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IMPERIALISM AND TRANSITIONS
TO SOCIALISM
RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY

Series Editor: Paul Zarembka

State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

Recent Volumes:
Volume 21: Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg’s
Legacy – Edited by P. Zarembka and S. Soederberg
Volume 22: The Capitalist State and Its Economy: Democracy in Socialism –
Edited by P. Zarembka
Volume 23: The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 – Edited by P. Zarembka
Volume 24: Transitions in Latin America and in Poland and Syria – Edited by
P. Zarembka
Volume 25: Why Capitalism Survives Crises: The Shock Absorbers – Edited
by P. Zarembka
Volume 26: The National Question and the Question of Crisis – Edited by P.
Zarembka
Volume 27: Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism – Edited by P.
Zarembka and R. Desai
Volume 28: Contradictions: Finance, Greed, and Labor Unequally Paid –
Edited by P. Zarembka
Volume 29: Sraffa and Althusser Reconsidered; Neoliberalism Advancing in
South Africa, England, and Greece – Edited by P. Zarembka
Volume 30A: Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy – Edited by
Radhika Desai
Volume 30B: Analytical Gains of Geopolitical Economy – Edited by Radhika
Desai
Volume 31: Risking Capitalism – Edited by Susanne Soederberg
Volume 32: Return of Marxian Macro-Dynamics in East Asia – Edited by
Masao Ishikura, Seongjin Jeong, and Minqi Li
Volume 33:  Environmental Impacts of Transnational Corporations in the
Global South – Edited by Paul Cooney and William Sacher
Freslon
Volume 34: Class History and Class Practices in the Periphery of Capitalism –
Edited by Paul Zarembka
Volume 35: The Capitalist Commodification of Animals – Edited by Brett
Clark and Tamar Diana Wilson
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

GENERAL EDITOR
Paul Zarembka – State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

EDITORIAL BOARD
Radhika Desai University of Manitoba, Canada
Thomas Ferguson University of Massachusetts at Boston, USA
Virginia Fontes Fluminense Federal University, Brazil
Seongjin Jeong Gyeongsang National University, South Korea
Jie Meng Fudan University, People’s Republic of China
Isabel Monal University of Havana, Cuba
Ozgur Orhangazi Kadir Has University, Turkey
Paul Cooney Seisdedos Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador
(PUCE), Quito, Ecuador
Ndongo Samba Sylla Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Dakar, Senegal
Jan Toporowski The School of Oriental and African Studies, UK

iii
This page intentionally left blank
RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY VOLUME 36

IMPERIALISM AND
TRANSITIONS TO
SOCIALISM
EDITED BY

RÉMY HERRERA
National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), France

United Kingdom – North America – Japan

India – Malaysia – China
Emerald Publishing Limited
Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 Emerald Publishing Limited

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in

any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting
restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA
by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those
of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of
its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’
suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80043-705-0 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-704-3 (Online)
ISBN: 978-1-80043-706-7 (Epub)

ISSN: 0161-7230 (Series)

CONTENTS

About the Editor ix

About the Contributors xi

List of Contributors xv

Prefacexvii

PART I
THEORETICAL ELEMENTS

Chapter 1 Abstract Labor and Imperialism

Fabien Trémeau 3

Chapter 2 Imperialism and Working-class Agency

John Smith 21

Chapter 3 The Imperialist Multinational: Concentration,

Fiction or Rent?
Andy Higginbottom 39

Chapter 4 Unequal Exchange and Global Value Chains

Andrea Ricci 59

Chapter 5 The Transition Toward a Post-capitalist Economic

Rationality
Wim Dierckxsens, Andrés Piqueras and Walter Formento 77

Chapter 6 Study on the Evolution of China’s Economic

Structure (from 1952 to 2014) – Analysis of the Role of Profit
Rate by Impulse Response Functions
Zhiming Long and Rémy Herrera 95

vii
viii Contents

PART II
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCES

Chapter 7 Land Revolution and Local Governance: Socialist

Transformation in China
Tsui Sit, Erebus Wong, Kin Chi Lau and Tiejun Wen 123

Chapter 8 Imperialism and Transition to Socialism in Vietnam

Tran Dac Loi 141

Chapter 9 A Testimony on the “Juche” Thought in the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Kinhide Mushakoji 157

Chapter 10 Imperialism and the Transition to Socialism

in Cuba
Al Campbell 163

Chapter 11 The Venezuelan Oil and the US Imperialism

(1920–2020)
Hemmi Croes 179

Chapter 12 The Citizens’ Revolution in Ecuador and the

US Imperialism
Constantin Lopez 197

Chapter 13 Brazil: Impeachment and the Conflicting

Relationship between the Dilma Rousseff Government and the
National Congress
Leonardo Loureiro Nunes 223

Index237
ABOUT THE EDITOR

Rémy Herrera (France) is an Economist and a Researcher at the National Center

of Scientific Research (CNRS). Graduated from a Business School (École supé-
rieure de Commerce, 1988), the Institute of Political Studies (Institut d’Études
politiques, 1990) and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Master of
Philosophy, 1994; Ph.D. in Economics, 1996), he supervises students in Ph.D. at
the Centre d’Économie de la Sorbonne. He started working in the financial audit
(1988), at the OECD (1992–1997) and for the World Bank (1999–2000). He was
a member of the CNRS National Committee (2000–2005) and of the Scientific
Council of Paris 1 (2001–2006). He taught at various universities in France (espe-
cially at Paris 1 [1993–2013]) and abroad, including at the Universities of Aleppo
(1998), Cairo (1999–2000), Vitoria in Brasil (2006), Complutense in Madrid
(2009–2013) and Lingnan in Hong Kong (2018). He was an Adviser to research
programs at the Chubu University (Nagoya). He is or has been associated with
the Third World Forum (Dakar), the Union of Radical Political Economics (New
York), the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economics (London),
the Sociedad de Economía Política Latinoamericana (São Paulo) and the
Asociación Nacional de Economistas de Cuba (Havana). He was the Executive
Secretary of World Forum of Alternatives. He is also a member of the Global
University for Sustainability and of the International Crisis Observatory. He
organizes the “Marx in the Twenty-First Century” seminar at La Sorbonne. He
regularly works with the Centre Europe-Tiers Monde (Geneva), supporting it in
its advisory role to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.

ix
This page intentionally left blank
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Al Campbell (USA) is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of

Utah and Co-Editor of the International Journal of Cuban Studies. The three
pillars of his research interests are the functioning of contemporary capitalism,
all human-centered theoretical alternatives to it, and all historical experiments in
trying to build an alternative, with much of the latter work being on Cuba. His
latest book is an edited collection by Cuban authors (Cuban Economists on the
Cuban Economy), and he is presently co-editing a collection of contributions by
Cuban authors on Cuban cooperatives.

Hemmi Croes (Venezuela) is an Economist, graduated from the Central University

of Venezuela. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne, after having obtained a Master’s in Macroeconomics and
Quantitative Analysis from the University of Paris 10 Nanterre. Since 2014, he
is a Professor of Political Economy at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.

Wim Dierckxsens (Netherlands) has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (Netherlands).

He was former Administrator for the United Nations. He is currently a Senior
Researcher on globalization and post-capitalist alternatives, and the Coordinator
of the International Crisis Observatory. He is a founding member of the Global
University for Sustainability, and the Co-Founder of the Latin American Society
of Political Economy.

Walter Formento (Argentina) is a Professor of Geopolitics, Hegemony and

Communication at the National University of La Plata, Argentina. He is the
Director of the Center for Policy Research and Economy. He also coordinates the
research branch on geopolitics, globalization, new forms of capital and interna-
tional conflict. He is a member of the International Crisis Observatory.

Andy Higginbottom (United Kingdom) is an Associate Professor at Kingston

University, London, and teaches modules on International Political Economy,
Slavery and Emancipation and Crimes of the Powerful. His current research pro-
ject is an extended dialogue with Marx’s Capital concerning Marini’s concept of
labor super-exploitation, as well as the transformation problem. He has recently
published papers on corporate responsibility for climate change.

Kin Chi Lau (China) is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Cultural Studies and
Research Coordinator of the Programme on Cultures of Sustainability of the
Centre for Cultural Research and Development at the Lingnan University in Hong
Kong, China. She is a member of the International Board of Peace Women across
the Globe, and a founding member of the Global University for Sustainability.

xi
xii About the Contributors

Tran Dac Loi (Vietnam) is currently Vice-President of the Vietnam Peace and
Development Foundation. He was formerly Vice Chairman of the Communist
Party of Vietnam Central Committee’s Commission for External Relations, with
a rank of vice minister.

Zhiming Long (China), Economist, is an Associate Professor at the Moral

Education Research Center at the Tsinghua University in Beijing. He supervises
researches since 2017 in this same institution. Since 2018, he has been granted
Tang Scholar. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Paris 1, as well
as two Master’s degrees in Economics from the Universities of Paris 1 and 10. He
is a specialist in growth theory, statistics and (timeseries analysis) econometrics.

Constantin Lopez (France) is a Ph.D. student in Economics (Paris 1 Panthéon-

Sorbonne) with a Master’s in Political Sciences (Sciences Po Toulouse). His works
are mainly about the strategy of economic development implemented in Ecuador
under Rafael Corea’s presidency. In 2014, he completed a 4-month internship as
an Associate Researcher at the Andean University Simon Bolivar in Quito. He is
a High-school Teacher of Economic and Social Sciences.

Leonardo Loureiro Nunes (Brazil) has a degree in Business Administration from

the University of São Paulo (USP), a Master’s degree in Economics from the
State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and a scholarship from the Institute of
Applied Economic Research. Currently, he is a doctorate student in Economics at
the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a Federal Public Employee from
the Brazilian government.

Kinhide Mushakoji (Japan) is former Vice-Rector of the Regional and Global Studies
Division of the United Nations University, Vice-President of the International
Political Science Association, Director of the Institute of International Relations
(Tokyo Sophia University) and of the Institute of Advanced Studies (Chubu
University), President of the Asia-Pacific Human Rights Centre (Osaka), Secretary-
General of the International Movement Against all forms of Discriminations
and Racism and a member of the boards (among others) of the Peace Studies
Association of Japan and of Radical Ecological Democracy.

Andrés Piqueras (Spain) did his Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Anthropology.
Currently, he is a Titular Professor in Sociology at the University of Castellón,
Jaume I, Spain. There, he is the Founder of the Permanent Observatory on
Immigration, and also Coordinator of the research branch on globalization,
new identities and collective subjects. He is a member of the International Crisis
Observatory.

Andrea Ricci (Italy) is a tenured Assistant Professor in Economics at the

University of Urbino, Italia. He has a Master’s in International Economics from
the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva
and a Ph.D. in Political Economy from the University of Ancona. His research
About the Contributors xiii

interest focuses on international and development economics and Marx’s theory

of value. His book Value and Unequal Exchange is to be published by Routledge.

Tsui Sit (China) is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Rural Reconstruction

of China at the Southwest University in Chongqing, China. She is a board mem-
ber of Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives and a founding member of
the Global University for Sustainability.

John Smith (United Kingdom) is an independent researcher and activist based

in Sheffield. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Sheffield. His
specialities are development economics and international economics, in particu-
lar international trade and monetary relations. He is currently working on pro-
jects related to his book Imperialism in the Twenty-first Century published by the
Monthly Review Press, New York, in 2016.

Fabien Trémeau (France) is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Paris

1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He graduated in Philosophy and Sociology from the
University of Paris 4 Sorbonne and from the Institute of European Studies in
Paris. His research focuses on the value and the commodity fetishism in Marx’s
work. As a publisher, he is also the Founder and Director of the Éditions Critiques.

Tiejun Wen (China) is a Professor and Director of the Centre of Rural Revitalization,
Peking University, China. He is the Executive Dean of the Institute of Rural
Reconstruction of China, Southwest University, China; the Executive Dean
of the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of the Straits, Fujian Agricultural and
Forestry University, China. He is a founding member of the Global University for
Sustainability.

Erebus Wong (China) is a Senior Researcher for the Centre for Cultural Research
and Development at the Lingnan University in Hong Kong, China. He is a fellow
of the Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives and a founding member of
the Global University for Sustainability.
This page intentionally left blank
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Al Campbell University of Utah, USA.

