to their interests and conditions and, at the same time, that are incapable of resisting the system because they remain fragmented and isolated. In short, this is the essence of the socio-metabolism of capital in the epoch of neoliberalism, of flexibility, precarious work and informality that annul, first, the collective and, later, the individual to isolate him from his fellows and ­submerge them in a psycho-traumatic emptiness that is consecrated by the ­dominant ideology through the media and its organic intellectuals that serve as support.

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In this way fragmentation and Toyotist organization go hand in hand, in that, promoted by neoliberal policies they manage to fragment the working class. They deregulate, reduce or annul their social and labor rights in a context of deepening the regime of super-exploitation of the labor force that at present, by the way, is becoming generalized in the economic, social and productive system of advanced capitalism. As human phenomena, fragmentation and social fracture are also seen in ideas and social sciences that present fetishized, nebulous, partial and distorted visions of social reality in order to make them pass as objective and holistic and generate an ‘immutable’ vision of the existing social order, so much so that it becomes impossible to overcome them and at the same time induce social conformity (Roitman 2010) in the very core of workers’ subjectivity and that can be interpreted, according to the author, as: … a type of behavior whose characteristic trait is the adoption of inhibitory conducts of the conscience in the process of construction of reality. It appears like a rejection towards any type of attitude that entails confrontation or contradiction with the legally constituted power. roitman 2010: 1

This conformism is an ideological perspective that the system constructs and disseminates every day ex-ante—and projects ex-post—of the relationship between globalization, technological development and the world of work through the human relations departments of the large corporate companies that disseminate them in the media. This illusion derives from a theoretical premise that supposes, in abstract terms, that scientific-technical development and its application to labor processes and labor organization, would contribute to counteract social tension, precarization and fragmentation in order to strengthen the overcoming of the negative elements of the restructuring and the structural reforms. It must be clarified that the alleged autonomy of science and technology— through the schools and the general teaching-learning process (Gramsci 1975; Antunes and Pinto 2017; and Camaranno 2004)—has no other objective than that of guaranteeing capitalist reproduction. This is the reason why it limits, but does not replace, wage labor in the production of value and surplus value. Rather, it is possible to warn that the technology involved in the productive processes, as well as the adoption of new forms of work organization based on neo-Fordism, neo-Taylorism, reengineering and Toyotism (all of them called ‘soft technologies’), seriously threaten the working populations of the entire planet. In the medium term they reinforce six areas of work restructuring:

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­ rivate property, individualism, depoliticization, culture, the purchase and p sale of labor power, and science and technology, at the same time that they extend their radius of action to the economy and society. On the ideological level, the struggle of ideas and class and anti-corporate awareness on the part of the working classes of all countries and continents are fundamental for the critical and conscious understanding of the social, political and labor reality, as well as for the discovering and stimulation of the potentialities of its transformation in all planes of human existence. The independent organization of the workers is often also affected by the ideological apparatuses—dissuasive and repressive—that manipulate the State and the private (communication) companies called ‘cultural industries’ but which, in reality, are authentic state-class ideological apparatuses and capital. These can be positive in the hands of workers when they induce reflection and analysis on the subject of work and, above all, when they postulate that it is their concrete subjects that can potentially transform the existing societies and the capitalist system that serves as sustenance. The workers recover their creative potential in order to become a historical subject of transformation of the mode of production and of society with a view to forming a new noncapitalist formation. To quote an author: “work, far from losing its power, is presented with all its explosive charge, putting into play class recomposition dynamics” (Vasapollo 2004: 75) where the new historical subject of transformation should arise and overcome the capitalist social formation: the revolutionary proletariat. This realistic vision of society and the world of work is opposed to the figures and images promoted by the private and official media that cannot find support in the social reality of our countries and societies, as well as in macro and micro trends that are projected on the horizon of the world of work: reduction of workforce of companies; replacement of workers by automation; reduction of wages and social benefits; increase in labor turnover rates; increases in productivity charged to the redoubled exploitation of labor; and inflation of prices and costs of popular consumer goods that determine the value of the labor force. Capitalist society is characterized by the instrumental reason that destroys jobs, precarizes work and causes structural unemployment. It also governs the organization of work and the logic of the production of value, surplus value and profits. This means that resources, such as process reengineering (Hammer and Champy 1993)2 that leads to job reductions (Sennett 1998) or ­Toyotism, 2 Re-engineering (Business Process Re-engineering) is the constant adjustment of companies to the changing reality of capitalism, for what is part of zero in order to review and radically redesign the processes and achieve radical improvements in performance such as costs,

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as the dominant forms of organization and exploitation of work, become evermore encompassed in the different labor organizations and will not function adequately on the old patterns of accumulation and reproduction of capital supported by Keynesianism and Fordism. It was necessary to restructure these—as well as their legal-political and ideological-administrative ­institutions—so that the organization of work in the making could become hegemonic in the creation of value and in the valorization of capital in accordance with the new demands of the business game strategic reposition in the production of surplus labor (surplus value). This instrumental logic, sustained in criteria of profitability and rationalization of capital to obtain high shares of profit, effectively causes the subordination of the labor force to capital. Its characteristics are extended and ­homogenized in production and in the world of work, including in the dependent countries of Latin America. This is independent of the specific (­dispersed) forms assumed by the fragmentation of the labor force and, in particular, of salaried work as a characteristic derived from the neoliberal policies of labor flexibility that have favored short-term hiring (temporary, seasonal, part time), the fragmentary payment for hours worked, extended the legal causes of the termination of the labor contract by disposition of the companies, and reduced the compensation for justified or unjustified dismissal. All these are historical demands of the employers of all the capitalist countries of the world to strengthen their domain over work in order to strengthen and make their systems of organization and exploitation more efficient. The vehicle of their imposition is structural reforms (structural adjustment, privatization, external openings, labor reforms) that encourage deregulation, go through fragmentation, precarious work, and culminate in the constitution of the state of social-psychological tension as a powerful tool that counteracts the capacities and organizational desires of the workers because it combines the objective conditions (economic crises, unemployment, low wages, high rates of exploitation and competition) with the subjective conditions (lack of class consciousness among workers, job disillusionment, anguish at the threshold of unemployment, poverty and defeat). The isolated workers, tense and turned into individual subjects with a deep feeling of helplessness, face the powerful and indefatigable apparatuses of bourgeois society (media, repression, prison, psychiatric hospitals, judicial systems) that condition and modify their behavior (for example, from being ­active quality, service and speed. In most cases it involves massive layoffs of personnel. We can, thus, identify, in terms of its effects in the world of work, re-engineering with precarization as a mechanism for enforcing precariousness. It can be concluded that any structural reform that imposes the system implies directly or indirectly industrial and labor re-engineering.

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and struggling, to passiveness and unconditional acceptance of the existing order) engulfing the workers and their identity. In this alienation (see Mészáros 1970) they become estranged from their own work and their products, which isolates them from the collective workers and from society itself. The final result, says Castells (2004: 29), is a flagrant contradiction between the self and the ‘global networks of instrumental exchanges’ that is synthesized in a dangerous break in the communication channels. The extension and deepening of alienation, social fragmentation and the state of tension that is introduced by labor flexibility3 and the new paradigms of the social organization of the work process, such as Toyotism, create a threshold that can cause both a state of fracture and rupture of the communicating vessels and values and the networks among the workers’ collectives (which can even affect class cohesion) and the instruments of struggle such as unions, strikes, potential political manifestation—and above all—the constitution of the working class as the vanguard of radical and transformative social change. Somehow in the course of the 1980s that strategic objective was achieved: to neutralize and, in extreme situations, to defeat the social movement of workers practically all over the world with the help of the imperialist State led by Reagan in the United States and the Iron Lady in England. This historical, ­social and political fact was the basis of the crisis of the welfare state for its subsequent de-structuring in the 90s and its conversion into a hegemonic neoliberal state, which contributed to the disintegration of the ussr and the imposition of the Washington Consensus, among other transcendent historical facts. This resulted in an ideological ‘demonstration effect’ on the ‘finishing’ of the class struggle. In particular, the historical struggle of the working class was fragmented and out of step to undertake effective resistance to this task. Instead, the organic intelligentsia of the dominant system proclaimed that the so-called (new) ‘movements and social subjects’ in abstracto were the ‘only actors’ who were the protagonists of social change, among whom appeared the women’s groups, the ngos, the anti-globalization or anti-systemic movements, peasants and indigenous people and students, among others, but all of them isolated, because the labor and union movement in the course of the 80s ­suffered severe blows—even physical ones—having been defeated by the restructuring of capital, which, with the support of the media, introduced and 3 Castel (1998: 337–338.) Considers that flexibility “… is not reduced to the need to adjust mechanically to a specific task, but requires that the operator is immediately available to respond to fluctuations in demand”.

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reinforced neoliberalism and flexible market economies based on the justin-time system, the precarization and super-exploitation of the world of work. As a result of this crisis and the restructuring of capital, the working class was fragmented and disarticulated from its class organization. The social fracture and social tension played that role and introduced isolationism, uncritical individualism and the feeling of defeat among its ranks, a phenomenon that was expressed in a sharp drop in the rates of unionization worldwide practically up to the present. While this situation was played out in the union ranks of the working class, the State achieved hegemony (consensus/repression/ fracture) with the help of the media and electronic media, as well as executing privatization of the economic and social system (the accumulation of capital through dispossession) and the promotion of market forces as presumed motors of the general development of society and economy. In short, the crisis, fragmentation and restructuring constituted an additional lever to deregulate, flexibilize, fracture and precarize the world of work in the course of the first fifteen years of the 21st Century. Capital initiatives— privatization, structural adjustments, reduction of costs and labor reforms, massive dismissals of workers, reorientation of their investments towards competitive sectors and high profitability—advanced in the direction of deepening and encouraging fragmentation, social fracture and the monumental extension of the precarious and informal work we see today. If this had not happened it would be hard to imagine that capital would have given the ‘tiger jump’ to solve the deep capitalist crisis of the welfare state and the subsequent restructuring of capital from the mid-70s. The process is not mechanical but, rather, it articulates the structural conditions that occur in the work processes under the imperatives of the management of the companies and their profit rates, but also under the conditions of the class struggle that, in particular, usually deploys the workers through the unions, the mass organizations and the real workers’ parties and the anti-capitalist left. 4

(Temporary) Employment and Job Insecurity

A pattern by which the precariousness of work is imposed is temporary employment, according to some authors. For example, Standing (2013: 63–64) argues that: Competitiveness through the use of temporary work is increasingly important in the global system, as companies strive to emulate what other

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market leaders in their sector do in other countries, a pattern known as the ‘dominant effect’. The International Labor Organization (ilo 2016a: 3) distinguishes four broad categories of what it calls “atypical forms of employment”: (1) temporary employment; (2) part-time work; (3) temporary work through agency and other multiparty work relationships; and (4) covert employment relationships and economically dependent self-employment. This international body outlines two important conclusions: a) In general, in industrialized countries, atypical employment can be found in almost all economic sectors, with predominance in low-wage occupations. In developing countries, casual employment continues to represent a significant portion of wage-earning employment but there has also been a proliferation of atypical employment in sectors where typical employment was more common, such as in the public sector or manufacturing. b) Compared with other population groups, it is more likely to find women, young people and migrants in atypical employment modalities. This overrepresentation reflects the greater difficulties these workers have in entering and remaining in the labor market. Especially in the case of women, it reflects the unequal distribution of unpaid work in the home and the consequences of this inequality in the possibilities they have of obtaining permanent employment, due to the schedules and availability required by some permanent jobs, as well as the doubts that some employers have about the hiring of women due to these demands (ilo 2016a: 7). There is evidence that temporary employment has increased globally in recent years. Thus, the ilo (2017: 28) indicates that as of the second quarter of 2016, temporary employment in the European Union (28 countries considered) reached 14.3% of total employment. However, in other countries, which include the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, the proportion remains well above 20% and in others such as Croatia and France this employment is increasing. In Japan about half of Japanese workers under the age of 25 have temporary or part-time jobs, increasing by 20% compared to 1990, this situation being worse for working women who earn 30% less on average than men (Goodman and Soble October 7, 2017). According to The Economist (July 16, 2016), since the economic recovery began in 2009, temporary employment represents one in ten new jobs in the United States that, at the same time that it grows, its quality deteriorates (­Castillo 2012: 259). According to official figures, temporary workers obtain between 20% and 25% less per hour than permanent workers in the performance

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of similar functions and fewer and fewer are covered by health and pension plans, whose costs are increasingly incurred by the taxpayers. The newspaper also highlights that in places where temporary work is imposed it negatively impacts the salaries of permanent workers: In states where less than 2% of the workforce was employed by temporary companies (temping firms) in 2000, the salaries of full-time workers grew by an average of 3% per year between 2000 and 2015. On the contrary, they increased only 2.6% annually in states with a higher proportion of temporary workers. According to a Report of the United States government (gao April 20, 2015: 4) this type of contingent employment rose from 35.3% of the total number of workers employed in 2006 to 40.4% in 2010 and its number continues to grow, affecting more and more different scales and categories of work, as well as salary amounts. 5

Unemployment as a Condition of the Super-Exploitation of Labor

Along with atypical employment and temporary employment, unemployment figures prominently as part of the mechanisms aimed at increasing capital gains. In this regard, Marini points out (1996: 65) that in order for the superexploitation of labor to operate under any circumstance, the existence of huge unemployment is required as a sine qua non condition that simultaneously (a) presses down wages, (b) increases the average exploitation rate in the system and, (c) increases competition among the workers themselves. Articulated, these measures are aimed at counteracting the decline in the rate of profit of large monopoly companies in the world and the United States. This confirms that the privileged era of capitalism is definitively behind us— the famous Les Trente Glorieuses—and will never repeat itself despite the delirious desires of the international financial organizations that believe it will. For example, between 1960–1968 the average growth rate in the United States was 4.4% and then it fell to 2.5% between 1979 and 1985. In the same period, Japan declined 10.4% in the first to 4% in the second; West Germany went from 4.1% to 3%; France, from 5.4% to 1.1%; Great Britain, from 3.1% to 1.2%, while, finally, the average growth of all oecd member countries fell by 5.1%, between 1960–1968, to 2.2%, between 1979–1985 (Harvey 2012: 153). Along with this behavior of the world economy, another phenomenon emerges as a characteristic of capitalism: the growing dissociation of the

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e­ conomic cycle from the behavior of the employment-underemployment rate. Thus, according to Marini, after stably displaying unemployment rates equivalent to 4% of the labor force, until 1973, these rose rapidly in the 24 most industrialized countries and reached their peak in 1983 (8%) affecting more than 30 million people. However, despite the fact that the recession had been ­overcome since the beginning of the following decade, unemployment still ­oscillated around 6% in 1990 to grow again in the subsequent years (Marini 1996: 55). In this way, and verifying Marini’s thesis, we find that in 2012, in the oecd countries, the unemployment rate reached 7.9%, 10.5% in the whole of the European Union and 11.4% in the countries of the Euro Zone in that same year (Eurostat October 1, 2012 and ilo 2014). Cillo (April 13, 2017: 17) notes that between 2007 and 2015 the number of unemployed worldwide of people between 15 and 24 years went from 70.5 million in the first year to 73.4 in the second, reaching the highest number in 2009 at 76.6 million unemployed youth. Although there had been ups and downs, this behavior does not seem to have changed at present (see Table 3). On the contrary, it reveals that even if the unemployment rate is reduced, as has been nominally occurring after the Great Depression of 2008–2009 in some countries such as the United States, Great Britain or Japan, this has not resulted in an increase of salaries nor in an improvement of the quality of the jobs, which, has actually decreased both in skills and level of remuneration in a context of growth of jobs that require advanced and specialized skills (Goodman and Soble October 7, 2017). These constitute the minority in the global labor markets (see Table 6). Capitalism has only been able to achieve growth by combining unemp­ loyment with precarious, informal, interim zero hour contracts, outsourced work with low wages, and increased exploitation of work. What has been made possible also thanks to the strong decline of the workers’ struggles and the unionization rates that, for example, in the United States, fell from 20% in 1983 to half that today (Sander cit. Tasin, 2015: 81). The 2000s did not change this labor panorama in the world or in the United States, to the extent that the ilo does not see a reduction in open unemployment as shown in the following. Table 3 shows the high unemployment rates in the European Union, to a lesser extent in the advanced economies and in France and Italy. In absolute terms, unemployment reached more than 200 million people in 2017 and in the EU this year it is above 22 million. In Latin America, with rates that averaged at around 6.5% between 2014–2017, in this last year the affected population is

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force Table 3 

Unemployment rate and total unemployment. Trends and projections 2007–2017

Unemployment rate 2014–2017 (%)

World Developed economies Emerging economies Developing economies G20 economies G20 advanced economies G20 emerging economies UE-28 UE-19

183

Millions 2015–2017

2014

2015

2016

2017

2015

2016

2017

5.8 7.1

5.8 6.7

5.8 6.5

5.7 6.4

197.1 46.7

199.4 46.1

200.5 45.3

5.5

5.6

5.6

5.6

135.3

137.7

139.1

5.5

5.5

5.5

5.5

15.1

15.6

16.1

5.5 7.3

5.4 6.8

5.4 6.6

5.3 6.5

123.9 42.2

124.3 41.2

123.8 40.2

4.9

4.9

4.9

4.9

81.7

83.1

83.6

10.2 11.6

9.4 10.9

9.2 10.7

9.1 10.4

23.2 17.5

22.7 17.1

22.2 16.7

10. 5.8 9.2

10.2 5.7 9.4

10.2 5.7 9.4

5.3 0.7 6.8

5.5 0.7 7.0

5.6 0.7 7.1

10.3 4.5 4.6 3.3 3.7 6.9 5.8

10.5 4.5 4.7 3.2 3.5 7.0 6.2

10.4 4.6 4.7 3.1 3.4 6.9 6.1

3.0 42.1 37.3 2.2 1.0 10.2 4.4

3.1 42.4 37.7 2.1 0.9 10.3 4.7

3.1 42.7 38.1 2.0 0.9 10.1 4.6

6.5

6.7

6.7

19.9

21.0

21.2

6.7 7.2 4.3

6.9 7.7 4.1

6.7 7.6 4.0

1.3 7.7 2.5

1.4 8.4 2.4

1.4 8.4 2.4

Subregions and Country Details Arab States 10.1 Saudí Arabia 5.9 Central and 9.1 Western Asia Turkey 9.9 Eastern Asia 4.5 China 4.6 Japan 3.5 Korea, Republic of 3.5 Eastern Europe 6.8 Russian 5.2 Federation Latin America 6.4 and the Caribbean Argentina 7.3 Brazil 6.8 Mexico 4.9

184 Table 3 

Chapter 8 Unemployment rate and total unemployment. Trends and projections 2007–2017 (cont.)

