Introduction
The power or employers to dictate to workers is hardly confined to Canada, of course. Various countries dominated by the class of employers have the right to dictate to workers except as limited by the collective agreement (and, of course, certain legislative acts).
Collective Agreement Between Aimbridge Employee Service Corp. and UNITE HERE! Local 737
From Collective Bargaining Agreement by and between Aimbridge Employee Service Corp. d/b/a Doubletree by Hilton Hotel at the Entrance to Universal Orlando and UNITE HERE Local 737, January 25, 2017 through January 24, 2021, pages 9-10:
4.3 Management Rights Clause
(a) All management rights, powers, authority and functions whether heretofore or hereafter exercised and regardless of frequency or infrequency of the exercise shall remain vested exclusively in the Employer except as otherwise limited by this Agreement. It is expressly recognized that such rights, power, authority and functions include, but are not limited to: the full and exclusive control, management and operations of the Employer’s business and its facilities, the determination of the scope of its activities and the methods pertaining thereto, the location of its operations, the materials and products to be acquired or utilized, and the material and equipment to be utilized, and the layout thereof; the right to establish or change shifts, schedules of work and reasonable production schedules and standards; the right to establish, change, eliminate jobs, positions, job classifications and descriptions; the right to introduce reasonable new or improved procedures, methods, processes, facilities, materials and equipment; the right to maintain order and efficiency; the right to subcontract work contracted out at the execution of this Agreement, the right to subcontract out work in the future for which the Employer does not have the proper equipment or Associates with the requisite skills to perform the work; the determination of the number, size and location of its facilities, and the extent to which the means and manner by which its facilities, or any part thereof, shall be operated, relocated, shutdown or abandoned; the right to terminate, merge, consolidate or otherwise transfer its business or any part thereof; the right to make, modify, eliminate and enforce reasonable safety and security rules and rules of conduct (except the attendance of substance abuse policies which have been established by mutual agreement between the parties and are incorporated by reference herein); the determination of the number of Associates to be employed in the bargaining unit and the number assigned to any particular operation; the right to determine job assignments; the right to change, increase or reduce the workforce, and the direction of the working forces, including but not limited to hiring, selecting and training of new Associates and the suspending, scheduling, assigning, discharging, laying off, recalling, promoting and transferring of its Associates except as otherwise limited by this Agreement.
(b) It is the intention of the Employer and the Union that the rights, powers, authority and functions referred to herein shall remain exclusively vested in the Employer except insofar as specifically surrendered or limited by expression provisions of this Agreement.
(c) The Employer requires Associates to observe Employer rules and regulations as are presently in effect
Since this clause forms part of the collective agreement, does the collective agreement express a fair contract? Does it express the freedom of workers? Does it express a democratic way of life or its opposite? Does it express economic democracy? Economic dictatorship? Economic justice?
There is nothing fair about collective agreements which concentrate most decision-making power over our work lives in the hands of the representatives of employers called managers. Collective agreements limit such power–but they do not by any means challenge such power. Indeed, they do not challenge the dicatorship of employers (see for example Employers as Dictators, Part One). Nor do they challenge the use of human beings as things that are treated as means for other people’s ends.
The law certainly does not prevent the exploitation and oppression of workers; workers may be able to use the law to limit their exploitation and oppression–but not abolish them.
What do you think? Do collective bargaining and collective agreements express something fair? Do they enable workers to be treated as human beings and not as things? Do union members really discuss such issues to any great extent? Do so-called leftists or “progressives?” Why or why not?
Does this clause express a situation where workers experience “decent work?” But let us listen to a supposed radical leftist here in Toronto, Sam Gindin:
Debating whether a job is ‘decent‘ is a misdirection. Everyone pretty much knows, I think, that workers are exploited even if their conditions improve. ‘Decent jobs’ or a ‘good contract’ are a way of expressing defensive gains when radical gains are not even on the table and we – those on this exchange – don’t have the capacity tooter [to offer?] them any kind of alternative jobs. So criticizing them for this hardly seems an effective way to move them to your view – which is not to say you shouldn’t raise it but that you shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t suddenly act on your point.