Hemmi Croes Bolivarian University of Venezuela, Venezuela.
Wim Dierckxsens The International Crisis Observatory, Netherlands.
Walter Formento National University of La Plata, Argentina.
Rémy Herrera National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS),
France.
Andy Higginbottom Kingston University, UK.
Kin Chi Lau Lingnan University, China.
Tran Dac Loi Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation,
Vietnam.
Zhiming Long Tsinghua University, China
Constantin Lopez Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.
Leonardo Loureiro Nunes Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.
Kinhide Mushakoji United Nations University, Japan.
Andrés Piqueras University of Castellón, Spain.
Andrea Ricci University of Urbino, Italy.
Tsui Sit Southwest University, China.
John Smith University of Sheffield, UK.
Fabien Trémeau University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.
Tiejun Wen Peking University, China.
Erebus Wong Lingnan University, China.

xv
This page intentionally left blank
PREFACE

In this volume, we provide the reader with a set of texts designed to shed light on
the issues of imperialism and the transitions to socialism. Written by 18 contribu-
tors – in addition to the author of these lines – from 12 countries and 3 continents,
these texts are organized in two main parts. One part is devoted to certain theoretical
aspects whose analysis seems to us to be decisive for understanding the subject under
consideration. The other part is focused on the examination of practical experiences
of socialist transitions, more or less advanced and with varying degrees of success.
In the theoretical part, the reader will not find a homogeneous definition of
imperialism nor a unified characterization of the transitions to socialism. Rather,
we propose multidimensional, polyvalent and multidisciplinary approaches to
highlight both the complexity and the topicality of these phenomena. Thus impe-
rialism, which combines and articulates relations of domination between nations
with relations of exploitation of labor by capital, is linked here to several of the
most fundamental concepts of Marxism, such as value, abstract labor, the distinc-
tion between productive and unproductive labor, and class struggle, but also to
the contradictory dynamics of the transformations of present-day capitalism, in
connection with the new contemporary forms of fictitious capital, the behavior of
transnational firms in the concentration and centralization of globalized capital
or the delocalization of production, as well as with the configurations of unequal
exchange in the international division of labor and global value chains or the evo-
lution of economic structures. These analyses do not claim to be exhaustive and
would certainly be enriched with in-depth studies of wars and military expendi-
tures, new technologies or the destruction caused by capitalism on the environment
– points that are present in this book but not extensively developed in the form of
specific chapters. In addition, even if the calculations and estimates in Chapter 6 are
performed on a particular country (China), we ultimately thought that it was rec-
ommendable and preferable to place this text in the theoretical part of the volume,
given the methodology used. The latter, as a matter of facts, is centered around a
conceptual and theoretical reflection on the rate of profit and mobilizes technical
tools (such as econometric modeling, impulse response functions, matrix calcula-
tion, Bayesian analysis, among others).
The countries studied as case studies in the applied part can, beyond the sin-
gularity of their respective historical trajectories, be classified into several quite
distinct categories. Here, two criteria will be used, depending on whether or not
these countries are anti-capitalist – that is to say, for questioning the structures
of capitalism – and/or anti-imperialist or not – in other words, for or against
the implementation of policies aimed at opening up margins of maneuver for
national sovereignty. China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba all fall into a first
category, that of countries that are both anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, where

xvii
xviii Preface

the revolutionary processes are the most radical, where the struggles for socialist
emancipation and national liberation have merged into a conceptual and political
unity, and through which the generalized social gains and the concrete improve-
ment of living and working conditions of the vast majority of the people are the
most solid. Venezuela (since 1999 and the setting in motion of the Bolivarian
revolution) but also Ecuador (for the period of the citizens’ revolution between
2005 and 2017 only) belong to a second group, bringing together countries where
significant revolutionary advances have been performed, or are still in the pro-
cess of being consolidated, whose anti-imperialist and pro-socialist orientation
is explicit, but which have so far only managed to tackle the neoliberal form of
the capitalist system, rather than its deep structures. Other governments, with
a popular base and progressive leaders, have made progress in the fight against
poverty, but limited and without affecting its causes, because the neoliberal line
of capitalism has not really been inflected there: this is the third category in which
we find Brazil of the mandates of Presidents Lula and Dilma Rousseff. Finally,
other countries, the fourth and last group, are seeing popular resistance, whose
heroism is no less important than that of previous struggles, against regimes that,
for the time being, remain right-wing or even extreme right-wing. Brazil after
the parliamentary coup of 2016 and Ecuador since 2017 have slipped into this
category. However, movement in the opposite direction is also possible, as Bolivia
has recently shown, whose people succeeded in overturning the military coup
orchestrated by proimperialist and racist forces in 2019 and, thanks to the vic-
tory of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS, or Movimiento al Socialismo)
in the Bolivian presidential elections of October 2020, in reviving the momentum
of the indigenous revolution begun in 2005. Bolivia, like other countries in Asia
(especially Nepal) and Africa (Burkina Faso, for example), could have been stud-
ied here to show how important the revolutionary advances of modern times are
for the strengthening of national independence and social justice, but also how
vulnerable they remain as long as they do not succeed in radicalizing themselves
by breaking with capitalism and socializing the productive forces.
Capitalism is in crisis. This crisis, old, structural, serious, is systemic, in the
sense that the system will not find a solution by itself. The capitalist system is
declining, degenerating, becoming more destructive and dangerous, and if it is
not collapsing faster, it is because its state is supporting it, at arm’s length, as was
the case in 2008 when the monetary authorities of the US hegemony injected
astronomical amounts of liquidity into the economy and granted the Central
Banks of the countries of the North and some key countries of the South unlim-
ited access to the dollar; or as is the case at the present time in the so-called
“health crisis” following the COVID-19 pandemic, with the main capitalist econ-
omies that only remain in a functioning state because they are placed under an
infusion of public money. There will be no way out of the “health problem” with
neoliberal managers who weaken public hospital services; nor will there be a way
out of the financial problem with rapacious private bank managers who continue
to speculate frantically, shamelessly. There will be no way out of the environmen-
tal problems with procapitalist environmentalists; nor will there be a way out of
the social problems with the social–liberal reformists; any more than there will
Preface xix

be no way out of religious terrorism with capitalist leaders who stir up hatred
and communitarianism and behave like temple merchants by weakening national
education (and secularism where it exists, as in France) by selling it to the private
sector (confessional, moreover) and promoting market mechanisms in education.
Capital will not find a solution through its internal logic of profit maximiza-
tion that locks the world system into a spiral of destruction and wars that ends
up threatening us all with death. This is where we are. And this is why wanting
to embark on a socialist transition is not only a response to a spirit of justice but
also an answer to the call of reason: it is a question of survival for humanity and
for life. Socialism is not just a word, it is a struggle. It is not an end, but a transi-
tion process, long and difficult that can take many paths toward the liberation of
labor from the domination of capital. It is socialism, a society of solidarity, which
walks with history.
Rémy Herrera
December 29, 2020
PART I
THEORETICAL ELEMENTS
CHAPTER 1
ABSTRACT LABOR AND
IMPERIALISM
Fabien Trémeau

ABSTRACT
To understand the logic that pushes capitalism to imperialism requires us to
question one of the fundamental categories of capital: abstract labor. Often
ignored by the Marxist tradition, abstract labor is, however, by Marx’s own
admission, one of its greatest discoveries. However, the different interpreta-
tions that have marked out the twentieth century have, most of the time, failed
to grasp the profound originality of this concept. However, a correct under-
standing of abstract labor makes it possible to understand the dynamics and
contradictions of capital and what distinguishes it from other forms of social
organization. By showing that abstract labor is much more than a neutral eco-
nomic category and that it is the general social mediator, we question the cat-
egory of labor within capitalist society. It then becomes possible to identify the
dynamics and contradictions of capital and why imperialism is necessary to it.
Keywords: Abstract labor; value; crisis; imperialism; production process;
productive and unproductive labor

INTRODUCTION
It is necessary to distinguish two types of categories in order to understand the devel-
opment of capitalism: logical categories and historical categories, and to study their
dialectical relationship in order to grasp the dynamics of capitalism and the possibili-
ties for action within it. Therefore, when writing a history of capitalism and imperial-
ism, it is essential not to do so independently of the logical categories that underlie it.1

Imperialism and Transitions to Socialism

Research in Political Economy, Volume 36, 3–19
Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0161-7230/doi:10.1108/S0161-723020210000036001
3
4 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

Marxist thinkers have often left aside the study of these categories in Marx’s
work, relegating them either to metaphysical fantasies still marked by Hegelianism
or to aporias, given the difficulties they raise in the economic field (think of value-
price transformation). Yet, if we agree with Marx that science would be useless if
essence and appearance coincided, understanding the logical categories of capital
is the prerequisite for a correct grasp of the historical dynamics of capitalism and
consequently of imperialism. This is Marx’s approach in Capital, since he starts
from the concepts of commodity, value and abstract labor in order to “recon-
struct” capitalist society in its most concrete aspects. These three categories, inti-
mately linked, become concrete abstractions in their phenomenal development
and subject humans to their laws. One of the “real abstractions” that Marx held
most dear and that caused him the most difficulty was undoubtedly abstract labor.
Abstract labor is a concept that has largely been ignored by the Marxist tradi-
tion. From the death of Marx to the 1920s, it was absent from both theoretical and
political debates. It was Isaak Rubin who first took a serious interest in this concept
in his book Essays on Marx’s Value Theory. Relatively unnoticed at the time, he
wrote in his book2 that “the theory of abstract labour is one of the central points
of Marx’s theory of value” (Rubin, 1990, p. 131) but his voice remains isolated and
this “central point” will remain anecdotal for the full understanding of capital, for
economists as well as for philosophers. Part of the Marxist tradition continued to
reduce the concept of abstract labor to its quantitative aspect alone that is, from the
point of view of the magnitude of value in a Ricardian approach to the question,
while another part did not even bother to consider it. After a few debates in the
Soviet Union in the 1920s, the question of abstract labor returned to oblivion and
did not reappear until the early 1970s with Lucio Colleti (1974) in Italy, Hans Georg
Backhaus (1974)3 in Germany and Jean-Marie Vincent (2019, 2020) in France.
This revival of the question since Rubin showed that the concept of abstract
labor went far beyond a simple economic category. According to Marx, this con-
cept is fundamental to understanding, on the one hand, the creation of value, and
on the other hand, the organization and specificity of capitalist society. Moreover,
he strongly and repeatedly stresses the importance of his discovery of the dual
nature of labor (abstract labor/concrete labor):
That the economists, without exception, have missed the simple fact that, if the commodity has
the double character of use value and exchange value, then the labour represented in the com-
modity must also have a double character; thus the bare analysis of labour sans phrase, as in
Smith, Ricardo, etc., is bound to come up against the inexplicable everywhere. This is, in fact,
the whole secret of the critical conception.4 The best points in my book are: 1. (this is funda-
mental to all understanding of the facts) the two-fold character of labour according to whether
it is expressed in use-value or exchange value, which is brought out in the very First Chapter.5

I was the first to point out and to examine critically this twofold nature of the labour contained
in commodities. As this point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy
turns, we must go more into detail.6

It may seem surprising that the Marxists did not seize with more force this
question, which seems so fundamental by Marx’s own admission.7 If the subject
has been so rarely treated, it is because it is, on the one hand, a relatively com-
plex concept and perhaps too abstract for immediate application in the struggles;
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 5

and on the other hand, it has often been misinterpreted by Marxists themselves,
making its use either harmless or counterproductive in the understanding of the
dynamics of capital.

ABSTRACT LABOR AND PHYSIOLOGICAL

EXPENDITURE
The first misinterpretation is to make abstract labor a mere expense of energy. In
fact, abstract labor seems to have long been, in Marx’s mind, work without concrete
determination, that is, a simple “productive expenditure of human brains, nerves,
and muscles.” If the concept of abstract labor has not, as we have seen, been simply
ignored, it has most of the time been understood, even by Marxists attentive to these
questions, as a simple undifferentiated expenditure of energy.8 Yet, this statement
amounts to saying that all particular labor is ultimately labor; besides the tauto-
logical character of such a definition, the distinction and specificity of labor under
capitalism is also totally ignored. However, as Postone (1993) points out in his book
Time, Labor and Social Domination, there is a historical specificity of work under
capitalism, which classical economists, and Ricardo in particular, have not seen:
An adequate analysis of capitalism is possible, according to Marx, only if it proceeds from an
analysis of the historically specific character of labor in capitalism. The initial and basic deter-
mination of that specificity is what Marx calls the ‘double character’ of commodity-determined
labour. (p. 55)

Reducing abstract labor to a mere quantitative expenditure of energy amounts

to removing all historical and social determinations from it, and for Marx abstract
labor is not an anhistorical form of organization of society. This way of thinking
about labor, that is, confusing labor understood as “metabolism with nature” (a
true and necessary phenomenon in every society) with labor as the source of value
specific to the capitalist mode of production, is, moreover, a reproach that Marx
makes against Ricardo: “The bourgeois form of labour is regarded by Ricardo as
the eternal natural form of social labour,”9 “Ricardo does not examine the form –
the peculiar characteristic of labour that creates exchange value or manifests
itself in exchange values – the nature of this labour.”10
The originality of Marx is that he questions the category of labor under capi-
talism; making it a simple expenditure of energy in order to explain the com-
mensurability of goods, naturalizes labor and therefore does not go beyond the
classical economists. Finally, this does not make it possible to understand how
labor under capitalism creates a structure, an objective form that imposes itself
on society as a whole and dominates it.

