An apple day...

When it was revealed that 14 Chinese workers at a factory in China making I-pads had committed suicide due to unbearable working conditions, I guess we all thought ‘Huh?’

Details were depressingly familiar to those of us who try very hard to steer away from the worst excesses of corporate greed by voting with our wallets. Employees, according the Observer were being coerced into working as much as 98 hours overtime every month; talking during the 12 hour shifts was forbidden, as was sitting down. The workers were allowed only one day off every fortnight, slept 24 to a single substandard room within a dormitory with décor enlivened only by the anti suicide nets in the corridor. They were paid on average a disgraceful £5.25 a day and the suicides, a despair ridden cry for help if ever there was one were not met with any attempt to improve conditions. Foxconn opted instead to simply force workers to sign anti-suicide pledges thus ensuring bereaved families could not sue the company.

Apple computers posted $6 billion in profits last year, they are one of the most successful companies in the world and for reasons that have always escaped me, create products that consumers react to with an almost sexual fervour. Marx’s consumer fetishism comes into sharp focus before the glassy eyed proselytization of Mac fans, deliriously thankful that Apple has created a physical manifestation of their own self worth. They just have to share the good news do they not? Steve Jobs was eulogised with the kind of prose usually reserved for the death of a royal grandmother and this despite the fact that he was, by all accounts, an asshole of such grandiose proportions that even with personal assets in the billions if he’d ever chosen to use $50 bills as toilet paper, he’d have been broke within a month. [i] He died a saint, whilst Bill Gates, (remember him?)  the world’s largest contributor to charitable causes and certified nice- guy enjoys no similar popularity, an object of derision and contempt his philanthropic efforts wins him no laurels.  

And that’s where the ‘huh’ came in. When 150 workers gathered on the roof, of a Foxconn factory and threatened to jump off in protest of working conditions we were reminded of the world that we have built for ourselves… that the wealth of a nation is too often built on the back of slaves. Britain started the concept, the gray-grim hues of Lawry’s Manchester factories painted a picture of insipid uniformity, of a despair etched into the veins of a society that churned out misery on an industrial scale.[ii] The party could not go on of course, Engels realised before any of us that abject misery was an unsustainable non-renewable resource. Where he erred was his belief that the road to freedom could be predicted, it cannot but nevertheless, the destination remains the same. If capitalism is not increasing prosperity even on utilitarian grounds, then it has simply, got to go.

Apple having sequestered away some $80 billion on their balance sheet, (which by the way is illegal,) have created a battle chest that will no doubt protect them from any of the law suites currently heading their way for human rights abuses. But the sheer scale of their liquid assets raises interesting questions; they are one company one American company that could, if they so wished pay Chinese workers enough money to prevent mass suicide in their factory in the first place. They could go one better, and actually open some factories in the US!  They could do it you know.  Because the American economy, in free fall, with a £274 billion trade deficit between the US and China alone is no more a sustainable proposition than were Lawry’s  grim matchstick men; China makes, America borrows, America consumes, a bastard hypotenuse that those of us familiar with the great crash of 1929 might care to recognise.

The American economy should be dust by now anyway. General Motors had the brilliant idea of moving its factories down to Mexico. ‘Mexicans,’ they must have thought ‘Will work for lower wages!’ Sure moving a factory and training up a work force was expensive but think of the long term, think of the savings! Never mind that the primary consumers of American cars were Americans, never mind that Americans like to buy American-made products, never mind that GM and companies that followed suit denuded the US economy of jobs. Well actually, we should mind, because mass unemployment drove wages down, allowed politicians to ignore the elephant in the room (the military budget,) and pretend that the real problem with the economy was centred on welfare or health or whatever the right wing Zeitgeist flavour-of-the-month scapegoat was that week. General Motors saved so much money moving to Mexico that it spectacularly failed to notice it was impoverishing its loyal consumers; it, as the US was dragged deep into the silt of a global quagmire, went bankrupt in 2009. From a high of over half a million workers in 1979 they dwindled down to just 50,000 in 2009. Well done them. Six months later they had been bailed out; because a US without a GM would be like, well it would be like Britain without Rover…

Whilst corporate America worked hard to ensure that the virtues of the American economy were demolished one by one, politically America was shielded by just about the most enviable trump card you could imagine, its status as the sole possessor world’s reserve currency. The ability to print money in quantities that would have us Europeans making kites out of 100 euro notes shielded and alas blinded Washington to the failure of a neo conservative agenda to deconstruct hard-fought, post road to Wigan pier like advances to liberal democratic living standards, worker rights and values. The huge advantage that the US economy has enjoyed for the past 60 years or so was never unassailable but it was the devil you know for so long that no one really ever attempted to topple it. Well, no one clever attempted to do so at any rate. But  China is as we speak  hoovering up gold in huge quantities; they are already the world’s largest producer of gold and every ounce they dig up is being lovingly added to their reserves… not they would admit to that but then, this is China we’re talking about. If China successfully wrestles the reserve currency from the antediluvian craw of the American economy then we’re going to start seeing a ‘¥’ upon a standard QWERTY keyboard pretty darn soon.

The question we have to ask is, would it really be such a bad thing? China is a beastly place when you think about it, human rights are non existent, workers are literally worked to their death, liberty remains an unaffordable premium, well, unaffordable to most that is. As the US slips into a respectable third or fourth place, new opportunities will arise, opportunities born out of adversity or not that may yet paint a picture of a not wholly depressing nature. Whilst America will longer be able to afford to ‘police’ the world nor will they be so impoverished as to force them into the ruinous isolationism of the past. Maybe, just maybe, America will look to its own prosperity. After all 60 years of meddling in the affairs of others has categorically not increased the prosperity of the many, only of the few and its aggressive military posture created it far more enemies than friends. And China, no more in control of its own destiny than anywhere else will soon find that one billion disgruntled workers demanding rights in the streets will take it too to the inevitable destination.

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[i] [i] For some great examples of his  assholyness  the Jobb see .http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-jerk-2011-10

[ii] Those of you unfamiliar with Lawry’s genius should take a look at http://www.thelowry.com