Forced and Unfree Labour: An Analysis

Abstract

In 2011, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) produced a new estimate of 20.9 million victims of forced labour. Forced labour continues to be found in almost all countries and all economic sectors. This persistence and development of forced labour raises various issues that we explore in this paper. It is free labour that is central to the Marxist account of capitalism, both in terms of its economic and ideological dynamics. There is, therefore, a potential tension for Marxist theory in terms of the persistence and diversification of forced labour, and we explore this, drawing also on the “realist” concepts of agency and structure. For forced labour to flourish, as clearly it is, there must also be a combination of motive and opportunity in the contemporary world. One can, therefore, ask what kind of capitalism promotes forced labour.

Keywords:

• forced labour
• unfree labour
• ILO
• neo-liberalism
• Archer

Notes on Contributors

Jamie Morgan is coordinator of the Association for Heterodox Economics, and co-editor of Real World Economics Review, the world's largest subscription open source economics journal. He has published in most areas of economics, but is particularly interested in financial stability and the broader consequences of financial systems and financial practices.

Wendy Olsen works at the Cathie Marsh Centre, University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the sociology of economic life. She specialises in the study of economic institutions from sociological and moral economy vantage points. Her research has included case studies of Indian and UK labour markets, the credit market involvements of the poor in India, and other topics in economic sociology.

Notes

¹The ILO acknowledges that its re-estimation is likely also highly conservative for a variety of reasons: 1) part of the methodology estimates from samples of reported cases and given the nature of forced labour those reports are likely to be a fraction of the whole problem; 2) many instances are also not easily classified because of the way forced labour shades into exploitation without clear indicators of “forced” (what makes psychological menace, etc.); 3) some areas are additionally “grey,” child labour is endemic in many poorer nations, particularly in agriculture, but countries like India exclude agricultural work for minors from their statistics, making it difficult to calculate comparable forced labour rates for children (there is also an issue created by different legal working ages in different countries); 4) The US Department of State Trafficking in Persons Reports (e.g., US Department of State 2011) categorise some countries as not fully compliant with forced labour protocols based on various issues of data collection and enforcement. India, for example is currently categorised as Tier 2, meaning non-compliant with its ratification of the 2000 UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorisation Act 2003. The numbers of trafficked victims are increasing and the government is currently failing to provide evidence that it is making satisfactory efforts to reduce trafficking (though India was recognised for its formal commitment and “uneven progress”).

²A useful checklist for forced labour characteristics is provided by the ILO (2005, 6), please refer to appendix 1.

³For example, estimates for the number of slaves in Athens after 500 BCE indicate that the slave population outnumbered the free population (though slavery categories were highly differentiated); slavery can be the dominant form of social relation in a pre-capitalist system. For discussion of how slavery was justified in Greece—with some reference to Marx from volume 3 of Capital—see Millett (2007).

⁴As Bob Jessop has pointed out, morphogensis as a conceptual underpinning for empirical work has many advantages. Its focus on the differentiations of agent-structure brought together through temporal interactions allows one to encompass recursive conditioning, mutuality, and complex co-evolution. As such it is an effective approach to sketching out social activity. Jessop, however, prefers the strategic-relational approach (SRA) in so far as he thinks this pays greater attention to the complex mix of spatio-temporal structures and of social forces (Jessop 2005, 48).

⁵Palley (2007, 3) defines financialisation as: “A process whereby financial markets, financial institutions and financial elites gain greater influence over economic policy and outcomes. Financialisation transforms the functioning economic systems at both the macro and micro levels. Its principal impacts are to 1) elevate the significance of the finance sector relative to the real sector, 2) transfer income from the real sector to the finance sector and 3) increase income inequality and contribute to wage stagnation.” For a Marxist analysis see Lapavitsas (2012); for its pervasive social consequences see Martin (2002); for the impacts of financial organisations on corporations and labour see Morgan (2009, 2013a, 2013b).

⁶The ILO for example highlights this beginning from: “The term ‘informal economy’ refers to all economic activities by workers and economic units that are—in law or in practice—not covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements. Their activities are not included in the law, which means that they are operating outside the formal reach of the law; or they are not covered in practice, which means that although they are operating within the formal reach of the law, the law is not applied or not enforced; or the law discourages compliance because it is inappropriate, burdensome, or imposes excessive costs” (ILO 2002, 2).

⁷The most prominent area of debate and disinformation here is probably child labour in the developing world. The argument that child labour is an alternative to poverty is self-serving. Children become labourers because of the poor terms and conditions offered in general to the most vulnerable in society. It is the collective impoverishment of classes and castes that leads to child labour. Furthermore, child labour is not typically necessary in order to meet an explosive demand for labour within the economy. Child labour is preferred because it is cheap and can be exploited. It is part of the way in which the terms and conditions of adults are reduced and it is part of the reason why there is often adult urban unemployment. Forced child labour has become a constituent in the inequalities of development that are typical of, for example, the Indian economy. It has done so because structural relations maintain the vulnerability of some to forced labour work patterns and because those relations have carried over into new contexts as the Indian economy has changed.

⁸As is well documented, economics does not deal well with issues of ethics, morals and systems and this is not new to neo-classical theory as a main legitimation for neo-liberalism. Schumacher (1993, 18), for example, in developing the concept of natural capital and arguing for decent work, is highly critical of Keynes' essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” which argues that self-interest (vice and selfishness) are necessary to promote growth in order to achieve a better society later. Keynes could easily be caught in a contradiction regarding labour standards and the existence of exploitation here [I thank Victoria Chick for this point].

⁹One should recall Erik Olin Wright here on the rise and contradictions of modern capitalism as a challenge to Marxism in the wake of the collapse of the communist states: “there is the political challenge posed by the dramatic historical developments of recent years, which call into question the feasibility of a critical theory normatively anchored in socialism. Some people might think that these challenges will ultimately lead towards a dissolution of Marxism as a coherent intellectual tradition. . . . While there may be no going back to the confident assurances of Marxism as a comprehensive paradigm of everything, it is also the case that any serious attempt to understand the causes of oppressions in order to enhance the political projects aimed at their elimination must include as part of its core agenda the analysis of class” (Wright 1993, 23).

¹⁰Scholar-activists, such as Heikki Patomaki or Barry Gills argue that the recent crisis within neo-liberalism may well have exacerbated the immediate problems of labour but that the historical moment also provides a new opportunity for progressive social movement responses to the inherent instabilities of neo-liberalism. Patomaki, in particular, is of the opinion that neo-liberalism will not survive long as a system (see, e.g., Patomaki 2013; Gills and Gray 2012).