ABSTRACT LABOR AND RATIONALIZATION

OF THE PRODUCTION PROCESS
If abstract labor is not labor sans phrase, another common misinterpretation is to
confuse it with a greater rationalization of concrete labor or more precisely of the
6 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

work process. In this case, abstract labor is confused with what we could call the
fragmentation of concrete labor. It is the increasing rationalization of the labor
process under capitalism that makes the different kinds of labor almost indistin-
guishable in their concrete forms. In other words, and to take up a concept that
Marx develops in the unpublished Chapter VI of Capital, abstract labor would
be linked to the real subsumption of labor under capital, that is, to the moment
when capital itself organizes and forms the process of labor.
This way of understanding abstract work is that of G. Lukács in History and
Class Consciousness. As labor becomes abstract with rationalization and ever
greater calculation in the labor process, Taylorism, which was then beginning to
develop, is clearly targeted here. In his approach to abstract labor, Lukács seems
to be more influenced by his professor Max Weber’s ideas of the development
of the rationalization process in capitalism than by Marx. Indeed, for Lukács
abstract labor becomes more and more “equal, comparable… measurable with
increasing precision,” referring here directly to the process of labor Lukács misses
the conception of Marx for whom abstract labor under capitalism is the domi-
nant social form and not only a rationalized organization of the labor process:
On the one hand, the process of labour is progressively broken down into abstract, rational,
specialised operations so that the worker loses contact with the finished product and his work
is reduced to the mechanical repetition of a specialised set of actions. On the other hand, the
period of time necessary for work to be accomplished (which forms the basis of rational calcu-
lation) is converted, as mechanisation and rationalisation are intensified, from a merely empiri-
cal average figure to an objectively calculable work-stint that confronts the worker as a fixed and
established reality. (Lukács, 1971, p. 88)

Although Lukács’ approach is different from Marx’s, the two approaches con-
verge as to the social, even totalizing character of abstract labor, though the two
interpretations are radically different. Lukács wants to grasp the social form by
looking at the history of the labor process (factories, plants, etc.); the conditions
of the labor process under capitalism (quantification, standardization) become the
conditions of existence of the whole of capitalist society and the state. Reification,
a concept developed in History and Class Consciousness, thus finds its roots in the
modern factory and becomes the lot of the whole society, which in turn reinforces
the process of reification within the factory: “The fate of the worker becomes the
fate of society as a whole; indeed, this fate must become universal as otherwise
industrialisation could not develop in this direction” (Lukács, 1971, p. 91).
This critique of capitalist rationality would go on to have a fertile posterity
with the Frankfurt School, especially with Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic
of Enlightenment, and with Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man. However, the lim-
its of this critique will soon become apparent, since starting from a critique of
the labor process and its technique, it would not be able to adequately understand
the upheavals in the production process from the 1970s in the most advanced
capitalist countries. When the factory tends to disappear, it becomes impossible
to find in its organizational structure the foundations or the engine of capitalism.
The changes in labor conditions, the transition from an industrial economy to a
service economy would thus lead many thinkers influenced by the critique of cap-
italist rationality either to abandon the concept of value-labor, as Habermas did,
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 7

for whom the disappearance of the working class in advanced capitalist societies
is a sign that surplus value is no longer created by labor power but by technology;
or to abandon completely the study of capitalism, since it has supposedly been
already transformed into something else, into a “technician society” according to
the expression of Ellul. There is indeed a blind dynamic, but it is no longer due
to capital but to technology, which has become autonomous. Obviously, such a
conception of the evolution of the dynamics in modern societies also leads to the
abandonment of the concept of value-labor:
The growth of techniques produces completely new phenomena. The link, the relationship
between the sectors of society and the economy, is now information …. The enormous conse-
quence is that in reality from this moment on it is no longer human labour that creates value.
Marx’s whole theory is overturned by the simple technical process. Of course, this value-creat-
ing work still exists, but in such a small quantity, applied to such different objects, that we can
no longer hold the reasoning of the past. What is truly value-creating is the technique itself, or,
as Richta would say, the “scientific and technical revolution.” (Ellul, 1982, p. 42)

ABSTRACT LABOR AND DEMATERIALIZATION

OF CONCRETE LABOR
There is a third misinterpretation that sees abstract labor as similar to virtual or
dematerialized labor. This definition takes its arguments from the latest develop-
ments of capitalism and the different forms of labor that are linked to it. Thus,
with the computer revolution at the turn of the 1970s, new forms of labor emerged
that differed greatly from the labor that Marx or even Lukács could think about.
This definition largely links abstract labor to computer-related occupations or,
more generally, to occupations in the new technologies. This conception does not
take into account the fact that work under capitalism has, as Marx called it, a
“twofold” nature; it is therefore always both concrete and abstract, regardless of
the concrete nature of the labor. The labor of the computer scientist has a con-
crete nature (all the particular activities related to this job) and as labor taken in
the process of capitalist production, it also has an abstract nature. Abstract labor
therefore has nothing to do with any tendency for work to dematerialize, as Negri
and Hardt (2000) seem to think in their book Empire: “Through the comput-
erization of production, then, labor tends toward the position of abstract labor”
(p. 292); nor can it be confused with finance:
I am convinced that today’s crisis is a terrible crisis. It is not the crisis of overproduction. But
it is a crisis of speculation. On the one hand a huge bubble. On the other hand, it is a crisis in
which the role of abstract labour, i.e. finance, is absolutely decisive.11

It is true that labor in the last phase of the history of capital increasingly
favors, by its internal logic, dematerialized labor; or, in other words, it favors the
tertiary sector. In this sense we can say that labor tends to become immaterial or
that concrete labor becomes abstract. However, assimilating abstract labor to a
form of dematerialized concrete labor does not get out of the aporia of abstract
labor understood as physiological energy expenditure. In this case, it becomes
impossible to question labor in its historical form and thus to understand labor as
8 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

a social category. As Rubin (1990) rightly says, it is necessary to choose between

a conception of abstract labor as physiological and therefore transhistorical and
abstract labor as a social category and therefore specific to capitalism:
One of two things is possible: if abstract labor is an expenditure of human energy in physi-
ological form, then value also has a reified-material character. Or value is a social phenomenon,
and then abstract labor must also be understood as a social phenomenon connected with a
determined social form of production. It is not possible to reconcile a physiological concept
of abstract labor with the historical character of the value which it creates. The physiological
expenditure of energy as such is the same for all epochs and, one might say, this energy created
value in all epochs. We arrive at the crudest interpretation of the theory of value, one which
sharply contradicts Marx’s theory. (p. 135)

ABSTRACT LABOR AND SOCIALLY EQUALIZED LABOR

If abstract labor cannot be confused with an expenditure of physiological energy,
whatever form this interpretation may take, because this leads to aporias or makes
abstract labor a transhistorical category, it is also necessary to distinguish abstract
labor from socially equalized labor. Here, the task is more difficult because these
two concepts are very close, as Rubin (1990) points out:
The social characteristics of labour which we traced through an organized community are also
found in a commodity economy. Here too we can see social labor, allocated labor, and socially
equalized labor. But all of these processes of socialization, equalization and allocation of labor
are carried out in an altogether different form. (p. 96)

Just as in a capitalist economy, socially equalized labor presupposes a certain divi-

sion of labor; we can say that in all societies labor has experienced some form
of distribution or division. However, while a division of labor exists in all socie-
ties, this division of labor, unlike in the capitalist organization, is not carried out
blindly, because labor is here directly social, and the division of labor is estab-
lished on the decisions of the society itself. In pre-capitalist societies, the various
particular labors have, so to speak, their function already attributed by society.
Thus, within these societies, the social labor necessary for the whole social body
is organized and distributed according to the functioning of each society: respect
for traditions or customs, relationship of direct domination organized through
religion, coercion, etc. This social distribution of labor is obviously the cause of
many injustices, as was the case in feudal societies in the Middle Ages, but it is
nevertheless true that no one then feared that their labor would not find a social
utility or that it could not be exchanged. The various types of work are social labor
from the outset, and they do not have to be compared with each other once they
have been carried out to find out whether they are “validated.” Socially equalized
labor therefore does not deny concrete work; on the contrary, it includes it, thanks
to the socialization carried out beforehand, in their heterogeneity.
The concrete labor of each person is therefore already socialized beforehand
and society, according to its particular expression, decides on its distribution. A
certain equalization of the different types of work is also necessary, but contrary
to a capitalist society where “there is no independent social decision as to the
equalization of labor” (Rubin, 1990, p. 99), a pre-capitalist society (or in Rubin’s
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 9

analysis, a socialist society) bases this equalization on concrete labor. Socially

equalized labor cannot, therefore, become a structure that subjects humans to
its law; this obviously does not prevent this society from falling prey to other
fetishes, but it is not a society based on abstract labor.

MARX’S CONCEPTION OF ABSTRACT LABOR

Abstract labor therefore cannot be confused with physiological energy expendi-
ture, nor with socially equalized labor. In both cases labor is conceived in a tran-
shistorical way and it becomes impossible to account for the specificity of labor
under capitalism. We can now turn to the accurate conception of abstract labor.
Abstract labor is, first of all, a historically determined category because if
value is unambiguously historically determined for Marx, abstract labor which is
represented in value is also necessarily historically determined:
It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by means of
its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in discovering that form under
which value becomes exchange value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives
of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with
the inherent nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is
entirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of
the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal form, taken
by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps that production as a particular species of
social production, and thereby gives it its special historical character. If then we treat this mode
of production as one eternally fixed by Nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook
that which is the differentia specified of the value form, and consequently of the commodity
form, and of its further developments, money form, capital form, etc.12

Secondly, abstract labor is a social category, in the capitalist mode of production:

The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance,
not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by
itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If,
however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they
acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social
substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest
itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity.13

In a capitalist economy, labor and the products of labor become the almost
exclusive means of obtaining other products, so that labor becomes the only
means for producers to obtain the products necessary for their subsistence.
The labor of each producer becomes the mediation by which each comes into
contact with the other. It should be noted that labor no longer has any relation
to the product that will ultimately be consumed since it is labor itself, that is, any
form of labor that makes it possible to obtain a commodity that is consumed for
its concrete character.
Labor at this stage of development – it is no longer embedded in social rela-
tions where domination is exercised directly – replaces the function of old social
relations by constituting “a social mediation in lieu of such a matrix of relations”
(Postone, 1993, p. 151). In pre-capitalist societies, labor had a defined function
10 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

framed by various social relations; in capitalist society, it becomes the general

social mediator. In a capitalist society, labor is no longer directly social or fixed
according to social relations, even if they are unjust: it is the mediator itself. Thus,
labor becomes the very foundation of society since all interactions are mediated by
it or its products, thus constituting a new structure which will dominate humans:
The individuals are subsumed under social production, which exists outside them as their fate;
but social production is not subsumed under the individuals who manage it as their common
wealth.14

And it is through this new structure that the new social relations will henceforth
be expressed. Abstract labor under capitalism is therefore social, not because of
transparent social relations that would give it its social character, as is the case
in pre-capitalist societies where work is directly social, but because, as a general
social mediator, it founds its own social character. In other words, labor in the
capitalist mode of production becomes social by the very function it plays as a
general social mediator. The repercussions of this fact are enormous in terms of
understanding what is and what is not labor, in capitalism.

PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE LABOR

While capitalism is a society based on labor, this obviously does not mean that any
activity can be considered as labor in the sense that this word takes in a capitalist
economy. For example, helping an elderly person in daily tasks may, depending
on whether one is paid or not, whether one is employed as an elderly helper or
not, be considered as labor. It would not occur to anyone now to say that when
they help their grandmother cross the street or do their shopping that they are
working. There is therefore a first distinction to be made between two identical
activities; depending on whether they are paid or not, one will be considered by
society to be labor and the other not.
However, not all paid activities, if they are all considered as labor, have the
same interest for the logic of valorization, to use Marx’s words: “every productive
worker is a wage labourer, but this does not mean that every wage labourer is a
productive worker.”15 There is therefore a second distinction to be made among
the activities considered as labor in a capitalist society, between productive and
unproductive labor.
In a capitalist society, only labor that produces value will be considered pro-
ductive labor. In fact, part of the value produced by labor will be given to the
reproduction of labor power, the other part will be reinvested in capital or taken
in the form of profit, and it is for this reason alone that the capitalist is interested
in making his employees work:
That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus value for the capitalist, and thus works
for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of pro-
duction of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when, in addition to be
labouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That
the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does
not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 11

between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific,
social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer
as the direct means of creating surplus value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a
piece of luck, but a misfortune.16

This quote allows us to emphasize several important points. First, as mentioned

previously, only labor from which value can be extracted can be considered produc-
tive labor under capitalism. Second, it should be noted that Marx uses the example
of “immaterial” labor, the schoolmaster, to illustrate the concept of productive
labor. Productive labor is therefore not necessarily related to industrial labor or
material labor. The reason why Marx is particularly interested in industrial labor
is that, in his day, the state of capitalism’s development made it possible to almost
confuse productive labor with industrial or material labor. It is therefore even more
notable that Marx chose “immaterial” work to illustrate productive labor.
In the example, the schoolteacher must work for an employer, otherwise he
would not be productive since he would not be able to increase capital. The
same labor can therefore be productive or unproductive depending on the case.
Elsewhere, Marx also takes up the example of the schoolteacher and specifies that:
A schoolmaster who educates others is not a productive worker. But a schoolmaster who is
engaged as a wage labourer in an institution along with others, in order through his labour to
valorise the money of the entrepreneur of the Knowledge-Mongering Institution, is a produc-
tive worker.17

Finally, it is shown that the notion of the utility of labor is meaningless for the
comprehension of productive labor since, in the capitalist economy, utility lies in
the production of surplus value. Consequently, there is no moral point of view
in terms of productive or unproductive labor, and they can in no way be related
to any utility for the individual or the collectivity, apart from the utility for the
valorization of capital. There is productive labor that is socially useless or even
harmful, just as there is unproductive labor that is indispensable to society.
Productive labor is therefore necessarily paid labor, but this condition, as we
have seen, is not sufficient. This labor must also produce a surplus value that can
be reinvested. Thus, in order to distinguish between the notion of productive and
unproductive labor, it is essential to understand it at the level of capital as a whole
and not at a particular level. Depending on its place in the production process,
labor may or may not be productive. For example, the personnel in charge of
administration, accountancy or maintenance in a company is part of the unpro-
ductive labor sector. Their salaries must be deducted from the surplus value pro-
duced elsewhere by the productive workers of the company. On the other hand,
if a second firm provides these same services (administration, maintenance, and
accounting) to that firm, then they become productive since the firm will valorize
its capital through its employees. Companies outsource the sectors that are not
productive, and other firms are created to meet the new needs that make their var-
ious jobs productive. The service economy is born from this internal movement
within each company. However, it is easy to understand that this movement – if it
has real consequences on the capital of each firm – does not change anything at
the level of capital taken as a whole, because unproductive labor is at the end of
the process still deducted from total capital.
12 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