Unemployment rate 2014–2017 (%)

Northern Africa Northern America Canada United States Northern, Southern and Western Europe Germany France Italy United Kingdom South-Eastern Asia and Pacific Australia Indonesia Southern Asia India Sub-Saharan Africa South Africa

Millions 2015–2017

2014

2015

2016

2017

2015

2016

2017

12.5 6.3

12.1 5.5

11.8 5.1

11.6 4.9

8.8 10.0

8.8 9.3

8.8 9.0

6.9 6.3 10.7

6.9 5.3 10.1

6.8 4.9 9.9

6.8 4.7 9.7

1.4 8.7 21.8

1.4 7.9 21.4

1.4 7.7 21.0

5.0 10.3 12.7 6.1 4.3

4.6 10.6 12.1 5.5 4.4

4.6 10.4 12.0 5.4 4.3

4.7 10.0 11.5 5.5 4.2

2.0 3.1 3.0 1.8 15.1

2.0 3.0 3.0 1.8 15.2

2.0 2.9 2.9 1.9 15.1

6.1 5.9 4.2 3.5 7.3

6.3 5.8 4.1 3.5 7.4

6.3 5.7 4.1 3.4 7.5

5.8 5.6 4.0 3.4 7.5

0.8 7.3 28.8 17.5 28.2

0.8 7.3 29.1 17.5 29.4

0.7 7.3 29.4 17.6 30.4

24.9

25.1

25.5

25.7

5.1

5.3

5.4

Source: ilo, 2016b: Tabl3 3 1: 13.

over 21 million people. Here the case of Mexico stands out for its alleged ‘low’ unemployment rates of around 4.3%.4 4 It is necessary to clarify that the official Mexican statistic that inegi raises generally refers to the ‘unemployment rate’ with a methodology and indicators that show the results reported in this Table 3, with an average of 4.3. But in reality the rate of open unemployment in the country is around 15% involving some 8,700,000 people unemployed in 2014 (Multidisciplinary Analysis Center (mac) January 28, 2015) against 2,070,000 according to the inegi (about 6 million fewer people), which is due to the measurement methods and the official indicators used by the Mexican government to hide the true figures of unemployment and, therefore, of prevailing poverty that have increased in the years following.

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Regarding the United States, in Table 3 something similar to Mexico occurs. An average unemployment rate of 5.3% is observed in the period 2014–2017, and other indicators raise this percentage. Thus, Williams (June 8, 2016, Figure 1: 3) calculates that the open unemployment rate in the United States in 2016 is 23% and not 4.69% as officially established by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of that country.5 An example of the rupture of the correlation between economic growth and employment is offered by the US manufacturing sector where, according to a Ball State University report, the recovery of manufacturing production after the 2008–2009 recession was achieved with millions of less workers and through a strong impulse given to the automation of jobs (Stettner, Yudken and McCormack June 13, 2017) in combination with the increase in productivity (relative surplus value), the greater exploitation of the worker (super-­ exploitation) and the reduction of real wages. In this view, Marx’s law is ­verified which says that, at the same time, as the reserve industrial army is conformed

5 In this regard, Torres (September 4, 2015) comments that in the United States there are six official unemployment measures prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. U1: Percentage of the active population unemployed 15 weeks or more. In August 2015 it was 2.2% and it was 2.9% in the same month of 2014. U2: Percentage of the active population that lost their job or ended a temporary job. In August 2015 it was 2.6% and in the same month of 2014, 3.1%. U3: It is the official rate of the ilo and the one normally used. It gathers, as a percentage of the active population, the number of people who are unemployed and who have actively sought work in the last four weeks. In August 2015 it was 5.1% against 6.1% in the same month of 2014. U4: Adds to U3 the ‘discouraged workers’, those being people who have stopped looking for work in the last twelve months because the current economic conditions make them believe that there is no work available. In August 2015 it was 5.5% and in the same month of 2014 it was 6.6%. U5: This is the previous one (U4) plus people only marginally linked to the labor market who are currently not working or looking for work, but indicate that they want to do so. They are available to work and have sought work at some time in the last 12 months. In August 2015, this range was 6.2%, and in the same month of 2014, 7.4%. U6: It is the previous plus the part-time employees who wish to work full-time but who cannot do so due to economic reasons. In August 2015 it was 10.3% and in the same month of 2014, 12%. Therefore, if this last rate is taken into account, it is much more realistic than the U3 when it comes to really knowing which people are unemployed or not, and it reveals that the unemployment rate in the United States is double what is officially said. But it does not stop there. This last U6 rate was modified in 1994 under Bill Clinton’s mandate to provide more favorable data for the government. Until then it included not only the ‘short-term discouraged’ but also those who had sought employment at some time in a period greater than a year. In his website Shadow Government Statistics the researcher John Williams has been calculating the U6 rate according to how it was calculated before the modification introduced by President Clinton. That is a much more realistic way, and it turns out that the unemployment rate of August 2015 in the United States would not be either 5.1% or 10.3%, but rather 23%.

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Chapter 8

to the influence of the automation of the productive processes, a smaller ­number of workers capital manages to obtain a larger mass of goods through the greater exploitation of the labor force. 6

The Deterioration of Wages

The variable: employment-unemployment-underemployment influences wages, upwards or downwards, depending on their behavior. What is preferable for capital is undoubtedly a general lowering of wages, coupled with the lowering of labor costs that include benefits and other components such as job security, compensation for layoffs, training, transportation expenses, scholarships, and so on, that capital strives to reduce significantly. Smith concludes that: In the face of an accelerated deterioration in living and working conditions, increased insecurity, attacks on wages, security in employment and (where they exist) social services, capitalism is increasingly unable to satisfy the minimum social needs of a large part of the working population of the imperialist nations and of the vast majority of the working population of the developing nations (2016: 166). Since the mid-70s, there has been a marked tendency to decrease both wages and labor costs mainly through the so-called structural reforms. The International Labor Organization (ilo 2016, Figure 5: 7) shows a global trend to the fall in wages, noticed between 2006 and 2015, without considering the participation of China, whose average wage, in 2016, was above that of Mexico and Brazil and most of the Latin American countries, and only 30% below the average of the economies of southern Europe (Spain, Greece or Italy) according to Euromonitor International (Latin Post February 28, 2017). This same source points out that while the average hourly wages in the Chinese manufacturing sector tripled between 2005 and 2016, during the same period average manufacturing wages fell from $2.90 per hour to $2.70 in Brazil, from $2.20 to $2.10 in Mexico and from $4.30 to $3.60 in South Africa. In contrast, in 2015 in the United States there was a relative increase in hourly wages (ilo 2016: 12), which reinforces the assertion of how, from the business and capital point of view, it is inconvenient to return companies and jobs (mainly from Mexico) to that country, ­being that in congruence with their capitalist interests framed in their pursuit of profit they are seeking low-wage countries and regions, as we argued in ­Chapter 2, in their search for extraordinary profits. Remember that capital

187

%

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

3.4 2.8

2.6

2.2

2.5

0.7 2006

2007

Global

Figure 4

1.8

1.6

1.5

2008

2.5

2009

1.6

1.6

1.9

1.3

1.7 0.9

0.8

0.6

Without China

1.7

2.5

2010

2011

2 per. mov. avg. (global)

2012

2013

2014

2015

2 per. mov. avg. (without China)

Average annual growth of real wages in the world, 2006–2015

has no homeland; it has interests! And these are governed by the logic of profitability. Without considering China—which in recent years has been experiencing a strong boost to the increase of its real wages and its internal market—in the world on average they tend to decrease as shown in Figure 4. Without China, as can be seen in Figure 4, the decline in real wages is pro�nounced very importantly from 2013. In its preface the ilo (2016/2017: 2) explains the recent behavior of real wages worldwide after the 2008–2009 crisis: … world real wage growth began to recover in 2010, but slowed down from 2012, to fall in 2015 from 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent, its minimum level in four years. By excluding China, where wage growth was faster than anywhere else, real wage growth has fallen from 1.6 percent in 2012 to 0.9 percent in 2015. In this unfavorable context for real wages, North Americans—although they are below those of countries such as Luxembourg, Norway and Austria—still remain high compared to other countries in the world, particularly dependent ones such as Mexico and Brazil (in the latter, real wages have recently declined according to a Joint ilo-cepal Report October 2017), as can be seen in the manufacturing industry in Figure 5. Hourly wages in the United States are well above Mexico and Brazil (around 6.7 times), where in the heat of the intense neoliberal policies that are being applied in both countries, they tend to fall more and be pulverized in accordance with business interests and of social austerity policies. Hence the illusion and demagoguery that have arisen in the context of the ftaa negotiations regarding the relocation of state-owned plants from Mexico supposedly for the sake of recovering lost jobs (around 700,000 during the effective date of the

188

Chapter 8

25 20.3

20 15 10 5 0

0 United States

Figure 5

1.2

3.6

China

2.2 2005

2016

2.1

Mexico

2.9

2.7

Brazil

Average wages per hour in the manufacturing industry of several countries, 2005–2016

ftaa) as Trump’s government alleges from a demagogic economic ultranationalism (see Financial Times April 28, 2017 and Chapter 2). Table 4 shows the wage relationship in the manufacturing industry of both countries; revealing that the ‘comparative and competitive advantage’ is provided by Mexico in benefit of the profit rate of the US monopolistic companies that, in this way, obtain juicy extraordinary profits from unusual increases of the super-exploitation of the labor force quotas on this side of the Mexican border. No matter how auspicious the ongoing negotiations between the representatives of the three countries that make up the fta, there is no doubt that this wage structure, which is completely favorable and advantageous to the United States and Canada, will not change favorably for Mexican workers. Spokes­ persons from the United States and Canada insist on this increase because they consider it a kind of ‘dumping’ in favor of Mexico. This would be to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and go against the secular logic of global capitalist accumulation and valorization based on exploitation and super-­ exploitation of the labor force as the central axes of the production of surplus value and monopolistic corporate profits in the era of secular crisis of advanced capitalism. Mexican real wages are more likely to continue to be depressed—they are already below the Chinese and other underdeveloped countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Belize, Kenya, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia in 2016—and, at the same time, global capitalist players take advantage of this hierarchical structure of precarious, loose and deregulated labor markets to do the same with real hourly and annual wages in the United States and other developed countries.

2.5 2.6 2.3 2.5 2.6 2.6 2.8 2.8 2.4 2.2

17.3 17.8 18.2 18.6 18.9 19.1 19.3 19.6 19.9 20.3

13.8 15.3 14.6 14.3 15.7 14.9 15.7 15.9 13.5 13.3

3.1 3.4 3.4 3.8 4.3 4.6 4.8 4.5 4.2 4.1

4.6 4.8 4.2 4.5 4.8 4.7 5 5.1 4.4 4

19.1 21.6 23.2 24.9 27.3 27.3 22.1 20.4 17.9 18.8

94.8 100.3 87.8 91.2 94.2 90.1 97.4 96 84.1 76

96.5 100.1 103.6 100.2 101.2 101.6 102.8 104.9 106.5 108.2

United States

Unit cost of labor in the manufacturing industry (Index: 2008=100)

Canada Mexico 20.2 20.7 18.4 21.2 22.8 23.2 22.6 21.2 19.1 18.4

Source: Office of the President of Mexico, 4th Government Report, 2016: 755.

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Japan

Mexico

Chile

Mexico

France

Remuneration in the manufacturing industry (dollars per hour)

Salaries in the manufacturing industry (dollars per hour)

Year

United States

Remuneration and productivity in selected countries 2007–2016

Table 4 

101.6 100 98.9 103.6 105.8 108.4 108.2 110.2 109.7 109.1

Mexico

100.7 99.9 99.2 104.6 105.4 105.7 105.7 105.1 105.3 105.7

United States

Productivity of labor in the manufacturing industry (Index: 2008= 100)

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force

189

190 7

Chapter 8

Salaries versus Productivity in the United States

At a global level there is a historical decline in labor productivity, with particular emphasis on the developed countries of Western capitalism and its main economies, including the United States in a context of slowdown in the rate of economic growth (gdp). Table 5 shows that productivity falls by half between 1999–2006 and 2007– 2013, especially in the European Union, the United States and Japan, which Table 5 

Growth of labor productivity, total hours worked and real gdp for major advanced economies, 1999–2016

United States

Japan

United Kingdom

Euro area

EU-28

Labor productivity growth (gdp per hour, annual average, percent) 1999–2006 2.8 2.2 2.3 1.5 1.9 2007–2013 1.3 1.3 0.2 0.6 0.7 2013 0.4 1.5 0.3 1.0 1.0 2014 0.7 −0.1 0.1 0.3 0.4 2015 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.8 2016 −0.3 0.8 −0.1 0.3 0.5 (Projection) Growth in total hours worked (annual average, percent) 1999–2006 0.6 −0.6 0.7 0.9 0.5 2007–2013 −0.2 −0.6 0.4 −0.6 −0.4 2013 1.2 −0.1 1.8 −1.5 −0.7 2014 1.9 0.3 2.8 0.6 1.1 2015 2.1 0.4 1.6 1.2 1.3 2016 1.9 0.1 1.8 1.2 1.2 (Projection) Real gdp growth (annual average, percent) 1999–2006 3.4 1.6 3.0 2.3 2.6 2007–2013 1.1 0.6 0.7 0.2 0.4 2013 1.6 1.5 2.2 −0.3 0.2 2014 2.6 0.2 2.9 0.9 1.4 2015 2.8 1.0 2.3 1.7 2.1 2016 1.6 0.9 1.7 1.5 1.7 (Projection)

191

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force 0.8

1 0.5

0.5

0.3

0 –0.2

–0.5 –1 –1.4

–1.5 –2

–2.1

–2.5 Nov73/January80

January80/July81

July81/July90

July90/March2001

–1.4

–2.1

–0.2

0.5

Series 1

Figure 6

March2001/Dec2007 0.3

Dec2007/Oct2016 0.8

United States: Real hourly wage growth over business cycles, cycle peak to cycle peak

constitute the hard core of the advanced industrial capitalist economy. The subsequent trajectory is even more hazardous for all, and in 2016, for the United States with a projection of −0.3%. Obviously, this situation in the United States will be compensated for by a decrease in the growth rate of real wages per hour as shown below in Figure 6). The compensation per hour, after the sharp falls that occurred between 1973 and 1990, is recovered in the subsequent years, but with extremely low rates that at most reached 0.8% per year between 2007 and 2016. It is verified that this negative behavior toward workers is not a temporary situation or conjuncture, as it is affirmed, but is a structural situation that is constituted in an economy of low wages, of precarious labor and of intense exploitation of the labor force, with a tendency in growing expropriation of a part of the salaries that go to the coffers of the accumulation of capital (see Chapter 8 on Violation and expropriation of salary). This reinforces our hypothesis, as argued by other authors (Smith 2016; Shaikh 2006 and February 4, 2011) relative to the fact that one of the central mechanisms used by capital to counteract the fall in its rate of profit is precisely to maintain and to press down the real wages of workers. Apparently, in the context of the weakness of the labor and union struggles worldwide, the era of low wages as a mechanism for increasing the general rates of return of capital came to stay and settle, as Marini explains, as a preferential mechanism of obtaining extraordinary profits, regardless of the upward or downward behavior of business cycles. 8

Two Stages of US Salary History

In the salary history of the United States there are two periods: one, starting after the World War ii, and the second from the structural and financial crisis

192

Chapter 8

Cumulative % change since 1948

of the mid-70s (see Mandel 1972: especially 150). In the first, hourly compensation adjusted for the inflation-benefits binomial (in addition to wages for the vast majority of US workers) increased in line with productivity-wide increases in the economy. Thus, compensation per hour became the main mechanism for transmitting productivity, which somehow resulted in an improvement in the population’s living standards. Figure 7 shows that during the period of 1948–1973 labor productivity grew 96.7% in real terms, but decreased to 72.2% between 1973–2014, that is during the second period, while the average remuneration, which was 91.3% in the first, fell to 9.2% in the second, that is, slightly more than 900%. This indicates that the productivity trajectory, which decreases 74.5% in terms of percentage—and that, theoretically, should improve its terms of correspondence with real wages supposedly because they are two complementary variables, as, it is worth remembering, the neoliberal ideologues preach—is disconnected and does not prevent the collapse of the latter in the period 1973–2014 as shown in Figure 7.6

120 100 80

96.7 91.3 72.2

60 40 20 0

Figure 7

1948–1973 Productivity

9.2 1973–2014 Hourly compensation

Gap between productivity and a typical worker’s compensation, 1948–2014

6 It should be clarified that the data of the figure 7 refers to the average remuneration per hour of the production workers / non-supervisors (“nonsupervisory workers”) in the private sector and the net productivity of the total economy. The “net productivity” is the growth of the production of goods and services minus the depreciation per hour worked. “Nonsupervisory employees include those individuals in private, service-providing industries who are not above the working-supervisor level.” This group includes individuals such as clerical workers, repairers, salespersons, operators, drivers, physicians, lawyers, accountants, nurses, social workers, research aides, teachers, drafters, photographers, beauticians, musicians, restaurant workers, custodial workers, attendants, line installers and repairers, laborers, janitors, guards, and other employees at similar occupational levels whose services are closely associated

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force Current minimum salary

20

193

Minimum wages as a proportion of average wages

Min.wage with productivity

18.17

18

18.85

16 14

12.88

12

11.23

10 8 6 4

5.94

7.61 7.17

9.63 9.21 8.79

10.01

9.58

8.56 6.73

10.29 10.29

11.05

7.14

7.94

2000

2010

11.35

7.25

3.51

2 0

1950

Figure 8

1960

1968

1980

1990

2016

United States: Minimum wage with productivity, without productivity and current real minimum wage, 1950–2016

Figure 8 measures two scenarios in which the behavior of the real minimum wage changes depending on whether or not it is accompanied by the trajectory of productivity and the evolution of minimum wages. It is observed that the historical trajectory of the level of the minimum wage in 2016 ($7.25 per hour) is decoupled from both the behavior of the average wage ($11.35) and that of productivity ($18.85). According to this source if the case had been to maintain a positive correlation with productivity as it happened during the period before 1973, the current level of the minimum wage would be an hourly amount of $18.85, something that would bring benefits in purchasing power both for salaried workers who receive this amount and for those who exceed it and, even, for those who earn higher incomes in the salary and interprofessional hierarchy of that country, which are influenced by academic and qualification grades as can be seen in Table 6 corresponding to the manufacturing industry: This same behavior is seen with respect to hourly wages. Thus, since 1973, the hourly compensation of the vast majority of US workers has not increased in line with the productivity trajectory. In fact, this type of remuneration has almost stopped growing with a marked tendency to stagnation (see Figure 7). Net productivity grew 72.2% between 1973 and 2014 or 1.33% each year. However, the actual remuneration per hour of production/nonsupervisory workers with those of the employees listed”. This note was extracted from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Chapter 2: no date: 2, at the suggestion of my friend and translator Jake Lagnado whose excellent curricular credits appear at: http://www.proz.com/profile/36361.

194 Table 6 

Chapter 8 Main highly-skilled manufacturing occupations, 2015

Average Current annual employment salary

Growth Education 2014–2024

Machinists

391,120

$ 43,220

10%

Welders

382,730

$ 42,450

4%

Industrial 334,490 machinery mechanics Industrial 256,550 engineers Computer- 146,190 controlled machine tool operators

$ 51,890

18%

$ 88,530

1%

$ 39,500

17.5%

High school + training long term High school + training moderate High school + training long term Bachelor’s degree High school + training moderate

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics, cited in Stettner, Andrew, Joel S. Yudken and Michael Mc Cormack, “Why Manufacturing Jobs Are Worth Saving”, The Century Foundation, 13 June 2017, https:// tcf.org/content/report/manufacturing-jobs-worth-saving/.

