Debate and Discussion: Fairtrade - Rehearse our scripts!
I’m convinced by Paul Hampton’s argument about the ineffectiveness of Fairtrade as a way to tackle sweatshops (Solidarity, 3/64).
I also find the Fairtrade approach distasteful: it emphasises what is different between people in the developed world and people in the third world over what we have in common. From our end, it sounds like “what can I, who have so much (including a fearful chocolate addiction), do for you, who have so little (no shoes on your feet, no roof over your head, and dirty, illiterate children)?”
And in doing that it gives a fundamentally false picture of most people’s actual experience.
While some charities can profitably appeal to a small number of guilty-feeling, middle-class people, most people in the developed world simply don’t feel like they have much consumer “power” at all, they are just trying to meet their needs.
That in Britain nowadays we are more or less able to do that — meet our needs — and even have disposable income — has been the fruit of trade union struggle. And trade union struggle is what third world workers are engaging in now in order to get their needs met.
So, all in all, developed and third world, much more unites us than divides us.
However, No Sweat activists have got to rehearse their scripts well in order to make arguments like this, or they risk pouring water on people’s enthusiasm to change the world.
Fairtrade has a lot more product recognition than supporting workers’ struggles, and we need to be sensitive to that. We live in a society where most people have never seen a strike, and have no inkling how the word Labour got into “New Labour”. It’s also a society where, for many, shopping is the most life-affirming thing you can do.
It’s common when you’re running a No Sweat stall to have someone eagerly rush up, insisting that you point them to the nearest sweat-free trainer shop. We have to be very careful not to come over Eeyore-like, telling them “there’s no such thing as sweat-free, the manufacturers are all as bad as each other”; and “but while you’re here, you can sign my petition to support the workers at the XYZ trainer factory in Indonesia” has to be said with a great deal of panache to get people coming back for more.
Vicki Morris, London
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There's a better choice?
If I want to buy a pack of coffee in my local shop, one that guarantees the farmer has received a fair price he can live on, how do I know which one to pick? Well, right now ONLY the ones carrying the Fairtrade Mark give me such a guarantee. Sure, Fairtrade may have its faults (what system doesn't?) but compared to what existed before (no products with guaranteed prices) its a huge improvement. If other people out there believe they can introduce a system that improves on Fairtrade, I say go for it - I'll be happy to buy those products when they are on sale in my local shop. But until then.....
There is a better choice
Even fair trade coffee includes exploitation. The argument for buying fair trade coffee is that it is less exploitative than other coffee but by the same argument buying no coffee at all is the least exploitative option. The argument for buying fair trade is also the argument against buying fair trade.
So, in practice the only impact of the Fair Trade movement (aside from supporting worker co-operatives and some unionisation in a very few instances) is to offer an expensive sop to the moral repugnance of capitalist methods. You can exchange your exploitation for their exploitation through the vector market forces rather than direct working class solidarity.
Fairtrade and choice
I think you've inadvertantly highlighted the problem when you say: "If people out there believe they can introduce a system that improves on Fairtrade...".
Implicitly you accept the idea that its all about having a system like Fairtrade, which is in itself sort of ignoring Paul's main point as I take it. The whole problem is that if you just look for a way you can buy better, more ethically friendly, goods then you're going to be politically stuck down a blind alley. Fairtrade is bad because it is limited, but thats not our only point. Our point is that any system where you change the world by buying this or that product is never going to make the kind of changes that are necessary, however radical it would hypothetically claim to be.
The point is that the capitalists will be beaten in the factories, not the supermarkets. I'm sure Fairtrade does make the world in some small way a better place for a tiny minority of people, but it in no way offers the radical change to the world that is necessary. You're welcome to buy Fairtrade if you want, and if you can afford it, but be under no illusions as to the real action that is necessary.
Perceptions of Fairtarde
Hi,
I am currently doing my dissertation on perceptions of fairtrade, and find the debate here very interesting, would it be ok if i use the information and quotes here in my dissertation, everything would be anonymous and no names or other information would be used?