Marx examines this phenomenon more particularly in Book II of Capital, and

the unproductive labor necessary for companies is called faux frais. These faux
frais are found in companies’ accounting, but in most cases, they are left to the
State, road or rail infrastructures being the best-known examples. Companies are
happy to leave these faux frais to the public authorities, which obviously allow
them to obtain a better profit because they do not have to manage these faux frais
internally and therefore to deduct them from the surplus value obtained from
the productive work. Moreover, most of the time they do not have the necessary
capital to be able to invest in the large infrastructure necessary for their activities.
In return, the State captures part of the surplus value generated by the companies
benefiting from its structures.
Over time, faux frais become more and more significant because the produc-
tive labor process requires structures whose investments grow over very long
periods of time. Thus, an educated population, a rapid movement of goods and
people, energy infrastructures or security-related sectors are all faux frais that the
State assumes. This phenomenon encourages contradictory reasoning in capital-
ist thinking. On the one hand, every company knows that for it to be competitive,
it must be able to benefit from good quality infrastructure, or so-called attractive-
ness. At an individual level, therefore, each capitalist will push for state invest-
ment in this infrastructure, yet at a higher level this infrastructure costs a part of
the surplus value, taken via taxes. As capitalists see part of their surplus value
taken by the State, they will ask the State to leave them alone, “laissez faire.”
However, as we have seen, whether these faux frais are borne by the state or by
private companies does not change the total capital.
One might think that faux frais are only associated with service companies, so
that unproductive labor could be confused with the tertiary sector. We have seen
that Marx gives the example of the schoolmaster, which obviously leaves no doubt
that unproductive labor and immaterial labor do not correspond. However, this
association, for which Marx has often been criticized, has its origin in passages
where he associates productive labor with material labor, or even industrial labor
and unproductive labor with immaterial labor:
Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern industry, accompanied as it is by both a
more extensive and a more intense exploitation of labour power in all other spheres of produc-
tion, allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working class,
and the consequent reproduction, on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient domestic slaves
under the name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, etc.18

A few lines later Marx adds to the list of unproductive labor “the ‘ideological’
classes, such as government officials, priests, lawyers, soldiers, etc.”19 We could
deduce from this passage that service occupations are unproductive labor that
takes a share of productive capital. If Marx is ambiguous on this question, it is
because, as we have already seen, there was a quasi-identity in his time between
material labor and productive labor. This is no longer the case today, so that we
could say that a large part of industry is not productive.
Let us take an example to better understand this assertion. A government
contracts with a construction company to build a building that will house a
branch of its administration. The labor produced to construct the building will be
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 13

unproductive because the government will not valorize the building, as the public
servants will not produce value. The share of value taken from the productive labor
to build the building is frozen, so to speak. If on the other hand the building does
not house civil servants but workers who produce value, then the labor produced
to build what will then be a factory will become productive. Now imagine that
the building is a factory, but it produces fighter planes for the state. These fighter
planes do not create any surplus value, and although they contain a lot of value,
that value is frozen, lost to global capital. The factory’s manufacturing therefore
becomes, notwithstanding its industrial fabrication of aircraft, unproductive labor.

CRISIS AND IMPERIALISM

The considerable increase in the share of unproductive labor in the general produc-
tion process should not only be seen as a development of the service economy –
and as we have seen, services can very well be productive – but as one of the
major sources of the crises of capitalism. Productive labor requires a considerable
increase in activities without which it could not develop but which costs it more
and more, directly or indirectly. Thus, in the mid-nineteenth century, productive
labor required mainly unskilled labor and required the state to provide a minimum
of education for this labor force. The faux frais of education were already captur-
ing part of the added value of productive labor, but this did not yet pose a threat
to the system as a whole. The development of capitalism throughout the twentieth
century required productive labor to be increasingly skilled, and the costs of educa-
tion began to become more and more important for States, becoming in most of
them one of the largest item in their budgets. At the same time, the share of pro-
ductive labor is becoming smaller and smaller in the overall production process, as
it requires an increasing share of unproductive labor to be carried out. As a result,
the share of surplus value taken by the State is more and more difficult to pay and
more and more handicapping for productive labor. The growing difficulty of pro-
ducing value, linked in particular to the increase of faux frais, is inherent in the very
contradictions of the fundamental categories of capital (value and abstract labor).
In its expansionist mode of operation, corresponding historically from its birth
until the beginning of the twentieth century, the schema of the capitalist mode
of production functions in such a way that the productive sector can finance the
various unproductive sectors. The surplus value of the productive sector serves to
finance constant capital, variable capital, but also the profits of the unproductive
sector. It is also necessary that the surplus value of the productive sector should
partly return to it. In this phase, the surplus value of the productive sector is
greater than the need of the unproductive sector. But when the productive sec-
tor requires more and more unproductive work to be carried out, the machinery
breaks down. At this stage, this means that the total mass of value within capital
falls since the unproductive sector demands more surplus value from the produc-
tive sector than the latter can produce.
Capitalism throughout the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth cen-
tury was able to operate with a productive sector generating enough surplus value
14 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

to allow unproductive sectors to be financed. These sectors were then reduced

to a minimal share, with very little state intervention, so that, as Marx may
have thought, the unproductive sector could be reduced to domestic servants.
However, firms in the productive sector that were subject to strong competition
had to achieve high productivity gains in order to remain competitive in the mar-
ket. A firm that acquires a new machine that enables it to produce commodities
twice as fast as its competitors has a decisive advantage over the latter. The com-
modity, on the other hand, contains half as much value as before:
The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by onehalf the labour
required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of
fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of
their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently
fell to one-half its former value.20

If at the individual level competition allows the capitalist to gain a tempo-

rary advantage over his competitors, this race for productivity gains proves cata-
strophic for the system as a whole. Each commodity receives less and less human
labor which, for a society based on abstract labor, is the only source of wealth
that allows it to continue its race forward. To compensate for this loss in value,
the capitalist has to sell more commodities. Historically, this competition between
capitalists to require less and less human labor time for the production of mer-
chandise finds its culmination at the beginning of the twentieth century with the
scientific organization of labor, Taylorism. Essentially based on the rationaliza-
tion of the labor process, each element of this process is broken down into sim-
ple and repetitive actions that can be carried out by unskilled workers. However,
these gains in productivity largely caused the 1929 crisis, which was only resolved
through the war economy.
At the end of the war, productivity gains were offset by the massive flow of
commodities. Then began what has been called the consumer society. New sec-
tors that had until then been outside the commodity sphere also offered new
opportunities:
Until the middle of the twentieth century, even in the core capitalist countries, large parts of
society and daily life had only been partially penetrated by monetary and market relations.
Alongside the modern industrial sector, an important traditional sector was perpetuated which
was still strongly marked by domestic, artisanal and agricultural lifestyles and production.
(Lohoff & Trenkle, 2014, pp. 41–42)

These new market sectors require a considerable amount of labor force and
thus bring the majority of the population into wage and salaried labor. This new
wage and salary earning population no longer produces little or nothing outside
of capitalist relations. Every moment of daily life that was formerly outside of
any market relationship becomes the object of capital (the food industry replaces
the family kitchen or the home garden, etc.). The post-World War II years were
also marked by the increased role of the state at all levels: it invested heavily in
infrastructure (road, rail and electricity networks) that allowed capital to develop
more easily and took over faux frais in return for corporate taxes. As companies
then generate a great amount of surplus value – through mass employment and
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 15

the extension of the market sphere to new sectors – the State can take part of the
surplus value of the productive sector to finance the unproductive sector without
compromising the general balance.21
Through various forms of financial aid, the state has also taken up the burden
of the new economic insecurity suffered by millions of workers, who no longer
have the old solidarity networks outside capitalist relations that had enabled them
to survive. This is the birth of the welfare state, which is still financed by the sur-
plus value generated by productive capital and which enables employees to find
solidarity at the level of the state, which is now inaccessible to them or is in danger
of extinction in their daily lives.
This beautiful mechanics broke down in the 1960s and even more so in the
1970s. Several reasons are at the origin of this crisis; some of them are cyclical,
such as the oil crises of the 1970s, which we will not study here, and others are at
the heart of capitalist logic and its internal contradictions. If productive capital
found new sectors to explore at the end of the war, thus allowing it to finance
unproductive capital, it fell back into crisis as soon as these new sectors began
to become scarce. As productive labor diminished, so did the surplus value that
allowed unproductive labor to be financed. From then on, states began to go into
debt to compensate for the lack of surplus value necessary to finance whole swaths
of nonproductive industries. This headlong rush of states into debt has not ceased,
reaching sums that would have made any capitalist shudder just a few years ago.
Finally, the digital revolution at the turn of the 1970s brought productivity
gains that had never been achieved before, further reducing the share of human
labor needed for the production of commodities and completely reorganizing the
labor process. Lohoff and Trenkle (2014) note that:
The situation began to change, however, in the early 1970s, when the first microprocessors were
developed, making information technology cheaper and more flexible, and allowing it to be
widely used, as in the control of industrial robots, which now became profitable to use on a
large scale. However, the potential for rationalisation resulting from the systematic application
of microelectronics went far beyond simply replacing human labour with industrial robots
and other electrically controlled machines. The ever-faster processing of large amounts of
information, combined with new communication technologies and the transport revolution,
made it possible to radically restructure the entire value chain, from the development of pro-
duction to the sale of products, with all the potential for saving time and money, while at the
same time speeding up the turnover of capital... Gradually the rigid Fordist system of mass
production was broken up, leaving the path open for a large degree of automation in manu-
facturing processes, which was called ‘lean manufacturing,’ in which humans did not become
entirely superfluous, but were pushed out of immediate production to an extent previously
unimaginable. (p. 67)

As human labor becomes increasingly scarce within the production process,

it becomes impossible for unproductive capital, whose share of jobs has become
very important in capitalist societies, to be financed. In order to escape this crisis
of productive labor temporarily, in addition to the indebtedness of states and
individuals, the 1980s saw what is now known as the financialization of the econ-
omy. Trapped by its internal contradictions, capital, watching the value on which
it vitally depends diminishing every day, has found refuge in the now unbridled
creation of money.
16 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

After the brief capitalist “golden age” between 1945 and 1975, capital’s
contradictions resumed and the abolition of the convertibility of the dollar into gold
removed the last brake on unlimited money. As Marx described: “Fixed as wealth, as
the general form of wealth, as value which counts as value, [money] is therefore the
constant impulse to exceed its quantitative limits: an endless process.”22
In order to break the deadlock in the crisis of productive labor, we then move on
to the M–M′ schema, where money seems to produce its own profit. Let us recall that
as profit is only one of the forms of surplus value, it must therefore rely upon value;
however, in this configuration capitalism acts as if it could do without the process of
production. Post-Fordist capitalism seeks in the future the value it lacks in the pre-
sent, and finance becomes the tool of this capitalism that has become financial, pro-
jecting value that has not yet been created. Money then becomes something almost
magical that can create itself, what Marx calls the fetishism of interest capital.
The creation of a gigantic amount of “fictitious capital” makes it possible to
temporarily make up for the fall in value in the productive labor sector, but the
bet on future value comes to an end as soon as reality reasserts itself: the expected
value has not been created or has not been created sufficiently. It is this phenom-
enon that explains the many crises that capitalism has gone through in recent
decades: the dot-com bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, etc.
Nevertheless, finance still needs a material basis to be able to rely on a hypo-
thetical value in the future, and it seems that it is becoming increasingly difficult
to find the productive sectors of the future:
What makes the problem worse is that the attainment of future value can only work if the finan-
cial products refer to a sector of the real economy that promises future gains. In the Reagan
era, that sector was U.S. Treasury bonds (government bonds); in the new economy era, it was
internet start-ups; and in the 2000s, it was real estate, whose prices seemed to be able to rise to
the sky. But if such promising sectors run out, capitalism, kept alive by the infusion of future
value, reaches its limits. Now this critical point has been reached.23