I doubt that Gindin has tried to raise the issue of managerial rights in any way–like most union reps. He simply, like most of the so-called radical left, ignores the issue, or rather thinks that raising such an issue has minimal importance or is a “misdirection.” Such is the nature of the “radical left” these days.
As for Gindin’s contention that
Everyone pretty much knows, I think, that workers are exploited even if their conditions improve.
Who is this “everyone?” The workers? Do workers really know that they are exploited? If so, where is the evidence of this? Gindin provides none. Frankly, I am astounded how the so-called left fail to crticize such views. Workers generally are not conscious that they are exploited in the sense that they are conscious that they produce more value than what the value of what they receive in the short term. What appears to be the case, in the short term, is that they receive the same value as the value they produce. Gindin, by claiming that everyone is aware of their exploitation (and oppression), flies in the face of the daily experience of workers.
Patrick Murray notes that in capitalist society it appears that the surplus value (profit) that workers produce for free for the capitalist appears as paid for. From page 373:
Turning to the wage, it presents itself as compensation for the labour done by a wage worker, as ‘the price of labour’. That appearance puts a stop to the thought that profit arises from unpaid labour: there is none.
But that is just the appearance. Page 390:
The wage appears to be ‘the price of labour’, compensation for the labour done: ‘On the surface of bourgeois society the worker’s wage appears as the price of labour, as a certain quantity of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour’.
…
Marx discloses the wage form to be the necessary form of appearance of relations of domination and exploitation.
So, the wage form in the short-term actually hides the immediate exploitation of workers by employers. Gindin, despite having written a book about global capitalism, by claiming that “Everyone pretty much knows, I think, that workers are exploited even if their conditions improve” shows that he has failed to grasp the nature of capitalist society. He is an empiricist, and his analysis runs along the surface appearances of capitalist society rather than connecting such appearances to social reality and the inverted nature of such appearances as in fact an essential aspect of such social reality.
What are the ideological implications of the appearance of wages as the price of labour? Workers tend then to believe that they are not exploited and that they are free and received their “just rewards”. Page 367:
Finally, the uncomplicated world of ‘commerce’ is high-minded and progressive: ‘The sphere of circulation or commodity exchange, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham’. What picture emanating from political economy could be more congenial to liberalism?
Gindin, rather than fighting against the ideological appearance of workers receiving the value of the commodities they produce, actually panders after their own beliefs by defending the concept of “decent work.” Despite appearances, he is, in fact, a defender of the class of employers rather than their critic. (I attended a global political economy course presented by the late Leo Panitch; in that course, Panitch indicated that Marx, in using some of the German philosopher Hegel’s ideas (and by implication methodology), Marx took a “wrong turn. Gindin and Panitch wrote several books together).
This applies not only to the short-term situation of workers of being immediately exploited but also to their longer-term situation of being repeatedly exploited.
Longer-term exploitation involves the repetition of the exploitation process such that the past accumulation of capital is taken into account. To understand this situation, I will quote extensively from Marx and another author since they are directly relevant to the issue at hand. The first quote is from Karl Marx’s Capital, pages 727-730, where Marx discusses the accumulation of capital in relation to the immediate exchange between workers and employers.
The relation between employers and workers initially assumes the form of a contractual relation of equal exchange, and this relation and form, if contextualized by providing the wider context of continuous accumulation, can be seen as one-sided and ultimately only a false appearance of what really happens. On the other hand, this false appearance still influences the consciousness of members of the working class:
Let us now return to our example. It is the old story: Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob and so on. The original capital of £10,000 brings in a surplus-value of £2,000, which is capitalized. The new capital of £2,000 brings in a surplus-value of £400, and this too is capitalized, transformed into a second additional capital, which in its turn produces a further surplus-value of £80. And the process continues in this way.
We leave out of account here the portion of the surplus-value consumed by the capitalist. We are also not interested, for the moment, in whether the additional capital is joined on to the original capital, or separated from it so that it can valorize itself independently. Nor are we concerned whether the same capitalist employs it who originally accumulated it, or whether he hands it over to others. All we must remember is this: by the side of the newly formed capital, the original capital continues to reproduce itself and to produce surplus-value, and this is true of all accumulated capital in relation to the additional capital engendered by it.
