Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

presidents..five secretaries did the same work now being
done by seven or eight deans, assistant deans and assistant
vice-presidents - and did it very well." (9)
The historic trend has been to sharply dilute the
role of productive workers even in vital industries. In food
products, for example, the percentage of total employment
that is non-production (managerial, supervisory, technical
and clerical) rose from 13% in 1933 to 32% in 1970. A
similar development took place in the chemical industry,
where non-production employees rose from 16% of all
employees in 1933 to 37% in 1970. (10) In manufacturing
industries as a whole the percentage of non-production
employees went up from 18% to 30% in 1950-1980. (11)
When we look at the overall distribution of
employed Euro-Amerikans, we see that in 1980 whitecollar
workers, professionals and managers were 54% - a
majority - and service employees an additional 12%. Only
13.5% were ordinary production and transportation
workers. That is only 13 out of every 100 employed Euro-
Amerikans. By 1982 there were thought to be more Third-
World domestic servants in California alone than Euro-
Amerikan workers in the entire U.S. steel industry. (12)
2. New Babylon
The observation was made by the Black Liberation
Movement during the 1960's that modern Amerika was
just "slavery days" on a higher level - in which U.S. imperialism
as slavemaster made the entire Third World its
plantation and Amerika itself its "Big House." The real
economy of the U.S. Empire is not continental but global
in its structural dimensions.
The U.S. oppressor nation itself has increasingly
specialized into a headquarters society, heavily dependent
upon the super profits of looting the entire Third World.
This is more than just a matter of dollar transactions. Born
out of the slave trade and the conquest of Indian lands,
raised up to power through colonial labor, the U.S. oppressor
nation has again developed a one-sided
dependence, even for its daily necessities, on the labor and
resources of the oppressed nations.
The Wall Street Journal said recently: "By last
year the U.S. sales to Third Worlds countries had swelled
to 39% of its exports, from 29% in 1970." (13) This even
understates the relationship. Afrika, for example, accounts
for 10% of all U.S. export earnings by official
statistics. (14) These figures conceal more than they reveal,
not including, for example, the profits taken out of Afrika
directly and indirectly by the European subsidiaries of
US. multinationals, not the sale of third-party commodities
- such as Saudi oil - by U.S. multinationals.
Nor can such figures express the super-profits gained
through unequal trade terms. The U.S. and other imperialists
puchase from Afrika at bargain basement prices
(often only a fraction of what they were 30 years ago)
cocoa, coffee beans, iron ore, chromium, coal, mica,
nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and so on. The basic
raw materials of industrial life are taken by U.S. imperialism
so cheaply they are the next thing to free.
This economic dependency on the rest of the world
was recently admitted by former U.S. Vice President Mondale:
"Unless our exports grow, we cannot hope to recover
from the recession.. . More than 20 percent of American industrial
output is exported. One out of every six manufacturing
jobs is linked to exports; four out of every five
created bet ween 1977 and 1980 were export-related.
Almost one-third of all corporate profits derive from
foreign investment and trade. *Two-fifths or our farmland
produces for export.. . " (1 5)
The most significant trend to us, however, has
been the export of capital in the form of production. This
is the latest step in moving the work of essential production
out of the oppressor nation. In the 1945-1965 period
the loyal Euro-Amerikan workers received a mass promotion
away from the proletariat, raising the majority of
them out of the factories and fields and into the whitecollar
professional, office, and sales world. Even in its
origins this was only possible by replacing them with colonial
labor, Afrikan, Puerto Rican, and Chicano-
Mexicano.
That early stage, in which the Afrikan proletariat
took such a heavy role in industrial production, is now
over. In the second stage the Empire is continuing to move
productive work out of the oppressor nation. This is accelerating
on a global basis now, with factories moving
across the Pacific and southward below the Rio Grande.
Even within the continental Empire new millions of colonial
proletarians are being brought in from Asia, Latin
Amerika and the Caribbean to both provide even cheaper
industrial and service labor, and to permit the dispossession
of Afrikans.
Alarmed at the rising anti-colonial movement of
the 1960s, the Empire has been replacing Afrikan workers
as rapidly as possible. Images of the past persist. We recall
how Afrikan proletarians, at the point of rebellion, were
systematically dispersed out of the urban South of the
1830s, and later throughout the 19th century driven out of
the industry and skilled trades they had created.
*Many of the largest corporations - such as Ford, GM,
Exxon, Citibank, Coca-Cola - obtai~l over 50% of their
138 profits overseas.