Furthermore, the debt of capitalist states has become abyssal. It should be noted
that the emergence of finance is not the cause but the consequence of a mode of
production which, as we have seen, is confronted with internal contradictions that
lead it to seek, via finance, a value that it can no longer find in the present. Thus,
to simply want to regulate finance or to fight the excesses of financial capitalism
is to fail to understand the very logic of capital. Capital needs finance as much as
the sick man needs his medicine, otherwise he will fall. Finance is not the bad side
of capitalism; it is the historical development of the internal logic of capitalism.
The growing significance of finance in the capitalist economy has been accom-
panied by a globalization of production processes. Under various modalities, the
enterprises of the imperialist countries have produced or outsourced in countries
where labor is cheap. This has resulted in the rising economic insecurity of the
working class in the capitalist countries and a brutal transformation of social
relations in the exploited countries. The phenomenal increase of industry in
these countries may at first sight seem contradictory to the general decline in the
mass of value. It is commonly said that the disappearance of the working class in
the imperialist countries has been compensated for by the emergence of a large
working class in China, India, etc., and that the working class is found more and
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 17

more in the periphery. This is partly true; however, a fundamental point must be
stressed: even if the working class in the exploited countries compensates for or is
even more numerous than the working class in the imperialist countries that it has
replaced, this does not mean that a greater mass of value is extracted at the global
level. What the companies in the imperialist countries are looking for is a cheap
labor force that is largely subject to its dictates. In these factories, the various labor
processes are still largely rudimentary, far from the standards of the factories of
the companies located in the most advanced capitalist countries, and a commod-
ity must necessarily align itself, once on the market, with the working time socially
necessary for its production. Thus, any commodity which, with modern means of
production, requires 10 hours to be produced in Germany and 100 hours in China
will represent the same amount of value even if in the second case it requires much
more labor than in the first. At the level of the individual enterprise, profitability
is still possible by giving miserable wages and deplorable living conditions to its
employees. However, at the general level, the value remains in line with the average
time needed to produce it. Therefore, no matter the conditions of production of a
commodity for the capitalist mode of production, the only things that count are
the value produced over time and its corollary abstract labor.
This evanescence of value is pushing the big capitalist companies to exploit
their employees more and more, so that absolute surplus value is making a
comeback first in the exploited countries and now increasingly in the imperialist
countries themselves. But this goes even further, so that we can speak of super-
exploitation in which the workers’ wages no longer even represent the value of
their labor power. This has many consequences: first of all on the working and
living conditions of the workers, which are becoming more and more difficult in
the countries subject to imperialism, but also on the situation of the workers in
the imperialist countries themselves, which is seeing jobs becoming scarcer and
pushing them into political deadlock; as well as a real plundering of the environ-
ment, child labor, the development of the informal economy because of mass
unemployment, and the list goes on and on.
This society based on capitalist labor sees its logic turned against itself and
prefers to sacrifice humans and the environment to the abstraction of “abstract
labor.” This abstraction is, so to speak, real since it really subjects humans to its
law and becomes the very foundation of society since all interactions are medi-
ated by it or its products. Abstract labor is a totalizing social activity in the sense
that it gives the general framework to all human activities. It is this peculiarity
of labor under capitalism that gives it its historical specificity and also its cold
absurdity where it becomes preferable to force children, men and women to work
in disgraceful conditions in the countries of the South and to offer only unem-
ployment or precarious jobs in the countries of the North.

CONCLUSION
Imperialism is of course a way for the big capitalist companies to extract value,
but it is above all a sign of the deep crisis of capitalism. This is not a crisis that is
18 FABIEN TRÉMEAU

due to excessive financialization or to a few bad capitalists who have lost all moral
sense. Rather, it is due to the very logic of capital, which is based on abstractions
(value, abstract labor) which, when confronted with reality, find their limits. The
capitalists are the agents of these abstractions; however, though we cannot excul-
pate the individuals, we must not forget that, as Marx wrote, “here individuals
are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic catego-
ries, embodiments of particular class relations and class interests.” The struggle
against imperialism must therefore follow both aspects of the method established
by Marx. On the one hand, we must understand the dynamics of the logical cate-
gories of capital that push it to extract more and more value, even if it means put-
ting more and more workers in terrible conditions and making them produce for
the sake of producing, to the detriment of the environment; on the other hand,
we must understand concrete historical developments, that is to say, understand
the elements that allow this absurd logic to reign. This method makes it possible
to avoid two pitfalls that are widespread in Marxist circles even today: on the one
hand, to think that the capitalists are consciously implementing a Machiavellian
plan to enslave the greater part of humanity; on the other hand, not to do the
thankless work of establishing and understanding the steps that make it possi-
ble to go from logical categories to the most concrete phenomena. Without this,
class struggle only calls into question the individuals and not the system that they
embody but we mustn’t forget that they actually embody them. Because we are
not struggling against abstractions.

NOTES
1. Marx writes in the Grundrisse: “In order to develop the laws of bourgeois economy,
therefore, it is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of production” (p. 460).
2. Essays on Marx’s Value Theory were not republished after Rubin’s death in 1928.
The first English translation dates from 1973; the German and French translations that
followed were based on the English version.
3. In Dialectics of the Form of Value, Hans Georg Backhaus criticizes the Ricardian
reading of Marx’s work: “The Ricardians do not realize that their thesis, according to
which labour determines the value of the commodity, remains external to the notion of
value itself: the determining reason and the determined object remain distinct here and
know no ‘internal interdependence.’ Labour in its relation to value still appears to be exter-
nal when the quantity of value is determined according to the quantity of labour spent.
Thus, the basic hypothesis of classical economics is nothing more than an assertion, a
‘metaphysical dogma.’”
4. Marx to Engels in Manchester (January 8, 1868), In Marx and Engels (2010), vol.
43, p. 514.
5. Marx and Engels (2010, p. 407).
6. Marx, Capital, In Marx and Engels (2010), vol. 35, p. 51.
7. Rubin (1990) already notes her astonishment at this fact: “When we see die decisive
importance which Marx gave to the theory of abstract labor, we must wonder why this
theory has received so little attention in Marxist literature” (p. 131).
8. “If even Marxists usually define abstract labor in the sense of expenditure of physi-
ological energy, then we need not wonder that this concept is widespread in anti-Marxist
literature” (Rubin, 1990, p. 132).
9. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, In Marx and Engels (2010), vol. 29,
p. 300.
Abstract Labor and Imperialism 19

10. Marx (1968), Part 2, p. 164.

11. «Entretien avec Antonio Negri sur le postcolonialisme et la biopolitique», Toplumbilim,
25, Istanbul, 2010.
12. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010), vol. 35, pp. 91–92.
13. Marx and Engels (2010, p. 57).
14. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010, vol. 28, p. 96).
15. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010, vol. 34, p. 444).
16. Marx, Capital, In Marx and Engels (2010, vol. 35, p. 510).
17. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010, vol. 34, p. 448).
18. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010, vol. 35, p. 449).
19. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010).
20. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010, vol. 35, p. 49).
21. “This was no doubt due to the fact that not only was the enormous expansion of
the employed labour force leading to a widening of the absolute mass of value, but also
that, in the wake of the tremendous progress in productivity, the rate of plus-value, that
is, the amount of plus-value in relation to the entire working day, was steadily increasing”
(Lohoff & Trenkle, 2014, p. 43).
22. Marx, In Marx and Engels (2010, vol. 28, p. 201).
23. Lohoff and Trenkle, Retrieved from Trenklehttp://sd-1.archive-host.com/membres/
up/4519779941507678/Sur_limmense_decharge_du_capital_fictif_Lohoff_et_Trenkle.pdf.

REFERENCES
Backhaus, H. G. (1974). Dialectique de la forme de la valeur. Critiques de l’économie politique,
18(October–December), 15.
Colleti, L. (1974). De Rousseau à Lénine. London: Gordon & Breach.
Ellul, J. (1982). L’inéluctable prolétariat. Paris: Seuil.
Lohoff, E., & Trenkle, N. (2014). La grande dévalorisation: pourquoi la spéculation et la dette de l’État
ne sont pas les causes de la crise. Paris: Post-éditions.
Lukács, G. (1971). History and class consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Marx, K. (1968). Theories of surplus value. Moscow: Progress Publisher.
Marx, K. (1973). Grundrisse. London: Penguin.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2010). Collected works. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Negri, A., & Hardt, M. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Postone, M. (1993). Time, labor, and social domination. A reinterpretation of Marx’s critical theory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rubin, I. (1990). Essays on Marx’s value theory. New York, NY: Black Rose Books.
Vincent, J.-M. (2019). Critique du travail: le faire et l’agir. Paris: Éditions Critiques.
Vincent, J.-M. (2020). Fétichisme et société. Paris: Éditions Critiques.
CHAPTER 2
IMPERIALISM AND WORKING-
CLASS AGENCY
John Smith

ABSTRACT
It is widely believed that, during the neoliberal era, labor has become weaker
and capital has become stronger. This chapter argues the opposite is true. Only
if class struggle is reduced to the economic struggle to improve our position
within capitalism – as opposed to the political struggle to overthrow it – can
workers’ loss of agency be considered a fact. In every other respect, this belief
is false. When uprisings against corrupt plutocracies, worldwide mobiliza-
tions sparked by George Floyd’s murder, youth rebellions against the capitalist
destruction of nature, struggles of millions of women for reproductive rights
are seen for what they are – expressions of class struggle – it becomes clear that
transition to socialism is not only necessary, it is also possible.
Keywords: Imperialism; working class; class struggle; socialism; politics;
revolution

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold / Greater than the might of
armies magnified a thousand fold! / We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old /
For the union makes us strong! (Chaplin, 1914)

INTRODUCTION
Agency implies conscious, premeditated intention; action that goes beyond spon-
taneous, reflexive resistance when attacked. Conscious action implies the capacity
to think in concepts, to analyze a complex situation and then to act on the results
Imperialism and Transitions to Socialism
Research in Political Economy, Volume 36, 21–38
Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0161-7230/doi:10.1108/S0161-723020210000036002
21
22 JOHN SMITH

of this analysis. Lenin reminds us that “Engels recognizes not two forms of the
great struggle … (political and economic) … but three, placing the theoretical
struggle on a par with the first two,”1 and he concluded that “without revolution-
ary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”2
This chapter builds on theoretical foundations laid in my 2016 book Imperialism
in the Twenty-First Century – Globalisation, Super-exploitation, and Capitalism’s
Final Crisis. This book addressed two major gaps in revolutionary theory: the
inadequacy of existing Marxist accounts of what it identified as “the defining
transformation of the neoliberal era,” namely the globalization of production and
its global shift to low-wage countries; and, connected with this, the fact that “two
necessary elements of a theory of contemporary imperialism – international vari-
ations in the value of labor-power and in the rate of exploitation – were explicitly
excluded by Marx from his general theory as elaborated in Capital” (p. 238), since
when they have been put not only to one side but also out of mind. Unless these
gaps are filled, it argued, the roots, nature and dynamics of the global economic
crisis that erupted in 2007–2008 cannot be understood. Extreme monetary poli-
cies and further increases in already-mountainous global debt allowed the global
economic crisis to go into remission but this only succeeded in postponing global
depression and making an even more cataclysmic financial crisis inevitable – for
which the coronavirus pandemic has provided the catalyst.
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century concluded that the crisis beginning
in 2007 marked “the transition from a post-war world order to a pre-war world
order”; that we are now living through “the deepest and most profound crisis in
capitalism’s history”; combined with “the capitalist destruction of nature … this is
not just capitalism’s greatest-ever crisis, it is capitalism’s final crisis, an existential
crisis for humanity” (p. 235). This chapter considers what working-class agency
means in the context of these enormous challenges. It asks the same question as
did Michael D Yates in his recent book, Can the Working Class Change the World?
His answer:
The working class must change world. There really is no choice …. We cannot afford to settle
for incremental changes …. To believe otherwise is surely utopian. It is the radical upending of
the social order that is now hardheaded realism, the only path forward.3

THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE AND

THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE
It is widely believed that, during the neoliberal era,4 labor has become weaker
and capital has become stronger, both in imperialist Europe and North America
and in the formally independent nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, they
continue to dominate and exploit. This chapter argues that the opposite is true.
The weakening and decay of capitalism is misinterpreted as a weakening of the
working class whose labor power it has subsumed. As its global systemic crisis
deepens, as depression conditions spread, as the tendency for the rate of profit
to fall asserts itself with ever-greater force, as inter-imperialist rivalries and con-
flicts of interest of all kinds between capitalists intensify, capitalism is becoming
Imperialism and Working-class Agency 23

weaker, not stronger. Agency – the capacity to act in order to achieve a desired
effect – is increasingly beyond the grasp of the capitalist misrulers of this earth.
The coronavirus pandemic; the global economic depression that predated it and
that has been hugely accelerated by it; climate heating; the mass extinction of spe-
cies – these four horsemen of the capitalist apocalypse – cannot be reined in by an
economic system based on selfishness, greed and dog-eat-dog competition. To all
with eyes to see, capitalism is revealing itself to be incompatible with the continu-
ation of human civilization. Socialist revolution – in imperialist countries and
across the world – is a necessity, an urgent practical task, a life and death question
if human civilization is to survive and if the capitalist destruction of nature – of
which the coronavirus epidemic is merely the latest symptom – is to be ended.
Not only is it false, belief in the alleged power-shift in favor of capital is “per-
formative,” that is, it has a paralyzing, agency-sapping effect on workers, farmers
and small producers. The increasing difficulty that working people the world over
now encounter in improving our conditions of life, or of holding on to gains
won by previous generations, is misunderstood to be a sign of our weakness. This
fatalistic notion is fanned by the exploiters and their servants in the media and
academia, who invest enormous effort and resources in convincing working peo-
ple that we are powerless and have no choice but to submit to their dictates.
Only if the class struggle is reduced to the economic struggle – the struggle to
protect and improve one’s position within the capitalist system as opposed to the
political struggle to overthrow it, a widespread malady denounced by Lenin as
economism – can workers’ loss of agency can be considered an unconditional fact.
It is also a banality, since it is always true that “in its merely economic action capi-
tal is the stronger side.”5 Enhanced international mobility of capital and reduc-
tion or removal of obstacles to the movement of all commodities except for labor
power across international borders has indeed substantially reduced workers’
economic bargaining power. While capital makes full use of its enhanced mobil-
ity to force workers in different countries and continents into competition with
each other, workers’ unions are seemingly less able to coordinate their economic
struggles than in the nineteenth century, when, despite the absence of telephones
and aeroplanes, trade unions waged a coordinated international struggle for the
eight-hour day.
That “in its merely economic action capital is the stronger side” is manifested
in the large and accelerating fall in labor’s share of national income in imperialist
nations and even more so in exploited nations,6 in the widespread trend toward
casualization, and in the withering of trade unions. We can’t say we weren’t
warned: in 1867, in a declaration drafted for the First International’s Lausanne
Congress, Marx (1867) said:
in order to oppose their workers, the employers either bring in workers from abroad or else
transfer manufacture to countries where there is a cheap labour force. Given this state of affairs,
if the working class wishes to continue its struggle with some chance of success, the national
organisations must become international.