The original capital was formed by the advance of £10,000. Where did its owner get it from? ‘From his own labour and that of his forefathers’, is the unanimous answer of the spokesmen of political economy. And, in fact, their assumption appears to be the only one consonant with the laws of commodity production.
But it is quite otherwise with regard to the additional capital of £2,000. We know perfectly well how that originated. There is not one single atom of its value that does not owe its existence to unpaid labour. The means of production with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well as the necessaries with which the workers are sustained, are nothing but component parts of the surplus product, parts of the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Even if the latter uses a portion of that tribute to purchase the additional labour-power at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, the whole thing still remains the age-old activity of the conqueror, who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has stolen from them.
If the additional capital employs the person who produced it, this producer must not only continue to valorize the value of the original capital, but must buy back the fruits of his previous labour with more labour than they cost. If we view this as a transaction between the capitalist class and the working class, it makes no difference that additional workers are employed by means of the unpaid labour of the previously employed workers. The capitalist may even convert the additional capital into a machine that throws the producers of that capital out of work, and replaces them with a few children. In every case, the working class creates by the surplus labour of one year the capital destined to employ additional labour in the following year.5 And this is what is called creating capital out of capital.
The accumulation of the first additional capital of £2,000 presupposes that a value of £10,000 exists, advanced by the capitalist, and belonging to him by virtue of his ‘original labour’. The second additional capital of £400 presupposes, on the contrary, only the prior accumulation of the £2,000, of which the £400 is the capitalized surplus-value. The ownership of past unpaid labour is thenceforth the sole condition for the appropriation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increasing scale. The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more is he able to accumulate.
The surplus-value that makes up additional capital no. 1 is the result of the purchase of labour-power with part of the original capital, a purchase which conformed to the laws of commodity exchange and which, from a legal standpoint, presupposes nothing beyond the worker’s power to dispose freely of his own capacities, and the money-owner’s or commodity-owner’s power to dispose freely of the values that belong to him; equally, additional capital no. 2 is merely the result of additional capital no. 1, and is therefore a consequence of the relations described above; hence each individual transaction continues to conform to the laws of commodity exchange, with the capitalist always buying labour power and the worker always selling it at what we shall assume is its real value. It is quite evident from this that the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws based on the production and circulation of commodities, become changed into their direct opposite through their own internal and inexorable dialectic. The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, is now turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange, since, firstly, the capital which is exchanged for labour-power is itself merely a portion of the product of the labour of others which has been appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, the worker, but replaced together with an added surplus. The relation of exchange between capitalist and worker becomes a mere semblance belonging only to the process of circulation, it becomes a mere form, which is alien to the content of the transaction itself, and merely mystifies it. The constant sale and purchase of labour power is the form; the content is the constant appropriation by the capitalist, without equivalent, of a portion of the labour of others which has already been objectified, and his repeated exchange of this labour for a greater quantity of the living labour of others.
The immediate exchange between workers and employers is an exchange of equivalents, so that workers receive the value of their cost of production. However, when considering the larger context of previous production, then the immediate exchange between employer and workers is a semblance or false appearance. The employer uses a part of the surplus produced by the workers in a previous round as means of production (machines, raw material, buildings, etc.) and another part (socially as money and physically as means of consumption, such as food, clothing, shelter) to further employ them (in addition to the initial investment).
When looked at in isolation, though, the exchange relation between workers and employers is indeed one of equivalence. This situation is one of the reason’s why unions and the social democrats often refer to “decent wages” . Indeed, Paul Weiler (1980), in his book Reconcilable Differences: New Directions in Canadian Labour Law argues just that. So too do union reps and unions imply that equal power relations are possible in general when referring to “fair contracts” (see for example Fair Contracts or Collective Agreements: The Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part Three: Unifor (Largest Private Union in Canada)).
Again, the issues of exploitation and the accumulation of capital need to be linked together when determining whether t The following couple of long quotes by Teinosuke Otani (2018) points to this need –a need that Gindin ignores by referring to decent work without even engaging into inquiry into the nature of capitalist relations of production and exchange.
The first long quote has to do with what is called simple reproduction, where the private employer exploits workers by obliging them to work for more time than they themselves cost to produce, thereby enabling the private employer or capitalist to appropriate and then consume the entire surplus value (profit) produced. Since the entire surplus value (profit) is consumed, each year the same level of investment arises–simple reproduction.