(which are part of the ‘typical workers’)7 of production, and which represent 80% of the labor force, increased only 9.2%, or 0.22% annually in the same period (Figure 7), most of which corresponds to the growth of 41 years to the period 1995–2002, according to the source cited in Figure 4. Net productivity grew 1.33% each year between 1973 and 2014, faster than the poor annual 0.20% in the median hourly compensation (Bivens and Mishel September 2, 2015, Table 1: 8). In essence, about 15 percent of the product­ ivity growth between 1973 and 2014 translated into higher hourly wages and benefits for the typical North American worker. Since 2000, the gap between ­productivity and payment has increased even faster. Thus, the net growth in 7 The typical worker is the average worker in the United States with a particular emphasis on the white worker and constitutes about 80% of the total number of American workers. See Figure 7 in this chapter.

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force

195

productivity of 21.6%, between 2000 and 2014, only translated into a net increase of 1.8% in compensation adjusted for inflation for the average worker (8% of net productivity growth, according to Bivens and Mishel September 2, 2015: 2). These increases in productivity are concentrated in specific sectors of the manufacturing industry: Almost all of the productivity growth that occurred in the manufacturing industry between 2000 and 2015 was concentrated in one sub-sector: computer and electronic products. The reported increase in productivity was an anomaly as a result of the way the government calculates the added value of increasingly powerful computer chips. stettner, yudken and McCormack June 13, 2017: 8

It also highlights the fact that the decline in productivity has a negative impact on the creation of jobs: … Productivity growth has slowed during the last decade compared to the 1960s and the 2000s, when manufacturing employment remained stable and productivity grew at a steady pace. During the most recent period of decline, the problem has been exactly the opposite of what the Ball State University team put forward: productivity growth has slowed down which has made American manufacturers less competitive and employing far fewer workers. stettner, yudken and McCormack June 13, 2017: 8

The Ball State Universiy report does not reduce, as it happens with other official analyses, the explanation of the decrease of jobs between 2000 and 2015, the period that covers the recession of 2008–2009, to purely technological issues. It indicates, on the contrary, the weight of trade and international competition in the last two decades, especially due to Chinese competition and the signing and application in 1994 of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. The United States’ deficit with China increased from $83 billion in 2001 to $347 billion in 2016 and with Mexico it went from a balance in 1994 “… before the ratification of nafta, to a deficit of $63 billion in 2016” (Stettner, Yudken and McCormack June 13, 2017: 8). The impact of this competition has been so strong that authors (Autor, Dorn and Hanson 2013, cit. in Stettner, Yudken and McCormack, June 13, 2017: 8) estimate that the productive areas exposed to Chinese competition in the United States caused the loss of 2.5 million jobs in the same period and for others (Kimball and Scott December 2014, cit. in Stettner, Yudken and Cormack June

196

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13, 2017: 8) this is still higher. More than half of the manufacturing jobs that are lost are as a consequence of international competition. In general terms between 1970 and 2015, manufacturing employment stopped representing 25% of total jobs in the United States in the first year to fall to only 9% in the second, and the number of workers in the manufacturing industry went from 17.5 million in 2000 to 11.7 million in 2015 (Sanders cit. in Tasin, 2015: 158). As can be seen, capitalist competition has its costs that, unfortunately, workers pay. Bivens and Mishel highlight that since 2000 more than 80% of the divergence between the growth of (median) remuneration and net growth in productivity has been driven by the increase in inequality (specifically, greater inequality in the participation of workers’ income in relation to capital owners). Throughout the 1973–2014 period, inequality accounts for more than two-thirds of the divergence between productivity and wages. They also point out that if the hourly wage of North American workers had kept pace with productivity growth since the 1970s, income inequality during that period would not have increased, at least on the scale at which it did so (see Figure 8). On the other hand, the growth of productivity, which does not affect the remuneration of workers concentrated in the highest level of the salary pyramid (­extended by the perceptions of senior business executives [ceos] who receive up to 400% more than the average worker (Sanders cit. in Tasini, 2015: 79), increased the income of capital owners by making the rich richer, the poor ­poorer and pushed the less poor into ‘industries without chimneys’. These structural behaviors indicate that while the improvement in productivity in recent times provided the potential for a relative growth of remunerations for a large number of workers, particularly for the stable and skilled, it turned against them. This can be illustrated with the following passage of the high profits that employers receive due to low wages and appalling working conditions in the United States: The billionaire commercial conglomerates such as Walmart, exploit workers by paying them miserable wages and providing them with little or no benefits. Walmart earns $16 billion in profits per year because they only pay their workers between $10 and $13 per hour and depend on state and federal assistance to provide impoverished families with Medicaid… and food stamps. Amazon’s plutocrat, Jeff Bezos, exploits workers by paying them $12.5 per hour while he has accumulated more than $80 billion in profit. The ceo of ups earns $11 million per year by exploiting his workers with a payment of $11 per hour. The ceo of Federal Express, Fred Smith, earns $16 million annually and pays his workers $11 per hour. petras October 05, 2017

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force

197

At the inaugural act of his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, Bernie Sanders, exclaimed that: … as we have seen in recent years… the number of millionaires and billionaires has increased while millions of Americans work more hours in exchange for a lower salary, and while we have had the highest child poverty rate of any major country on earth. tasini 2015: 17

Bivens and Mishel conclude that in order to correct these negative trajectories, policies aimed at stimulating the generalized growth of wages should be ­promoted not only to promote productivity growth (through full employment, technical innovation and public investment), but also to restore the broken link with workers’ wages. The gap between these and productivity is not related to the stagnation of the individual productivity of the ordinary worker, as shown by the fact that although US workers, on average, made significant progress in education, this did not translate into an increase of their productivity or their salaries and their material well-being. The Economic Policy Institute identifies three reasons for the stagnation of wages in the United States: a) First, the stagnation of wages did not occur because productivity growth (income and wealth creation) declined (Figure 7). It was also associated with a ‘slowdown’ in productivity growth, but even with this slowdown, productivity made wages grow in previous decades. None of this growth influenced the salaries of the typical worker, nor of undocumented ­immigrant workers. And neither did the distribution of income and the living and working conditions of the American working population improve. Less likely will it be with the new antisocial policies that President Trump is promoting, particularly against immigrant workers and, among them, the undocumented who are, in their majority, of Mexican nationality against whom the wall of ignominy and the racist and social exclusion policies are erected that will have disastrous consequences. b) Secondly, the remuneration trajectory did not manage to follow that of productivity, mainly due to two key dynamics that affect the increase in inequality: (1) the inequality of remuneration (more wages and salaries accumulated in the upper part of the scale of salaries) and, (2) the change in the proportion of the total national income that goes to the owners of capital very far from the wages of workers and, in general, of the average wage earners at the base of the pyramid. The policy of the North American regime to reduce taxes on the wealthy classes and on capital through

198

c)

9

Chapter 8

cuts in social spending, for example on health (Medicare), only reinforces this situation to the detriment of workers and, in particular, to the most vulnerable within the class structure of the United States (see Note 1, Chapter 7). Third, even if productivity growth is boosted in the long term, this will not result in broad-based wage gains unless policies of ‘reconnection’ of productivity growth are implemented with the salary of the large majority of the population (Bivens and Mishel 2015: 2). But this is not the logic nor the practice of capitalism in its neoliberal form in the United States that, under various modalities, is also the dominant power in the world economy. Living and Working Conditions

The above situation for North American workers, with particular emphasis on both immigrants and the undocumented, has aggravated the general conditions of life and work due to the economic crisis, the slowdown in employment growth rates, especially in full time and indefinite, the increase in temporary employment, the fall in labor productivity, low wages and the increase in poverty, due to the inflation of essential products of the basic basket of workers and general consumption. In the United States, the working week runs from Monday through Friday. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average working week for all employees (including part-time work) working in private industries in the United States amounted to approximately 34.4 hours in 2016. Job performance is considered ‘normal’ at 40 weekly hours, but this exists only in the statistics. The real time has a duration that fluctuates between 45 and 50 hours per week, due above all to the low salaries that have to be supplemented by prolonging the workday. The Gallup annual Work and Education Survey (Saad August 29, 2014) shows that full-time workers, on average, work 47 hours a week as a means to compensate for the low wages they receive in relation to the high cost of life in the United States (see Figure 9 and Table 11). As can be seen in Table 7, whose data are extracted from the Gallup annual Work and Education Survey, 50% of full-time adult workers worked between 41 and 60 hours or more per week in 2014, while 42% did 40 weekly hours. Only a minority (8%) worked below this level. The conclusion of the Gallup survey indicates a clear lengthening of the working day that in some cases reaches 12 hours per day for workers who work between 50 and 60 hours or more per week:

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force Table 7 

199

United States: Average hours worked by full-time US workers, aged 18+2014 (%)

60+hours 50 to 59 hours 41 to 49 hours 40 hours Less than 40 hours

18 21 11 42 8

Source: Gallup, in saad, 9 August 2014.

As can be seen in Table 7, whose data are extracted from the Gallup Annual Labor and Education Survey, 50% of full-time adult workers worked between 41 and 60 hours or more per week in 2014, while 42% did 40 weekly hours. Only a minority (8%) worked below this level. The conclusion of the Gallup survey indicates a clear lengthening of the working day that in some cases reaches 12 hours per day for workers who work between 50 and 60 hours or more per week. The percentage of full-time workers in the United States has declined since the recession began in 2007 but the number of hours they declare to work each week has remained stable at around 47 hours. Meanwhile 4 out of 10 workers say they do an average of 40 hours in the work week, many others are working more than that, including almost 1 in 5 (18%) who work 60 hours or more, which translates to days of up to 12 hours from Monday to Friday, or on shorter weekdays but with a lot of time spent working on the weekends. This is a typical form of production of absolute surplus value. Although surplus labor hours are remunerated as ‘overtime’8 the worker continues to wear out the means of production or constant capital and transfers part of its value preterite to the merchandise; by wearing down their work force and creating an equivalent to the value (aliquot) of their labor force, in addition to generating a bit more of surplus value and, therefore, of profit for capital.

8 The Fair Labor Standards Act (flsa) stipulates that the calculation for the payment of overtime is at least one and a half times the regular rate of payment of an employee after 40 hours of work in a working week. See United States, Department of Labor, at: https://www.dol.gov/ general/topic/workhours/overtime.

200 10

Chapter 8

The Housing Problem and the Purchasing Power of the Minimum and Average Salary

An additional, but essential, factor is the issue of rental housing whose cost in relation to monthly and annual real wage is increasingly insufficient to satisfy this essential component of social, human and working life in any part of the world, where the United States, as will be shown below, is not the exception as it is sometimes believed. According to the Pew Research Center (pew), 30% of the US labor force earns a minimum wage. This is nearly 21 million people, and it is the federal government that sets the salary (Table 8). Since July 24, 2009 this is $7.25 per hour, an amount that has not changed to date and that is insufficient in accordance with the standard of living. This means that a worker who works 40 hours a week during the 52 weeks of the year earns $15,080 per year, an amount that is completely insufficient to cover the expenses of a family (see Table 11). In the case of ‘non-supevisory’ production workers (‘production and nonsupervisory workers’ or ‘typical American worker’; see Note 7 in this Chapter) who constitute 80% of the labor force, in 2017 they obtained the equivalent of $723.67 per week, which is an annual amount of $34,736.16 dollars according to the United States Department of Labor (Goodman and Soble October 7, 2017). The average annual rent for a two-bedroom house in 2017 according to The People History, has an approximate cost of $19,200 per year, double what it cost in 2008, as shown in the following Table 9. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, full-time workers who earn a minimum wage cannot afford a two-room rental in any US State without investing more than 30% of their income. The annual report of the Out of Reach group compares minimum wages and housing costs in states, metropolitan areas and counties across the country. The 2017 records show that the hourly wage rate needed for a ‘modest’ two-room rental is more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour in all states, except four (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2017). The national housing wage in 2017 was $21.21 per hour for a two-bedroom rental house, or more than 2.9 Table 8 

2007

2008

2009

United States minimum monthly salary, 2008–2017 (US dollars)

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

892.7 1,014 1,135.3 1,256.7 1,256.7 1,256.7 1,256.7 1,256.7 1,256.7 1,256.7 1,256.7 Source: United States Department of Labor.

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force Table 9 

201

usa, price of rental housing per month and year 2008–2017

2008 $800 2009 $780 2010 $945 2011 $955 2012 $1045 2013 $1195 2014 $1314 2015 $1,258 2016 $1,300 2017 $1,600

(9600 yearly) (9360) (11,340) (11,460) (12,540) (14,340) (15,768) (15,096) (15,600) (19,200)

Source: People History. June 2018.

times higher than the minimum federal wage of $7.25 per hour, and the housing wage for a one-room rental costs around of $17.14, or 2.4 times more than the federal minimum wage (National Low Income Housing Coalition 2017: 1). The Report indicates that currently an average American worker needs to earn $19.35 per hour to pay the rent in a two-bedroom unit, above the average hourly wage of $15.16 earned by the average US worker, and 2.5 times the federal minimum wage. It is also more than the average hourly wage of the average US worker, which is $17.09. In 13 states with expensive cities and exorbitant rents— including California, Washington, New York and Virginia—one person would have to earn over $20 per hour to pay the rent for a two-bedroom house (National Low Income Housing Coalition 2017). In Table 10 we have synthesized the information of the workers subject to the minimum wage regime (about 21 million people or 30% of the labor force in the United States, immigrant workers making up a high number) and the average salary of the ‘typical worker’ which constitutes more than 80% of the labor force, revealing the insufficiency of both categories in terms of housing. In the first case, the average annual housing rent ($19,200) exceeds by 21.45% the total income, which even allocating everything to the payment of housing only covers 78.54% of the rental value, while in the second, you have to allocate 55% of the salary amount to pay the rent, leaving the remaining (45%) to provide for the other needs of the worker and his or her family (see Table 11). On the average income (about $25,000 per year), the North American working class spends more than two-thirds of their salary on the rent of a precarious house where in a good part of the cases people have to make do with all the consequences that this entails in matters of discomfort, unhealthiness, space and family well-being.

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Table 10  United States: Proportion of annual minimum salary and average annual average salary/rental price of dwelling, 2017

Minimum annual wage Housing rental $15,080 dollars (78.54%) 2 rm. (average annual = US$19,200) 11

Average annual wage $34,736 (55%)

Purchasing Power of the Salary and Basic Basket of Consumer Goods

It is difficult to calculate in products, value and price the cost of a ‘basic basket’ that more or less expresses an average purchasing power of salaries in the United States. There is an approach, although limited. This basket or basic basket of consumer items that we see in Figure 9 includes, in the opinion of the source cited, basic products for life in the United States.9 The annual average cost of this basket is observed through years. It stands out that after having reached its highest peak in 2012 ($79,280), although a decrease is observed in the subsequent years, in 2017 it increases again above 2011 and 2016, although this decrease is minimal, of the order of 9.4%, but with a new increase of around 1% in 2018 (see The People History). While the price of this basket increased 32% between 2008 and 2017, the wage also increased but in a lower proportion at around 12% during the same period, generating a deficit in the purchasing power of 20%. Combining both calculations, in light of the line that draws the trend in Figure 9, it can be con�cluded that the salary loses ground more and more to acquire the basic basket so the worker is forced to seek other complementary sources of income before the loss of his or her real purchasing power. This situation is aggravated if we consider that a series of product-factors, which make up the value of the labor force, do not appear in the indicated basket, for example: (a) the rent of the house or apartment (which on average absorbs around $800 per

9 In quantities of bread, potatoes, milk, bacon, dozen eggs, coke, water, tomato, butter, cornflakes, pizza, sugar, flour, ground beef, detergent, toilet paper, Campbell’s chicken soup and 1 gallon of gas. We must emphasize that this example is indicative and does not include essential elements that also determine and integrate the value of the work force such as home rental, health, education and, in general, those that Marx indicated as historical-moral which, obviously, significantly increases said value and pronounces its deviation from the real purchasing power of the worker’s wage.