The onset of systemic crisis in 2007–2008 means that political strategies limited
to the quest for reforms within capitalism – in other words, the social democratic/
24 JOHN SMITH

Stalinist politics that have dominated working-class politics in the imperialist

countries for a century – have reached a dead end. This is not proof of the loss of
working class agency, but on the contrary, it is evidence of the loss of the capacity
of the bourgeoisie to continue to co-opt the working class.
The same is true of its equivalent in the neocolonies known as “developing
countries.” There, too, the scope for bourgeois democratic reforms is vanishing,
since capitalist development in these nations is more dependent than ever on the
health of imperialist economies, on northern demand for the South’s exports, and
on the fickle whims of imperialist investors.
As attempts to co-opt the working class with reforms run into the sand, capi-
talist politics moves sharply to the right, with racism and xenophobia rising in
prominence and fascist movements straining at the leash. Except in revolutionary
times, bourgeois ideology dominates working-class politics – inevitably so, since
“the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (Marx, 1846) –
and it is no surprise that all but the most conscious sectors of the working class
are pulled along by the current. But it is a mistake to identify the accelerating
rightward drift of bourgeois politics with an accelerated rightward drift of the
working class, as do many middle-class liberals and self-regarding progressives
who have drawn exactly this simplistic conclusion from the workers who voted
for Brexit in the United Kingdom, or those in Brazil who voted for Bolsonaro
out of disgust at the Workers’ Party’s corruption and pseudo-radicalism. The
unprecedented participation of US workers who are Caucasian in anti-racist pro-
tests following the murder of George Floyd shows that the truth is much more
complicated than these patronizing, prejudiced “progressives” think.
The bourgeoisies’ embrace of reaction is unambiguous and pathological, but
the path of working-class consciousness involves growing tensions and contra-
dictions between ideologies which have long held them in thrall and their own
rational reflection on history, on world events and on their own experiences.
Workers’ disenchantment with “progressive” reformism shows they are in advance
of those who are still enchanted by it and can be the first step in a process of
radicalization, even if the first manifestation of this is endorsement of the “lefts”
right-wing opponents. Many workers who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012
gave their vote to Trump in 2016 more because he denounced the corrupt rela-
tionship between politicians and big business, a.k.a. “the swamp”, than for his
crude xenophobia – and we shouldn’t forget that most US workers didn’t vote at
all. Of course, swallowing the demagogues’ poison is damaging to health, but the
“progressives” poison is all the more dangerous for being insidious and coated
with hypocrisy.
There are many reasons to reject the notion that four decades of neoliberal
counterrevolution has neutralized working-class agency. The Arab Spring, the
worldwide mobilizations against racism and police brutality sparked by the mur-
der of George Floyd in the United States, the mobilizations by youth around the
world against the capitalist destruction of nature, the struggle of women from
Korea to Argentina to Ireland to Sudan against sexism and for sovereignty over
their own bodies, the rise of anti-imperialist and avowedly anti-capitalist govern-
ments in many Latin American nations – these are all expressions of class struggle.
Imperialism and Working-class Agency 25

This is so whether or not their participants have developed an anti-capitalist, class

perspective, for two reasons: the vast majority of participants in the struggles must
sell their labor power to survive, and because racism, patriarchal oppression, eco-
cide and dictatorial methods of rule are all intrinsic to capitalism, including in the
imperialist democracies, who not only install, arm and supervise the vilest capital-
ist dictatorships around the world, they also keep these methods ready for use at
a moment’s notice at home.
Salvador Allende survived just three years in office before he was toppled
in a military coup orchestrated by Richard Nixon and Chile’s right wing gen-
erals, while the radical anti-imperialist government in Venezuela led by Hugo
Chavez and Nicolas Maduro has survived 20 years of attempted military coups,
economic strangulation and internal subversion orchestrated by George Bush,
Barrack Obama and now Donald Trump.7

THEIR POLITICS AND OURS

The young generation of whites, Blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of
extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have
misused it …. And I for one will join in with anyone, I don’t care what color you are, as long as
you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth (Malcolm X, 1964).

“Left-wing” is widely used as a short-hand expression for identification with

the interests of working people, opposition to all forms of prejudice and discrimi-
nation, and adherence to the ideals and values of socialism and communism. But
there are reasons why those who embrace socialist and communist values should
disdain to be identified as, or to self-identify as, “left-wing.” The term comes
from the French Revolution, when the most radical deputies in the first National
Assembly sat to the left of the President while the most reactionary deputies sat on
the right. Herein lies the big problem with this term – “left-wing” denotes a part of
the spectrum of bourgeois politics, yet working class politics is nowhere to be found
on this spectrum. There is no place for revolutionary proletarian politics anywhere
on the left-right spectrum of bourgeois politics. Communists are not extremists,
nor are we “ultra-left.” The extremists are those who defend this depraved, inhu-
man capitalist system, including those who self-identify as liberals and social
democrats. When they attack those who advocate social revolution as “extremist”
they are merely projecting their own psychological disorder upon their opponents.
Revolutionary activism is not extremist; it is the only way for responsible human
beings to act at this extreme moment in human history. Cuba’s revolutionary
leaders have never acted in an “extremist” manner. Audacious, yes! “Implacable
in struggle, generous in victory,” to quote Fidel Castro, yes! Intransigent in the
defence of principles, yes! But this isn’t extremism! One fact which many will find
both amazing and highly instructive is that there has never been a single instance
of US flag-burning during any of the multitude of massive anti-imperialist dem-
onstrations since the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959. Extremism and
ultra-leftism is diametrically opposed to genuine revolutionary, working-class
26 JOHN SMITH

politics, and often turn out to be the most important friends of counterrevolu-
tion and reaction at key turning points in the revolutionary process. To recognize
the fact that we live “at a time of extremism,” as did Malcolm X at the end of his
December 1964 speech at Oxford University in the epigraph above doesn’t make
you into an extremist. It is extremely harmful and self-defeating to self-identify
as extremist or to allow others to identify us as such. The effect is to create a
ghetto or a silo in which we become trapped, and which reinforces a sense of self-
importance and of being special, different from everyone else.
Our politics is not “the art of the possible,” it is the science of necessity.8 By
any means necessary!, Malcolm X’s magnificent revolutionary slogan resonates
with Freedom is the recognition of necessity, a well-known saying by Frederick
Engels (1877) in his critique of Eugen Dühring, a right wing socialist of his day.
We must do whatever is necessary to overthrow oppression, to end our exploita-
tion, to win our freedom; we must do whatever is necessary to halt and reverse
the capitalist destruction of nature. And we can only discover what is necessary
through science, by studying the miserable condition that exists on this earth from
all angles, by gathering and analyzing all relevant data and drawing on all relevant
experiences. While all fields of natural sciences are currently experiencing aston-
ishing revolutionary advances, a diametrically opposite situation prevails in the
social sciences, above all in politics and economics. There, the situation is truly
abysmal. Instead of revolutionary advances, mainstream social sciences are in
chaos, abandoning criticism for apologetics, theoretical rigor for eclecticism, and
the rejection of science altogether in favor of post-modernist denial that there is
any such thing as objective truth.9 Servility has replaced science, confirming a
thousand times over the truth of Marx’s famous dictum:
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas … the class which is the ruling
material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.10

We need revolutionary social science for these revolutionary times, with all the
rigor and objectivity, which bourgeois social science proclaims but is incapable
of achieving!
The ecological crisis provides a striking example of the gulf separating bour-
geois pragmatism from revolutionary realism. Science tells us what is necessary
if we are to avert cataclysm, but bourgeois politicians will only do what it is pos-
sible short of destabilizing the capitalist system that is responsible for this exis-
tential threat, and short of provoking resistance from the capitalists who mightily
profit from it – in other words, practically nothing. Their “art” consists of fooling
the rest of us that they’re taking meaningful action and that nothing else can
be done, which they accomplish with the crucial help of the servile media. An
eloquent example of this is that, in 2017, the most recent year for which there
is data, imperialist nations donated just $18 billion toward their pledge made at
the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 to contribute $100 billion per annum to
help poor countries adapt to climate change (by shifting to sustainable sources of
energy) and to mitigate its effects (by strengthening their ability to protect them-
selves from floods, drought, etc.), representing just 0.03 percent of their combined
GDP of $55 trillion.11
Imperialism and Working-class Agency 27

Greta Thunberg spoke for millions who are seeing through the hypocrisy,
denial and criminal negligence of those who claim to be awake to the threat and
the reality of ecological destruction:
For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away
and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still
nowhere in sight …. You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your
betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say:
We will never forgive you.12

Speaking truth to power is a waste of time, because the power isn’t listening.
The power is hostile to truth. We can only hope to catch the ear of the powerful
by bending the truth, by editing it, by sugar-coating it, by smuggling bits in and
leaving the most important bits out; each time betraying it.
In revolutionary times, social science must be revolutionary or else it is not sci-
ence. Social scientists must give up on trying to speak truth to power, and instead
make truth into a weapon of the powerless. This means taking the side of the
dispossessed and exploited and oppressed, learning from them, helping them
forge the weapons they need to take power. And the same applies to natural and
applied sciences and to science workers. This is not an easy path – because of the
power of the ruling ideas, and because of academia’s privileged status as a con-
stituent part of the labor aristocracy.
A very different example of the contrast between the science of necessity
and the art of the possible was given by the now-receding “pink tide” reformist
governments in Latin America. The anti-imperialism and devotion to the inter-
ests of the people expressed by many of their leaders and most of their adher-
ents was sincere. Yet their “art of the possible” has meant doing whatever can
be done within the framework of bourgeois democracy, whatever can be done
without being frozen out of international markets, to postpone the inevitable
showdown and to buy time for the search for an illusory third way. In prac-
tice, this has meant seeking alliances with “patriotic” capitalists while chan-
neling some of the proceeds from oil and other primary commodity exports
into social programs.
The results are now in. After 13 years of Workers Party (PT) rule, brought
to an end by a parliamentary coup in 2016, Brazilian capitalism is intact but the
Amazon rainforest isn’t, the trade unions and mass movements that brought Lula
da Silva to power are in disarray and Lula himself spent nearly two years in jail
on framed-up charges of personal corruption, although he must take responsibil-
ity for the enormously corrupt relation between his reformist government and
Brazil’s capitalists, revulsion against which helped sweep the far-right demagog
Jair Bolsonaro to power in 2018. In neighboring Venezuela, dreams of peace-
ful coexistence with its capitalists have been dispelled by their violent resistance
and their embrace of far-right politicians, but the revolutionary process survives
thanks to the deep anti-imperialist class consciousness of its working people and
on their capacity to resist, that is, on their agency13; while in Nicaragua, where
a revolutionary workers’ and farmers’ government was brought to power by
an armed popular uprising in 1979, in the following decade its leaders got lost
searching for a third way between capitalist development and social revolution,
Another random document with
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advantage over the propeller type in the removal of dust lies in the
fact that they overcome greater internal resistance, and a uniform
high velocity in a complicated system of pipes can thus more easily
be maintained.

Fig. 3 shows adjustable hoods and ducts fitting closely over rollers for mixing
coloured inks, and serving not only to prevent inhalation of lead dust by the
workers, but also the colour from one machine affecting that on another. In the
particular room where the installation is fitted there are thirteen separate sets of
rollers; the diameter of the branch duct of each machine is about 5 inches, and
that of the main duct close to the fan about 20 inches. The special points we
have considered as to entrance of all branch ducts into the main duct
tangentially, gradual tapering of the main trunk, and collection of the dust in
filter-bags, are noticeable. Further, when one set of rollers is not in use the
raising of the hood automatically cuts off the draught through it. (Drawing
supplied by the Sturtevant Engineering Company, Limited, London.)