From A Guide to Marxian Political Economy: What Kind of a Social System Is Capitalism?, pages 218-224 ( emphases in the original):
8.4 Capital as the Materialisation of Unpaid Labour of Others
Under simple reproduction, it is assumed that the capitalist consumes the entirety of the surplus-value appropriated from the worker year after year. Now let’s assume that during a period of 5 years, a capital value of 1000 brings the capitalist a surplus-value of 200 every year and that the capitalist consumes this entire amount. At the end of the 5 years, he still has the 1000 in capital value that he possessed at the outset, but over the 5 years, he has appropriated 1000 in surplus-value from the worker and consumed this 1000 in value.The capitalist would likely say: «It is precisely because I initially possessed 1000 in value, as the fruit of my own labour, that I was able to appropriate and consume 200 in value every year. The 1000 in value that I advance each year—no matter how many years this is repeated—is the initial value created by my labour».
The situation appears quite different, however, if we carefully observe the process as repeated reproduction.
Let’s take our capitalist at his word here and assume that the 1000 in value he started off with was appropriated through his own labour, so that it is the materialisation of his own labour.
During the 5-year period, the capitalist consumes a sum of value equal to the value he initially possessed. Yet after the 5 years, he is still in possession of a sum of value equal to what he started off with. Why? What is clear is that it is precisely because the capitalist has received the 1000 in surplus value for free that he can still have 1000 in value despite having consumed that amount. The 1000 that he holds after 5 years is thus the result of the 1000 in surplus-value appropriated during the 5 years, merely representing the total sum of 1000 in surplus-value obtained for free. This point can be well understood if we consider what would happen to the capitalist, who consumes 200 in value every year, if he did not appropriate any surplus-value during those years. In such a case, even if he had 1000 the first year, he would have no alternative but to consume 200 every year, reducing by that amount the sum of money that could be advanced as capital. After 5 years, the sum would reach zero and he would cease to be a capitalist. The fact that he is able to still exist as a capitalist at the end of 5 years, with 1000 in capital, is clearly the outcome of appropriating 200 surplus-value every year over the course of that period.
The capitalist in our example has appropriated the materialisation of 1000 in value from another person’s labour during a 5-year period. Since the capitalist is still in possession of 1000 in value after 5 years, having lived by consuming 200 per year, his 1000 is nothing but the materialisation of the labour of others. Even if the capital value the capitalist initially possessed was the materialisation of his own labour, the capital value he is now in possession of after 5 years is the materialisation of the worker’s surplus-value, which is to say, thematerialisation of the labour of others. Starting from the sixth year, the capitalist appropriates further surplus-value that is the materialisation of others’ labour by means of capital value that is also purely the materialisation of the labour of others.
8.5 Reproduction of Capital-ownership Through Appropriating the Labour
of Others…
At first glance, the capital relation, which is the relation of production between capitalists and workers, seems to continue to exist, as is, year after year. In particular, it seems that the pivot of this continuity is the capitalist’s continued possession of capital, which he owned from the outset. In fact, however, as noted in the previous section, the capital relation is not an inorganic entity like a cornerstone, which cannot collapse once put in place unless some outside force is applied, but rather is maintained by being constantly reproduced and formed through the labour of labouring individuals within the production process. This is similar to how the human body is maintained by the infinite number of cells that compose it being replaced every day by newly created ones.
…
Now let’s imagine that a person with no money borrows 1000 in value from someone (assuming that the loan is free of interest) and makes it function as capital for a 5-year period, during which he appropriates 200 in surplus-value every year and that after 5 years he repays the 1000. Once the loan had been repaid, he would return to his penniless state and cease to be a capitalist. In this case, the fact that he was able to exist as a capitalist for 5 years was not because he held on to 1000 in value during the 5 years. Indeed, if the 1000 had not functioned as capital, he would have consumed the 1000 during the 5 years, leaving him with nothing but the debt for that amount. The reason the capitalist is instead able to still have 1000, and was able to consume 200 in value every year, is that during those 5 years, he made the 1000 in value function as capital and was thus able to appropriate 200 in surplus-value from workers each year. It is precisely because of appropriating this unpaid labour that the capitalist is able to exist as a capitalist for a period of 5 years.