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force 90

79.28

80 70 60

54.11

59.21

66.17

70.37

74.48

76.75

2013'

2014'

73.5

203

69.74

71.77

2016'

2017'

50 40 30 20 10 0

2008'

Figure 9

2009'

2010'

2011'

2012'

2015'

United States: Average price of the basic goods basket, 2008–2017

month); (b) insurance and health care expenses; (c) electricity; and (d) water consumption, transportation and education, to highlight the most important factors. A detailed investigation corresponding to 2015 on approaching the monthly and annual value of the labor force based on the average household expenses prepared by researchers of the Economic Policy Institute (Gould and Schieder June 28, 2017) provides a more complete picture of household expenditures on essential products based on a methodology that breaks them down according to a household in which two adults work full-time (40 weekly hours a year) and who together contribute between $40,000 and $50,000 a year. The result is expressed in Table 11: It is appreciated that wage earners who manage to earn between $40,000 and $50,000 per year do not manage to adjust their income to acquire the basic basket, even considering that these salaries are nominal and not real, that is, net. Now, consider the annual minimum wages ($15,080) and the typical worker’s average ($34,736). In both the deficit is huge against the worker’s home, in the first case at around 384% and in the second case 167%. An interim conclusion relates that the working class (native, migrant or immigrant) cannot reproduce, in ‘normal conditions’, the value of their labor force mainly derived from the insufficient wages they collectively receive. Along with increases in the working time of the working day that is seen in various sectors and branches of production, we can classify this situation as structural and that typifies a super-exploitation situation due to the fact that the worker cannot reproduce his or herself with the income that they receive. In this sense, it can be said that they are being remunerated below their value and corresponds, thus, to a super-exploitation resulting from a combined movement of stagnation—or little growth—of purchasing power and an

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Table 11  United States: Selected monthly and annual expenses, 2015

Category

Monthly expenditure

Annual expenditurea

Housing Shelter Utilities, fuels, and public services Electricity Telephone services Clothing Food Groceries Fruits and vegetables Health care Health insurance Prescriptions and medications Transportation Gasoline and motor oil Vehicle insurance Total

$1,257 $717 $302 $117 $105 $96 $435 $263 $49 $313 $222 $33 $685 $167 $70 $4,831

$15,084 $8,604 $3,624 $1,404 $1,260 $1,152 $5,220 $3,156 $588 $3,756 $2,664 $396 $8,220 $2,004 $840 $57,972

a The calculation of the total and annual monthly expenditures is made by the author.

i­ncrease, perhaps slower than what happens in the dependent countries, of the prices that constitute their consumption fund. 12

Violation and Expropriation of Salary

Along with the lengthening of the working day (or absolute surplus value) there is a frank and open expropriation mechanism-violation of part of the workers’ salaries, regardless of whether it reduces the total amount and places it below the value of the labor force, as we have stated, which constitutes a specific form of super-exploitation that has been spreading in the United States and in the world of advanced capitalism, at the same time as weakening the workers’ struggles, their unions and their class organizations. Addressing the discussion of Chapters 3 and 4 regarding the extension of the super-exploitation of the labor force in advanced capitalism, we consider it a modality that next to those already identified (the prolongation of the

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force

205

working day, its intensity and the expropriation of part of the value of the labor force), the remunerations are above the value of the labor force in advanced countries, or, in some of its productive branches it is subjected to superexploitation through the expropriation of part of that value and its conversion into an additional source of capital accumulation. We call attention to the expropriate verb and to what defines the third mechanism of super-exploitation identified by Marini (1973: 40): … the intensification of work, the prolongation of the working day and the expropriation of part of the necessary work to the worker to replenish his labor force—they configure a mode of production based exclusively on the greater exploitation of the worker, and not on the development of his productive capacity (emphasis added). That would be the fourth form of the super-exploitation regime not contemplated, by the way, by Marini himself—who had no reason to have done so, we clarify—nor by the majority of the dependency authors inscribed in the aspect of dependency theory who assume that the floor of their capital cycle is just the super-exploitation of the labor force, unlike other authors who preach the approach of a ‘dependency theory without super-exploitation’ as we saw in Chapter 4. The ideal form of this fourth form has been built primarily through the imposition of precarious work and its update with the precarization of the elements that make up the world of work such as salaries, functions performed, categories and subcategories, social benefits, labor costs, syndication, collective bargaining agreements, flexibility and deregulation. In this sense, according to Castillo (2012: 259): … precarization does not correspond to a particular situation in the countries that are more backward or more affected by the contradictions and crises of the neoliberal model. Precarious work corresponds to a general and complex trend, which is also developing in the most developed economies. According to Beck (2000) the precariousness of work is expressed in the advent of the ‘risk society’ and the ‘Brazilianization’ of the advanced capitalist Western societies. For Castel (1998: 527 and 609) the deterioration of the wage relation and the precariousness of work is the great social issue of the late 20th Century and, we add, of the 21st Century. Meanwhile Bauman (2000) sees precariousness, instability and vulnerability as the main characteristics of contemporary capitalist societies. Any of these realities points to the destruction

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of the rights and achievements of workers accumulated through decades of struggle as well as the wage reduction through various procedures in which capital and its organic intellectuals are experts on. Something similar can be said about the extension of the super-exploitation of work as a universal phenomenon. But both phenomena we must clarify assume diverse manifestations depending on the socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions of the societies in question. In particular, in relation to the correlation of forces between labor and capital for the working class as a whole and its different fractions within it. Some will be more affected than others based on these conditions and the class struggle. According to a report of the Economic Policy Institute prepared by McNicholas, Mokhiber and Chaikof (2017) the stealing of wages by employers is scandalous. They calculate that just between 2015 and 2016 the US Department of Labor recovered a total of $2 billion in stolen wages thanks to collective lawsuits filed by workers before the labor courts. The Institute “estimates that lowwage workers lose more than $50 billion annually in theft of wages”. Employers “… refuse to pay promised wages, pay employees only for some of the hours worked or do not pay overtime premiums when employees work more than 40 hours in a week” and: Wage theft occurs when employers do not pay workers the full salary they are entitled to for their work. This includes, for example, refusing to pay workers the total amount of promised wages, not paying time dedicated to preparing a work station at the beginning of a shift or closing at the end of a shift and not paying overtime bonuses to workers who work more than 40 hours a week. The report says that if a full-time worker earns the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour (around $15,000 per year), if his employer requires him to work 15 minutes ‘outside legal hours’, before and after his shift of 8 hours per day, “that extra half hour of unpaid work per day represents a loss of around $1,400 annually for the worker, including the premiums for overtime that he should have received”. Finally, the report contemplates the following types of theft or expropriation of part of the workers’ salaries and, from our perspective, what constitutes an evident mechanism of super-exploitation of the labor force in the United States via the violation of part of the salaries. The following form more frequent modalities of expropriation of wages of workers in the United States: – Workers are paid below the legal minimum wage. – Workers are not paid the time that exceeds 40 weekly working hours.

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force

207

– Workers are often required to work outside the legal working hours before or after covering their shift legally stipulated in the work contract. – Transfers of the meal schedule to which the worker is entitled to, from the middle of the day to after the end of working hours. – Illegal deductions to wages. – Tips are confiscated by not paying the difference between them and the legal minimum wage. – Locating the worker with a category other than the one set by his contract, for example, as an ‘independent contractor’ in order to pay a salary below the legal minimum, or avoid payment for overtime. 13 Conclusion We have circumscribed our analysis of the super-exploitation of the labor force to the particular case of the United States. From the findings of our ­research and analysis, we conclude that the super-exploitation of labor is a structural, not conjectural, fact of the productive systems and the social relations of exploitation and organization of work that they deprive in that country. Ávila, Martinez and Victoria affirm that the super-exploitation of labor: … can be formed in a combined way in two territorial areas, Mexico and the United States, the first in the periphery and the second in the center, from a process of integration of the labor force market (2016: 91). Validating, thus, the Marinist hypothesis of the extension of the superexploitation in advanced capitalism in its more developed region that is precisely the United States. Where, as we have said, it operates a hegemonic ­regime of production and exploitation of the labor force based on the production of relative surplus value, as it happens in other imperialisms of advanced capitalism such as Germany, England, France or Japan. We must consider that it is an imperialist country belonging to advanced capitalism—to which Mexico has integrated its system of production and accumulation in a subordinate way—and that, as we have insisted throughout the text and in other essays, maintains the hegemony of the production of relative surplus value in their economic, productive and capital accumulation systems. This confirms what we have been saying about the arrival of superexploitation of the labor force as a category, as Marini postulates, expropriating a part of the consumption fund and the value of the labor force of the North American worker to turn that part into an additional factor of the accumulation of capital and the increase of its rate of profit. Our theoretical-

208

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methodological approach is inscribed in the Marxist dependency theory with its axis articulated in the super-exploitation of the labor force. Part of the theory of value, Marx’s work, and the critique of political economy, is touched on by Marini, when he says: … the super-exploitation of labor that implies, as we saw, that the labor force is not remunerated at its value, leads to the reduction of the workers’ consumption capacity and restricts the possibility of realizing these goods. Super-exploitation is reflected in a salary scale whose average level is below the value of the labor force, which implies that even those layers of workers who achieve their remuneration above the average value of the labor force (skilled workers, technicians, etc.) see their salaries constantly pressured in a downward direction, dragged downward, by the regulatory role that the average wage fulfills with respect to the scale of wages as a whole. marini 1979a: 53

In a concrete plane it is a question of constructing a typological scheme more or less with the following profile and imaginary percentages that, with the results of the investigation, would confer their real contents. The average salary is the average result of all the remunerations that are verified in society, and exercises the regulatory function of the salary hierarchies. It is generally below and does not equal the real value of the labor force (see Table 12), which is determined by the amount and time of socially neces�sary labor invested in its production and reproduction. The minimum wage expresses the amount of goods and services that the worker and his family must legally obtain in order to reproduce in theoretically more or less normal conditions. However, in fact, in capitalist societies (dependent and many other developed) this does not happen. The worker has to obtain another job, or 2–3 part time jobs, to supplement his stunted income based on the high cost of living (see Table 12). It does not matter that this operation is carried out with Mexican pesos, US dollars, sterling pounds, Brazilian reals or euros. The real wage expresses the true purchasing power and it is still below the nominal minimum and, of course, the average wage. Usually with the payment or purchase of one or two products of the basic food basket (food, housing and transportation, for example) it depletes its reserves, as we verified earlier in this chapter. It is possible, in both dependent and advanced countries, that fractions and categories of workers (especially in inter-professional capacities) receive an income equal to or greater than the value of their labor force. However, as noted above, even in this condition, they

Precariousness of Work & Super-Exploitation of Labor Force

209

Table 12  The Slf in dependent capitalism and in advanced countries

Salary amount and value of the labor force

Value of the labor force=100

Wages equal to or greater than the value of the Slf Average salary of society Minimum nominal salary Actual salary minus the inflation of the basic basket

100-125-150 80 50 30

can be subject to super-exploitation insofar as part of their value is expropriated and converted into an additional source of capital accumulation. In this first expropriatory movement, the wage does not necessarily fall below its value. In part, this optimal result for capital is achieved through the p ­ recariousness of work that implies lowering, or frankly dismantling, economic, social and labor rights as well as the protective norms in force in labor law. The data we have recorded in the tables and graphs above relating both to the relationship between productivity and minimum and average wages, as well as to the relationship between the expenses of working families and their purchasing power—together with the increase in the working week beyond the 40 hours that are considered normal time, and violations of working conditions and wages—these elements and phenomena allow us to verify that, in a structural manner, the super-exploitation regime operates in the United States itself.

Epilogue Debates about dependency and its extension to the advanced world of central capitalism are slowly beginning to show evidence that this is indeed happening. Despite the different theoretical positions that are assumed in this regard, the fact that super-exploitation operates in a conjectural manner or, according to other positions, structurally, is already an indication that one of the theoretical-methodological veins that are consolidated to explain the problems of capitalism and its crisis, as well as to avoid or counteract the decrease in the average rate of profit in the system, consists precisely in an articulation of economic, political and organizational devices commanded by the monumental precarization of the world of labor as the process through which the superexploitation of the labor force is consolidated. It is worth observing, perhaps, that one of the most relevant issues is the debate regarding whether the extension of super-exploitation invalidates the theory of dependence, in the terms that it was originally developed by Marini, as some authors maintain. Our answer is negative: not only is the relevance of the Marxist dependency theory reaffirmed, with its categories, concepts, hypotheses and particular laws, but also it is updated to explain the new configuration of world capitalism, particularly after the great financial and structural crisis of 2008–2009 that shook the center of the world system, the United States, characterized by dismeasure of value, the fall in the rate of profit that it causes, as well as the prevalence of fictitious capital in the global reproduction of capital. Since super-exploitation in advanced capitalism is structural, we consider that this current situation will not be changed by the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidential power of the United States, which effectively marks a milestone in international relations and in domestic affairs with respect to the working classes, immigrants and society. In relation to the first point, in frank provocation, which he himself has announced, he is willing to unleash World War iii that today would be nuclear, creating a set of regional conflicts as has already been done in the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, on the Korean Peninsula against North Korea, in Ukraine, in relation to the conflict with Russia, and generating friction with another great power such as China. This is in addition to US intervention in Latin America both with the strengthening of right-wing governments, and against progressives such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, among others. Its stated objective is supposedly to recover the military-strategic power that sustains the so-called ‘American exceptionalism’ and its unilateralism in the international relations plane.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004415652_011

Epilogue

211

So far these objectives have been unsuccessful as shown by the statements, on the one hand, of the Syrian government and, on the other, of the authorities of Iraq in the sense that both countries defeated the terrorists who were ­sheltered under the cloak of the so-called Islamic State, in fact proven to be backed by the United States, which had the objective of fragmenting these nations in order to seize their energy and strategic resources (see Note 4, Chapter 2). Regarding the second point, with an undeservedly triumphalist air, President Trump announced the implementation of economic and social policy measures with the aim of recovering the United States from the difficulties it has experienced in recent years. He focused his speech on the implementation of protectionist policies which included the construction of the Wall of Ignominy between the border of his country with that of Mexico, the withdrawal of support funds for the sanctuary cities that until now have protected a certain category of undocumented persons who arrived in that country since childhood but who have no right to citizenship, as well as many of the guarantees that citizens enjoy in general. Another of the measures that he intends to promote with all the power granted by the Imperial Presidency is the renegotiation of the Free Trade Agreement (nafta) that it maintains with Mexico and Canada, in the shadow of the threat that if that treaty is not adjusted in line with their commercial and strategic interests, the United States will eventually abandon it. From the domestic perspective, although official unemployment rates have been reduced in relation to the economic crisis that shook it between 2008– 2009 (when they reached almost 10%), nevertheless, in relation to the world of labor, there is an unusual growth in temporary employment and a strong trend which pronounces the maintenance of stagnant wages as we show in this book. This has caused the great majority of North American workers and ­other categories of Hispanic and undocumented workers—predominantly ­Mexicans—the inability to obtain sufficient income to pay the cost of the indispensable basic basket of products and services necessary both for the social reproduction of the work force, as well as for life. Along with this situation, the US State has passed a substantial reduction of fiscal taxes in clear benefit of great capital and the dominant and proprietary social classes of the country through the last fiscal reform approved by Congress on December 20, 2017, and initialed by Trump two days later (see Note 1, Chapter 7). All this reinforces our central thesis that in one of the most developed countries of the conglomerate of the industrialized capitalist countries, the United States and its ‘American way of life’, uses the super-exploitation regime reinforced by labor flexibility, deregulation and precarization of work,

212

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along with a spectacular fall in the unionization rates which decline workers’ struggles and that, in general, affect all of the North American proletariat. It must be reiterated, however, that it should not be forgotten that whatever form this regime assumes in advanced capitalism it will always be subject to the rules and ordinances determined by the hegemony of the production of relative surplus value in close articulation with scientific development and scientific-technology on a large-scale, since it is the center of the system and the center of capitalist social relations of production, at least since the first great industrial revolution that solidified the capitalist mode of production.

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Index Abbagnano 89 absolute surplus value 44, 50–52, 56, 84–85, 90–92, 96, 98, 101–3, 111, 116, 132, 199, 204 academics 45, 62 accumulation 8–9, 18–19, 43, 47, 49, 57, 80, 90, 93, 100, 102, 111, 116–17, 132, 143–44, 155–56, 158–59, 168, 177, 207 pattern of 67, 152 accumulation of capital 19, 50–51, 62–63, 84–85, 90–92, 96, 99–100, 113, 127–28, 135, 144, 147, 150, 179, 191, 204, 207–8 fund of 99–100 accumulation patterns 49, 131 advanced capitalism 1–2, 7–8, 10, 41, 43, 63, 74, 80, 88, 90, 94, 97, 101, 105, 107, 109, 111, 115–16, 131–32, 136–37, 146, 150, 155, 168, 175, 188, 204, 207, 210, 212 Afghanistan 14, 154, 162 afl-cio 173 Africa 12, 62, 74, 140, 145, 162 agencies dominant international 63 local law enforcement 32 agents, representative 171 Aglietta 132, 139 agreement 29, 32, 75, 77 collective bargaining 1, 205 agro-industry 136, 138 air conditioning equipment 17 al-Assad, Bashar Hafez 22 alalc 76 alba 77, 158 Aleppo 22 alienation 122, 178 Allende, Salvador 59 alliances 76, 130 alternation 85 Althusserian structuralism 105 altvater 2, 171–72 Alves 56, 66, 94, 125, 130, 136 American Exceptionalism 16, 24, 28, 210 American jobs 17, 21, 36 Americans 17–18, 21, 46, 151 American way of life 21, 211 American workers 193, 201

Americas 24, 77–78, 158–59 Amin 110, 121, 124, 127 amnesty, unrestricted 70 amount, total 145, 204, 206 Anderson 14 anti-capitalist 60, 147, 179 anti-value 83, 153, 155 Antunes 1, 66, 143, 171, 175 application, systematic 67, 85 Approaches, theoretical-methodological 2, 207 appropriation 13, 123, 134 Argentina 26, 45, 49–50, 53, 62, 64, 67–68, 70, 76–77, 81, 102, 131, 167, 170, 183, 188 Aristotle 89 armies, industrial 55, 148, 154, 185 arrival 21, 46, 69, 141, 207, 210 Arrizabalo 80, 97–100, 102–3, 133–34 articulated level 86 articulated mechanism 135 articulated onslaught 61 articulates, exploitation regime 50 articulates category 170 articulation 44, 92, 94–95, 105, 210 close 212 concrete 45 dialectical 50, 132 effective 56, 110 multiple 44 necessary 127 ascending spiral 153 asean-5e 161 Asia 29, 62, 78, 140, 145, 158 Asian capitalism 107 Asian countries 106 assessment, critical 104 assets fragile 145 physical collateral 143 real 145 Asunción 77 atrocities, terrible 168 attenuation, regulated 164 attributing 110 attribution 107

232 atypical work 65, 171 the 172 Aurora 25 austerity policies 17, 138 internal 74 social 187 Australia 29, 184 Austria 162, 187 Austrian Marginalist School 17 authoritarian 26 authorities federal 31 governmental 25 highest 72 author’s understanding 104 automatic mechanism 122 automation 114, 124, 176, 185–86 automobiles 30, 34, 37–38, 111, 128 automotive industry 34–36, 49, 55, 160 terminal 37 automotive inputs, strategic 37 autonomization 170 autonomous activity 172 autonomy 53, 97 alleged 175 territorial 142 auto parts 34, 37 supplying 35 auto parts industry 36–38 average exploitation rate 19, 181 average growth rates 157, 181 average hours 198 average income 201 average intensity 110 average price 21, 202 average production 131 average profit 133–34 average remuneration 192 average salary 199, 201, 208 average unemployment rate 185 average wage earners 197 average wages 186, 188, 192–93, 207–9 average worker 193–94, 196 Ávila 207 axes, central 43, 126, 188 axis 2, 102, 117, 132, 134, 207 main 117 neuralgic 114

Index Bachelor’s degree 194 backwardness 52, 58, 140, 168 economic-social 107 Bagu 89 Bambirra 59–60, 62, 95, 104–5, 126 bands, restricted 86 Bangladesh 106–7 Bank of America and aig 159 bankruptcy 15, 46, 160 banks 145, 152, 160, 163 private 160 Baran 141 barbarism 19, 168 Bartra 104–5 Basel 145 Basel estimates 152 basic basket 198, 201–3, 208 indispensable 211 basket basic food 208 basic goods 202 Bauman 205 Bear Stearns 160 Beck 170–71, 205 Bedminster 146 behavior downward 191 empirical 43 long-term structural 132 negative 191 recent 187 Beinstein 115, 145 Belgium 162 Belize 188 Bellamy 13, 21, 135 beneficiaries 156 beneficiary, great 37 benefits 12, 19, 26, 31, 53, 57, 66, 74, 82, 86, 111, 121, 143–44, 146, 158, 174, 186, 188, 192–93, 196 abused public 32 social 1, 10, 57, 114, 149, 176, 205 Bensaid 155 Berlin Wall 134, 159 Bezos, Jeff 196 billionaires 196 white 27 binomial Center-Dependency 102 biodiversity 2, 155

233

Index bionic senators 70 biotechnology 64 Bivens 193–97 Blacksburg 25 blockades 61, 76, 128 blocks, large regional 35 blocs dominant bourgeois 130 political 158 Bohm, David 26 Böhm-Bawerk 100 Bolivarian Alliance 77, 158 Bolivarian Alternative 77, 158 Bolivarian forces 60 Bolivarian government 60, 146 elected 22 Bolivarian project 61 Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela 23 Bolivia 26, 60, 69–70, 74, 188, 210 boom relative 68 stock 164 sustained economic 164 border agents 32 border patrol, official 29 borders 9, 17, 28–30, 66, 211 national economic 128 border wall 30 bourgeoisies 73–75, 95, 108, 110, 145, 149 big financial 130 big monopoly 130 dependent 63, 76, 108 foreign 147 great exporting 130 national 75 salaried petty 131 branches advanced 113 judicial 73 multiple 113 productive 37, 113, 132, 204 Brasilia 47 Braverman 159 Brazil 18–19, 26, 45, 47, 49–50, 53, 59, 62, 64, 67–68, 70–71, 73–77, 81, 85, 102, 109–10, 127, 131, 141, 162, 167, 170, 183, 186–88 Brazilian capitalism 74 Brazilian classrooms 59 Brazilianization 205