Ducts.—The main duct should be of metal (steel, sheet-iron, or

zinc); it should be circular in shape, have as straight and short a
course as possible, and be tapered in such manner that the area of
cross-section at any point shall equal the combined areas of all the
branch pipes which have entered it at that point (Fig. 3). Proper
dimensions must be studied in relation to the size of the fan and the
work to be done. Wooden ducts, unless chosen for specific reasons,
such as the presence of acid in the fumes to be removed, are very
unsatisfactory, as it is difficult to maintain them in an air-tight
condition or to make branch pipes enter with rounded junctions.
Where several branch ducts enter a main duct, situation of the fan
midway between them has advantage, not only in saving metal in
piping, but also in causing the distance of the fan from the farthest
branch duct to be only half what it would be were the fan placed at
the end of the system (see Fig. 7, p. 217). Further, the sectional area
of the two collecting ducts will be less than that of one main duct,
and greater uniformity of flow thereby secured. Where the two ducts
join up into the single duct of the fan, the bends must be easy;
otherwise the draughts would collide and neutralize one another.
Branch ducts, if they cannot be made tangential to a rounded curve,
should enter the main duct at an angle of 30 degrees, as by so doing
equalization of the draught at different openings is made fairly
uniform. The very common defect of a right-angle joint diminishes
the draught by nearly one-half. Branch ducts should never be made
to enter a main duct on the outer side of a bend, because at this
point the pressure of the current of air inside the duct is increased.
They should join up on the inside of a bend, where the pressure is
reduced.
Hoods and Air-Guides.—As the object of hoods is to
concentrate the draught on the fumes or dust to be removed from
the worker, position in regard to origin of the fumes or dust requires
first consideration. The more restricted the opening consistent with
unimpeded work, the more effective is the draught, and the less
disturbed will it be by cross-currents in the workroom. Pendock lays
it down as a useful principle that the area of the front opening into
the hood should not be more than four times that of the exhaust
throat—i.e., the point of junction of the hood and duct (Fig. 4). Not
less important is it that the draught should operate below the
breathing level. Preference as to the direction to be given to the
exhaust current should be in the order named: (1) Downwards; (2)
downwards and backwards combined; (3) backwards and upwards
combined; and (4) upwards only. Use should be made, for the
removal of the fumes or dust, of any initial current of hot air set up
from a bath of molten metal or from a heated metallic surface, as in
vitreous enamelling. Hence under such circumstances only (3) and
(4) need be considered. Generally hoods applied err in having too
wide an opening, or they are placed too far away from the source of
danger. They require sometimes to be adjustable to suit different-
sized articles. Care is necessary to see that, when a hood has been
adjusted for large articles, it is readjusted for smaller-sized articles.
The principle of ventilation downwards and backwards is recognized
as right for grinding and polishing on a wheel, since the tangential
current set up by the wheel in its rotation is utilized. Pug-mills in
paint-works are perhaps best ventilated by applying the exhaust to a
dome-shaped hood covering the posterior half of the mill. Edge-
runners must be encased, with an exhaust pipe attached to the
casing and sliding doors or shutters for introduction or removal of
material (Fig. 5). A small negative pressure inside the casing is all
that is necessary, so as to insure passage of air inwards and not
outwards. Branch ducts must protect the casks out of which material
is scooped, and the receptacle into which it is discharged. In
scooping out dry colour from a barrel, it is unwise to attempt to
remove the dust created at every displacement of air on removal of a
scoopful by means of a hood suspended over the barrel. Instead, the
last joint of the duct should be a telescopic one, so that it can be
lowered into the barrel, and be kept at a distance of about 6 inches
above the material. The air is thus drawn downwards into the barrel
(Fig. 6).
Fig. 4 shows a well-designed arrangement of hoods, duct, and fan, in the packing
of white lead, and the filter-bags for collecting the dust so removed. An
additional safeguard is introduced, as the casks stand upon grids through which
a down-draught is maintained by connecting the space underneath with the
exhaust system. (Drawing supplied by the Sturtevant Engineering Company,
Limited, London.)

Processes such as colour-dusting, aerographing, ware-cleaning,

enamel-brushing, and the like, are best carried out at benches under
hoods with glass tops. Air will enter from in front, and carry the dust
or spray away into the exhaust duct placed at the back of the bench.
Fig. 5 shows a pan mill with edge runners fitted with casing (partially open). The
casing is connected to a powerful fan, and branch ducts with telescopic terminal
sections control the dust in scooping out from the barrel, in feeding into the mill,
and at the point where the ground material is discharged.

Collection of Dust.—Frequently no heed is paid to the

collection of the dust. Sometimes a dust chamber is arranged to
intercept it on the far side of the fan, or attempt is made to blow the
dust into a tank of water. The fine dust of which we are speaking
cannot be satisfactorily collected by either of these methods, nor
even by a cyclone separator, so useful for the collection of many
kinds of dust. In lead works generally, the dust removed by the fan is
best collected in filter-bags made of some porous fabric. Various
efficient filters constructed on these lines by Messrs. Henry Simon,
Ltd.; Messrs. Beth and Co., Ltd.; and the Sturtevant Engineering
Company, Ltd., are on the market.
Fig. 6 shows an arrangement of piping with balanced telescopic joints fitted to a
Sirocco dust fan for removal of dust, in an electric accumulator works, when
scooping out litharge from a cask into the receptacle prior to emptying the
weighed quantity into the mixing machine, also under a hood connected with the
exhaust system. (Illustration supplied by Davidson and Company, Limited,
Belfast.)

In collecting the dust, care must be taken to provide an adequate

outlet for the spent air, so as to prevent creation of a source of
friction in front which might destroy the effectiveness of the
installation.
Fig. 7.—Exhaust Ventilation on the Patent “Pentarcomb” Principle applied
to Linotype and Monotype Machines in Printing Works, as installed by
the Zephyr Ventilating Company, Bristol.
P, Patent “pentarcomb” for equalizing exhaust; V, patent “pentarcomb” for general
ventilation; D, main and branch ducts; F, fan; U, upcast from fan; M, hoods over
metal-pots of monotype machines, constructed to raise and lower, and swing out
and in with metal-pot; L, hoods over metal-pots of linotype machines,
constructed to raise and lower.
In the illustration “pentarcomb” grids connect the branch ducts over the metal-pots
of mono and linotype machines with the main duct. The “pentarcomb” grids are
arranged also elsewhere in the main duct itself to assist in the general
ventilation of the workroom. The hoods over the metal-pots are constructed to
be raised and lowered, and to swing out and in radially with the melting-pot arm.
(Drawings supplied by the Zephyr Ventilating Company, Bristol.)

In order to secure equality of flow from a number of branched

ducts, the Zephyr Ventilating Company apply a special grating of
curved and slanting inlets—the “pentarcomb”—to each branch duct.
The air passing through the comb is split up into numerous small
columns, and the inclination of the curve which each is made to take
is such as to reduce friction to a minimum. By means of this device
we have found, in a trunk with twenty branches, the draught at the
one farthest from the fan as serviceable as that next to it. The
method is illustrated applied locally to remove the fumes from
linotype machines, and generally in the main duct for removal of foul
air near the ceiling.
Where electricity is available as a motive power for driving the fan,
some modification in the views expressed as to the curvature of the
pipes and system of installation can be allowed. In a red lead plant,
for instance, it may be desirable to have the pipes leading to the
sifter or packing machine with sharp angles, so as to prevent
tendency of such heavy dust to collect in them. The electric current
allows a fan to be installed at any point desired; and if applied with
knowledge that the increased friction due to an acute angle has to be
overcome, the result may be quite satisfactory.
The various forms of vacuum cleaning apparatus with
mouthpieces designed to aspirate the dust from different surfaces
are sure to be increasingly used. In our opinion, wherever electric
power is available, they will obviate barbarous methods involving use
of hand-brushes to collect dust from machines, such as those for
litho-dusting or for sweeping lead dust from benches and floors, or
use of bellows to blow out the dust from compositors’ cases.
Finally, the carrying out of lead processes by automatic methods
and with the interior of the casing under a negative pressure, so that
the material is transported from one process to another by means of
worms or conveyors, is everywhere to be aimed at. Or, again, it has
been found possible on a commercial scale, by means of
compressed air in a closed system of receivers and pipes, to force
material in very fine state of division from one place to another, as,
for instance, of litharge from the cask into the mixing machine for
preparation of the paste for manufacture of accumulator plates,
without risk of contact.
Indication of the efficiency of the draught may be gained by
holding smoke-paper at the orifice of the hood. The definition of
efficient exhaust in some regulations for the removal of fumes, as in
the Tinning Regulations, is that it shall not be deemed to be efficient
unless it removes smoke generated at the point where the fume
originates. Accurate gauging, however, of the draught can only be
done with an anemometer, so as to determine the number of linear
and cubic feet passing through the throat per minute. Only rarely
does one find an occupier alive to the value of the use of such an
instrument. The importance of this point has been recognized in the
Regulations for Heading of Yarn, by the requirement that the speed
of each exhaust opening shall be determined once in every three
months at least, and recorded in the general register. We prefer to
use Davis’s[A] self-timing anemometer, which gives readings in feet
per second without the need of a watch. Other useful anemometers
—Casella’s or Negretti and Zambra’s—require to be timed.
[A] It is not available for velocities exceeding 1,200 linear feet per minute.

The details of all routine observations on localized exhaust

ventilation might well be entered on a card hung up in the workroom.
Such a card drawn up by our colleagues, Miss Lovibond and Mr. C.
R. Pendock, has the following headings:

FIRM .......... PROCESS ..........

Fans: No. .......... Kind ..........
Motive power ..........
Other load ..........
Screen ..........
Direction ..........
Periodic cleaning ..........
Hoods: No. .......... Kind ..........
Size ..........
Maker ..........
H.P. ..........
Method of driving ...
Condition of driving
Dust collection ..........
Size ..........
 Structure ..........
Distance between each ..........
Ducts: No. .......... Kind ..........
Size .......... Length ..........Section ..........
Structure ..........
Periodic cleaning ..........
Fresh-Air Kind ..........
Inlets: No. .......... Position ..........
Size ..........
Fixed or temporary ..........

Hood: Position Date ..... Date .....

Reference of Anemo- External External
Number. meter. Conditions ..... Conditions ..... Re
Area Volume Area Volume
of Speed C.F. of Speed C.F.
Throat. F. p.m. p.m. Throat. F. p.m. p.m.

Frequent cleaning and inspection of exhaust installations are very

important, as accumulation of dust greatly impedes the flow of air at
all points of the system. The person employed in cleaning the fan
should wear a respirator. Hoods and ducts should always be cleaned
with the exhaust in full action.

REFERENCES.
[1] Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1910, p. 172.
[2] Ibid., pp. 172, 173.
[3] G. Elmhirst Duckering: A Report on an Experimental Investigation into
the Conditions of Work in Tinning Workshops, and Appendices. Included in
Special Report on Dangerous or Injurious Processes in the Coating of Metal
 with Lead or a Mixture of Lead and Tin. Cd. 3793. Wyman and Sons, Ltd.
Price 1s.
G. Elmhirst Duckering: The Cause of Lead Poisoning in the Tinning of
Metals. Journal of Hygiene, vol. viii., pp. 474-503, 1908.
G. Elmhirst Duckering: Report on an Investigation of the Air of Workplaces
in Potteries. Included as Appendix XLIX. in Report of the Departmental
Committee appointed to inquire into the Dangers attendant on the Use of
Lead, and the Danger or Injury to Health arising from Dust and Other
Causes in the Manufacture of Earthenware and China, vol. ii., pp. 93-113,
1910. Cd. 5278. Price 1s. 9d.
[4] G. Elmhirst Duckering: Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of
Factories for 1910, p. 47.
[5] C. R. Pendock (one of H.M. Inspectors of Factories): Report on Systems
of Ventilation in Use in Potteries. Included as Appendix XLVIII. in vol. ii. of
Potteries Committee’s Report referred to under[3].
C. R. Pendock: Second Report of the Departmental Committee appointed to
inquire into the Ventilation of Factories and Workshops, part i., and
especially part ii., 1907. Cd. 3552 and 3553. Price together, 4s. 8d.
Other works referred to include—Construction des Usines au Point de Vue de
l’Hygiène, by Ingénieur-Architecte Maniguet. Ch. Béranger, Paris, 1906;
Hygiène Industrielle, by MM. Leclerc de Pulligny, Boulin, and others. J. B.
Baillière et Fils, Paris, 1908; and many excellently illustrated trade
catalogues issued by ventilating engineering firms, such as the Sturtevant
Engineering Company, Ltd., London; Henry Simon, Ltd., Manchester;
Davidson and Company, Ltd., Belfast; John Gibbs and Son, Liverpool.
 CHAPTER XIII
PREVENTIVE MEASURES AGAINST LEAD
POISONING—Continued

Periodical Examination.—In various codes of regulations a

surgeon is required to make periodical medical examination of the
workers. The term “surgeon” is defined as the “Certifying Factory
Surgeon of the district, or a duly qualified medical practitioner,
appointed by written certificate of the Chief Inspector of Factories,
which appointment shall be subject to such conditions as may be
specified in that certificate.” The wording of the regulation varies
somewhat in different codes, but the intention in all is the same, and
the following example from the Tinning Regulations will indicate the
purpose and scope:
“Every person employed in tinning shall be examined by the surgeon once in
every three months (or at such shorter or longer intervals as may be prescribed in
writing by the Chief Inspector of Factories), on a day of which due notice shall be
given to all concerned. The surgeon shall have the power of suspension as
regards all persons employed in tinning, and no such person after suspension
shall be employed in tinning without written sanction from the surgeon entered in
the health register.
“Every person employed in tinning shall present himself at the appointed time for
examination by the surgeon. No person employed in tinning shall, after
suspension, work at tinning without written sanction from the surgeon entered in
the health register.”

