Foxconn: right and left should stop apologising for China
Posted on Thursday 16 February, 2012
Filed Under International
BARACK Obama’s hot date for Valentine’s Day this year was none other than Xi Jinping, the man set to take over as president of China at the end of this year. The White House celebrated his visit with a level of razzamatazz not usually accorded to anyone short of the rank of head of state, or so we read.
The warm welcome should surprise no-one. Much the embarrassment of the free market right and a sizeable chunk of leftist opinion alike, the alliance between US-based multinational capital and Chinese Stalinism constitutes the most important bilateral economic relationship in the world today.
Anyone seeking a contemporary illustration of the notion of a dialectical unity of opposites need look no further; the one model would simply cease to function without the other.
Whatever the antagonisms between Washington and Beijing – and they are ample points of contention in Asia-Pacific international relations – the two sides share a common interest in the super-exploitation of the Chinese working class.
Even as the 19-gun salute was taking place in Washington, technology giant Apple finally announced that it would allow independent inspections of the Chinese factories turning out the gizmos that have made it the most valuable company on the planet.
Months before he died last year, Apple boss Steve Jobs denied that the iPod and iPhone plants operated by its contractor Foxconn could properly be described as sweatshops.
One awaits the findings of the inspectors, of course. But I do note that some Foxconn workers are paid as little as 30p an hour, with only one permitted break per ten hour shift. Since 2009, at least 18 employees have killed themselves.
Numerous health and safety incidents have seen a further four die, and hundreds more injured. Meanwhile, many of Foxconn’s 70,000 workers live in company dormitories, with up to 20 crammed into three-room apartments.
The free market right doesn’t have a problem with this. However brutal such conditions look to us, they must be a step forward for those who flock in from the countryside take up such employment, right? Bad jobs are better than no jobs.
Meanwhile, progressive opinion is split between those who demand protectionist measures and those taken in by the rhetoric of ‘building socialism with Chinese characteristics’.
While the description of what goes on at Foxconn might remind many of the grim descriptions of 1840s Lancashire textile mills contained in volume one of capital, this is somehow excusable because a party calling itself communist is running the show.
The net result is that demands for free trade unionism, freedom of expression and assembly and multiparty democracy the sole preserve of a handful of brave Chinese dissidents and a smallish consistent minority of the western left. They deserve a far wider hearing.
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10 Responses to “Foxconn: right and left should stop apologising for China”
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All good stuff until the business end. Many of the Chinese dissidents are not anti-Stalinist or anti-regime they are anti-communist and a multi-party democracy would see the peasants used as a make weight to smash what the Stalinists have not yet smashed including any free trade unions and the rapidly emerging mass movement of Chinese workers. Soviet or proletarian democracy is the obvious call to go along with free trade unions, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. We are for the Chinese working class surely not the frustrated and growing pro-imperialist Chinese bourgeoisie and Stalinist bureaucracy.
So how many of us were out there daring the police barricades the last time China’s despot visited London?
Once upon a time tyrants who made state visits to western capitals got demonstrated against – but now we’d rather sit on our fat spotty behinds blogging and tweeting.
Roger. Maybe people spot the hypocrisy eg: Cameron along with British arms dealers visiting our dictator Islamic friends in Saudi and Bahrain etc whilst attacking Libya. China is a major trading capitalist state now Roger. Why go out and protest about them!
Absolutely correct Dave Osler. The Chinese government is the enemy of the Chinese working-class, *even moreso* than David Cameron is the enemy of the British working-class. The aims and attitude are the same, the methods even worse.
‘Leftists’ apologising for the Beijing regime, just like those apologising for Putin’s Moscow (usually the same culprits) are moral cretins, whose senile decaying Stalinist nostalgia blinds them to the truth that pretty much anyone else can see.
As usual, you take a snap shot and ask us to accept that that is how it is for ever and ever, amen! Conditions in the industrial north of England in the 19th c. were, by today’s standards, quite appalling but Marxists fail to mention that no-one forced the workers into their tenements at the point of a bayonet – not least because the tenements were actually an improvement on the hovels they had in the country. Similarly, I remember the likes of ‘Wedgie-Benn’ having hissy-fits over the conditions of Chinese workers in Hong Kong back in the ’70s whilst forgetting to mention that the British army was on the frontier with watchtowers and armed patrols – not to keep the downtrodden workers in but to keep the zillions out who were trying to get in!
The really interesting part of the Foxconn story is the fact that the conditions have been reported on and now inspections will take place and improvements will be made. That is real progress unlike the theoretical bullshit Marxists go in for!
Arthur: the article is fine but the conclusion proposes a bourgeois liberal solution which will result in a Chinese Putin that will make the Russian Putin look like Liberace. In fact ten or twelve Putins all dismembering China with the help of the chinese Stalinist bureaucrats and their imperialist allies. Whilst a constituent assembly is a progressive transitional call in regard of say the Arab Spring, provided we know when to ditch it in favour of All Power to the Independent Organs of the Working Class, in China it would be thoroughly reactionary. We are socialists not liberals and the restoration of bourgeois rule in China would be an utter disaster. The question for us is working class democracy and power and an internationalist perspective. There is no doubt that the wealthier end of the Stalinist bureaucracy will be looking to consolidate and legalise its wealth and thievings and a bourgeois counter revolution initially under the slogan of formal bourgeois democracy is a likely starting point.
The task during glasnost in the Soviet Union was to put forward a programme for political revolution to drive out the bureaucracy not to fall uncritically in behind that wing of stalinism that was seeking restoration.
not many comments on this one. shud hev mentioned JEWS and shit.
everyone leanns fro there mistakes tho don’t they” Eh?
“not many comments on this one. shud hev mentioned JEWS and shit”
What is your excuse? No war to apolgise for?
Duff – ‘Conditions in the industrial north of England in the 19th c. were, by today’s standards, quite appalling but Marxists fail to mention that no-one forced the workers into their tenements at the point of a bayonet’
By today’s standards? FM do you not just gasp at the relativism of the right? On this scale no doubt he thinks Sobibor was just a particularly harsh but necessary rehousing policy.
As for Bayonet’s. Fucking look up ‘Peterloo’!
Martin. The Massacre of the Calton Weavers was first, 1787. They were rode down by an English Cavalry Regiment. Reputedly the first recorded strike in the UK! There is a monument in the Calton Cemetery to commemorate them. For you English that have never been north of London the Calton is in the East End of Glasgow. Worth a visit. The strange thing is that lots of weavers signed up for the same regiment. An empty belly has no conscience.