Brazilian military 72 Brazilian military dictatorship 59 Brazilian reals 208 Brazilian State 74 Brazil’s growth 68 breakdown 60, 75, 161 Brennan 14 Brenner 142 Bretton-Woods 158 Brignoli 48 British brexit vote 142 Brooklyn 33 Brunei 29 Brussels 142 brutal attacks 12 brutal incarnation 13 brutalities 71 budget deficit 151 Bukharin 46 Bulgaria 137 burnout 173 Bush, George H.W. 77 Bush, George W. 26 business cycles 191 businesses 18, 25, 163, 186 big 37 pharmaceutical 173 business game 177 businessman 29–30, 33 elected 24 business management 49, 55–56 businessman-president prone 19 Business Process Re-engineering 176 Búster 141–42 calamities 78 environmental 145 natural 25 social 28 calamitous scenario 29 California 30, 201 Californian bank Indymac 159 California State Attorney 24 Camaranno 175 Cambodia 106 Campaigning 14 campaign promises 151 campaign strategists 15 Campbell’s chicken soup 202

234 Canada 29, 35–38, 54–55, 77, 161, 184, 188, 195, 211 Canadian markets 37 candidate 16, 23, 26, 30 presidential 15 vice-presidential 15 capacity 17, 51, 70, 88, 142, 164, 177 inter-professional 208 productive 36, 50, 92, 96, 101–2, 130, 138, 204 purchasing 148 technological 51 undoubted 24 capital 2, 10–11, 17–19, 43–45, 47, 49–52, 56–58, 62–68, 73–74, 81–87, 89–90, 93, 95–96, 98–101, 108, 111–13, 115–17, 121–27, 130–36, 143–50, 152–57, 166, 168–69, 173–74, 176–79, 186, 191, 197, 205, 207–8 banking 130 circulation of 45, 108 commercial 130 constant 94, 199 export manufacturing 67 financial-regional-continental 130 fixed 10, 57, 64, 156 foreign 49, 73, 111, 130, 150 fractions of 8, 108, 130 global 132, 147 globalization of 7, 9–11, 144 global social 10 industrial 12, 17, 144, 148, 152 legitimate 23 obsolete 148 organic compositions of 66, 83, 170 parasitic 152 private 52, 144 productive 125, 140, 143, 149, 157 speculative 125, 159 sustaining 156 trans-national 10 valorization of 9, 57, 115, 163, 177 variable 98, 156 capital accumulation processes 111 capital accumulation systems 207 capital appropriation 108 capital cycles 47, 52, 95, 97, 101, 114, 116, 131, 146, 205 loan money 147 capital de-accumulation 145–46

Index capital faces 66 capital goods 55 capital initiatives 179 capitalism 1, 9, 12, 19–20, 43–44, 46–49, 51, 60, 64–65, 69, 74, 78, 80–81, 87–90, 93, 95, 103, 121–22, 124–26, 129, 132–33, 136–37, 140, 146, 149, 152, 154, 159, 163–66, 181–82 baneful 149 bury 81 central 80, 108, 210 classical 45, 53, 127, 131 contemporary 19, 80–81, 93, 96–97, 115, 125, 134 core 92 current 115, 154 expanding 7 fictitious 105 globalized 156 historic 78 historical 63 industrial 17 late 148 parasitic 150 perpetuate 113 postwar 141 productive 149 robust 156 savage 148 speculative 149 submerged 157 capitalist 29, 44, 46, 48, 54, 65, 87–88, 101, 104, 134, 137–38, 147, 164, 176, 212 advanced 51, 113, 205 dependent 46, 58, 126 developed 2 capitalist accumulation 133 global 188 mature 84 capitalist centers 136 capitalist competition 66, 83, 195 real 133 capitalist countries 15, 90, 112, 177 advanced 51–53, 57, 85, 93, 130–31, 135, 168 backward 85 classic 134 dependent 11, 116 dependent subordinate 8

Index developed 86, 159 industrialized 211 main developed 145 capitalist crisis 45, 65, 125, 129, 142, 149–50, 155, 163, 167–68 contemporary 154 deep 179 great 86 capitalist development 49, 134 anarchic 53 relative 102 capitalist economy 101, 129, 135, 147, 153 advanced industrial 191 chaotic world 28 dependent 50, 92, 96, 111 global 144, 165 capitalist exploitation 45 capitalist forms 116 capitalist interests 18, 186 capitalist logic 9 capitalist markets 57 capitalist methods 67 capitalist mode 8, 43–44, 78, 126, 131, 157, 212 dependent 126 historical 13 capitalist neoliberalism 70 capitalist players, global 188 capitalist practices 19 capitalist production 43, 50, 122–23, 126, 132 capitalist rationality 115 capitalist reality 90 capitalist redeployment 28 capitalist reproduction 56–57, 124, 175 capitalist rules 105 capitalist societies 112, 176, 208 advanced 112 contemporary 205 historical 43, 126 capitalist solution 166 capitalist State 108, 155 capitalist structure 46 capitalist system 29, 44, 63, 89, 100, 156, 163, 176 advanced 157 global 24, 26 worn-out American 28 capitalist terms 96 capitalist world 26 capitalist world crisis 152

235 capitalist world economy 121, 127 capital-labor relation 81 capital manifests 166 capital-money 125 capital owners 195–97 capital reproduction pattern 50 capital reproduction systems 128 capital strives 186 capital works 123 capture-appropriation 173 Carcanholo 123–24, 130, 144, 149, 156 Cardoso 47–48, 59, 61, 85, 126, 130, 136 ideological lineage 85 Cardoso-Faletto 104 Cardoso-Serra 104 Caribbean Community 77 Caribbean Economic System 76 Caribbean States 77 Carrier 17 Carter administration 71 Castel 113, 122, 132, 178, 205 Castells 178 Castillo 180, 205 Catalan people 142 Catalonia 142 catastrophe 159, 163 surmountable 171 catch and release 32 categories 1, 7, 9, 46, 78, 88–90, 92–93, 104–5, 109, 115, 117, 124, 129, 133, 138–39, 153, 170, 174, 180–81, 201, 203, 205–7, 210–11 essential 88, 112 eternal 122, 153 Center for American Progress 31 center/periphery 97 center-periphery 67 center recreating 109 centers 67–68, 73, 89–90, 92, 97, 101, 107, 109–11, 113, 117, 130–31, 135–36, 207, 210, 212 academic 59 active hate 25 advanced 63, 80, 84, 116, 136 developed 51, 141, 146 dominant 75 great scientifictechnological-financial 64 immigrant detention 32 imperialist 74, 85, 89

236 centers (Cont.) manufacturing 157 original 8 traditional 68 working class of the 103 centers of power 8, 45, 142 Central America 75–76 Central American Common Market 76 Central American Integration System 77 Central Europe 141 Central Intelligence Agency 8 centrality 124 analytical 133 centralization 19, 56, 145 extreme 130 Century Foundation 194 Century Socialism 61 ceos 196 cepal 53, 145 Chaikof 205 Champy 176 change qualitative 68 radical 68 technical 142 technological 114 tectonic 16 characteristics basic 49 expressive 166 following 34 fundamental 172 main 205 market 35 sub-imperialist 74 Charlottesville 25 Chávez, Hugo 77 Chesnais 130, 143–44, 156 Childhood Arrivals 31 child poverty rate, highest 196 Chile 29, 49, 67, 70, 72–73, 76–77, 143, 188 Chilean 72 Chilean Constitution 72 Chilean dictatorship 69 Chilean process 72 China 12, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24, 29–30, 68, 106, 129, 151, 158, 161, 165, 183, 186–87, 195, 210 China’s economy 157 China’s expansion 68

Index Chinese competition 195 Chinese Foreign Ministry 24 Chinese manufacturing sector 186 Chinese workers 18 Chomsky 16, 20–21, 24, 29, 82 chronic work fatigue 173 Chrysler 18, 35, 162 circulation 64 citation, previous 105 cities 25, 32, 153 expensive 201 sanctuary 20, 31, 150, 211 strategic 22 Citigroup 159 citizens 15, 33, 70, 211 eligible 15 low-income senior 66 citizenship 211 grant 31 Citizens’ Revolution 61 Citizens United 12 civilization crisis 2 civilization vs. barbarism 168 civilizatory hecatomb 20 clashes, supposed 103 class alliances 47 class bases 69 class cohesion 178 class collaboration 149 class consciousness 177 class demands 169 classes 21, 28, 63, 66, 86, 103, 130, 151–52, 176 exploited 170 immigrant 1 intermediate 86 oppressed 64 popular 10, 87, 103, 112 social 47, 169, 211 upper 95 wealthy 197 classic name 105 classic thesis 93 class structures 39, 122, 131, 197 class struggle 10, 25, 62, 97, 100, 113, 121, 138, 154, 156, 174, 178–79, 206 intense 61 Clinton, Bill 185 Clinton administration 30 Clinton era 163

Index Clinton, Hillary 12, 14–16, 20, 22–24, 26–27 Clinton’s discourse 16 coefficient 166 Cold War period 27 Colombia 60, 77 colonialism 46, 140 Colonial Ministry 76 colonial period 7 Colorado 25 commercial conglomerates 196 commitment, implicit 70 commodities 87, 106, 121, 133 Common Market 77 common problems, sharing 23 Commonwealth 161 Commonwealth of Independent States 162 communication channels 178 communication networks 153 communist parties 60–61, 70 communities 2, 26, 78–79, 169 non-white 24 Community of Latin American and Caribbean States 77 companies 9, 17–18, 34–35, 43, 57–58, 74, 114, 125–26, 151, 155, 160, 162, 171–72, 176–77, 179 bankruptcy of 57, 163 big 129 dot-com 164 energy 2, 154 international 36 large 155 large corporate 175 large European 136 large monopoly 181 medium-sized 135 monopolistic 166 multinational 135 precarious 172 private 12 real estate 159 subsidize 163 temporary 181 compensation 177, 186, 191–92, 194 hourly 192–93 typical worker’s 192 competence 133 technological 110

237 competition 10, 21, 34, 38, 108, 110, 129, 133–34, 148, 165, 172, 177, 181, 195 intensifies 172 international 37, 195 open 47 unregulated 141 competitive advantage 188 competitiveness 35, 66, 179 international 57 competitive reality 18 competitors 134 active 12 complementary 47 complementary variables 192 complex scenario 167 complex trend 205 components basic 9 essential 99, 129, 199 social 106 composition 141 compound rates 63, 140, 166 comprehension 126 computer chips 194 Computer-controlled machine tool operators 194 computerization 13 computers, new 8 concentration growing 49 high 19 concept conceals 72 conception 52, 93, 97, 105, 115–16, 121, 126, 149 descriptive 117 concept-mechanism 93 concepts 7, 43–44, 46, 50, 54, 62–64, 66–67, 69, 71, 75, 85, 87–92, 99, 104–5, 107, 109, 115, 122, 126, 140, 154, 156, 210 articulated 44 new 78 original 13 conceptual differences 91 conceptual differentiation 69 conceptual essence 87 conceptual levels 133 concessions 149 concomitant 73 concurrence 123

238 conditions 9–10, 24, 28, 30, 37, 45, 50, 56–58, 63, 66, 70, 74, 96, 103, 108, 111, 131–32, 134–35, 143, 147, 153, 160, 166, 169, 174, 177, 179, 181, 205, 208 contemporary 45, 62 contractual 129 current 85 dependent 51 general 198 international 55–56, 64, 83 legal-political 144 living 58, 105, 138, 174 microeconomic 53 national 56 necessary 96 new 68 objective 177 operating 154 safe 144 sociopolitical 205 subjective 177 technical 168 working 38–39, 56–57, 81, 86, 140, 170, 186, 196–98, 209 Confederate slave states 25 configuration current 67 democratic political 155 historical-structural 95 new capitalist 117 particular 144 structural 110 unbalanced 48 configure 87, 96, 101, 204 configuring 127 confiscating 30 conflicts 28, 33, 38, 130, 168, 210 foolish 174 hypothetical 103 institutional 72 provoking military 14 regional 210 conformation, structural 100 confrontation 175 expansionist 75 open 75 confusion, supposed 109 conglomerate 211 Congress 18, 23, 30, 33, 150, 160, 211

Index conjectural 2, 93, 169, 207, 210 conjuncture 191 Connecticut 25 connection 115 close 140 consensus/repression 179 consolidate 157 constant adjustment 176 constituent assembly 70 constituent foundation 88 constitution 50, 68–69, 90, 132, 137, 142, 156, 177–78 generalized 73 new 146 consumer goods 9, 92 durable 55 popular 176 consumer items 202 consumer markets 84 internal 112, 148 Consumer Protection Act 163 consumption 48, 50, 53, 66, 81, 86, 98–99, 101, 106, 112, 127, 132, 138, 164 general 198 high 95 increased 36 ultra-basic 106 water 202 worker’s 99–100 consumption baskets 105 consumption capacity 207 consumption fund 56, 84, 91–92, 96, 100, 112, 115, 128, 139, 204, 207 containment 142, 151 contaminate 33 contemporary societies 103, 140 context 2, 7–9, 13, 20, 24, 27–28, 38, 50, 56, 60–61, 66, 81–82, 99, 101, 113, 127, 129, 136, 152–53, 156, 159, 172, 175, 182, 187, 190–91 global 28, 151 regional 36 unfavorable 187 contextualizes 1 continent 60–61, 75, 176 continuation 29 contour 94, 102, 146, 170 contraction 74, 146, 157–58, 167 contractionary 146

Index contractor, independent 206 contracts 114, 171, 206 collective 171 collective labor 57 interim zero hour 182 zero hours work 65 contractual relations 157 contradictions 12, 45, 75, 102, 111, 115, 122–24, 128, 163–64, 175, 205 class 174 deep 28, 123 enduring 112 essential 121 flagrant 178 fundamental 133 initial 49 particular 74 contraposition 123 contravening 169 contribution, original 52–53 contributions 45 fundamental 52, 59, 132 control 8, 51, 70–72, 164 achieved total 22 social 129 social metabolic 122 control mode 122 controversy 59 conventions 143 convergence 109 conversion 54, 57, 67, 84, 91–92, 96, 113, 128, 133, 171, 173, 178, 204 cooperation 44, 75, 171 antagonistic 47, 53, 75 core capital countries 135 core capitalist countries 135 core imperialist nations 1 Coriat 34 Cormack 195 corn-flakes 202 corollaries 133 corollary, following 57 corporate organs 72 corporate profits 188 corporations 13, 55, 125 trans-national 136 Correa, Rafael 61 correlation 57, 61, 112, 134, 185, 205 analytical 134

239 direct 123 intimate 48 positive 57, 140, 192 correspondents 30 cost effectiveness 48 costs 18, 33, 36, 38, 64, 133, 153, 159, 176, 179, 181, 195, 199–201, 211 annual average 202 approximate 200 high 198, 208 nationalism at all 27 one-room rental 200 wage 137 counter 1 counteract 9, 27–29, 43, 83, 93, 95, 128, 131, 142, 153, 159, 175, 177, 191, 210 counteracting 28, 76, 132, 135, 155, 169, 181 counteract mercosur 77 counterinsurgency 32, 47, 71, 73 counterinsurgent 87 counterweight, collective 170 counties 31–32, 200 countries advanced 2, 8, 10–11, 62, 64, 82, 84, 89, 92, 96, 109, 128, 138, 140, 204, 208 backward 51 central 111 complex 28 computerized 145 core 136 emerging 68 importing 54 industrialized 35, 54–55, 65, 138, 180, 182 largest 49 low-wage 18, 186 oecd 65, 145, 182 peripheral 135 progressive 69 semi-colonial 81 sovereign 14 underdeveloped 30, 38, 66, 108, 110–11, 155, 188 under-developed 29 undeveloped 137 countries block 128 countries-dependent countries, advanced 102 country music concert 25

240 coups 25, 73, 131 failed 60 institutional 74 parliamentary-institutional 26 recent parliamentary 15 soft 61 covert employment relationships 180 credit 143, 154 subjects of 146 credit insolvency problems 163 crimes, committing 32 criminal and security State 155 crisis 2, 16, 18–19, 21, 24–27, 46, 48–49, 60, 64, 68, 80–81, 93–95, 97, 111, 113, 119, 123, 125–26, 138, 140–42, 145–47, 149–50, 152–54, 157, 159–60, 163, 168, 170–72, 174, 178–79 constant 124 deep 21, 74, 158, 163, 170 environmental 171 global 160 great 151 historical 142 individual 173 monetary 21 permanent 169 political 25 previous 154 recurrent 93 subprime 160 terminal 60 crisis deepens 158 crisis phase 147 critics claim 53 Croatia 180 cross-border bridge, solid 135 Cruz, Nikolas 25 crystallizing 77 Cuba 23, 70, 76–77, 158 Cuban revolution 69 Cueva, Agustín 104–5, 107 Cueva’s contributions 105 culmination 132 cultural unification 77 Current Employment 194 Current minimum salary 193 Customs Enforcement 32 Customs Office 32 cutting-edge technologies 56, 130

Index cycle 85, 90, 130, 146, 153, 164 commercial 57 dominant 138 economic 18, 65, 67, 116, 146, 160, 164, 182 global 18 perverse 125 productive 8, 136 revolutionary 69 secular 19, 78 vicious 130 cycle peak 191 Cyprus 162 daca 31, 33 extinguishing 32 daca protection 31 Daesh 22 Dakota Access Pipelines 33 damage Mexico-US relations 21 damages 33 danger 2, 21, 23, 129, 169 Davos 157 day ex-ante 175 death 152, 173 debt 159–60 external 158 global 158 national 151 debt crisis 137 decadence 19, 22, 26, 113, 126 declaration 23 Déclin 158 de-commodification 156 decomposition, ergonomic 56 decree 29, 31, 33 interventionist 15 de facto government 75 defeat, complete 22 defender 14 defense 8, 14, 22, 29, 170 defense budget 30 defenselessness 31 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 31 deficit 36, 148, 195, 202–3 financial 151 fiscal 163 growing 145, 148, 158 strong fiscal 21 definiteness 153