Under the Special Rules for white-lead works, examination is

required at weekly intervals; under the Special Rules for
Earthenware and China, Manufacture of Litho-Transfers and Red
Lead, and under the Regulations for Electric Accumulators, and
Paints and Colours, monthly; under the Regulations for Tinning, Yarn
dyed with Chromate of Lead, and Enamelling, at quarterly intervals,
subject to the limitation or extension specified in the regulation
quoted.
The limitation as to quarterly examination is useful to meet
conditions, on the one hand, where special incidence calls for
increased safeguards; and, on the other, relaxation, by reason of
adoption of special processes or measures lessening risk. Thus, in a
yarn-dyeing factory, in consequence of occurrence of six cases
within five months, a weekly instead of a quarterly examination was
prescribed. After eight months, as no further cases were reported, a
monthly examination was substituted for the weekly, and eventually,
with continued absence of illness, the normal quarterly examination
was resumed.
An appointed time for the surgeon’s attendance at the factory has
been found necessary, because, in conformity with the literal wording
of the regulation, the occupier should not continue to employ a
worker who, for one reason or another, has not been examined by
the surgeon during the prescribed interval. With knowledge of the
date and hour posted in a conspicuous place in the factory, excuse
for absence becomes difficult. Alteration by the surgeon of his
appointed time should, whenever possible, be given beforehand.
Surgeons in the past frequently made examination of the persons
employed with the view of taking them unawares, and so of
precluding special preparation beforehand—a practice which had its
advantages; but they are outweighed by the hardship inflicted on
workers who were unavoidably absent, as, for example, night-
workers. A health register is supplied to all occupiers where
periodical medical examination is enjoined, the headings of which
and manner of entry are indicated later on in this chapter.
The objects which the surgeon should have in mind in making his
examination are:
1. To prevent lead poisoning and minimize lead absorption.
2. To obtain information for the occupier and Inspector of Factories
of the relative danger of one process and another with a view to
adoption of remedial measures.
In safeguarding the health of the workers, he should make effort to
gain their confidence, in order to be able to attach proper value to
statement as to subjective symptoms. Suspicion in their minds that
the examination is made solely in the interests of the employer
militates against success, and increases inclination to conceal
symptoms and to give untruthful answers as to the state of health
since the last examination. In our opinion, the surgeon will best carry
out the first object by attention to the second. The study of
thousands of reports on cases of lead poisoning convinces us that
90 per cent. at least are due to inhalation of dust and fumes. The
surgeon, therefore, should utilize the earliest sign of lead absorption
to warn the occupier and inspector of conditions favourable to the
development of plumbism, and due probably either to some
unguarded spot in the manufacturing process whereby dust or fumes
are not being removed completely, or to ignorance or carelessness
(often excusable in the absence of proper instruction) on the part of
the worker. He should direct, therefore, especial attention to new
workers, not only because of their need for guidance as to
precautions to be observed and greater liability to attack during the
first year of employment, but also because development of signs in
them constitutes the surest guide to defects in the process of
manufacture. Occasionally symptoms in a worker may be so
menacing as to demand immediate suspension, but generally before
the power is exercised attempt to rectify the condition which gives
rise to them should be made. The surgeon can do much by
influencing the foremen and forewomen, who will necessarily come
before him for examination, in insisting on the supervision by them of
care and cleanliness by the workpeople under their charge. Should
suspension, despite attention in the manner suggested, be
necessary, he will recognize that transference to a non-lead process,
if feasible, is preferable to entire cessation from work in very many
cases. The surgeon, therefore, should know what departments are
possible alternatives to lead work.
The fact that an examination is made on factory premises, is
directed to detection and prevention, treatment taking a subordinate
place, and is often made on persons who, unlike hospital patients,
seek to conceal their symptoms, causes it to be an examination sui
generis. Hence the surgeon must trust his sight more than his
hearing. A surgeon with experience of such work has said: “The
worker in lead must be surveyed as an individual, and idiosyncrasies
must be carefully studied and allowed for; the ‘personal equation’ is
of vital importance”[1].
For the examination a well-lighted room affording privacy is
essential. While it is desirable for the surgeon periodically to see the
processes and conditions under which work is carried on, systematic
examinations of workers should not be made elsewhere than in a
private room. The custom of marshalling workers in a queue,
although perhaps unavoidable in many cases, is liable to detract
from the seriousness of the proceedings, a sense of which it should
be one of the aims of the examination to arouse. In discussing the
method of interrogation and usual examination, Dr. King Alcock[2],
Certifying Factory Surgeon of Burslem, says: “Note the general
manner assumed in answering questions and any indications of
carelessness in dress and toilet. Inquire into the state of digestion,
existence of colicky pains, regularity of bowels, menses, history of
pregnancies and miscarriages, whether before, in the intervals of, or
during lead employment; existence of headache, diplopia, or
amaurosis. Note the type, facies, state of teeth and nails,
complexion, speech, tongue, strength of grasp (if possible, with
dynamometer), any tremor in outstretched hand, resistance to
forcible flexion of wrist.... If strabismus is present, note whether of
old standing or recent; and if ocular troubles seem imminent,
examine for optic neuritis, either at once or at home (this is very
important, as cases of acute and serious optic neuritis still baffle
examination by their intermensual development).” He recommends
the surgeon, apart from entry in the health register, which must
necessarily be very brief, to keep a private notebook, and to enter in
it as a matter of routine such details as name, process, age, duration
of employment, condition (married or single), pregnancies, state of
bowels and menses, dental toilet, and any special point worthy of
note in individual workers. A card index, if in use, might conveniently
serve for such entries.
In the actual routine examination it may be useful to describe the
procedure where a large number of workers pass before the surgeon
in a white-lead works every week. The points noted are:
1. The general appearance of the man as he walks forward,
especially the face with regard to anæmia, which in the majority of
cases of early lead absorption is not a true anæmia, but is due to
vaso-motor spasm of the arterioles of the face and eyes. Frequently,
on speaking to a lead-worker, the face, apparently anæmic, flushes
directly.
2. The brightness of the eyes, state of the pupils, and condition of
the conjunctiva and of the ocular muscles.
3. The mouth should next be examined, and search made for any
evidence of blue line around the gum.
4. The gait should be watched both on advancing to, and retiring
from, the surgeon. If necessary, the man should be made to walk a
few steps. Although the peroneal type of palsy is extremely rare, the
possibility of its occurrence should never be absent from the mind of
the surgeon.
5. The man should then be directed to stretch his hands out in
front of him, with wrists extended and fingers widely spread.
Presence or absence of tremor should be looked for, and the
condition of the finger-nails, as to the practice of biting, etc. The
extensor power should then be tested, firstly of the fingers. While the
hands of the workman remain outstretched, the surgeon places the
forefinger of his hand in the outstretched palm of the workman, and
the ball of the thumb upon the extreme tip of each finger, and by
gently pulling it down, noting the spring present in the muscles. This
test is probably the most delicate there is for detection of early
extensor paralysis. The condition of the lumbricals and interossei are
noted on movement of the fingers. The extensors of the wrist are
then further examined, the workman being directed to flex his arm at
the elbow and strongly pronate the wrist, so that the palm of the
hand is directed forwards. He is then told to close the fist when the
surgeon endeavours to flex the wrist, the workman at the same time
resisting by forcible extension of his wrist. Ordinarily the extensor
communis digitorum and minimi digiti are sufficiently powerful to
resist a very powerful pull upon the wrist; and if the wrist is found to
yield, it is a sign that the muscles are affected. Sometimes the
strength of the wrists and fingers is judged by the surgeon placing
his palms on the dorsum of the patient’s outstretched hands, and
seeing whether the patient can be prevented from lifting them
without flexing the wrists or finger-joints.
 The test detects (1) paralysis which has been recovered from to a
large extent; (2) commencing partial paralysis; and (3) weakness of
muscular power, especially in those who have worked in lead for a
number of years. This weakness appears to be an effect of lead
upon the muscular tissue or dependent on debility, the result of lead
absorption, and independent of nerve implication. We have known
the condition to remain unaltered for years, and also to undergo
alteration, being at times absent for months together. Occasionally
reports of definite paralysis refer to pre-existing weakness.
6. The pulse is next noted. The pulse-rate need not ordinarily be
counted, but if it is either very slow or fast careful examination at the
conclusion of the general inspection should be made.
It is well to make all these points before asking any questions.
After they are completed inquiry as to regularity of the bowels,
existence of pain or discomfort, would follow. The speech should be
noted, as slurring or hesitating speech is occasionally associated
with early lead poisoning.
All these points can be gone through quite rapidly, and at the
conclusion of the general examination, if judgment is in suspension,
careful examination in the routine medical manner should be made.
In some factories all new workers are examined by the surgeon
before they commence work in dangerous processes. At any rate, a
list of such persons should be given to the surgeon at his visit, as
naturally the question of personal fitness for employment should be
decided at his first examination. Conditions which should lead to
rejection are tubercular disease of every kind, idiopathic epilepsy, all
forms of mental disease or weakness (hysteria, feeble-mindedness,
and neurasthenia), obvious alcoholism, women who are pregnant or
who give a history of repeated miscarriages prior to work in lead,
persons with marked errors of refraction unless corrected by
glasses, kidney disease of all kinds, evidence of previous chronic
saturnism, and bad oral sepsis. Special attention will have to be paid
to casual labourers, and it should be the aim of the surgeon to
discourage this class of labour in lead industries. Work under special
rules or regulations requires to be carried out under strict discipline,
and this it is extremely difficult to maintain on other than regular
workers, who recognize the need for cleanliness and observance of
regulations.
Other aids to diagnosis cannot be carried out as a matter of
routine, but will necessarily be used in particular cases, such as
ophthalmoscopic examination of the fundus, electrical reactions of
muscles, analysis of the urine, and examination of the blood-
pressure.
A few words may be added on the significance of the two
commonest signs—the blue line and anæmia. It cannot be too
strongly insisted on that presence of the Burtonian line on the gums
is, as a rule, indicative of lead absorption, and not of lead poisoning.
As a danger signal its value is immense, and hardly less so its value
in clinching diagnosis in doubtful cases. Whenever the line is seen
risk is imminent, and poisoning (not necessarily of the individual in
whom it is pronounced) among the workers is inevitable in the
absence of adoption of precautions. Unfortunately, careful dental
toilet, which the surgeon will necessarily lay stress on, may prevent
development, or the practice, when adopted, cause disappearance
of the line after the lapse of a few months. Under these
circumstances, the merest trace will have all the significance of the
fully-developed line in a worker neglectful of care of the teeth.
Among new workers a commencing blue line should be strong
evidence of the need for dust removal at some point in the process
of manufacture. The line, in our experience, is dense in occupations
giving rise to fumes or to dust of compounds of lead, but
comparatively rare in those handling metallic lead or its alloys, as
compositors, tea-lead rollers, solderers, and the like.
Some degree of pallor is so commonly met with in adolescence
that it is the progressive development of the anæmia which the
surgeon must especially watch for. As a danger signal, therefore, it
has the same significance nearly as the blue line; but when lead
absorption has affected the elements in the blood, progressive
anæmia in new workers, attributable to the employment, and
showing no tendency to improve after watching for a few months, is
an indication for suspension or transference to other work. In older
workers, with a duration of employment of five years or more, there
may be a quasi-pathognomonic pallor which does not vary from year
to year. In them it must be supposed that an equilibrium has been
established, and development of other symptoms, such as tremor,
wrist weakness, or albuminuria, becomes significant. Attention has
already been directed to the distinct saturnine facies associated with
anæmia, and characterized by loss of fat, particularly noticeable in
the orbit and buccinator region of the face. “So far as the question of
any worker’s suspension is concerned,” says Dr. King Alcock, “I
prefer to make my instinctive primâ facie distrust of a saturnine pallor
the basis for action. The pallor of plumbism cannot be summed up in
hæmoglobin and corpuscular content; it is the expression of a
complex toxæmia resulting from defective assimilation and
excretion”[3].
The knowledge the surgeon should gain of the idiosyncrasies of
the workers by his periodical examination will enable him to appraise
at their proper value the nature and degree of the symptoms in
notified cases.
Sometimes a rule is made that no lead-worker who has suffered
from an attack of plumbism should be allowed to resume work. This
we consider too harsh a measure. It may be true for painters, but
when remedial measures, such as locally applied exhaust
ventilation, can be applied, with consequent removal of the danger in
the process at which the poisoning has arisen, prohibition of
employment seems an unnecessarily drastic measure.
The health register in general use where periodic medical
examination is required in pursuance of special rules and regulations
is divided into two parts, in each of which entries by the surgeon are
required at each visit.
Part I.

List of Persons Employed in Processes. Particulars of Examina

First Employed
Worker’s Name, in such Process. Date Date Date
No. in full. Process. Age. Date. Result. Result. Result.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
 Part II.

Particulars of any Directions

given by the Surgeon.
Reference to Any Certificate of Suspension
Part 1. Date of Number of or Certificate permitting
Examina- Persons Resumption of Work Signa
Page. Col. tion. Examined. must be entered here in full. of Surg
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

In Part I. of the register the surgeon should, at the times of

examination, enter the date at the head of one of the columns
numbered 6 to 9; and in the space below, opposite the name of each
person examined on that date, a brief note (see next page) of the
condition found.
In Part II. he should again enter, in Column 3, the date of
examination, with a statement of the total numbers examined on that
occasion (Column 4); and in Column 5 any certificate of suspension
from work, or certificate permitting resumption of work, and
particulars of any other direction given by him, appending his
signature in Column 6.
It is the duty of the occupier to enter in Part I. the following
particulars with regard to each person examined: (1) Name in full
(Column 2); (2) the process in which he or she is employed (Column
3); (3) age when first employed (Column 4); and (4) date of first
employment in that process (Column 5); and these particulars, in