Even if, during the 5-year period, he had been able to live without consuming the 200 of surplus-value or had somehow been able to procure a separate consumption fund to last the 5 years, so that even after repaying the 1000 by the end of that period he would have a total of 1000 in value appropriated from workers, it would still be clear that this value is the mass of surplus-value appropriated from the workers.
In short, the capital value owned by the capitalist must sooner or later, through the progression of reproduction, be transformed into the materialisation of the appropriated labour of others, so that the ownership of capital value by the capitalist (even if initially the result of his own labour) is transformed into the outcome of the appropriation of others’ labour, i.e. transformed into the outcome of exploitation carried out in the production process.
In simple reproduction, it is assumed that the original investment came from the labour of the purchaser of the labour power of workers and of the means of production (machinery (such as computers), buildings, raw material, and other such products), but on the basis of that assumption the preservation of the same initial investment arises through the constant exploitation of workers.
In simple reproduction the preservation of the original value of the investment year after year, therefore, is due to the continued exploitation of workers year after year. How can work be decent in such a situation? Let Gindin and other social democrats explain this.
When we consider the real accumulation of capital, where part of the surplus value (profit) produced for free by workers and appropriated by private employers (capitalists) for no equivalent is not consumed but ploughed back into further investments, not only is the original value of original capital preserved through the continued exploitation of workers but the relation between the original capital invested and the new capital invested due to the exploitation of workers increasingly becomes smaller and smaller relatively as the accumulation of capital and the continuous exploitation of workers proceed. From Otani, pages 228-234:
Our assumption here again will be that a capitalist has advanced 1000 in value and then appropriates 200 in surplus-value, all of which is subsequently advanced as additional capital.
Where does the capitalist get this 1000 in capital? The capitalists and the economists who defend their interests respond in unison that this capital was the fruit of the capitalists’ own labour or that of their forbearers. But we have already seen that, even seen from the perspective of simple reproduction, all capital is transformed into a mass of unpaid labour of others through the recurrence of reproduction and that capital-ownership is also reproduced through the appropriation of unpaid labour. But, for now, let us accept the capitalist’s view of the situation.
… commodity holders in the sphere of commodity exchange recognise each other as private owners, but in so doing, they do not concern themselves with how the other person came to possess his commodity. Instead, they can only assume that this other person obtained it through his own labour. This socially accepted assumption that a private owner’s property title stems from own labour is the property laws of commodity production.
When the capitalist initially appears on the market with 1000 and purchases means of production and labour-power at their value, those involved in the commodity and labour markets do not care how he came into possession of the 1000 in value, provided he is the proper owner of that sum. Those involved in the transaction all assume with regard to each other that commodities and money were obtained through their own labour, with each quite content to declare: «I worked to save up this 1000» or «It was obtained through my parents’ hard work». And it seems that this is the only assumption that could be made, according to the property laws of commodity production.
The situation is completely different, however, in the case of the 200 that the capitalist seeks to advance as additional capital. We are perfectly familiar with the process that generates this sum of value, knowing that it was originally surplus-value. This means that the 200 in its entirety is the objectification [materialisation] of the unpaid labour of others. The additional means of production and additional labour power purchased with this sum are nothing more than a new form taken by this value qua [as] objectification of unpaid labour.
Viewed as a transaction between the capitalist class and working class, we have a situation where the working class, through its surplus-labour in the current year, creates the new capital that becomes the additional means of production and additional labour-power the following year.