Index deformations 169 degradation, consequent 174 degree 49, 99, 114, 134, 170 deindustrialization 102, 146 Delgado 157 demagoguery 19, 187 democracy 69–71, 79, 86, 153 bourgeois 25 era of 155 full 72 parliamentary 70 representative 73 restricted 69 viable 71–72 Democratic Administration 14 Democratic administrations, previous 12, 17 Democratic candidate 15, 21–22 democratic freedoms, essential 72 Democratic Party 12, 14–15, 23 Democratic Party and Obama 15 Democratic Party leadership 15 Democratic presidents 16 democratic-representative type 71 democratic restoration 71 democratization 61, 73 Democratization Process 69 democrats 12, 14, 23, 26 demolishing 122 demonstration effect 148, 163, 178 demonstrations, open 24 denominate excess 150 Denvir 152 Department 8, 27, 31, 160 Department of Labor 199 dependence 45, 47, 49, 53, 58, 62, 74, 76, 85, 87, 89, 91, 103, 105, 112–13, 115, 126, 131, 140–41 expanded reproduction of 47, 52 new 67, 85 structural 53, 55, 58, 60, 63, 76, 87 technological 57 theory of 52, 66, 68, 86, 104–5, 113, 210 dependence envisage 63 dependency 45–47, 58–59, 62, 78, 104, 109, 113, 117, 126, 128, 145, 210 definition of 47, 62 extinguished 49 dependency analysis 86 dependency articulates 48

241 dependency category 47, 117 dependency relations 102, 110 socio-political 111 dependency theorists 105 dependency theory 1, 22, 43, 47, 52–53, 58, 62, 80, 97, 104–5, 116–17, 131, 205 new 109 updating 109 updating of 109 dependency thesis 53 dependent areas 74 dependent capitalism 9, 17, 50–51, 58, 66, 73, 82, 85–86, 88–90, 95, 108, 116–17, 136, 208 dependent capitalism system 88 dependent capitalist formation 90, 95 dependent capitalist reproduction patterns 63, 73 dependent countries 2–3, 8, 10, 45, 48–49, 54, 63, 67, 81, 102–4, 109–11, 113, 115–17, 127–28, 130–31, 133, 136–38, 157, 204 labor force of 108, 110 largest 49 underdeveloped 107 dependent countries of Latin America 141, 177 dependent economies 10, 47–48, 50–52, 54–55, 66–67, 80, 82, 84, 86, 90–92, 95, 102, 107–8, 111–12, 114–15, 127, 130–32, 135, 146, 168 dependent Latin American countries 135 dependent primary-exporting countries 136 dependent self-employment 180 dependent state, contemporary 69 depersonalization 173 deployment 9, 13, 45, 136 large-scale 112 restricted 132 depoliticization 176 deportation 14, 31–32 deposits, exacerbated 172 depression 153, 172 great 27, 160, 182 depressive wave 152 long 152 deregulate 175, 179 deregulation 1, 57, 110, 114, 129, 146, 155, 170–71, 177, 205, 211 financial 130 deregulation policies 144

242 Derivative financial products 145 derivatives, preventing 130 design 8 illusory 14 destitution 81 destruction, asset 163 de-structuring 178 detention 32 internal 32 deterioration 19, 39, 205 accelerated 186 Deutsche Bank 145 devaluation 94, 153 strong technological 10 devaluations, increasing 145 developed capitalist-imperialist countries 93 developed countries 11, 48, 51, 53, 82–83, 136, 146, 156, 172, 188, 190, 211 Developing Asia 161 developing countries 53, 63, 137, 180 Developing economies 183 development 9, 13, 19, 27, 44, 46, 49–54, 61, 67, 70, 76, 78, 86, 90, 92, 96–97, 101–2, 126–27, 129–31, 134, 136, 138, 141, 143, 154, 158–59, 165, 170, 172, 174 advanced 58 combined 90 contemporary 129 degree of 109 dependent 51 economic-social 168 general 179 historical 13, 127 imperialism’s 25 long-term 164 material 123 productive 127 scientific 212 scientific-technical 97, 101, 175 scientific-technological 63, 101, 126, 135 unequal 7–8 developmentalists 107 devices, flexible 57, 66 dialectic 90, 102, 134 dialectical 95, 107 Dialectics of Dependence 45, 87, 91 Dialectics of Dependency 46–47, 59, 128

Index Dialectics of Dependency articulates 48 dictatorial 73, 156 dictatorships 69–71, 73 Dierckxsens 10 dimensions 1, 7, 57–58, 95, 139 productive 53, 63, 163 disaster 37 disintegration 45, 68, 129, 134, 142, 173, 178 dismantling 59, 129, 142, 150, 209 dismeasure 93–94, 121, 125, 129, 136, 147, 210 disseminates 135, 175 distribution 50, 108, 134 divergences 104, 107, 110, 195–96 diversity, great 107, 172 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform 163 dollars 17, 21, 145, 159, 189, 200 domain 124, 149, 177 exclusive 44, 138 domestic markets, developing 53 domination 7, 69, 73, 79, 136, 146, 153–54 financial 144, 147 modes of 47, 108 periphery/center 136 domination system 26, 69 Dominican Republic 188 Dow Jones 159 Draitser 16–17 dreamers 31 dumping 188 duration 114, 153, 164, 198 Dussel 109, 133 Dutch citizens 142 dynamic core 35 dynamics changing 56 class recomposition 176 internal 18, 138 Earth 13, 196 Eastern Asia 183 Eastern Bloc 137 Eastern Europe 137, 183 eclac 70, 136, 145 economic activity 148, 160 economic conditions, current 185 economic crisis 27, 38, 43, 76, 115, 131, 171, 177, 198, 211 current global 74

Index economic growth 65, 68, 77, 140, 142, 148, 150, 153–54, 156, 164, 185, 190 low rates of 2, 93, 144 economic level 67 economic output 160 Economic Policy Institute 197, 203, 205 economic reductionism 52 Economic Report 160 economic-social formations 11, 109, 126–28 dependent 96, 127 economic ultranationalism 188 economies 2, 7–8, 10–11, 21, 48–50, 52–53, 57–58, 68, 121, 128, 130, 133, 136, 145, 152, 159, 161, 163–64, 176, 179, 183, 186, 191–92 advanced 50, 80, 103, 115, 135, 161, 182–83, 190 backward 103 central 93, 128 dependent exporting 141 developed 105, 183, 205 dynamic 165 emerging 137, 183 extractivist 67 financial 152 free market 19 global 1, 68, 142, 157, 164 imperialist 113, 117 industrial 28 informal 171 integrated 51 international 9, 52, 82, 128, 152 low-wage 111, 117 mono-exporting 49 national 130, 155 neolithic 100 new 122, 156, 163–65 peripheral 112 productive 116 real 152, 163 speculative 163 underdeveloped 107 Ecuador 26, 61, 77, 210 education 155, 171, 194, 197, 202 Education Survey 198 Egypt 107, 109 elections 15, 21–22, 26, 60, 73 presidential 15, 20, 23 Electoral College 15, 20, 22

243 electricity 202–3 electronics 55, 128 elimination 37, 163 elucidation 88 Emerging Asian Economies 106 Emmanuel 127 empire 44, 117 empirical evidence 66, 86 employees 106, 162, 172–73, 198–99, 206 employers 169, 177, 180, 196, 205–6 employment 58, 65, 114, 129, 135, 165, 170–71, 179–80, 185–86, 197 atypical 180–81 industrial 156–57 manufacturing 36, 195 precarious 58, 172 temporary 151, 173, 179–81, 198, 211 end of work, theories of the 122 environment 2, 117, 150, 155, 163, 166, 169 equality 79, 85 equalization 83 Europe 28, 35, 45–46, 57, 65, 75, 78, 137, 141, 158, 161, 163, 167, 172 southern 142, 186 European economies 142, 158 European Union 65, 81, 86, 136–37, 142, 144–45, 172, 180, 182, 190 Eurostat 182 Euro Zone 65, 182 exchange 50, 83, 88, 114, 129, 165, 196 unequal 47, 53, 63, 67–68, 107–9, 127, 135 exchange rates 154, 163 Executive Orders 1, 12, 29, 32–33, 36 exhaustion 34, 154, 163, 173 expansion 10, 17, 27, 51, 74, 90, 127, 135, 140, 145, 153, 164, 173 expenses 17, 58, 114, 128, 148, 200, 209 explanations 20–21, 90, 98, 113, 115, 131, 133, 195 exploitation 8–9, 18–19, 43, 45, 48, 50–51, 54–55, 79, 81, 84–85, 89, 91–94, 96, 98, 100–103, 105, 108, 111, 113–14, 116–17, 126, 128, 140, 142–43, 148, 151, 177, 185–86, 188, 207 degree of 98–99, 128 exploitation of labor 2, 7–8, 43–44, 50, 52–53, 65, 74, 113, 117, 160 exports 36, 56, 67–68, 74, 95, 141, 143, 145, 158

244 expropriation 13, 50, 84, 91, 95–96, 112–13, 191, 204, 206 extension 1–2, 7, 11, 30, 38, 43–44, 48, 52, 64, 82–84, 115–16, 121, 128, 141, 147, 154, 162, 167, 178, 204–5, 207, 210 extinction 2, 19, 38 extraction 65, 108, 115, 124 extraordinary profits 1, 10, 18, 66, 83, 91, 94, 110, 125, 129, 147, 186, 188 Extraordinary Summit 77, 158 factories 17–18, 34, 55, 57, 163 Faculty 47 Fajnzylber 131 Fal 144, 166 Faletto 47, 130 Federal Reserve 130, 159 Felix 108 fictitious 146, 149 fictitious capital 8, 13, 19, 115, 123, 125, 129–30, 140, 143, 145–47, 149, 152, 156, 163, 167 favored 160 international 46 prevalence of 94, 136, 150, 210 fictitious capital scheme 145 fictitious capital swings, new 166 fictitious earnings 144, 148 fictitious levels 156 fictitious profits 143, 149–50 concomitant 123 Fictitious Regime 147 fictitious type 12 figureheads, public 14 financial assets 125, 145 counted 145 financial balances 160 financial bodies 64 financial capital 21–22, 27, 129–30, 144, 146, 149–50, 154 big 58 global 130 speculative 12, 130 financial crises 146, 156, 191 current 46, 157 financial dominion 144 financial institutions 152 international 143 financialization 121, 145 financial liberalization 129

Index financial mechanisms 76 financial organisms 7, 19 financial preeminence 152 financial systems 8, 56, 154, 160 Financial Times 188 financial transactions 145 findings 158, 206 Finland 162 fiscal exemption 151 flexibilization 8–10, 19, 53–54, 56, 63, 110, 114, 129, 146, 159, 169, 171 flexible automation 34, 153, 172 food stamps 196 Forbes 37 forces 12–13, 22, 26, 30, 55, 61, 63, 112–13, 127, 151, 155–56, 158, 164, 169, 204–5, 209 armed 69–71 market 129, 179 social 62, 169 terrorist 22 Ford 18, 35, 162 Fordism 45, 111, 140, 170, 177 peripheral 111 Fordism-Taylorism 153 Fordist factories 132 Fordist-Taylorist systems 49, 55 forecasts 83, 162 foreign policy 23 formation 56, 82, 107, 141 forms concrete 62, 96 dominant 51, 111, 123, 177 modified 134 new 43, 76, 117, 168, 175 particular 11, 51, 83, 94 formulas 72, 98, 143 Formulation Level 58 foundation 89, 92, 95–96, 98, 100 Fourth Estate 69, 73 Fourth Power 69, 72, 155 fracture 169, 178–79 fragmentation 26, 104, 114, 159, 174–75, 177, 179 social 168, 174, 178 framework 1, 7, 45, 69, 76, 99, 108, 116, 121, 127, 168, 170 general 47, 74 theoretical-methodological 62, 80 unalterable 20, 27

Index France 8, 13, 24, 68, 74, 88, 107, 110, 122, 136, 141–42, 157, 161–62, 180–82, 184, 207 France Telecom 173 free markets 16–17, 28, 129, 154 Free Trade Agreement 20, 30, 38, 55, 211 French structuralism 104 Friedman, Milton 46 fta 38, 130, 188 ftaa 77, 188 functions 1, 9, 32, 51, 56, 129, 148, 156, 170, 172, 174, 177, 181, 205 fund, public 155–56 G20 183 Gallup 198 gdp real 190 total 145 gdp growth 148 General Motors 35–36, 162 generation 36, 45, 62, 100, 149 geopolitics, global 16–17 geopolitics of super-exploitation 8, 11 Germany 8, 12–13, 24, 35, 68, 74–75, 88, 107, 136–37, 141–42, 157, 160–62, 167, 172, 184, 207 global capitalism 52, 138, 140 globalization 13, 19, 55–56, 64–65, 67, 83, 129, 135, 153, 156, 159, 170–71, 175 process of 55, 121 Globalization of Imperialism 140 gm 18, 160 Goldstein 15 Goodman 180, 182, 200 goods 8, 35, 37, 48, 54, 56, 89, 95, 101–2, 106, 111, 128, 132, 135, 139, 163–64, 186, 201, 207–8 primary 67, 141 standardize 83, 129 Gould 203 government 2, 22–23, 25, 38, 60–61, 69, 75, 77, 137, 150, 159–60, 162–63, 167, 172, 185, 194 constitutional 23, 61 federal 21, 199 legitimate 22, 74 progressive 26, 60–61 Government Report 189 Gramsci 121, 175

245 Great Britain 65, 137, 157, 181–82 Greece 64, 107, 137, 142, 146, 162, 167, 170, 186 gross domestic product, real 161–62 groups, environmental 2, 33 growth 36, 55, 63, 65–66, 93, 148, 151, 155, 160, 163–66, 182, 193–95, 197, 204, 211 annual 187 net 193, 195 relative 9, 196 Growth of labor productivity 190 growth rates 27, 147–48, 151, 156, 161–62, 191 economic 68, 143, 158, 190 low 74, 166 Grundrisse 2, 111, 114, 121, 126, 133, 153 Guamán 143 guarantees 9, 27, 70, 77, 106, 159, 165–66, 211 Guarimbas 60–61 Guillén 122, 164 Gunder Frank 62, 74, 108, 127, 141, 204 Guyana 77 Habermas 1, 66 Haine 15, 62 Harvey 63, 140, 143, 166, 181 hasten 53, 78 health 99, 155, 181, 197, 202 health insurance 151, 203 hegemonic 8, 44, 51–52, 67, 116, 125, 131–32, 137, 168, 177 hegemonic capitalist countries 8, 109 hegemonic category 50, 97 hegemonic centers 88, 127 hegemonic media 14, 29 hegemonic regime 50, 131, 170, 207 hegemony 8, 10, 28, 50, 55, 76, 116, 126, 130, 146–47, 151–52, 158, 170, 207, 212 Hegemony of Relative Surplus Value and Super-exploitation 126 heterogeneity 170–71 Higginbottom 104, 136 highlights 1, 7, 51, 55, 86, 102, 131, 181, 195, 202 high rates 18, 177 High School 194 Hispanic 21, 211 historical reality 43, 78 history 19, 26, 60, 77, 79, 82, 122, 132, 134, 141, 153, 158 end of 63, 153, 156

246 Hodgson 16 homogenization, technological 66, 83, 129 Honduras 15, 64, 73 horizon 45, 94, 124, 176 hourly wages 107, 186–87, 193, 196, 201 household 203 houses, two-bedroom 200–201 housing 19, 99, 155, 201, 203, 208 Housing Problem 199 human beings 66, 122 humanity 2, 9, 14, 20, 24, 57, 71, 79, 155, 163 Hyundai 35 ice 32 ideological apparatuses 176 ideologies, dominant 174 ignominy 30–31, 197, 211 ilo 171, 173, 180, 182, 184–87 imbalances 111–12, 157–58 recurrent 68, 86 imf 17, 19, 26–27, 81, 130, 137, 144, 153 immigrants 12, 16, 21, 29, 32–33, 198, 203, 210 undocumented 20, 30, 32 immigrant workers 197, 201 immigration 18, 20–21, 32–33, 111 immigration agents 31–32 immigration laws 32 immigration reforms 22, 150 imperialism 1, 5, 13, 20, 25–26, 47, 60, 64, 75, 97, 140, 144, 154, 207 imperialism countries 81 imperialist 46, 75, 156 imperialist capitalism 13, 103 imperialist countries 81–82, 95, 97, 105, 110, 112, 115, 136, 138, 150, 207 imperialist policies 20, 151 Imperialist Praxis 12–13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39 imperialist project 22, 28 imperialist system 13–14, 21, 24, 26, 140 imperialist war 154, 163 Imperial Presidency 13, 20, 26, 211 implementation 10, 25, 56, 121, 124, 144, 211 Importance and Validity of Dependency Theory 52 imports 36–37, 49, 55, 138 improvement 38, 56–57, 149, 164, 170, 182, 192, 196 incessant 115, 138

Index income 17, 49, 66, 86, 145, 164, 192, 195–97, 200, 202–4, 208, 211 concentration of 66–67, 86 income distribution 149, 197 incorporation 129–30, 133, 138, 159, 170 independence 53, 63, 75, 141–42 India 24, 68, 106–7, 151, 158, 165, 184 indicators 107, 145, 184–85 individualism, uncritical 173, 179 individualization 170–71 Indonesia 106, 162, 184 industrialization 7, 49, 130, 138 import substitution 55, 131 industrialized centers, large 57, 131 industrial reserve army 51 industrial revolution 44–45, 50, 53, 111, 127, 132, 134 great 131, 212 industry 18, 34–36, 51, 110, 141, 162–63, 165, 189 great modern 65, 132 national 35, 37–38 terminal 34, 36 inegi 184 inequality 103, 170–71, 180, 195, 197 inflation 148, 154, 163–64, 176, 194, 198, 208 initiative 37, 72, 76–77 initiative of Cuba and Venezuela 77, 158 innovations, technical 35, 51, 197 insecurity 21, 169 instability 170, 205 institutionalization 71–72 institutions 17, 113, 165, 169 instrument 76, 89, 92, 178 insufficiency 107, 201 integration 75–77, 207 intellect, general 114, 121 intellectuals 20, 45 organic 174, 205 intensification 8, 44, 50, 66, 82–84, 92, 96–97, 101, 112, 132, 204 intensity 83, 86, 91, 96, 99, 111, 114, 129, 131–32, 170, 204 lesser 27, 39 intensity of work 44, 91, 132 interaction 101 inter-Americanism 76 inter-capitalist competition 12, 125, 129

247

Index interests 7–8, 12–14, 16, 18, 20, 27, 29, 36–37, 58, 61, 68, 76, 78, 88, 144, 146, 156, 169, 171, 174, 187 class 11–12, 21, 159 strategic 22, 211 international capital, great 27, 146 international division 51, 117 new 67 internationalization 8, 110, 144 International Labor Organization 66, 171, 173, 180, 186 international levels 35, 38, 61, 73, 103, 115, 144 International Monetary Fund 9, 25, 28, 46, 148, 160, 162 international relations 27, 55, 159, 210 international trade 74, 115, 166 inter-professional levels 54, 56 intervention 93, 121, 123, 154 intense 8, 19 invasions 13–14 investment funds 125, 145 investments 13, 18, 28, 49, 51–52, 55, 74, 124–25, 135–36, 140, 146, 179 investors 144 Iran 33, 151, 158 Iraq 13–14, 22, 33, 134, 154, 210–11 Ireland 107, 137, 162 Iron Lady 137, 178 Islamic State 14, 22, 211 Israel 23–24 Italy 141–42, 146, 161–62, 172, 182, 184, 186 Japan 8, 12, 24, 29, 35, 54, 65, 74, 81, 86, 88, 106, 114, 142, 144, 157, 159, 161, 167, 180–83, 190, 207 Japanese origin 8, 34, 55 Job Insecurity 179 job performance 9, 198 jobs 9, 18, 21, 26, 38, 148, 160, 162, 172, 176, 182, 185–86, 195, 208 manufacturing 194–95 part-time 171, 180 temporary 185 Juárez 18 juicy profits 18, 25 Kant 89 Katz 104–11, 113–16 Keynes 46

