Award-winning book showcases case studies uncovering the
exploitation of labor and class in the Global South
Winner of the 2018 Paul M. Sweezy – Paul A. Baran Memorial Award
for original work regarding the political economy of imperialism,
Intan Suwandi’s Value Chains examines the exploitation of
labor in the Global South. Focusing on the issue of labor within
global value chains—vast networks of people, tools, and activities
needed to deliver goods and services to the market and controlled by
multinationals—Suwandi offers a deft empirical analysis of unit
labor costs that is closely related to Marx’s own theory of
exploitation.
Value Chains
uncovers the concrete processes through which multinational
corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value
from the Global South. We are brought face to face with various
state-of-the-art corporate strategies that enforce “economical”
and “flexible” production, including labor management methods,
aimed to reassert the imperial dominance of the North, while
continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the
global economy. Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the
growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labor
creates the surplus value that enriches the capitalists of the North,
as well as the secondary capitals of the South. Today, those who
control the value chains and siphon off the profits are primarily
financial interests with vast economic and political power—the
power that must be broken if the global working class is to liberate
itself. Suwandi’s book depicts in concrete detail the relations of
unequal exchange that structure today’s world economy. This study,
up-to-date and richly documented, puts labor and class back at the
center of our understanding of the world capitalist system.