Now let us assume that the 200 is advanced in the second year as additional capital and yields 40 in surplus-value [the same rate of profit as the initial investment of 1000 with a surplus value of 200: 200/1000=40/200=1/5=20 percent]. Since the original capital also generates 200 in surplus-value in the second year, by the third year, there is 440 (in addition to the 1000) that can be advanced as capital [First year: 200s from the initial exploitation of workers+ second year, an additional 200s from the 1000 again invested and used to exploit the workers +the 40s produced in the second year by the workers and used for further investment in the third year=440]. Not only is 400 unmistakably the objectification of unpaid labour, 40 is the objectification of unpaid labour appropriated through the additional capital, which itself is the objectification of unpaid labour. If this process of accumulating all the surplus-value is repeated for the subsequent 4 years, by the end of that period the capitalist will have—in addition to his original capital of 1000, which we could call the «parent»—the surplus-value appropriated through the parent capital during the 4 years… Together this forms an «offspring» of 1074. So if the capitalist advances the aggregate capital in the fifth year, there will be 2074 of capital («parent» and «offspring») in operation that year. [The capitalist is assumed to exploit workers to the extent of 20 percent per unit. At the end of the first year, 1000×1.2=1,200; this is invested in the second year, and at the end of the second year, 1,200×1.2=1,440; this is invested at the beginning of the third year, and at the end of the third year, 1,440×1.2=1,728; this is invested at the beginning of the fourth year, and at the end of the fourth year, 1,728×1.2=2074, which again can be invested at the beginning of the fifth year…].
Even if we assume that the capitalist possessed the 1000 of the 2074 to begin with, he certainly cannot claim that the remaining 1074 in value was created through his own labour. As long as it is recognised that the 200 in surplus-value appropriated every year from the 1000 in capital is the objectification of surplus-labour, then this 1074 in value is, from top to bottom, the surplus-value transformed back into capital and thus the objectification of labour of others. … In other words, we are dealing with a mass of surplus-labour appropriated through a mass of surplus-labour.
The more the reproduction of capital is repeated, the smaller the original capital advanced, until it becomes an infinitesimal amount. The surplus-value transformed back into capital, whether it is made to function as capital in the hands of the person who accumulated it or in the hands of someone else, comes to represent the overwhelming part of the capital that currently exists.
The capitalist every year buys the means of production and labour-power on the commodity market and labour market in accordance with the property laws of commodity production in order to repeatedly carry out production. The result of this is that the capitalist appropriates unpaid living labour on an increasingly large scale by making the unpaid surplus-labour of others function as capital. Marx refers to the capitalist’s appropriation of unpaid labour in this manner as the laws of capitalist appropriation.
In the market, which is the surface layer of capitalist production, the property law of commodity production operates. But if we consider the production of capital that underlies this in terms of social reproduction, it becomes clear that the law of capitalist appropriation is in operation. Where the capital relation exists, the law of capitalist appropriation is the necessary consequence of the property laws of commodity production. Marx expresses this reality by referring to the inversion of the property laws of commodity production in the laws of capitalist appropriation.
The surplus-value qua ]as] objectification of the surplus-labour of another person, which the capitalist appropriates in the production process, is turned into capital; and the ownership of this capital value is thus the result of the appropriation of surplus-value in the production process. The capitalist’s appropriation of surplus-value in the production process precedes, and brings about, his ownership of capital. Here it is precisely the production of surplus-value by the labouring individuals first. Rather, it is precisely the behaviour of the labouring individuals within the production process that is always generating the ownership of the means of production by the capitalist within the production process that generates capital ownership.
At first glance, there seemed to be a vicious circle with regard to capitalist ownership of the means of production by the capitalist and his appropriation of surplus-value, wherein the latter is only possible through the former, but the latter always generates the former. However, within this relation, the active determining moment that continues capitalist production as such is the constant reproduction of products within the production process by the labouring individuals and the constant production of surplus-value. Labouring individuals are the active subject of continual production, regardless of the form of society, but under capitalist production, we have a situation where labouring individuals completely separated from the conditions of labour come into contact with the means of production in the production process as things belonging to others, which means that the resulting surplus-labour always belongs to others as well, and through this there is the continual reproduction of capital and wage-labour and the relation between them. Thus, in terms of the capitalist ownership of the means of production, and the capitalists’ appropriation of surplus-value, it cannot be said that the former is the immovable premise or even that it is a vicious circle where it cannot be said which of the two comes first. Rather, it is precisely the behaviour of the labouring individuals within the production process that is always generating the ownership of the means of production by the capitalist.
When conceived as a continuous process of exploitation and accumulation of capital, the idea of “decent work” sounds and is hollow. The idea of “decent work” completely ignores the whole process of exploitation founded on previous exploitation–and the hidden nature of both short-term exploitation and longer-term exploitation characterisctic of repeated processes of producing workers’ lives.
Do you think that “Everyone pretty much knows, I think, that workers are exploited even if their conditions improve?”
The Abolitionary 