Keynesianism 140, 177 Keynesians 9, 46, 103, 106, 147, 155 kilometers 30 Kimball 195 Korean Peninsula 13, 210 Kreye 111 Ku Klux Klan 24, 29 labor 2, 7–10, 18–19, 43–45, 49–54, 56–57, 64–65, 68, 74, 80, 86–89, 94, 101, 106, 108, 111, 113, 117, 122–23, 126–27, 134–35, 143, 153, 156–57, 159–60, 168–72, 176–78, 189, 191, 199–200, 203, 205 international division of 7, 56, 67, 75, 95 new international division of 67 super-exploitation of 9, 48–52, 54, 63, 65–67, 80–82, 84–86, 107, 112, 116–17, 140–41, 143, 145, 147, 149, 154, 181, 207 wage 126, 175 world of 8–10, 19, 38, 53, 56, 117, 119, 154, 157, 169, 171, 210–11 labor and capital 2, 11, 98, 113, 116, 123, 157, 174, 205 labor contract 170, 177 labor costs 1, 10, 186, 205 labor deregulation 19, 159 labor flexibility 19, 57, 177–78, 211 labor flexibilization 56 labor force 1–2, 7–10, 19, 45, 50, 52–56, 58, 63–66, 80, 82–89, 91–92, 94–106, 108–13, 115–17, 121, 123–24, 126, 128–29, 131–33, 135–39, 142–43, 145–48, 155–57, 167–69, 175–77, 181–83, 185–89, 191, 193, 199–210 labor-force 87–88, 93–94 value 94, 208 labor laws 143, 209 labor markets 52, 56, 114, 129, 171–72, 180, 185 labor organizations 159, 175, 177 labor power 43, 63, 86–87, 99–100, 121–22, 135, 155–56, 176 labor processes 130, 138, 169, 175 labor productivity 44–45, 52, 54, 56, 83, 91, 102, 111, 127–28, 131, 190, 192, 198 labor reality 44, 106, 176 labor reforms 57, 143, 172, 177, 179 labor relations 116, 169, 171 labor rights 10, 18–19, 141, 170, 174–75, 209 labor standards 114 Labor Statistics 185, 194, 198

248 labor systems 10, 39, 93 labor theory 63, 130 labor time 101, 106, 128 necessary 55, 64, 83, 85, 98, 100, 121, 124, 126 labor-value 47, 126 large monopolies 10, 147 Latin America 1, 7, 12, 15, 23, 26–29, 45–46, 48–49, 52–55, 57–58, 60–62, 68–69, 71–75, 81, 87, 97, 102, 105, 126, 131, 135, 137, 141, 145–46, 162, 167, 170, 177, 182–83, 210 Latin American 46–50, 55, 58–59, 61, 63, 66–67, 69–70, 72, 74, 76–78, 85–87, 93, 101–2, 104, 127, 141, 143, 145, 158, 186 contemporary 58, 68 Latin American reality 47, 59, 71 Latin Post 186 law 2, 25, 44, 46, 61, 95, 97, 104, 121, 126, 132–33, 135, 155, 168, 172 general 2, 51, 95 leaders 16, 62 leaderships 49, 59 legitimacy 142, 145 Lehman Brothers 46, 160 Lenin 13, 21, 46, 90, 103, 154 liberation 22, 58 Libya 13–14, 33 life daily 113, 174 political 70, 72 social 21, 138, 155 limitations 22, 84, 97, 111 limits, structural 78, 116 Lipietz 111 Lipset 16 liquidation 47, 130 location 13, 39, 62 Long Boom 164 low wages 19, 58, 111–12, 115, 172, 177, 182, 191, 196, 198 lumpen-bourgeoisie 67 Luxembourg 162, 187 Maastricht Treaty 141–42 machinery 34, 92, 123, 128 machines 34, 123 macro 53, 176

Index Maduro, Nicolás 61 magnitude 74, 96, 99–100, 123, 166, 170 maintenance 73, 86, 100, 146, 211 Malaysia 29, 106, 162 management 18, 153, 179 managers 9 Mandel 46, 127, 152, 192 manifestations 51, 111, 127, 154, 157, 163, 205 manufacturing industry 36, 142, 187–89, 193–95 maquiladoras 36, 38 Marcuse 21 Marini, Ruy Mauro 1, 7, 10, 19, 43, 45–55, 58–67, 69–72, 74–78, 80, 82–85, 87–93, 96–105, 107–15, 126–38, 141, 155, 181–82, 191, 204, 207, 210 markets 34–35, 44, 48, 56, 86, 129, 135, 158, 165, 172 financial 144, 163, 170 internal 48, 67–68, 86, 95, 147, 187 Martins 81, 104, 130–31 Marx 43–44, 46–47, 87–90, 92, 95, 99–101, 103–4, 106, 111, 114, 121–24, 126, 133, 153, 202 Marxism 58, 63, 127 Marxist dependency theory 7, 43, 45, 47–48, 50, 57–64, 68, 74, 80, 89, 91, 103, 114, 116–17, 121, 207, 210 Marxist dependency theory and Marini’s thought 78 Marxists 13, 154 Marxist Theory 58, 117 Marxist theory of dependence 91, 115 Marxist theory of dependency 58, 104 Marxist Theory of Dependency and Marini’s Ideas 45 Marxist thought 47, 58 Marx’s Theory 43, 99 masses 50, 60, 81, 84, 99, 127, 134, 139, 155, 186 mass layoffs 160 mass organizations 179 McCormack 157, 185, 194–95 McNicholas 205 measures, internal 27, 67 media 20, 25, 32, 163, 165, 174–75, 177–79 corporate 20, 151 Medicaid 196

Index medium 105, 108–9, 112, 117, 125, 148, 152 medium term 151, 175 membership 141 merchandise 43, 64, 83, 92, 100, 115, 132, 153, 155, 199 mercosur 77 Mészáros 19, 122, 152, 178 Method of Exploitation in Marx 43 methodological 66, 114, 127 methodological level 86, 116 methodology 48, 74, 184, 203 Mexican border 188 Mexican Communist Party 104 Mexican government 77, 184 Mexican nationality 197 Mexican neoliberal 70 Mexican oil exports 21 Mexican pesos 208 Mexicans 12, 17–18, 21, 29–30, 32, 37, 188, 211 undocumented 20, 31 Mexican Senate 2 Mexican southeast 77 Mexican State 21 Mexican statistic, official 184 Mexican workers 17–18, 54, 83, 188 undocumented 29 Mexico 3, 17–19, 21, 27, 29–30, 32, 34–38, 47, 49–50, 53–55, 59, 62, 64, 67–68, 75, 102, 107, 109–10, 131, 141, 147, 156, 162, 167–68, 170, 183–89, 195, 207, 211 microelectronic technologies 8, 138 middle classes 66 Middle East 23, 28, 162, 210 midst 7, 45, 131, 160 migrants 180, 203 migrations 65, 110, 125 military 7, 12, 20, 22, 26, 29, 32, 72–73, 143 military caste 71, 73 military dictatorships 69, 71, 73, 131, 143 military option 22 military power 20, 73, 155, 159 military regime 61, 70 military spending 10 minimum wages 9, 165, 192–93, 199–200, 208 current real 193 federal 200–201, 206 misery 58, 78, 86, 135, 169

249 Mishel 193–94, 196–97 modalities 65, 74, 85, 95, 99, 115, 132, 147–48, 153, 197, 204 mode 47, 89, 91, 97, 105, 108, 122 new 90, 171 model, new 35, 73 modernity, second 170–71 modernization 47, 56, 135–36, 171 moments 83, 153 Monday 198–99 monetary 7, 57, 144, 152, 165 money 16, 30, 87, 100, 143, 153 monopolization 125 monopoly 138, 146 monstrous mechanism 48, 54, 107 Montmollin 56 Moreano 105 movements 57, 62, 94, 110, 113, 124, 132, 148 popular 62, 135 strong 52, 68 union 15, 178 Multidisciplinary Analysis Center 184 multinational corporations, large 8, 10 multiple relationships 25, 92 Muslims 33 myths 21 nafta 17, 26, 30, 34, 36–37, 54–55, 77, 195, 211 negotiations of 35, 37 Nakatani 130, 149, 156 narrowness 111–12 National Autonomous University 47 national content 37 National Intelligence Council 28 National Low Income Housing Coalition 200–201 national security 31–32 National Security Council 71–72 nations 22–23, 27, 33, 51, 53, 55, 60, 63, 65, 73, 76, 100, 103, 106, 110, 129, 151, 169, 211 dependent 8, 67 imperialist 8, 186 natural sciences 122, 154 nature 2–3, 26, 28, 32, 69, 78, 89, 124, 126, 147, 153, 156, 165, 172 conjectural 85, 97 necessary work time 50, 56, 84, 125, 133

250 negative effects 63, 151 negotiation capacity 78 negotiations 37–38, 60, 174, 188 Negri 117, 136 neoclassical 52, 57, 106, 155 neoclassical economics 127 neo-Fordism 66, 175 neo-imperialism 153 neoliberal 25, 49, 63, 67, 85, 135–36, 141–42, 146–47, 155–56, 170 neoliberal capitalism 57, 70, 147, 168, 170 neoliberalism 1, 9, 16, 19, 27, 55, 61, 63, 102, 129, 135, 149, 152, 154, 156, 170, 174 neoliberal model 147, 205 neoliberal phase 1, 80, 150 neoliberal policies 125, 143, 159, 175, 177 Neoliberal State 129 Neo-Protectionism 5 Netherlands 162, 180 networks 56, 140, 169, 171, 178 social media 16, 62 New Peripheries (np) 68, 136, 145 New York 33, 157 New York Times 16, 146 Nicaragua 69, 77, 158 Nigeria 68, 162 Nissan 35 Nixon, Richard 27 normal conditions 9, 97, 138, 203, 208 normality 96, 98, 102–3, 154 North America 37, 55, 137 North American 10, 18, 21, 26, 35, 38, 55, 67, 75–77, 83, 122, 131, 142, 157, 160, 163, 187, 196–98, 201, 207, 211–12 North American Crisis 29 North American Free Trade Agreement 26, 29, 36–37, 77, 195 Northern Africa 184 northern neighbor 29 North Korea 24, 151, 158, 210 np (New Peripheries) 68, 136, 145 oas 19, 76 Obama, Barack 12, 14–16, 20, 22–23, 26, 29, 31, 33, 163 object 124, 128 objection 93 object of study 69, 74 obligation 38, 151

Index obsolescence 10 occupational diseases 173 O’Connor 155 oecd 130, 164 Offe 1, 66 oil 2, 68, 136 oligarchy 20, 95 Oliveira 155 operation 13, 29, 37, 56, 89, 163, 208 organization 8, 35, 43, 45, 61, 64, 97, 111, 114, 132, 154, 165, 170–71, 176–77, 207 business 35, 157 class 179, 204 international 9, 23, 146 international financial 144, 181 Osorio 94, 96–97, 104, 136 outsourcing 10, 114 Overcoming Dependence 75 overdetermines 50–51, 102 overexploitation 91, 105 overproduction 35, 153 overthrow 15, 22–23, 26, 61, 90 overtime 199, 206 Pacific 29, 184 Pakistan 14, 106–7, 151, 162 Palestine 23 Pan-Americanism 75–76 Paraguay 15, 73, 77 parameters 13, 116 participation 12, 15, 36, 87, 98, 102, 123–24, 157, 186, 195 patterns, new 56–57, 159, 164 pauperization 84, 105, 107 payment, balance of 143, 145, 148 Pentagon 14, 30 Pérez 173 period expansive 69, 141 manufacturing 44 periodization 44 periphery 62, 74, 89, 107–11, 113, 116–17, 134–36, 207 new 68, 136, 145 perspective, theoretical 43, 62, 80, 84, 127 Peru 29, 73, 77, 107 petras 15, 20, 130, 142, 156, 196 petrocaribe 77 phases 44, 85, 95, 128, 156, 174

Index current 13, 140, 142, 149, 165 phenomena 3, 13, 48, 51, 57, 60, 64, 66, 73–74, 78, 81, 83, 85, 94, 112–14, 122, 125, 130, 132, 140, 145–46, 151, 157, 169, 171, 174, 179, 181, 205, 209 human 26, 175 socio-labor 114, 169 Philippines 106, 162 Pinto 171, 175 Piqueras 84, 93–94, 129, 164, 166 plane, political 73, 102 police 31–32 policies 10, 12–13, 17–19, 25, 28–29, 36, 38–39, 131, 142, 146, 148, 153, 155–57, 159, 168, 171, 196–97 destabilizing 28 economic 25, 56, 67, 70, 85, 141, 156, 160 exclusionary 86 human rights 71 international security 8 nationalist 24 neoprotectionist 149 new antisocial 197 privatization 57 protectionist 1–2, 10, 16–18, 27, 39, 151, 211 public 12, 81, 148 restrictive 140 retroactive 9 social exclusion 197 structural adjustment 141 wage 57 policies of capital 144, 153 political authoritarianism 73, 86 Political Category 97 political economy 45, 87, 97, 99, 104, 126, 207 political systems 9, 12, 141, 147 politicians 7 politics 60 poorest 137, 152 population 9, 21, 33, 36, 48, 61, 66, 73, 86, 112, 127, 138, 145, 151, 174, 182, 192, 197 active 185 Portugal 107, 137, 142, 162, 167, 170, 180 Portuguese 59 position 13, 32, 47, 72, 97, 103, 105, 115, 117, 172, 210 theoretical 116, 210 positivism 1, 174

251 postulates 104, 136, 176 post-war Keynesian scenario 113–14 post-war period, long 49, 64 post-World War ii period 10, 24, 102, 165 poverty 81, 107, 146, 177, 184, 198 poverty patterns 107 power 8, 13, 15–16, 22, 24, 26–27, 38, 45, 47, 53, 61, 69–73, 75, 123, 130, 139, 142, 147, 155–56, 176, 211 dominant 20, 197 necessary concentration of 73, 86 political 8, 60, 130–31 Prado 84, 125 Prebisch 53 precariousness 9, 19, 81, 112, 157, 168–70, 173, 205, 208 wage 125 Precariousness of Work and Super-Exploitation 168 precarious work 171–72, 174, 177, 205 Precarious Work and Structural Reforms 171 precarization 1, 8–10, 19, 28, 65–66, 94, 110, 112–13, 119, 125, 141, 143, 146, 159, 168–69, 171–72, 175, 177, 179, 205, 211 generalized 104 monumental 113, 210 predominance 44, 55, 152, 180 prelude 117, 134, 154, 163 premise 26, 44, 89, 157 prerogatives 12, 169 presidency 14–15, 30, 137, 167, 196 prices, market 95, 133, 162 prioritizing 51, 113 priority 31, 50, 103 private property 64, 176 privatization 28, 129–30, 154–56, 177, 179 privileges 47, 51, 73, 159, 171 problems 7, 12, 15, 18, 21, 25, 36, 48, 58, 67, 75–76, 81, 83, 86, 89, 104, 111, 114–15, 122–23, 131, 135, 143, 149, 163, 166, 195, 210 process 7–11, 13, 17, 39, 43, 50, 55–58, 60, 64–66, 69–70, 73–74, 78, 80, 82–83, 85, 105, 108, 112–15, 117, 123, 127, 130, 132, 135, 141–43, 168–69, 175–76, 179, 207, 210 economic 48, 54, 107, 130 productive 101, 105, 129, 141, 159, 169, 174–75, 186 revolutionary 60 technological 83, 123

252 production 8, 11, 13, 34–36, 38, 43–45, 47–48, 50–51, 55–57, 62, 64, 66–68, 83–84, 86–87, 90–94, 96, 99–102, 107–8, 110–11, 115–17, 121–28, 131–32, 137–38, 141, 157, 163–64, 175–77, 199–200, 207–8, 212 manufacturing 18, 185 mass 45, 49, 55, 64 merchandise 49, 51 mode of 19, 50, 92, 96, 101, 163, 165, 176, 204 production methods 34, 55 production modes 126, 138 production of anti-value 83, 153 production of relative surplus value 8, 10, 44–45, 54, 92–93, 97, 101, 111, 115–17, 123, 128, 135–37, 168, 207, 212 production prices 90, 95, 107, 127, 133 production processes 110, 114, 124 productive activities 114, 143 productive forces 45, 50, 101, 121–22, 124, 141, 154 productive systems 7–8, 51–53, 75, 86, 97, 116, 121, 135, 140, 156–57, 163, 175, 207 productivity 9, 34–35, 48, 54, 57, 63, 91, 102, 105, 107–8, 127–29, 131, 176, 185, 189–90, 192–97, 209 development of 48, 52, 54 net 193 productivity growth 193–97 productivity trajectory 192–93 products 13, 15, 27, 37, 91, 137–38, 141, 144, 147, 153, 171, 178, 201, 208, 211 essential 198, 203 gross world 145, 152 primary 68 profile, new 67, 85 profit 1, 28, 43, 47, 82–84, 93–94, 108, 123–26, 128–29, 132–34, 142, 146, 148, 153–54, 160, 163, 173, 176–77, 181, 186, 191, 196, 199, 207, 210 high 124, 196 profitability 10, 82, 136, 142–43, 168, 177, 187 profitable activities 68, 86 profit rate 10, 99, 155, 167, 179, 188 progress, technical 48, 53–54, 64 projections 2, 32, 75, 115, 146, 183–84, 190–91 projects 20, 28, 33, 61, 77, 155 proletariat 10, 117, 156

