Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 25. Mars
2012 / Time Line March 25, 2012
Version 3.5
24. Mars 2012, 26. Mars 2012
03/25/2012
"Back To Child Labor And Slavery?"
By John Scales Avery
Until the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th
centuries, human society maintained a more or less sustainable
relationship with nature. However, with the beginning of the
industrial era, traditional ways of life, containing both ethical
and environmental elements, were replaced by the money-centered,
growth-oriented life of today, from which these vital elements are
missing.
According to Adam Smith (1723-1790), self-interest (even greed) is
a sufficient guide to human economic actions. The passage of time
has shown that Smith was right in many respects. The free market,
which he advocated, has turned out to be the optimum prescription
for economic growth. However, history has also shown that there is
something horribly wrong or incomplete about the idea that
individual self-interest alone, uninfluenced by ethical and
ecological considerations, and totally free from governmental
intervention, can be the main motivating force of a happy and just
society. There has also proved to be something terribly wrong with
the concept of unlimited economic growth.
In the
early 19 th century, industrial society began to be governed by new
rules: Traditions were forgotten and replaced by purely economic
laws. Labor was viewed as a commodity, like coal or grain, and
wages were paid according to the laws of supply and demand, without
regard for the needs of the workers. Wages fell to starvation
levels, hours of work increased, and working conditions
deteriorated.
John Fielden's book, “The Curse of the Factory System”
was written in 1836, and it describes the condition of young
children working in the cotton mills. “The small nimble
fingers of children being by far the most in request, the custom
instantly sprang up of procuring 'apprentices' from the different
parish workhouses of London, Birmingham and elsewhere... Overseers
were appointed to see to the works, whose interest it was to work
the children to the utmost, because their pay was in proportion to
the quantity of work that they could exact.”
“Cruelty was, of course, the consequence; and there is
abundant evidence on record to show that in many of the
manufacturing districts, the most heart-rending cruelties were
practiced on the unoffending and friendless creatures... that they
were flogged, fettered and tortured in the most exquisite
refinements of cruelty, that they were in many cases starved to the
bone while flogged to their work, and that they were even in some
instances driven to commit suicide... The profits of manufacture
were enormous, but this only whetted the appetite that it should
have satisfied.”
With the gradual acceptance of birth control in England, the growth
of trade unions, the passage of laws against child labor and
finally minimum wage laws, conditions of workers gradually
improved, and the benefits of industrialization began to spread to
the whole of society. Among the changes which were needed to insure
that the effects of technical progress became beneficial rather
than harmful, the most important were the abolition of child labor,
the development of unions, the minimum wage law, and the
introduction of birth control.
One of the important influences for reform was the Fabian Society,
founded in London in 1884. The group advocated gradual rather than
revolutionary reform (and took its name from Quintus Fabius
Maximus, the Roman general who defeated Hannibal's Carthaginian
army by using harassment and attrition rather than head-on
battles). The Fabian Society came to include a number of famous
people, including Sydney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw,
H.G. Wells, Annie Besant, Leonard Woolf, Emaline Pankhurst,
Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes, Harold Laski, Ramsay
MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Tony Benn and Harold Wilson. Jawaharlal
Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, was greatly influenced by
Fabian economic ideas.
The group was instrumental in founding the British Labour Party
(1900), the London School of Economics and the New Statesman. In
1906, Fabians lobbied for a minimum wage law, and in 1911 they
lobbied for the establishment of a National Health Service.
The reform movement's efforts, especially those of the Fabians,
overcame the worst horrors of early 19 th century industrialism,
but today their hard-won achievements are being undermined and lost
because of uncritical and unregulated globalization. Today, a
factory owner or CEO, anxious to avoid high labor costs, and
anxious to violate environmental regulations merely moves his
factory to a country where laws against child labor and rape of the
environment do not exist or are poorly enforced. In fact, he must
do so or be fired, since the only thing that matters to the
stockholders is the bottom line. One might say (as someone has
done), that Adam Smith's invisible hand is at the throat of the
world's peoples and at the throat of the global environment.
The movement of a factory from Europe or North America to a country
with poorly enforced laws against environmental destruction, child
labor and slavery puts workers into unfair competition. Unless they
are willing to accept revival of the unspeakable conditions of the
early Industrial revolution, they are unable to compete.
Today, child labor accounts for 22 % of the workforce in Asia, 32 %
in Africa, and 17 % in Latin America. Large-scale slavery also
exists today, although there are formal laws against it in every
country. There are more slaves now than ever before – their
number is estimated to be between 12 million and 27 million.
Besides outright slaves, who are bought and sold for as little as
100 dollars, there many millions of workers whose lack of options
and dreadful working conditions must be described as slavelike.
The CRO's of Wall Street call for less government, more
deregulation and more globalization. They are delighted that the
work of the reform movement is being undone in the name of
“freedom”. But is this really what is needed? Perhaps
we need instead to reform our economic system to give it both a
social conscience and an ecological conscience. Perhaps some of the
things that the world produces and consumes today are not really
necessary.
Governments already accept their responsibility for education.
Perhaps in the future they will also accept the responsibility for
insuring that their citizens can make a smooth transition from
education to secure jobs. The free market alone cannot do this
– the powers of government are needed. Let us restore
democracy! Let us have governments that work for the welfare of all
their citizens, rather than for the enormous enrichment of the
few!
Suggestions for further reading
1. John Fielden, “The Curse of the Factory System”,
(1836).
2. Adam Smith, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”,
(1859); D.D. Raphael and A.L. MacPhie, editors, Clarendon, Oxford,
(1976).
3. Adam Smith, “An Inquery into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations”, (1776), Everyman edn., 2 vols., Dent,
London, (1910).
4. Charles Knowlton, “The Fruits of Philosophy, or The
Private Companion of Young Married People”, (1832).
5. John A. Hobson, “John Ruskin, Social Reformer”,
(1898).
6. E. Pease, “A History of the Fabian Society”, Dutton,
New York, (1916).
7. W. Bowdin, “Industrial Society in England Towards the End
of the Eighteenth Century”, MacMillan, New York, (1925).
8. G.D. Cole, “A Short History of the British Working Class
Movement”, MacMillan, New York, (1927).
9. P. Deane, “The First Industrial Revolution”,
Cambridge University Press, (1969).
03/25/2012
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