[Marxism] World proletarianisation and the absolute law of capitalist accumulation

["Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

1. GROWING URBANISATION

Some 46 per cent of the world's population are presently urban dwellers, a
figure expected to rise to half of the global population by 2006, according
to the 1996-based Revision of "World Urbanisation Prospects" just released.
Most of that growth will come in smaller urban areas, that currently have
less than a half million residents. In 1800, only 3 percent of the world's
population lived in urban areas. By 1900, almost 14 percent were urban,
although only 12 cities had 1 million or more inhabitants. In 1950, 30
percent of the world's population resided in urban centers. The number of
cities with over 1 million people had then grown to 83.

An urban area can be statistically defined by the number of residents, the
population density, the percent of people not dependent upon agriculture, or
the provision of such public utilities and services as electricity and
education. Typically though, a community or settlement with a population of
2,000 or more is defined as "urban". A listing of country definitions is
published annually in the UN Demographic Yearbook.

Urbanisation always implies increasing dependence of the population on the
market for a livelihood. A peasant family can feed, clothe and shelter
themselves in subsistence farming by their own work, but urban dwellers can
not. To obtain an income, they must sell their own labour or the products of
their work. But even in rural areas  production for the market is
increasing, and thus typically the percentage of the rural workforce in
developing countries engaged in non-farm work now to the order of 30-40
percent. Hence, urbanisation implies proletarianisation.

The UN revision reveals a slightly lower pace of urbanisation than
previously predicted. Over three-fifths of the population will be urban by
2030, i.e. five years later than previously anticipated. Projections show
that by 2030, 8 in 10 people will live in cities in the more developed
regions, while 57 per cent of the population in the less developed regions
will be urban dwellers.  In three decades,  one in two Africans or two
Asians will live in cities. More than 8 in 10 Latin Americans, Europeans and
North Americans will be urban dwellers and, three of every four Oceanians
will live in cities.

2. THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

In 1975, two-thirds of the world's workers were largely cut off from the
capitalist world market by protectionism and centrally planned economy,
which imposed a state monopoly of foreign trade as a barrier against
imperialist exploitation; now more than 90 percent of the world's labour
force works in countries producing for the world market. In the next three
decades, the world's labour force, which doubled since 1965, will increase
by more than a billion. Almost all of that rise will be in the low- and
middle-income countries which have higher birth rates. World
proletarianisation is powerfully boosted by the four-step economic regime
forced through by the IMF:

1. Privatisation: privatization of state industries has top highest
priority. Weak nartional currencies allow foreign dollar investors to buy up
the main property assets of a country. The responsible politicians of the
country are often corrupted with enticing secret deals to privatize the
national assets.

2. Deregulation of money and capital markets: the IMF requires that banking
and financial markets are opened to foreign investors. The large speculators
can become established in a country, amass assets in speculative deals, make
large profits and then sell quickly, while the economy of the country
collapses behind them. Next, the multinational corporations enter into the
fray and buy up the devalued assets very cheaply.

3. Market-pricing: fixing a country's domestic prices corresponding to the
market, i.e. abolishing state subsidies and price controls. In developing
countries, gasoline, food and other essential goods for the population have
often been subsidized by the state. The IMF aims to drastically slash state
budgets to minimize state influence on the economy, making a country
defenseless against foreign takeover of its major assets, and causing the
Left to philosophise about globalisation.

4. Currency devaluation: the IMF requires massively devaluing the currency
of a particular country, to make exports "more competitive" and create
higher incomes, so foreign dollar debts can be paid off. Thus, countries
must export more and more to gain the same dollar profit from export
surpluses. This reduces raw material prices for the multinational
corporations that use those inputs.

If as a result of IMF policy the prices of primary products fall, the rural
population is impoverished, becomes indebted, and is forced off the land,
whereupon it migrates to urban areas in search of a better income and a
better life.

The IMF can thus be seen as the animating spirit of Marx's law of value on a
world scale, since the thrust of its policy is to integrate all countries
into the capitalist world market, and encourage the establishment of global
production prices traded in the world market. But as Marx showed, the
accumulation of capital is predicated on the growth of the working class,
and thus the expansion of the capitalist world market is predicated on the
growth of the working class, as well as on the prerequisite of that growth,
namely mass unemployment, which is crucial to enforcing the proletarian
condition. After all, the "working class" consists of all those workers who,
lacking other means of livelihood, are forced to work for an employer to
obtain a money-wage or salary. If there is no unemployment, that compulsion
disappears and workers can lever up their wages, causing rising labour costs
for employers.

3. THE WORLD WORKING CLASS

There are few comprehensive quantitative studies of the world labor force by
academics which make an analysis of the world's social classes as defined by
income source and the social relations of production. Nevertheless ILO's
World Employment Report 2001 and supporting ILO data provide some useful
information. See for example:
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/support/publ/wer/tables/tabl_toc.htm .

Paul Bairoch published a more comprehensive, in-depth study in 1968 called
"La population active et sa structure" (The working population and its
structure - Bruxelles : Université Libre, 1968, 236 pp. series Statistiques
internationales rétrospectives; vol. 1). Prof. Bairoch has the merit of
quantitatively tracing the origins of the European proletariat from the
middle ages onwards, in various publications.

Another detailed study was done by Deon Filmer more recently called
'Estimating the World at Work', as a background report for World Bank's
World Development Report 1995 (Washington DC, 1995). See
monarch.worldbank.org. Filmer estimated 2,474 million people participated in
the global non-domestic labour force in the mid-1990s. Of these around a
fifth, 379 million people, worked in industry, 800 million in services, and
1,074 million in agriculture. The majority of employees in industry and
services, Filmer notes, are wage & salary earners - 58 percent  in the
industrial workforce and 65 percent of the services workforce. But a big
portion are self-employed or involved in family labour. Filmer suggests the
total of employed people worldwide in the 1990s was about 880 million,
compared with around a billion working on own account on the land (mainly
peasants), and 480 million working on own account in industry and services.

 'Employed people' of course includes higher managers, executives and
professionals as well (about 10 percent), suggesting an employed world
working class of about 700 million, a third in 'industry' and the rest in
'services'. If dependents (non-employed spouses, children and retired
elderly people) are included, the proletarianised population is between 1.5
and 2 billion, and if unemployed people are included, the total is still
larger. The expansion of the services sector in the capitalist world economy
is quantitatively analysed by Bob Rowthorn in 'Where are the Advanced
Economies Going?', in G M Hodgson et al (eds), Capitalism in Evolution
(Cheltenham, 2001).

In Britain, the "locus classicus" of industrial capitalism analysed by Karl
Marx, two-thirds of adults feel proud to be among the ranks of the working
class, according to  poll results which were released by Mori on 20 August
2002. The Social Value poll by Mori also found half of those in the middle
classes had "working class feelings". Of the 1,875 adults interviewed, 68%
agreed that, "at the end of the day, I'm working class and proud of it". In
1999, just 52% shared that sentiment, with 58% in 1997 and 51% in 1994. See
further http://www.mori.com/

(Acknowledgements: Chris Harman, Marcel van der Linden, Associated Press,
United Nations).

Jurriaan





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