Index prolongation 44, 50, 58, 84, 92, 96–97, 99, 101, 132, 204 protectionism 12, 17, 27–29, 38 protectionist 13, 17, 24 purchasing power 9, 107, 138, 148, 192, 199, 201–2, 204, 208–9 real 113, 202 Putin, Vladimir 16–17, 22–23 qualifications 110, 114, 154 quasi-stagnation 147–48, 165 races 24, 100, 169 racists 16, 24–25, 29, 197 Ramirez 7, 75 rate 1, 28, 54–55, 83–84, 89–91, 93–94, 98–99, 124, 128, 132–33, 139, 142–43, 146–48, 151, 153–55, 160, 163, 173, 179, 181–82, 184–85, 191, 207, 210 tax 151, 154 rationalization 56, 142, 177 raw materials 34, 49, 64, 143 Reagan-Bush administration 82 Real hourly wage growth 191 recession 46, 65, 68, 74, 153, 164, 182, 185, 195, 199 recovery 27, 78, 142, 154, 159–60, 163, 185 reduction 34, 44, 85, 95, 101, 110, 128, 132, 139, 166, 174, 176, 179, 182, 185, 207, 211 wage 58, 65, 81, 131, 176, 205 Reevaluation of Marini’s Thought 61 reforms 25, 36, 81, 129, 144, 159, 172 tax 151–52 regime 11, 51, 61, 69, 71, 73, 79, 85, 89, 108, 115, 138, 144, 147, 168, 212 regional content 37–38 regions 13, 18, 23, 26, 35, 37, 46–49, 55, 62, 69–70, 73–77, 136, 138, 145, 169, 171, 186 regulations 57, 129, 143, 163, 168–69 relations 1–2, 7, 23, 27, 34–35, 37, 43, 45, 47, 51, 75, 86–87, 93, 95, 107, 110–11, 116, 133, 135–36, 147, 150, 166, 168–69, 195, 198–99, 205, 210–11 relative over-population 107 relative strangulation 51 relative surplus value 8, 10–11, 44–45, 48–56, 84, 90–93, 97–98, 101–2, 111, 115–17, 123, 126–28, 130–32, 135–38, 146, 168, 185, 207, 212

Index relative surplus value/ super-exploitation 134 remittances 21 remuneration 84, 91, 95–96, 99, 109, 112, 182, 189, 193, 195–97, 204, 207–8 low 104, 136 rental housing, price of 200 replacement 92, 123, 176 representatives 27, 46, 61–62, 70, 130, 146, 151, 188 repression 64, 142–43, 154, 177 reproduction 10, 44, 55, 63–64, 66, 73, 82–84, 98–99, 117, 121, 124, 126, 138, 145–47, 155–56, 166, 208 reproduction of capital 18, 49–50, 68, 90, 111, 116, 132, 136, 143, 155, 166, 169, 177 pattern of 68, 144 reproduction of labor power 135, 155 reproduction patterns 47, 67, 155 Republican Party 12, 14, 21, 23, 27, 36 resistance 33, 66, 78 resources 32, 68, 86, 104–5, 109, 155–56, 164, 176 financial 152 natural 115, 141, 163 responsibilities 57, 70, 87 resurgence 63 return 18, 23–24, 45–46, 62, 67, 70, 73, 93, 112, 143, 147, 149–50, 191 revolution 35 rhetoric 16, 24 Rifkin 1 rights contractual 19, 112 fundamental 58, 170 human 9, 14, 21, 70, 75 social 167–68, 172 Roitman 175 Rousseff, Dilma 74 rulers 25, 27 rules of origin 37 ruling classes 12, 39, 61, 150 Russia 14, 16–17, 22–24, 151, 158, 161, 210 Saad 198 Sabadini 144, 149, 156 salaries 1, 9–10, 21, 34, 56, 94, 98, 100, 106, 114–15, 129, 132, 135, 145, 170, 181–82, 190–92, 197, 199, 201–7

253 annual minimum 201 low 18, 54, 104, 110, 198 monthly 199 salary amounts 181, 201, 208 Salary and Basic Basket of Consumer 201 salary scales 56–57, 207 Salles 61, 70, 74–75 Salvia 81 Samir Amin 109 Sánchez 38 sanctions 17, 32 Sanders, Bernie 25, 37, 150–151, 182, 195–96 Sandoval 10 Santa Catarina 59 Sapir 22, 134 Saudi Arabia 24, 162 Sauviat 145 Saxe-Fernández 8, 13, 18, 64, 115, 146, 163 scale, global 7–9, 20, 25, 35, 80, 83, 136, 157 Schlesinger 13 science 78, 123–24, 128, 138, 175–76 secretary 14, 85 sectors 7–8, 26, 35, 92, 101, 113, 126, 128, 131–32, 172, 180, 194, 204 economic 143, 180 informal 58, 171 popular 60, 73 private 160 public 129, 180 secular crisis 18, 63, 188 security 10, 15, 18, 23, 143, 152, 174, 186 internal 32 social 9–10, 155 Security Council 16, 23 segments 58, 103, 141 self-valorization 84, 154 Selser 26 semi-peripheries 109, 117 Senate 14, 23, 38, 151 Sennett 173, 176 sentence 54, 146, 156 Serra 59, 85, 136 services 8, 18, 54, 65, 78, 139, 152, 155, 163–64, 177, 208, 211 public 203 social 137, 186 Shaikh 127, 154, 157, 160, 191 shelters 69, 71, 203 shift 164, 206

254 Singer 104, 137 situation 17, 33, 43, 49, 60, 85, 102, 104, 110, 115, 128, 148, 158, 167, 169–70, 173–74, 179–80, 191, 197–98, 202, 204, 211 skills 110, 170, 182 slope, dangerous 83 Slovak Republic 162 Slovenia 162 slowdown 94, 190, 197–98 Smith, Adam 80–81, 100, 104–05, 136, 186, 191 Soble 180, 182, 200 social change 60, 178 social formation 46, 58, 74, 90, 101, 121, 176 social fracture 174–75, 179 socialism 60, 69 socialist 59, 70, 90, 103 socialist bloc 45, 68, 136, 142 socialist revolution 90 social metabolism 122 social metabolism category 122 social programs 151 social reality 175–76 social relations 2, 11, 44–45, 98, 122, 127, 135, 137, 168, 207, 212 social sciences 68, 127, 168, 175 social security systems 19, 129, 150 social tension 56, 169, 172–73, 175, 179 social thought 63, 78 social value 112–13 social work 64, 122 societies 43, 52–53, 57, 62–63, 66, 78–79, 81, 86, 93, 101, 105, 112, 122–24, 152, 170, 174, 176, 178–79, 205, 208, 210 bourgeois 123, 177 dependent 105, 126 socio-labor metabolism 169–70 sociological 52 sociology 59, 122 Somalia 14, 33 Soriano 57 Soros, George 46 Sotelo, Adrian 1, 45, 55, 66, 73, 80, 83, 104–5, 111, 116, 125, 132, 136, 143, 146–47, 156, 165, 169 source 58, 63, 66, 83–84, 91–92, 100, 106, 110, 122, 128, 151, 162, 184, 189, 192–94, 198–200, 202, 204, 208 South Africa 19, 68, 109, 162, 184, 186 South American Nations 23, 77

Index Southern Cone 67–68, 71 Soviet Union 63, 134, 142 extinct 27 spaces 9, 13, 83, 145, 155, 201 productive 11, 34 Spain 64, 75, 107, 137, 141–42, 146, 161–62, 167, 170, 180, 186 specialization 34, 67–68, 73 productive 48, 85–86 specificity of super-exploitation 85, 91 speculation, financial 144, 159 speeches 16, 24, 211 spending, social 36, 55, 197 spheres 58, 86, 95, 108, 144, 166 financial 125, 159 low 86, 95 productive 66, 86, 115, 149 Sri Lanka 106–7 stability, political 72, 77 stagnation 51, 85, 148, 193, 197, 204 economic 28, 53, 148 standards, living 192 State 13–15, 17, 19, 23, 31–32, 47, 52, 54, 56–58, 62–64, 69–74, 77, 86–87, 93, 97, 105, 110, 112, 135, 139, 141, 143–44, 151, 153–56, 169–72, 176–79, 181, 189, 196, 200–201 counterinsurgency 69, 71 imperialist 10, 20, 178 national 75, 141 normal 93, 96, 98 state apparatus 70–71 state power 70–71 Stettner 157, 185, 194–95 Streeck 129–30, 165 strength 32, 80, 100 structural adjustments 177, 179 structural basis 52, 136 structural behaviors 121, 196 structural conditions 10, 168, 179 structural crises, recurring 49 structural crisis 1–2, 11–12, 149, 152, 210 deep 165 structural reforms 39, 46, 55–56, 63, 110, 122, 132, 135–36, 149, 171–72, 175, 177, 185–88, 191–92, 208 structure changing 34 economic 43, 162 polarized 86, 110

Index polarized production 66, 86 productive 48, 54 styles 34, 100, 110 subcategories 1, 205 sub-imperialism 47, 53, 73–74, 85 sub-imperialists 74–75 subject 2, 7, 88, 90, 93, 95, 102, 111, 128, 133, 155, 157, 172, 176, 208, 212 subjectivity 173, 175 subordination 7, 47, 53, 71, 90, 127, 177 Sub-Saharan Africa 162, 184 subsidies 10, 174 subsistence 128, 138, 172 substance 87, 169 succession 153 suicides 173 super-exploitation 1–2, 7–11, 19, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47–55, 57–59, 61, 63, 65–67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79–117, 119, 121, 123, 125–29, 131–33, 135–40, 142–43, 145–48, 167–68, 188, 204–8, 210 extension of 2, 89, 94, 113, 115, 210 mechanism of 204, 206 universalization of 82 super-exploitation category 58, 88, 90, 95, 99, 105, 117, 134 super-exploitation of work 43, 205 super-exploitation regime 1–2, 8, 10–11, 55–56, 80–81, 83–84, 97, 102, 116, 130, 132, 135–36, 144, 157, 175, 204, 209, 211 super-exploitation theory 47, 114 superiority 16, 51, 87 supremacy 24, 144, 146, 154, 156, 159 surplus 148, 166 surplus labor 83, 91, 124, 128, 177 surplus value 2, 18–19, 43–45, 47, 50–51, 53, 62, 64–68, 74, 82–83, 88–90, 92–93, 95, 98–101, 107–9, 113, 115–16, 121, 123–24, 126–28, 134, 139, 143, 146–47, 152–53, 155–57, 165, 167, 175–77, 188 development of relative 128 extracting 81 extracting absolute 44 extraordinary 51, 94, 111 hegemony of relative 11, 132, 138 highest possible 134 increasing 85 method of production of relative 44–45, 135

255 preceded relative 116 prevalence of absolute 44, 132 producing 89 production dynamics of relative 126, 138 production of absolute 56, 91–92, 96, 98, 101–2, 111, 199 rate of 99 subordinated absolute 132 transfers of 63, 108 surplus value production 85 surplus workers 84 syllogism 115 synthesis 26, 104, 150 Syria 13–14, 22, 28, 33, 154, 158, 210 system 1–2, 8–9, 13, 15, 25–26, 29, 32, 34, 43–44, 64–65, 67, 69, 73, 80, 83–84, 94, 121–22, 125, 132, 134–35, 137–38, 146–48, 154–56, 163, 165, 168–69, 174, 177, 210, 212 dependent 48, 51 economic 18, 74, 157, 170 global 13, 179 social 103, 179 systemic crises 28, 45, 121, 146, 174 Table 17, 28, 68, 106, 145, 160–62, 166, 182–85, 188–90, 193–94, 198–201, 203, 208–9 tariffs 17, 37–38 Tasin 151–52, 182, 195 Tasini 25, 37, 150, 196 taxes 17, 21, 30, 36, 151–52, 197 Taylorism 45, 169 technological development 44, 49, 54, 57, 67, 108, 115, 124, 129, 146, 159, 175 technologies, new 52, 54, 64 technology 10, 13, 34, 43, 52–53, 123–24, 128, 138, 142, 146, 164, 170, 175–76 Temer, Michel 74 tendency, marked 73, 186, 193 tensions 56, 73, 168–69, 172, 178 territories 2, 7, 9, 11, 13, 25, 155 national 21–22, 32 Thatcher, Margaret 137 Theoretical Controversies 80–81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117 theory 43, 45–46, 49, 59, 62, 69, 74, 78, 97, 101, 104–5, 109, 113, 116, 126–27, 134, 152, 156, 207 threshold 174, 177–78

256 totality 26, 44, 74 total unemployment 183–84 Toussaint 136–37 Toyotism 55, 66, 82, 171, 175–76, 178 flexible 8, 45, 123 trade 195 trade agreement 36 trajectory 127, 164, 191 transfers 23, 51, 63, 65, 82, 89, 136, 206 transformation 58, 60, 82, 89, 176 transition 34, 49–50, 57, 70, 111, 127, 129–30, 164 translation 60, 71, 78, 131 transnational companies 49, 172 transnational corporations 35, 57, 77, 135 large 76, 136, 156 transportation 202–3, 208 treasury 85, 135, 144, 159–60 Trente Glorieuses 158, 165, 181 Trump, Donald 1, 2, 12, 15, 17–18, 24–25, 27–33, 37–38, 30, 146, 149, 151–52, 157, 167, 197, 210–11 Ukraine 16, 162, 210 underdevelopment 47, 52, 58, 102, 140–41 underemployment 9, 170 undocumented people 14 unemployment 9, 19, 65, 81, 84, 86, 115, 137, 146, 163–64, 171–73, 177, 181–82, 184 mass 125, 174 open 58, 173, 182, 184 unemployment figures 181, 184 unemployment rate 65, 164, 182–85 official 162, 211 Unemployment rate and total unemployment 183–84 Unequal Exchange and Super-Exploitation 107 unionization 1, 179 unions 139, 165, 169, 174, 178–79, 204 United Kingdom 24, 146, 161, 184 United States 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12–33, 35–38, 45–46, 54, 57, 60–63, 68, 73–77, 81–82, 86, 106–7, 110–12, 143–46, 149–52, 157–61, 163–64, 167–68, 180–82, 184–88, 190–91, 193, 195–99, 201–4, 206–7, 209–11 United States and Canada 55, 77, 188 United States and Japan 35, 65, 142, 190

Index United States Department of Labor 199–200 United States Minimum 199 United States Senate 30 universalization 2, 8, 55, 64, 82, 96–97, 129, 143 universities 59 ups 182, 196 US 14, 17, 20, 25, 31, 151, 160 US capitalism 2, 164 US dollars 199, 208 US economy 18, 37, 163–64 US government 23, 77, 159–60, 167 US imperialism 27, 75, 158 US interests 17, 26, 38, 77 US labor force 199 US Salary History 191 ussr 69, 178 Valenzuela 16, 124–25, 130, 148 validity 44, 64, 105, 112 Validity of Dependency Theory 52 valorization 85, 93, 108, 143, 188 value 43, 50, 52–54, 56, 62–63, 66, 81–84, 87–96, 99–101, 103, 105–9, 112–13, 116, 121, 123–25, 127–30, 132–34, 136, 139, 145–47, 150, 152, 155–57, 164–65, 175–78, 194, 199, 201–4, 207–8, 210 law of 2, 8, 43–44, 55–56, 64, 82–83, 90, 94–95, 98–100, 106, 113, 129, 133, 135, 155 new 98, 167 real 48, 54, 91, 128, 135, 208 total 94, 112 transfer 67, 109, 127, 143 transfer of 47, 67, 82, 92–93, 95, 108 transfers of value and surplus 68, 74, 90, 95, 107–8, 146 use 87–88, 97, 101, 122 Vasapollo 141, 145, 171–72, 176 Vasconcellos 46, 59, 62 vehicles 37, 131, 177 Veltmeyer 142, 156–57 Venezuela 15, 23, 26, 60–61, 69–70, 77, 146, 158, 210 Venezuelan people 15, 61 Vergopoulos 157–58 Vietnam 27, 29, 106, 162 Violation and expropriation of salary 191, 204 violence 21, 25, 60–61

Index Virginia 25, 201 Vitale 48 votes, popular 15 vulnerability 169, 205 wage differentials 19 wage divergences 105 wage earners 203 wage growth 187 real 187 wage levels 138 wage relation 205 wages 10, 12, 17–18, 56, 81, 84–85, 89, 98, 100, 112–13, 129, 131, 140–42, 148, 151, 154, 176, 181, 186, 192, 196–97, 202, 205–9 determination of 56 insufficient 204 miserable 196 period average manufacturing 186 promised 206 reduced 112, 162 reducing 142 stagnant 211 stagnation of 57, 197 wage slavery 78 wage structure 188 wage theft 205–6 wall 29–30, 32–33 Wallerstein’s world system analysis 117 wall of ignominy 30–31, 197, 211 Wall Street 14–15, 130, 150 Walmart 196 war 10, 13–14, 22–23, 25–28, 158 civil 25, 60 Washington 16, 21, 24, 37, 72, 75, 201 Washington Consensus 63, 70, 156, 178 waters 33, 155, 202 wealth 123–24, 164 production of 123, 145 Weil, Simone 122 welfare state 21, 28, 112, 129, 141, 159, 170–71, 178–79 Western Europe 54, 130, 159, 184 White House 14, 16, 26, 30, 37, 160 Wolff 12, 15 women 79, 169, 174, 180 work 1–2, 9, 28, 30–31, 34–35, 43–45, 51–57, 59, 63–66, 80–81, 87–88, 90–92, 94–97, 100–103, 106, 108, 110–14, 122–25, 128–29,

257 131–32, 134–36, 138, 140, 142, 150–51, 168–79, 181–82, 185, 198–200, 204–7 annual 198 necessary 83, 98–99, 101, 124, 204 part-time 180, 198 precariousness of 1, 169, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209 salaried 168, 177 temporary 82, 179–81 unpaid 180, 206 work and social tension 56, 169 work contract 170, 206 workday 99, 198 workers 9, 17–19, 34, 36, 38–39, 48, 50, 54–58, 62–66, 78, 81, 83, 87–88, 91–92, 94–103, 105, 110–12, 114, 121–24, 128–29, 131, 135–38, 147–49, 160, 167–70, 172–73, 175–82, 185, 195–202, 204–8 full-time 181, 198–200, 206 greater exploitation of 48, 54 migrant 20, 141 permanent 180–81 real wages of 82, 160, 191 salaried 103, 192 temporary 180–81 typical 193, 197, 201 undocumented 12, 21, 29–30, 33, 150, 211 wages of 197, 206 work force 9, 34, 50, 66, 87–88, 92, 96, 98, 105, 107, 110, 113, 166, 199, 202, 211 workforce 28, 45, 49, 66, 73, 83, 97, 109–10, 121, 123–24, 129, 176, 181 working classes 10, 12, 55, 66, 102–4, 108, 112, 115, 117, 126, 131, 137–38, 142, 150, 169, 172, 174–76, 178–79, 201, 203, 205, 210 white 12, 150 working day 44, 50, 58, 84–85, 91–92, 96–97, 99, 101, 132, 198, 204 working hours 2, 206 working populations 175, 186 working time 81, 91, 122–23, 132, 204 work organization 8, 82, 175 workplace 56, 114 work processes 2, 9–10, 44, 55–57, 121, 154, 178–79 World Bank 9, 25, 28, 130, 144, 148, 153 world capitalism 2, 90, 102, 110, 127, 140, 158, 210

258 world capitalist economy 2, 82, 88, 125, 152 world capitalist system 132, 156 World Economic Forum 157 World Economic Outlook 162 world economy 2, 10, 29, 66, 68, 74, 83, 85, 95, 125, 128, 136, 142, 145, 157–58, 165, 181, 197 world market 9, 48, 50, 53, 67–68, 75, 86, 95, 102, 107, 109–10, 129, 132, 136–38, 166–67 world scale 19, 66, 83, 153

Index world system 134, 136, 210 world trade 29, 166 World War 28, 140 World War ii 27, 34, 55, 76, 114, 163, 191 Worth Saving 194 wto 129, 166 Yemen 14, 33 Yudken, Joel S. 157, 185, 194–95