3071-The political economy of new slavery

Ivan Manokha 233
sweatshops. Nor does Fair Trade challenge global capitalism. Fair Trade
presupposes the existence of certain relations which are fundamental to
capitalism such as wage labour, production for the market, private property
and capital accumulation. It takes for granted the fact that there
are labourers and employers, that the former have no choice but to
work for the latter. It does not question the inequality involved in this
relationship. Instead, it implicitly includes these unequal relations as a
set of unstated assumptions, taking their existence and historical origins
for granted and it contributes to their normalization and objectification.
From this perspective, Fair Trade is an ideological concept, understood
not in the sense of a political programme (such as liberalism or socialism)
or false consciousness (as some Marxists authors do), but in the sense
used by Marx particularly in The German Ideology. This meaning of
ideology refers to forms of knowledge which distort and conceal certain
relations of power, but which is not reducible to a deliberate project of
an identifiable agency or class. It is a result of the fact that in capitalism
certain relations look different from what they really are, and so do
solutions to existing problems (Larrain, 1983, pp. 15–45; Maclean, 1988,
pp. 308–9). For example, in capitalism individuals appear free and equal,
but this is true of political and civil equality, while economically some
people are richer and others are poor. In the production process some
have no choice but to enter into a wage labour relation and sell their
labour power to others. Economic inequality in capitalism appears as
inequality of income and the solution seems to lie in a struggle for better
wages. This, however, leaves relations of wage labour intact and reproduces
the dominant position of the owners of means of production
and subordination of those without them who must work for a wage.
Fair Trade is an example of such ideological thinking in that it presupposes
capitalist relations of production and reproduces them. Today,
capitalism is global and there are no visible alternatives to it. The
socialist/communist alternative not only failed and thereby contributed
to the strength of victorious capitalism, but also contributed to its
legitimacy as a social organization with free and equal individuals. This
is because socialist/communist regimes were characterized by massive
repressions, purges, torture, concentration camps and genocide. But this
fact does not mean that capitalism is the best alternative form of social
organization and that with the establishment of global capitalism history
will end. The failure of the alternatives and their sometimes repugnant
nature does not mean that we should stop thinking about a different
way of organizing social life. Fair Trade does not do so and in this lies its
conservative nature.