Thanks,
Mat
The limitations of fair trade
The limitations of fair trade have been highlighted by a Costa Rican trade unionist currently on tour in the UK with the Banana Link campaign. He spoke last night at a Battersea and Wandsworth TUC event, explaining the perilous situation facing banana workers organising across Central and South America.
Apart from sackings, victimisation and lock outs, employers use paramilitaries to rough up and to assassinate militant workers. Employers boast privately about this, while in public they claim to allow freedom of association.
The speaker explained that employers have leapt upon the FAIRTRADE label to give themselves a progressive tint. Although the FAIRTRADE mark includes support for union organising, it is toothless since it isn’t withdrawn from firms who violate workers’ rights. The speaker said strikes in FAIRTRADE plantations have been smashed by force and by sackings – but still the firms keep their good name.
Something for ethical consumers to protest about.
Paul
Only A Result of TU Struggle?
Vicki says above that the fact that workers in Britain now are able to meet their needs is a result of TU struggle. Actually, that is not true. Trade Union struggle can win improvements within certain limits for workers, but as Marx points out beyond a certain point Capital will respond by replacing labour with capital, will use its resopurces for speculation or consumption rather than investment etc. What has raised workers living standrads as marx points out in the Grundrisse is Capital's "Civilising mission" its necessity to constantly expand the horizons of the worker as consumer in order that that consumer buys more of the Capitalists products, and provides a market for every expanding ranges of products. In short we have a contradictory development. On the one hand each individual Capitalist seeks to restrict the wages of his own workers as workers, but wishes to see all other workers as consumers recieve higher wages in order to buy his commodities. The more the productivity of labour rises and the use values bought by the worker form a smaller part of production the more must these use values be replaced by new types of use values and the worker must be persuaded to consume them or else the whole mechanism of capitalist production grinds to a halt.
Workers living standrads have risen because capitalist production constantly revolutionises production, and makes more use values available for the same quantity of exchange value, sates demand for one type of use value, and has to create a demand for another, and as marx points out because workers form at least a most significant portion of total demand their needs and requirements have to continually be refined and developed. A look at the increasing range and quantity of use values now being consumed by Chinese workers and other Asian workers demonstrates the pattern being repeated.
Arthur Bough
Slaves Productive!
The error referred to above is symptomatic of the way study of Marxist Economic theory has lapsed. I saw a statement in one post by an AWL comrade a few days ago - unfortunately I can't find the actual post - that claimed that slaves were productive!!! Such a statement is incredible for a Marxist to make as it undermines the whole of Marxist theory. Of course slaves are productive of Use Values, but so too is nature, a pack animal or a machine. But for a Marxist the term productive means something specific - it means productive of Surplus Value, and thereby Capital. To undermine this basic element of Marxist theory is to collapse into subjectivist bouregois economics which precisely from the fact that Nature i.e. Land, and Machinery (in its terms Capital) are productive of Use Values the same as Labour derives the Marginal Productivity theory.
The reasons why slaves are not productive is fundamental to Marxist theory. In order to be productive of Surplus Value they have to Exchange with Capital. But Capital is historically specific. The slaves relationship to the slave owner is not the relationship of the wage worker to Capital. To present it in that way is to denude Marxist categories of their historical and class content - but then the AWL does that in relation to the State too. As Marx points out slaves cannot be Productive in the Marxist sense for the simple reason that like machines and animals they do not participate in the process of Exchange, and thereby the calculation of Exchange Values. The slave owner when he comes to buy the surplus product of some other slave owner asks how much would this cost. The answer on average is the cost of the materials and used up equipment, plus the maintenance of the slave. The cost of the minatenance of the slave will always be less than the time worked by the slave. Slave owner B will then only be prepared to hand over the equivalent of this cost without any surplus value i.e. what it would cost him to produce the particular product. Again as Marx points out if slave owner A attempted to make a profit on the transation by adding an amount of say 10% on top of this cost, then slave hodler B would be completely justified in doing the same for the goods he sells, and the end result is that we would be in the same position as if neither had inflated the price of their goods.
The same is true of workers that own their own means of production, or where two Capitals exchange - say if there were just two capitalists that employed no wage labour. It is only where wage labour exchanges with Capital that Surplus Value can arise, and that for a Marxist is the definition of Productive Labour.
Arthur Bough