Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy | Nature Communications
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Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains. Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labour in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages. We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level. This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income. Hickel and colleagues find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. They find Southern wages are 87-95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.
  • Vampire [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    51·
    5 months ago

    Can you summarise?

    There is no unequal exchange. Workers in more developed countries get paid more because they produce more per hour. There are statistics showing the amount of steel or the amount of grain produced per man-hour of labour in India might be 10-100 times lower than in the USA or UK (because workers use more technologically advanced tools).

    Hickel’s paper says “We find that Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill.” – but a worker of equal skill working a big induction furnace to a worker using a charcoal furnace produces more. He does more socially-necessary-labour per labour-hour.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      31·
      5 months ago

      There is no unequal exchange. Workers in more developed countries get paid more because they produce more per hour.

      …

      There are statistics showing the amount of steel or the amount of grain produced per man-hour of labour in India might be 10-100 times lower than in the USA or UK (because workers use more technologically advanced tools).

      The important question to ask here, if we want to work within this model, is why countries in the periphery do not use the labour techniques and tools used by by centre and combine this with their lower peripheral wages? Surely this would generate more profit than using their inefficient techniques. Secondly, if this could be the case, why hasn’t all capital fled from the centre to the periphery, as this would make the most profit. Lastly, given the current distribution of techniques and technology being what it is, one has to ask the question: is the international division of labour that results from that, with the centre specialising in certain branches of production, and the periphery responsible for other branches, compatible with equal exchange? If it was, the fractional share of products the centre produces that are exchanged for what the periphery produces, at a single price for each product, should be equal. But is it?

      One possible answer here is that labour is not exploited uniformly; the rates of surplus value are unequal. And this needs to be explained in terms of value, rather than in direct prices. And how is this unequal exploitation of labour manifested? It is manifested through unequal exchange. It is this unequal exploitation of labour, and the unequal exchange that results from it, that dictates inequality in the international distribution of labour. Demand is distorted structurally across a global scale, which accelerates self centred acculturation in the centre, while hindering dependent, extroverted accumulation in the periphery.

      • Vampire [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        It’s a more classically Marxist way of looking at it.

        Marx locates the origin of exploitation in the wage system.

        I don’t think you’ll find unequal exchange mentioned in Marx or Engels.

        Can we abolish exploitation by trade treaties? Or do we need to abolish capital?

        Not sure which side of the debate I am on, still pondering.

        • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          5 months ago

          I’ve updated my first response.

          But as for looking at it in a Marxist way (obviously you are correct in that Marx did not mention unequal exchange, the chapter of Capital based on international trade never saw daylight and it is impossible to know what Marx would’ve written), Samir Amin came up with two accumulation models.

          I have proposed two accumulation models, one involving the center and the other the periphery. The model involving the center is governed by the articulation of Capital’s two Departments, I and II, which, by that fact, expresses the coherence of a self-centered capitalist economy. Contrariwise, in the periphery model, the articulation that governs the reproduction of the system links exports (the motive force) to (induced) consumption. The model is “outward-turned” (as opposed to “self-centered”). It conveys a “dependence,” in the sense that the periphery adjusts “unilaterally” to the dominant tendencies on the scale of the world system in which it is integrated, these tendencies being the very ones governed by the demands of accumulation at the center…

          These conditions, governing accumulation on a world scale, thus reproduce unequal development. They make clear that the underdeveloped countries are so because they are super-exploited and not because they are backward…

          The “two models,” nonetheless, constitute but a single reality, that of accumulation operative on a world scale, and characterized by the articulation of Marx’s Departments I and II—grasped henceforward at the global scale and no longer at the scale of societies at the center. For the periphery’s exports, at this scale, become constitutive elements of constant capital and variable capital (whose prices they lower), while their imports fulfill functions analogous to those of Department III: that is to say, they facilitate the realization of excess surplus-value.